Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sailors heed a lesson from these men of high renown,
When you leave the ocean and it’s time to settle down,
Never cast your anchor less than ninety miles from shore,
There’ll always be temptation to be off to sea once more!
-Marching Inland

JUNE

Fabian looks up at the house, a quaint ranch-style with yellow siding and towering pine trees framing the driveway, and wonders what exactly led his father to drag his ship up out of the sea and put down roots in downtown Elmville.

It already feels wrong, standing on the sidewalk of Maple Street, after spending six years on the ocean. Cramped, almost. It shouldn’t; this is how he spent his teenage years, the king of suburbia, but even then there was the understanding of freedom, that with adventuring comes chaos and loose boundaries and no curfew. Here, though, Fabian’s sole purpose is to blend in. Be gentle and amicable and normal, and it’s already seeming like he’s a little bit out of his depth.

The driver’s side door slams shut and Riz gets out, hands on his hips, and looks out at the house with Fabian. “Well,” he says. “We’re here. We should get in our stuff before it rains.”

Thick grey clouds hang low over the one-story house, ominous and humid, and it seems almost like an omen. Riz pops the trunk of the car, a modest thing from thirty years ago, and starts hauling out luggage. There are three suitcases in total, plus bags and boxes and Riz’s briefcase, the bronze around the latches oxidized from almost a decade of use. Nobody tries to talk to them as they start bringing their things in, but Fabian can see neighbors peek out of windows and stand on their porches just scoping out the new arrivals. It’s the kind of street with neighborhood watch stickers on all the doors, the kind where everyone knows everyone and everyone talks. Fabian hasn’t felt self-conscious in a long time, but he’s starting to feel the itch of it now.

The clouds break just as Fabian’s lugging in the last box, stuffed full of case notes and other confidential material and easily weighing fifty pounds. Riz stands in the soon-to-be living room with him and looks at the pile of stuff, all of the junk that will make up the next few months of their lives.

Tomorrow the movers will come with used furniture provided by the agency, prepaid and stiffly handed over to Riz like the house and the car, to be returned after the job has elapsed. But for now the rooms are barren and empty, wallpapered with the design choices of inhabitants before them. Riz lies down on the dusty floor almost immediately and pulls out his crystal to call for a pizza. In the dim orange overhead light, Fabian catches the glint of the ring on his left hand, identical to the one on Fabian’s. That’ll take some getting used to.

When the pizza comes, half plain and half pepperoni with anchovies, the same order it’s been for years, it’s delivered by a pimply teenage dwarf in a uniform polo shirt that eyes the two of them and the unfurnished house as he takes the money and leaves on his bicycle. It’s kind of efficient, Fabian figures; the more people that talk about them, the easier it’ll be to integrate them into the community. Better to be infamous than have to beg to be noticed, Fabian has always thought.

They eat the pizza on the ground like true newlyweds in relative silence. Riz opens up some of his file boxes and starts flipping through paperwork. Fabian watches this.

Irritation starts to bubble under his skin. Riz was the one who initiated this, dragged Fabian into his work, brought him to this house, 37 Maple Street, and isn’t even going to talk to him. Fabian uprooted his life for Riz, or at least the next three to five months of his life, and he deserves answers.

But then again, how much of a life was it?

Six years of being transporting cargo, some of it legal, with a small crew of acquaintances that he didn’t feel a bit bad about dropping to go with Riz. And as his friends get married and buy houses for real, Fabian’s willing to be the bigger man and admit that there’s a gnawing dissatisfaction that has been eating at him for a year or so.

So really, when Riz called and said, “I have a huge favor to ask, it’s a matter of national security,” what could Fabian have said other than ‘I’m in?’

Riz hums down at a sheet of paper, a crease between his eyebrows, holding an uneaten piece of pizza in one hand that’s steadily dripping grease on the hardwood floor. Fabian hands him a napkin and Riz looks up, a little surprised, as if he had forgotten that Fabian was still there. “Thanks.”

“Alright,” Fabian says. “We need to do some talking, the Ball.” Riz frowns at the childhood nickname. Fabian pushes on. “I get that there’s a lot you can’t tell me, but I think I’m entitled to at least a little information, wouldn’t you agree?”

Riz sighs and rubs his forehead. He smears a little bit of pizza sauce above his eyebrow. “I know, Fabian. And I really am glad that you were willing to do this, believe me.”

“I’ll believe you when you tell me what the hell we’re doing here.”

“Okay.” Riz lays out his papers, what look like case briefings. “Here’s the deal. And you cannot, under any circumstances, tell anyone I told you this, alright?”

It feels thrilling and clandestine, being told state secrets in an empty house over delivery pizza, and that quells Fabian’s annoyance a little bit. “So here’s what we’re working with. There’s a new radical subset of the Harvestmen- they call themselves the Children of the Harvest.”

“A little on the nose,” Fabian points out.

“If only they could’ve had you running PR,” Riz remarks dryly. “The reason why we’re getting involved in the Children of the Harvest is because they’re less interested in bringing about the apocalypse and more interested in seizing control of the government. We’ve been tipped off that they’re most likely planning a coup as we speak, which makes their business our business. Apparently Newport is a big hub for these guys, so that’s why we’re here. I’m going to try and find an in with the Children of the Harvest, and it’s easier if I’ve got a family-man persona. That’s where you come in.”

Fabian frowns. “If this is a crazy Helioic cult, wouldn’t it have been better to find some nice lady spy to come with you? Or literally any one of our female friends?”

“Adaine’s too recognizable, Fig’s taken, and Kristen has a mullet.” Riz ticks them off on his fingers. “Besides, having a male partner makes me an outsider. It gives them something to sink their teeth into.”

“I see,” Fabian says with a grin, “I’m bait.”

“You’re not bait.”

“I’m set dressing,” Fabian amends, taking another slice of pizza. “I’m honored.”

“Fabian.” Riz puts a hand on Fabian’s knee. It leaves a small smudge of grease. “You’re here because they told me to take someone that I trusted implicitly, and that’s you. You’re much more than set dressing. And hey, if it makes you feel special, you’re the only civilian who knows anything about this case.”

“That does make me feel special.” He tracks the sauce on Riz’s forehead, the glint of gold on his finger, and wonders what kind of mess he’s gotten himself into, helping Riz break open a cult in one of the most picturesque corners of Solace. “Thanks, the Ball.”

“You can’t call me that around any of our new neighbors,” Riz warns. “Or I’ll call you something worse.”

“I don’t think you could possibly come up with a nickname as amazing as ‘the Ball.’” Something in the back of Fabian’s memory reminds him that it wasn’t actually him who came up with the nickname but Ragh; Fabian was the one who took it to the bank, though, so he counts it as his own victory.

“Sweetheart. Snookums. Sugarbear?”

“That last one’s definitely not a thing. And call me any of those names in public and it’s your head on a pike.”

Riz wiggles his eyebrows. “In public?”

Fabian shoves him lightly and Riz laughs, and it’s kind of funny that the day they bought wedding rings and moved into a house together comes with such a backslide into adolescent banter. “Shut the fuck up.”

Outside, rain pelts the windows. 37 Maple Street can be nice, Fabian decides. Once there’s furniture and such. It’ll at least be bearable to spend three to five months in. When Riz had breached the subject of the timeline, the anticipated duration of the case, over the phone, it had sounded like a lifetime. But now, watching Riz’s ring catch the light, Fabian thinks that it might not be all bad.

At least it’s Riz, he thinks. He can do this with Riz.

~

The first dinner invitation comes when Fabian’s at work (a temporary gig working in the harbor, a job provided by the agency like everything else- it kind of makes you wonder how many pies the agency’s got its fingers in). Riz is ‘working from home,’ or at least that’s the cover story they’re going with. So he’s there when the neighbors across the street- a middle-aged human couple almost definitely associated with the church, according to Riz’s texts- come bearing a bottle of fancy maple syrup as a housewarming gift and a request to come over for dinner at their house that night.

Riz had accepted because he wanted to get a foot in the door with the Children of the Harvest and definitely not because he wanted free food, or so Fabian gleaned from his brief, matter-of-fact texts. One of the other deckhands, hauling crates of seafood off of a dumpy little crabber, had asked with a sly smile who he was texting and the answer “my husband” had slipped out of Fabian’s mouth so quickly that he didn’t even clock the insanity of what he had said until a good thirty seconds later.

When he gets home, sweaty and smelling of fish and salt, his ‘husband’ is hunched over his computer in a jacket-less suit. “I put out your nice clothes,” he says without looking up, pointing to the newly furnished bedroom.

Fabian takes in the house, full for the first time, and he can see it. With a little elbow grease, they can absolutely pull this off. Some coffee cups by the sink, shoes by the door, a guitar or a bookshelf or something like that, and this can and will pass as a newlywed’s house. Fabian and Riz’s newlywed house. The only slightly stained 50’s-style furniture, quirky in its obsolescence, seems fitting for Riz, who only owns old man shoes and wore a newsie cap all through high school. In the bedroom, there’s a king-sized bed with an orange duvet that looks impossibly soft. Fabian wonders if he had joined the secret service with Riz if he would’ve gotten this kind of treatment the whole time or if they’re only being generous because he’s an interloper.

True to his word, Riz has laid out one of Fabian’s few nice outfits on the bed. Somehow Riz has picked through Fabian’s eclectic wardrobe and compiled something that’s simple and modest, plain slacks and a dress shirt that surprisingly still has all of the buttons. When Fabian returns, freshly showered and outfit donned (he prefers to think of it like a disguise. It still feels weird to wear normal people clothes after years of the kind of garb that gets you street cred on pirate islands but thrown out of bars anywhere else), Riz looks up from his computer and practically jumps. “Oh. That’s weird,” he mumbles, half to himself.

“When are we supposed to be there?” Fabian asks, tugging at the sleeves of the shirt. It’s slightly too tight around his arms; he can’t fathom the last time he’s worn this.

“Ten minutes.” Riz stands and puts on his jacket from where it’s been hanging over the back of his chair with the kind of ease of someone who’s been wearing suits since middle school, which he has. “We need to figure out some basic facts, get our stories straight.”

“We met in high school, fell in love in college, got married in the springtime under a canopy of apple blossoms. What more could we need to know?” Fabian nods vaguely over at the glass bottle of syrup on the kitchen counter. “Why did they give us maple syrup?”

“Apparently it’s a point of regional pride.” Riz rubs his face, massaging his temples like the act of being around Fabian is giving him a headache. “And you didn’t go to college. When would we have fallen in love?”

“We secretly loved each other the whole time,” Fabian answers easily. “We confessed our love the summer of your junior year.”

“Okay. Sure. Okay. And you’ve never done any illegal shit, okay? You’re just a normal sailor.”

“No such thing.”

“They don’t know that.” Riz claps his hands in finality and grins up at Fabian. “You ready?”

“Always, the Ball,” Fabian says, and is out the door before he can see Riz’s reaction.

The neighbors are called the Humberts and meet them at the door with matching grins. For a moment it’s a little eerie, their identical expressions, but Fabian gets over himself pretty quickly. Maybe these are freak cultists, but it’s unlikely that they’re going to do anything that’ll actively give him nightmares. They usher Fabian and Riz in with overly-enthusiastic greetings, and it’s entirely possible that Fabian’s reading too far into this. He wasn’t around a lot of normal adult figures as a kid; the most average person he knows is probably Gilear, who still may or may not be the chosen one.

“Hello, welcome!” Mrs. Humbert says to him. “We met your Riz already, but we haven’t had the opportunity to meet you. I’m Kathy and this is my husband, James.”

“Fabian Aramais Seacaster,” he says, and shakes their hands with a practiced flourish. The unsaid ‘son of Bill Seacaster’ hangs in the air. He’s long stopped introducing himself that way in polite company, but there’s still the compulsion that lingers every time he greets someone new.

The phrase ‘your Riz’ takes a moment to hit him, but when it does it hits like a semi truck.

“Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, so why don’t we wait in the living room?” Kathy says. “I hope you like baked ziti.”

Fabian’s still standing there, mouth a little agape, when Riz- his Riz- knocks his hand against Fabian’s and inclines his head toward the living room. “Come on.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Fabian murmurs, and follows.

The living room is nice and quaint, a perfect picture of the suburban middle class. Wide windows looking out over the expansive front yard, a white couch surprisingly free of stains, a fireplace with a mantle cluttered with framed family photos. Riz sits on a small yellow loveseat and Fabian follows his lead, trying very hard not to look as nervous as he feels. He looks at the pictures, vacation photos and graduation portraits for what looks like three kids, grinning widely in their caps and gowns.

“So,” James begins as his wife disappears into the kitchen, “what brought you to Newport?”

Riz smiles easily. It’s only because Fabian’s seen the awkward, paranoid teenager he was that he knows it’s a well-practiced act; anyone who doesn’t know him as well as Fabian does would never be able to tell. “We really loved the sense of community here. We didn’t want to go someplace where we’d never see our neighbors, we wanted to be able to make friends and meet people. And everything’s within walking distance, which is a huge plus.”

“You have to try the Baronese restaurant in town, it’s only a few blocks away and it’s wonderful,” Kathy interjects, coming in bearing glasses of wine and a bowl of nuts on a kitschy little plastic tray reading ‘it’s 5 o’clock somewhere!’ “Meeting you both is so exciting. You know, we’ve never had people like you here before.”

“People like us?” Fabian says icily. Riz kicks him, just a flash of pain in the ankle that goes unnoticed by the Humberts.

Riz carries out basic small talk while Fabian quietly seethes. It’s really the lowest level of rude comment, and not even one that was meant to be rude, but it makes Fabian’s blood boil anyway. What would it be like if he and Riz were actually married? If they were truly, deeply in love and had to deal with being absentmindedly othered by the community at every turn. It’s a sort of righteous indignation that floods his system, anger at the fact that there are countless queer people being hurt by people like this; he saw what they did to Kristen as a kid. Riz must notice Fabian’s irritation, because he reaches over and rests his hand on Fabian’s. It’s nice, an easy gesture of solidarity, and Riz’s thin fingers lazily entwined with his act as a physical reminder that he’s not alone, that someone else is just as pissed as he is.

They relocate to the dining room and Kathy brings out the baked ziti, bubbling and crusted with cheese. For a moment the smell makes Fabian almost forgive their oblivious homophobia.

“Are you two religious?” James asks as they eat. Riz stiffens in his chair next to Fabian, sitting up a little straighter, ears twitching. This is the Riz that Fabian knows.

“We are, actually,” Riz says. His voice is carefully modulated, just one more thing that’s changed since high school. “We were members of the Church of Sol back in Elmville, it’s really a shame that it had to get shut down.”

It’s a smart move. The old church in Elmville had gotten into some money troubles (embezzlement, to put it less politely) and was disbanded, so there are no records to check, no one to ask to confirm Riz’s claim. “Awful,” James says with a disappointed shake of his head. “This government doesn’t give a damn about the church.”

Riz just nods sagely. “We’ll want to find a good church here, where do you go?”

“We’ve been attending the Church of the Blessed Harvest for going on thirty years now,” James answers. This time it’s Fabian’s turn to kick Riz, attempting to reiterate his earlier point about the obvious cult marketing. Riz doesn’t react but cleches his jaw a little.

“Well, we’ll see you Sunday.” Riz shoots Fabian a look, as if to ask ‘is that okay?’ It’s largely perfunctory. Of course Fabian’s in.

They get to the topic of weddings over dessert, which is grocery store cherry pie rewarmed in the oven. Kathy asks how long they’ve been married and Riz answers easily, “since April. Fabian really wanted a wedding with apple blossoms.”

Fabian steps on Riz’s foot under the table. To any outsider, Riz’s grin would probably look loving, but to Fabian it looks awfully shit-eating. Riz reaches across the table and takes Fabian’s hand in his own and Fabian’s never had someone hold his hand smugly before now. It’s almost mathematical, the way Riz is playing out the night: just enough affection to sell the marriage but not enough physical intimacy to scare off their conservative neighbors. Every answer is carefully crafted, every movement a planned action. Shit, Fabian thinks. My husband is a damn good spy.

“Who proposed?” Kathy asks.

“Me,” Fabian says, because he knows an opportunity to embarrass Riz when he sees it. “I proposed on the Bastion common and Riz fell in a pond.”

“Only because you didn’t tell me I was about to walk in,” Riz retorts, and hopefully their rapport seems like witty banter and not trouble in paradise. “I was moving backwards, I couldn’t have known!”

Fabian grins and takes another bite of pie. “A fish swam into his shirt.”

This time Riz swats him on the back of the head in full view of the Humberts, an infatuated sort of teasing that fits perfectly into their act.

The night ends without fanfare, and Fabian holds Riz’s hand as they walk back across the street to their house. The street lamps cast an eerie glow over the pavement, dappled from the trees, bathing the deathly quiet night in orange light. It feels strange, walking into a house side by side with Riz, dropping the keys on the small table by the door and leaving their shoes on the mat. It feels far too domestic. And that’s the point, it’s good that they’re selling it enough that even Fabian’s feeling it, but it hasn’t really sunk in until now.

They retire to the bedroom and they’ve shared beds many, many times before, but it seems different now. The wedding band on Fabian’s ring finger seems heavy. It’s a large enough bed, especially considering how little space Riz takes up, so there’s plenty of wiggle room. It’s unlikely they’ll end up cuddling or something, not unless someone initiates it.

But then Fabian sees Riz out of the corner of his eye in flannel pajamas and wonders why he was thinking about cuddling in the first place.

Being here, in this zone of falsehood, casts everything in a different light. They’re not just Fabian and Riz, adventurers and best friends, anymore. They’re Fabian and Riz, married couple. It’s not a wrench in the machinery of their relationship but it’s definitely a pebble in a shoe, noticeable enough to want to stop and shake it out. Fabian watches through half-closed, tired eyes as Riz reads for an hour or so by the light of a small table lamp by the bed, knees pulled up to his chest and running his index finger along the page, following the path of the words, and wonders once more about his father. If he had felt such cognitive dissonance when he had married Hallariel, the sudden calm of sedentary life, or if he had been too in love to notice.

Riz clicks off the lamp at a quarter to one and climbs under the covers with Fabian, and in the dark room he can almost imagine that they’re back in the Hangvan under the careful protection of Tracker’s Moon Haven, scared for their lives with every breath. Fabian listens to Riz breathe, a foot and a half of space between them, and tries to force himself to get used to this new environment, the hum of the air conditioning and Riz’s gentle snoring.

And although they’re on solid ground, as Fabian drifts off to sleep he can almost feel the bed sway beneath him as if rocked by the sea.

~

They go to church on Sunday.

It’s the first time either of them have done so, and the energy in the small house is tense as they dress in silence.

“We need to get you more nice clothes,” Riz remarks as he ties his tie in the reflection of the oven, waiting for the coffee to brew.

“I have nice clothes,” Fabian argues. “Just not church clothes.” The toaster pops and he retrieves his bagel, smears it with cream cheese and a light sprinkling of salt and passes one half to Riz, who takes it with vague surprise, no doubt expecting his breakfast to consist only of coffee, but inhales it in three seconds anyway. Bagels are one of the few foods that Fabian can make, along with microwave popcorn, cereal, spaghetti (on a good day), and one time, under Gorgug’s watchful eye, he successfully made crock pot pulled pork. Fabian eats and watches Riz fidget, a little spot of cream cheese gone unnoticed at the corner of his mouth. Riz takes the coffee pot from the machine and fills a mug, downs it, and pours himself another. “Any idea what to expect?” Fabian ventures.

“I’ve done research,” Riz says, but the way he says it makes it clear that he doesn’t think it’ll be sufficient. “I wish we could just ask Kristen.”

That’s the hard part about being undercover, Fabian’s realized. The rest of their friends know that Fabian and Riz are sharing a house in Newport for a few months but no more than that. He’s sure they know that something’s up, just like how they all know what Riz’s real job is, though they politely pretend he’s just a low-level government employee, but they can’t ask and Fabian can’t explain anything. If they called up Kristen and asked for any tips for entering a fundamental Helioic church it would invite questions that the agency can’t risk. Loose lips sink ships, and Fabian’s been on enough sinking ships to know the importance of keeping a secret.

“It’s a little reassuring to know going into it that everything they say is a bunch of bullshit,” Fabian remarks, and Riz hums into his coffee.

“The things I do for this fucking country,” he mumbles.

They leave at half past 7; all down the street, Fabian can see cars pulling out of their driveways, no doubt going to the same place. He halfheartedly wonders if it would be more efficient for them to just run a bus or at least some kind of carpool. “I miss the Hangman,” Fabian grouses as they sit at the stoplight, mourning just one more loss necessary for the cover. Riz just huffs out a laugh and keeps his eyes trained out the window. He cleans up well, and Fabian’s always known this, but he feels like he realizes this more now, fully grown and adult and sitting in the car in his Sunday best. Riz has styled his hair in a way that he usually doesn’t, taking extra care to try and shape it into something actually presentable as opposed to the normal mop of curls that he’ll throw a hat over and call a day. Fabian likes the wildness of his usual hair, but looking at him out of the corner of his eye at stop signs now just reminds him of that picture of Pok that they spent so much of sophomore year poring over until it was ingrained into all their memories. If not for the permanent freckles that sit comfortably beneath his eyes and the scar on his chin from a disastrous battle during senior year, Fabian wouldn’t recognize Riz at all; everything else, the rakish smile, the quirk of the eyebrows, the cut of the jaw, is all his father.

Fabian and Riz spent nearly their entire childhoods grappling with the seeming inevitability of turning into their dads, and at least when Fabian sees himself he can see those obvious elven traits that separate him so distinctly from Bill, but when Riz looks in the mirror and sees that perfect symmetrical image of Pok, Fabian can’t even imagine what he thinks.

They pull into a packed church parking lot, teeming with cars and families and people carrying large containers of food into a side door. Riz gets out of the car first and stands with his hands on his hips just like he had their first day in Newport, silently casing the joint from the outside. People turn to look at them, the queer newcomers, and Fabian’s skin crawls. It’s a kind of encroaching shame that he hasn’t felt since high school and he shrugs it off as best he can, rounding on the passenger’s side of the car to stop Riz before they go in. “Hold on,” he says, and licks his thumb before taking Riz’s chin in the crook of his index finger and wiping away the leftover bit of cream cheese from breakfast. People stare at them. Fabian lets them; Riz’s cheeks flush a muddy kind of forest green.

And then, as the church bells ring, they walk side by side in through the double doors with squared shoulders.

Fabian watches as Riz takes in the place within seconds, eyes darting around the chapel with expert perception, like a computer gathering data.

To Fabian, it’s just a church. Not that he’s been in many of them, but he knew roughly what to expect. White walls and a tall, sloped ceiling, enormous stained-glass windows casting the room in dancing, multicolored light. Rows of wooden pews, already pretty filled, framing a long red carpet leading up to the altar/stage kind of thing (Fabian’s not totally sure of all the vocabulary. He might have to do some of his own research when they leave). Heavy tapestries woven with images of corn and sheaves of wheat and shining suns. Riz leads them to a seat near the middle in a pew with only two other people in it, an elderly couple who eye them as they sit.

Riz leans in towards Fabian’s shoulder and murmurs, “there are only five nonhumans here.”

Fabian looks around and quickly realizes that he’s right, barring them: there’s a reedy half-elven man sitting at the organ, three old halfling ladies in the front row, and one gnome usher by the doors. In the sea of humans, Riz’s green skin sticks out like a sore thumb.

The organist starts to play and the choir starts to sing and Fabian and Riz share a look, a mutual, unspoken ‘what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?’

“I’d like to remind you,” Fabian whispers into Riz’s ear, “that I’m not being paid for this shit.”

Riz elbows him in the side.

Here’s something that Fabian probably should’ve guessed: church is fucking boring.

It’s interesting in that this is Riz’s job and Fabian’s technically a part of espionage, but it’s also a lot of sitting and listening and reciting dispassionately from books, which are all things Fabian has never been very good at.

They sing all together, or more accurately, everyone else sings and Fabian and Riz move their mouths and pretend, and then there are prayers, and then there’s more singing, and then they all turn and greet each other in the other pews. The woman behind Fabian, a middle-aged redhead who reminds him of Kristen’s mom, looks him up and down before reluctantly reaching out to shake his hand. Fabian can’t help but feel a little bit of vindication as she wishes him peace, trapped into offering him decency purely out of societal convention.

There’s more singing and then a sermon, where the pastor paces the stage and speaks like a high schooler in theater who was just told to project to the back of the house for the first time, half talking and half yelling. The sermon is about choice and the ‘righteous path that Helio has laid,’ about how everyone has the free will to either worship god and go to heaven or deny god and go to hell. After the service, safely cloistered away in the car where no one can hear them, Riz remarks, “it’s not really free will if one comes with such harsh consequences, is it? At this point, it’s not really about choosing whether you want to believe in god or not, it’s choosing whether or not you want to go to hell.”

“I know,” Fabian says, because he can’t fully summarize the way it had felt, sitting next to his fake husband in a room full of people who looked nothing like him and having someone preach to him about eternal damnation. “It’s stupid.”

It’s different from what Kristen has told them about her old church, where they wore their bigotry blatantly on their sleeves. Here it’s more insidious, putting up a veneer of acceptance, a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ lack of outright hostility.

Riz says that’s their trick: display a welcoming front so that they can lure in sinners and convert them.

After the service there’s a potluck lunch, which neither of them knew about but seemed all too serendipitous. Everyone gathers on the lawn and lays out food on folding tables, dips and casseroles and deviled eggs. Fabian and Riz are the men of the hour, and they don’t get a second of reprieve from introductions and conversations from the moment they step out onto the grass.

Some folks are chatty and polite, talking about the church and the town and what restaurants to try. Fabian notices, though, the people that offer quick introductions and then flee to the other side of the lawn. He also notices the conspicuous lack of children being introduced, instead sidelined to staring from faraway tables or shielded behind the legs of their parents.

It’s hard keeping up the act of willful ignorance, pretending that they don’t see the way that people hesitate before shaking their hands. At one point, while everyone else stands in tight little huddles and gossips, Riz gets up on his tiptoes and Fabian crouches a little so that he can whisper in Fabian’s ear, “if it makes you feel any better, half of these people will be in handcuffs before the year is out.”

Riz is good at this, better at playing naive, because he’s had a lifetime of experience being the outsider. And so has Fabian, he’s had plenty, he’s looked out over a sea of white faces and felt unfamiliar, he’s visited Fallinel and felt a deep lack of belonging, but he’s never been the only goblin in the school district, one of four in the town. And Fabian had learned to overcompensate, to fight tooth and nail to prove his worth, but Riz had done what any good rogue should do and learned to blend in. That fact, watching Riz artfully move through a crowd that hates him with a glint of steel in his eyes, both saddens Fabian and hardens his resolve. He shakes the bigots’ hands and imagines them behind bars, imagines his fake husband putting them there.

There’s one young girl at a table eating potato salad alone, clearly not rich in friends, who watches the two of them with eagle eyes the entire time. It doesn’t seem confrontational or angry but pure intrigue, the kind of awe of seeing something for the very first time. Fabian waves and she looks away quickly.

He mainly just follows Riz’s lead as he navigates the congregation, trying to talk to anyone who’ll listen with carefully phrased conversation topics about building community and is there any way to get more involved in the church? Fabian stands at his side, still easily three feet taller than him, shoulders back and head high. He takes note of every time Riz catches a bit of information that could help the case, the minuscule twitch of his ears and the way he inhales sharply, barely enough for anyone to notice except someone who’s a master in the craft of Riz-watching like Fabian is.

They don’t touch. Fabian can read a room, he knows it’s not the time or place. But he does miss the reassuring weight of Riz’s hand in his own like that night at the Humberts’, the unspoken alliance it creates.

It’s hours later that they finally get to leave, after food and inane conversation and watching other people dance to country music, just slightly tipsy and stumbling as their high heels catch in the grass. The energy in the car is somber as they drive through the warm, bright Sunday afternoon. When they get in the house, Riz shucks off his jacket and tie in a world-weary sort of way, heaves a sigh, and says, “three to five months of this.”

Fabian, leaned against the wall, the plaster cool against his face, just hums. His feet hurt in his dress shoes, and he silently mourns the inevitable loss of the callouses he’s spent so long building up. Riz claps his hands once with finality. “I’m going to go send in my report,” he says, and it sounds like even he’s not comfortable with the way his voice sits in the quiet house. “And Fabian? Thank you. For doing this with me.”

Fabian reaches out in an attempt to take Riz’s hand like he wanted to all day, but aborts the motion before he gets there and ends up just brushing the inside of Riz’s wrist with his fingertips. “Of course, the Ball.”

~

It was senior year of high school, two weeks before graduation, and Riz didn’t want to jump.

It was maybe 10:30 at night, and they had spent an hour walking through the woods to get there, a rickety bridge overlooking the river and a rope swing on the bank. Fabian and Gorgug had abandoned their clothes in the dirt and, clad only in underwear, had each grabbed hold of the grimy rope and swung, ignoring the way the branch that held it shook for one fleeting moment of airlessness before letting go and plunging into the freezing water.

Riz sat on the bank, shoes unlaced, and refused to come in. “I don’t like swimming,” he said.

“Everybody likes swimming!” Fabian protested.

Gorgug floated on his back and said, “if Riz doesn’t want to swim, he doesn’t have to.”

So Fabian and Gorgug took the rope swing again, trying to chase that perfect feeling they had felt the first time, and roughhoused in the water as Riz sat on the ground, playing music from his crystal. They talked as they swam, about leaving and being kids and what they were going to do in the future.

Fabian watched Riz on the shore, the casual way he sat, cross-legged, not caring about the dust clinging to his legs. In the dark everything became a muddy gray, but Fabian could see Riz’s lopsided smile, the way he pitched forward when he laughed, and wondered if maybe he might’ve ignored an opportunity in high school, though he wasn’t sure what.

“I’m going to miss you guys,” Gorgug said, and Fabian felt something drive into his heart.

At 11:00 the Thistlesprings texted to ask where they were, so they got out of the water, dripping, muddy, and shivering, and started the slow process of leaving. They put their clothes directly back on their wet bodies, the fabric sticking to their skin, and Riz watched from his perch, his eyes glinting in the night, their protector and sentinel.

~

Fabian’s unloading groceries from the car when he’s accosted by the girl.

She’s maybe 12 or 13, in knee-length jean shorts and a ratty green t-shirt advertising some Helioic summer camp. Between her getup and the freckles speckling her nose, Fabian thinks that he’s got a pretty good picture of what Kristen must’ve looked like in middle school.

She’s sitting on his porch, poking at the dirt with a stick, and perks up when he nears. “Hi,” she says.

“Hello,” Fabian responds, and he’d wave if he weren’t carrying two loads worth of groceries. “Do you need something?”

“I saw you at church,” she says, perfectly matter-of-fact.

He can sort of see it if he squints, actually. She had been significantly less grubby then, wearing a modest blue and white floral dress and looking sufficiently unhappy in the first pew, sandwiched between her parents. And then at the potluck, staring at them in earnest across the lawn. Her father is a deacon, if he remembers correctly. “I think you might have. You live down the street, don’t you?”

“I heard that you’re married to the goblin man,” she says in lieu of a response, blinking owlishly up at him.

If I get hate crimed by a child, so help me god, Fabian thinks, but puts on a smile and tries to extend the girl a little bit of grace. “I am, his name is Riz Gukgak.”

She pokes at her toes, nails painted pink, with the stick. “Why don’t you have a wife?”

“Because I didn’t want one,” he says simply. “I wanted to marry Riz.”

It still startles him sometimes, how easily the lies come out. This alternate universe him, the one that actually loves Riz, holds the reins, and maybe it’s just commitment to character, but Fabian finds it so effortless to slip into that role and tell a random child that he loves his best friend enough to marry him.

Everything about the girl’s posture screams terror as she looks down at her feet and mumbles, “aren’t you worried about going to hell?”

There’s something there, something behind the harsh words, that makes Fabian want to reach out to this kid. Tell her that despite what her parents may have told her, it’s okay to do whatever you want, that you don’t have to live in fear of eternal damnation. “I’ve been to hell, actually,” he jokes instead. “It’s not so bad if you’ve got the right connections.”

She looks at him with the kind of open amazement that kids are so prone to, eyes wide and wondering. “You went to hell?”

Fabian sets down the grocery bags, arms aching, and crouches down in the grass to be on her level. “When I was in high school, I was in an adventuring party with Riz. You know what those are, right?” She nods enthusiastically and he continues. “He got kidnapped and taken to hell, and we had to go down and break him out.”

“Wow,” she murmurs.

“What’s your name?” Fabian asks. “It’s pretty hot out here, I’ve got some juice in the fridge if you want it.”

“Elizabeth,” she says. “I love juice.”

It’s weird, sitting on the stoop and drinking juice with a middle schooler. Elizabeth is smart, with sharp eyes that remind him of Riz. But there’s also something heavy about her, like she’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders all before eighth grade. Fabian tells stories about adventuring and tales from his time on the sea that are definitely not appropriate for someone her age, but she giggles along all the same. “What happened to your eye?” She asks at some point, and Fabian has to think quickly to avoid saying, ‘it was cut out by a member of a cult that your family may or may not be involved in.’

“It got eaten by a dragon named Kalvaxus,” he lies, and feels reassured in the way her eyes light up. “He was also our vice principal.”

“You’re nice,” Elizabeth says after he’s recounted the tale of a sea serpent off the coast of Fallinel. “My dad said you wouldn’t be nice.”

“Why would he say that?” Fabian asks, half-joking, even though he knows full well why. “I’m a delight to be around. Ask my husband.”

Elizabeth looks into her glass, now empty, and frowns a little. “Can I ask you something?”

Fabian nods and Elizabeth takes a moment, chewing her lip as she thinks. It’s swelteringly hot and Fabian thinks of all the groceries that are probably going bad in the trunk of the car. But Elizabeth seems to be a troubled little girl, and if Fabian can offer at least a bit of help he’s not going to say no. “When…” she begins, looking intensely nervous, “how did you know you loved him? Mr. Gukgak?”

Oh. Fabian didn’t know what he was expecting, but certainly not that. Shit, he thinks. Now he’s got to come up with something. “Well, that’s a kind of hard question to answer,” Fabian attempts. But then he thinks of all the things he loves about Riz, platonically, and wonders just how different that really is from romance. “We’ve been best friends since high school, and I guess one day I decided that I wanted us to be… more than that. I love his confidence, and the fact that he’s weird in all the best ways, and he’s cool, just not in the way you would expect. He used a briefcase as a backpack all throughout school, but he’s just- he’s intensely loyal and he always does the right thing, even if it hurts him, and at some point I realized that I cared about him a little differently than I did the rest of our friends.”

The monologue slips out painlessly, and Fabian wonders how long his thoughts about Riz have been so clear without him noticing. He’s never put into words what he loves about Riz, but he knows deep down that nothing he said was a lie.

Maybe it’s because him and Riz aren’t really married, but it’s strangely simple to slip into that role, to compartmentalize the true relationship he has with Riz away and build up this fake one, to think of him as a husband instead of a best friend.

But then again. How separate is his Riz, the one he grew up with, and this fake husband Riz? They’re the same Riz, the same freckles and stupid suits and lopsided smile, just with different titles.

Fabian tries not to think about it too hard.

“Oh.” Elizabeth is staring into her glass as if she’s going to find the meaning of life in there, eyebrows drawn up like she’s cracking a case wide open in her head.

Not for the first time during the conversation Fabian thinks of Kristen, of the way she held herself in freshman year, bible under her arm and a drunken confession always on the tip of her tongue. Riz is doing good work, figuring out the cult stuff and keeping the country safe, but Fabian wonders if them being here, just existing as themselves, is doing more help than they would’ve imagined.

“You should probably get home, kiddo,” Fabian says. “But you’re always welcome anytime to talk or drink some juice. Alright?”

“Alright,” she parrots, and begins to skip off across the overgrown lawn. “I’ll see you next Sunday, Mr. Seacaster!”

Fabian brings the groceries inside and feels far too comfortable loading up the freezer with ice cream and frozen peas, this life he never thought he’d have. When Riz comes back from the historical center where he’d been reading old newspapers about the church, he’s sweating through his suit jacket but brightens when he sees Fabian sitting at the kitchen table, and Fabian feels something scared find its way to the spot beneath his stomach, like stage fright and the roiling kind of nerves it brings. He stands and pushes it down and follows Riz to the bedroom to ask if they want to get takeout for dinner.

~

They get a video call from their friends about three weeks in.

It’s strangely emotional, seeing them all packed into the tiny space of the crystal, waving into the camera. When Fabian was on the sea, he was completely separate from the person he had been in high school, he could push away how lonely he was. Now, though, he cohabits the world with Riz, and as they laugh and talk and reminisce Fabian can’t help but think about how much he wishes the other ‘Bad Kids’ were there to fill in the pieces, fully flesh out that perfect synergy they’d had. He knows Riz feels it too, because he smiles more during the video call than he had the entirety of June.

“We miss you!” Kristen shouts almost immediately, and everyone quickly parrots her like it’s a round without music.

“How’s domestic life treating you both?” Fig asks, and Fabian sees that she’s cut her hair again since they’ve been away, gone from a fluffy bob to a shaggy sort of mullet, and she’s wearing purple lipstick instead of red. She’s the only other one, along with Fabian and Riz, who actually ended up doing what she had wanted to in high school. She’s gone from teenage rock sensation to cult classic, and from what Fabian has gathered, her career consists of tunnel shows and concerts in bars where she owes the owner a favor. They’ve got one of her records here at the house with them, propped up on the bookshelf next to the Gnomish-Common dictionary.

“It would be better if Fabian knew how to cook,” Riz says with a grin, and Fabian messes up his hair, making it stick up in all kinds of directions like he’s been electrocuted.

“I get the groceries and you cook them, the Ball. That’s the arrangement.”

Riz crosses his arms and turns away. “I don’t remember ever agreeing to this.”

“I’m going to buy you a fucking cookbook,” Adaine tells Fabian. “You can’t go on living like this.”

“I absolutely can, and I will,” Fabian argues. But he knows that if he checks the mailbox in a week or so there will be a cookbook there; Adaine’s not the kind of person to go back on her word. He admires her, the ferocity that she’s only slightly tamed since she was a teenager, and every time he sees a picture of her in the newspaper he sends it her way without comment, a wordless acknowledgment of her success.

“Anyway, we were eating dinner and thought of you guys,” Gorgug says, and Fabian realizes for the first time that they’re not in anyone’s house but in a dimly lit restaurant, all crammed into one booth. It’s rare that they’re all in Elmville at the same time, and Fabian wishes more than anything he could be there in a crappy restaurant with them, stealing off each other’s plates and having three separate conversations at once. “No one tells the unicycle story like you, Riz.”

“No one else gets the facts right,” Riz says haughtily.

Fabian scoffs. “It’s a story, the Ball, the facts are inconsequential.”

“The facts are very important! If the context is off, then the story isn’t as funny!”

On the crystal, Fig mimics a yapping mouth with her hand and flips Riz off when he notices. Riz flips her off back, but he tucks his thumb as he does it and it makes Fabian laugh, which makes Riz shove him. Fabian just cards his hands through Riz’s hair again, neck to forehead, and Riz elbows him in the stomach as he tries to smooth his hair down. “You suck,” he says, jabbing a finger at Fabian, but the message is ruined by the way his voice comes out halting and stilted as he tries to smother laughter.

It hurts, growing up, in a way no one warns you about.

There were years when they were the Bad Kids, FabianandRizandFigandGorgugandAdaineandKristen, and they existed as one unit in every aspect of their lives. Fabian broke himself off from his father and immediately became absorbed into the twelve-handed monster that was the Bad Kids and never really learned to be his own person without someone to protect and honor and be a part of. And then they all left, went off to their own little corners of the world, and Fabian formed a crew around himself that was nothing better than a bad memory of his high school friends. And now he’s here with a fake husband, a third of the bad kids, just FabianandRiz.

And he knows he’s better now. He’s his own man, he’s moved on from the days when he saw himself as nothing more than the shadow in Bill Seacaster’s mirror. But he misses it, the codependency, the absolute trust that there was always someone there who would lay down their life for you and was never more than a hundred feet away.

He really tries to reassure himself that he didn’t peak in high school but he doesn’t quite believe it sometimes when they’re all together, reverting back to their teenage habits and teasing, as if they were still shooting spitballs at each other over ice cream sundaes at Basrar’s.

“I have a serious problem,” Kristen says, and everyone perks up. “Tracker really wants a dog, but how do I tell her that I’d really rather get a cat? They’re just so much easier, and like hell am I getting up at the crack of dawn every morning to walk a dog.”

“Oh, god, I thought you were dying,” Adaine sighs.

“What if you get a dog the size of a cat?” Gorgug suggests.

“Nah, the temperament’s all different.” Kristen waves him off. “I’ll just tell her and hope she doesn’t break up with me.”

“Oh no, I hope she doesn’t break up with you,” Fig intones. Kristen and Tracker have been on-and-off for years after a long break period during college, and it’s a common point of contention about whether they should just bite the bullet and split up for good or not. If Fabian remembers correctly, they had only gotten together again a month or so ago.

“Not all of us can be ‘happily engaged,’ bridezilla,” Kristen shoots back, screwing up her face as if the entire concept of engagement disgusts her. Fig just sticks out her tongue at her and looks extremely smug.

Fig is going to be married in August. Fabian doesn’t know if he’ll be able to go, if he’ll still be stuck here in Newport with Riz, playing his own hand at marriage, trying to save the world for the hundredth time. It’s a kind of heroism that Fabian isn’t accustomed to, the kind of stuff Riz does now. Underground, underappreciated, filed away forever in one big library of state secrets. There’s a good chance that Riz will never draw a weapon in this entire job and Fabian still has to wrap his head around that, the fact that the world is saved every day in little ways by people who will never get that recognition.

How many small glories has Riz missed out on, those long stretches of time being deep undercover? Dinners and holidays and parties, bumping into an old friend at the grocery store. And how many of them has Fabian missed, sailing around the world on his little vanity project of a ship, not even getting the satisfaction of knowing you’re doing the right thing.

Riz always does the right thing, Fabian thinks as they wish each other goodbye and hang up, even if it hurts him. That’s what he told Elizabeth from down the block.

“Maybe we should go out to dinner too,” Riz says, and the words go straight through Fabian’s skull without ever finding purchase; all he can focus on is the way Riz’s hair pokes up in all directions, his own handiwork, and the soft smile still left over from the call.

“Okay,” Fabian mumbles.

Riz just grins, looks up at Fabian with something puzzling in his eyes, and brushes the inside of Fabian’s wrist before disappearing into the bedroom to put on his shoes, the same touch Fabian had given him that first Sunday after church. It lingers on his skin, almost buzzing, and he tries to commit the feeling to memory.

~

Of all of the world’s wonders, Fabian likes thunderstorms the best.

They’re thrilling when you’re out on the open sea, terrifying to a seasoned sailor as a dragon is to an adventuring party. It’s a true marvel of nature, the way the ocean froths and foams and the hull of the boat groans against the waves. The plunging weightlessness as the ship goes over a wave, seeing lightning crack across the sky, illuminating the world from behind a cloud like a halo silhouetting the head of a saint. Feeling the wind and spray on your face, drenched in rain and murky saltwater, completely at one with the moment as you fight to keep your head above the surface.

In Newport, thunderstorms are much less dramatic.

Fabian does love a good summer storm, though. He remembers being a kid, curled up in bed and watching the rain pour from his window, counting the seconds between thunderclaps to estimate how far away the storm was. Fabian gets home from work when the sky is heavy and grey to Riz trying to tune an old radio to find a weather report, turning the hissing dials until he gets a spot of clarity. The clouds don’t break much later, and rain comes down in sheets as they eat dinner standing in the kitchen, not even bothering to set the table. They don’t talk much over their pasta: there’s an odd atmosphere that hangs over them, an energized anticipation as they wait for the worst that nature can throw at them. The power goes out as Fabian is washing the dishes, and there’s a moment of hesitation as they both pause as if wondering if what they think happened really did. Riz just wordlessly shuffles through his briefcase and retrieves matches and a small bundle of candles that are clearly meant for some sort of religious rite, the kind of junk that gets deposited in a bag of holding and never used. Fabian dries his hands and watches Riz light the candles, the way the fire casts an orange glow against his face. It’s hot and humid, even with the storm, and with the windows closed it quickly gets stuffy in the little house.

They find themselves on the front porch, sheltered from the rain by the overhang, sitting cross-legged on the concrete and watching the storm pass over them. Riz counts the seconds between the thunderclaps.

It’s hardly 8:00 but it’s dark enough to be midnight, the sky choked with clouds. The occasional lightning strike fills the world with brightness and puts on plain display the way the rain has muddied the yards and plugged the storm drains with old leaves, flooding the street. Without power, the normal lights in the neighborhood offer no reprieve from the precocious night. They get ice cream out of the freezer with the loose excuse of not letting it melt and eat it straight out of the carton, dipping in with no regard to germs or manners.

“I used to be scared of storms when I was a kid,” Riz says around his spoon, the metal clicking against his teeth.

“You’re joking,” Fabian says. Thunder rumbles in the distance, slow and rolling.

“Why would I be joking?” Riz asks, sticking his spoon, handle up like a stick of incense, in the half-eaten ice cream and leaning back, bracing himself with his hands flat against the ground. “I drove my mom crazy. I would find somewhere to hide and wouldn’t come out until it had stopped. She still claims that I once got myself behind the fridge, but I don’t know if I believe her.”

Fabian takes another bite of ice cream, the good kind with chunks of other shit in it. Riz says Fabian spends too much money on food, but there’s no accounting for taste. “If anyone could get behind a fridge it would be you, the Ball.”

Riz laughs gently and shakes his head, curls sticking to his temples in the humidity. “What’s it going to take for you to stop calling me that?”

“Five hundred thousand gold.”

Riz snorts. “Really? I feel like you’re kind of lowballing. I half expected ‘a lifetime of servitude’ or something.”

“I’ve already got you cooking my dinner every night,” Fabian says. “So I think you’re the one who can’t play the game.”

“Goddamnit.” Riz looks out over the yard with a distant smile, the kind that creases his face with smile lines that’ll become wrinkles in ten years but is bright now, unburdened and present.

There’s something that’s been nagging at Fabian for almost a month now, and as Riz sits and eats ice cream with him as though this is a normal thing that they do, he can’t help but wonder again. “I don’t understand why me,” he says, and Riz looks up in surprise, a little confused about the abrupt shift in conversation. “If the agency wanted someone to be the second half of this fake ‘perfectly normal couple,’ why in the nine hells would you choose the son of a pirate? I’ve got an eyepatch, for god’s sake. That doesn’t scream suburbia to me.”

“All of our other friends are either queer women or already taken,” Riz explains for the hundredth time. “Or both. They wouldn’t be able to sell it.”

“Oh, and I would?”

“You didn’t have to say yes.”

“Of course I was going to say yes,” Fabian counters. “I’m involved in espionage.”

Riz rolls his eyes, a practiced exchange between the two of them. Fabian’s dramatic wishes of swashbuckling spy antics versus Riz’s reality. “You’re not involved in espionage.”

“And why would they send you? No offense to you, but you hardly seem like the right man for this… white bread hellhole.”

“They, uh, they didn’t actually want to send me.” Riz says weakly. “Told me to my face that they didn’t think I’d be good for the case. But I had experience taking down the Harvestmen and I had the most impressive resume, so they figured I’d work it out.”

Riz doesn’t talk about his job much, such is the way of the secret service, but it’s clear that it takes a toll on him. The long periods of time away from everyone, the degrading work of being undercover in a place like this. Fabian wants to say something, maybe that he can quit if he wants, or that he can do anything he puts his mind to, or even just that he’s always got someone behind him. But it feels somehow simple and delicate, sitting side by side on the damp concrete as the storm rages around them. There’s a faraway cracking sound as bending tree branches reach their limits and Fabian only vaguely registers that it’s probably not a good thing. “Dare you to go out in it,” he says instead.

Riz leans forward and dislodges his spoon, taking a hearty bite and waving the spoon about as he says, “only if you go out there with me.”

Fabian grins as he takes in the storm, the merciless downpour and the winds that make the rain come down almost horizontally. “Deal.”

And together they pull off their shoes and run, barefoot, into the yard, getting instantly drenched. The mud-smothered grass oozes between their toes, splattering dirty water up to their knees. Riz stands with his arms open and his face up to the sky as if receiving a blessing from a god. Fabian spins in a circle like a child, unsure of how to handle himself in the wild freedom of the moment. What do you do, he wonders, when you’re perched at the end of the world? What’s the expected comportment when the rumbling skies sound like the opening gates of the great beyond? Fabian doesn’t know, so he just spins.

When he stops, dizzy and scattered, Riz is just standing there, grinning madly up at the clouds, and it seems too static for the moment. And Fabian’s never been good at static, he’s a mover and shaker, so he grabs Riz’s hands and they spin together, their weight pulling each other back and keeping each other upright like a physics problem. Fabian can see Riz laughing but he can’t hear it over the roar of the storm, so he sates himself with the way Riz looks, open and bright, hair plastered flat against his skull and water pouring down across his cheeks in rivulets of muddy rain.

When they come in, shivering from the loss of the warm deluge against their skin, Riz takes the first shower and Fabian waits his turn back on the porch, dripping on the ground and hugging himself to keep any remaining heat. They change into their pajamas and get into bed early, the power still out, and for the first time since marrying they talk as they lie beneath the shared comforter, idle chatter that fills the empty space where the drone of a fan or a distant car would be. The rain offers a cozy backdrop to their conversation, and as Fabian looks across a foot of mattress and sees Riz’s vague outline, wet hair dampening the pillow, he decides that he’s glad he took Riz up on his offer.

He’s finally doing something, something meaningful, even if it’s just sitting back and watching Riz do all the work. He’s not writing his name on the face of the world like his father would want him to, but that’s alright. He’s content.

Chapter Text

Then it’s “ho!” for the chops of the channel at last,
And the cheer that goes up when the tug hawser’s passed,
The mate’s “that’ll do, fourteen month’s pay,”
Those girls have got hold of our tow rope today!”
-Tow Rope Girls

JULY

Riz comes through the door like a tempest, throwing his bag down on the floor with a heavy sigh. “Being in a cult is fucking exhausting,” he bemoans.

Fabian, who’s spent the better part of the evening trying in vain to fix the broken thermostat, wipes the accumulated sweat from his forehead and turns to look at his fake husband, who’s planted himself face down on the couch. “How many fucking bowling nights can you have?” Riz whines into a pillow.

“How many bowling nights until it stops becoming a Helioic cult and starts becoming a bowling one?” Fabian says with an easy laugh.

“I don’t know, like, three bowling nights ago?” Riz’s voice is slightly muffled by the couch cushions and it makes Fabian laugh. “It’s hot as balls in here.”

“Thermostat’s broken. Have you been saving up all your swearing for when you get home?”

Riz doesn’t say anything, but his silence is telling.

“Did you eat?”

“A little. I could still go for dinner, though.”

Fabian drops his screwdriver in the very shoddy bag of tools they found in the back of a closet, forgotten by the previous owners and covered in dust. “I’ll order a pizza.”

Riz raises a fist in weak triumph. “You’re the best.”

When Fabian finishes the call with the promise of food in thirty minutes or less, Riz asks, “have you checked for bugs yet this week?”

“I did,” Fabian assures him, and shoves his feet off of the couch so that he can sit. Riz doesn’t move, just lies like a discarded scarf, half on the cushions and half off.

“You checked the furnace?”

“Yes.”

“And beneath the flowerpots?”

“Yes.”

“And the lights?”

“You know I did.”

Riz hums in approval, eyes still closed and face turned in towards the pillows. “Thank you.”

“It’s your turn next week. I’ve done it two weeks in a row.” Fabian tips his head back, trying to undo the knot between his shoulders. It was a long day at the docks, and when he got home all he got was a ‘welcome back, I’m heading out’ from Riz before he left for cult bowling night like a shadow, two ships passing in the night. “Do you honestly think they’d bug us?”

“Never underestimate anyone,” Riz says, and it sounds like a practiced line. “That’s how civilizations fall.”

Fabian reaches over and musses Riz’s hair, frizzy from the humidity. Riz bats his hand away but doesn’t try and smooth his hair back down; even he seems to see it as a lost cause.

When the pizza comes they forgo the table and eat on the floor of the living room, just like they had their first night in the house. Fabian soaks up the grease with his napkin and Riz just lets it drip down his arm, licking it off when he’s finished a slice. It’s kind of funny, watching him try to reach his elbow with his tongue, and if Fabian waits to offer him a napkin just to see him struggle a little more, that's nobody’s business. “What did you talk about tonight?” Fabian ventures when they’ve finished half the pie.

Riz groans. “Temptation, again. I’m convinced they coordinate their prayers around whether I’m going to be there.”

“Temptation, huh?” Fabian asks with a grin.

“In their eyes, I have the soul of a good Helioic man that’s just being ruined by the temptation of sin,” Riz explains with a shrug.

Fabian wiggles his eyebrows. “And I’m the temptation?”

Riz snorts. “I think they’re giving you too much credit.”

“I’m flattered.”

Riz shakes his head with a smile and takes another slice of pizza, the last cheese. “I never should have told you that.”

“You just couldn’t help it after I tempted you into telling me your secrets.” Riz rolls his eyes and Fabian laughs, and he’s glad for many reasons that the house isn’t bugged, that they’re free to speak however they want in their own little space. Riz wipes orange grease off of his wrist with Fabian’s napkin and his hair sticks up in all directions like a fluffy cloud. He looks young and happy, tired out from the cult antics like a kid coming home from a day at the beach exhausted and sunburned. “I’m sorry you have to deal with that,” Fabian says, and Riz looks up, confused.

“It’s my job, Fabes.”

“Shit job.”

Riz shoots Fabian a look, a ‘we’ve talked about this’ look. “Yeah, but I love it.”

Fabian loved sailing, he always will, and he wouldn’t be able to be happy without the promise of returning to the water. But it was a shitty life to live. It was lonely and chaotic and you always had to move on just before you were able to get used to a place or a person or a relationship. He couldn’t be like his father, he couldn’t spend decades with his crew and then raise a family on the sea, but then again, neither could his Bill Seacaster. He folded, he came ashore and put down roots in Elmville. He died in his ship under the glow of yellow street lamps. “Do you?”

Riz tilts his head and really studies Fabian, and under the scrutiny of his investigator’s gaze Fabian has always felt a little naked. “I do,” he says slowly.

“Alright,” Fabian says, a surrender. “Alright.”

~

If there’s anything a suburban purgatory like Newport can do like no one else, it’s a block party.

All the stay-at-home moms with nothing else to do seem to go feral over the prospect of supplying nut-free baked goods and lawn games for the kids of the neighborhood and the dads all pull out their barbecue grills, each determined to declare themselves the barbecue king of the neighborhood once and for all. It’s a slice of life that Fabian’s never really understood, so they buy liters of soda to offer to their neighbors and call it a day.

The day dawns bright and hot, the smell of charcoal grills and aerosol sunscreen lingering around every corner. Fabian wears a short-sleeved button down printed with pineapples that Riz bought him from the clearance rack at the local mall for occasions just like this and Riz appraises his outfit from over his coffee cup with a satisfied hum when he emerges from the bedroom. There are still so many moments that feel like falling headfirst into a backwards world, the kind of world where Riz absently hums along to the radio as he toasts bagels for the two of them and Fabian wears tropical patterned shirts.

The entire neighborhood is out, choking the sidewalks and filling the streets, blocked off at either end by road markers graciously provided by the local police. Riz immediately starts fanning the front of his shirt, forehead already starting to glisten with sweat. The Humberts wave to them; they always do. Fabian inwardly commends them for trying, which is more than he can say for a lot of the town.

They find a drinks table and put down their contributions, filling their own plastic cups with soda and taking in the extent of the event. There’s more food than you can imagine, haphazardly set up on rickety folding tables and even more being brought out in a steady parade by women carrying large Tupperware containers and unveiling their deviled eggs like they’re a masterpiece sculpture. Men stand in tight groups, all outfitted with a sweating can of beer, and kids run wildly between yards, laughing and screaming. There’s cornhole and horseshoes and some little girls drawing an extensive hopscotch path that easily measures the length of a house. Fabian and Riz just stand, unsure of what to do with themselves.

“Thank god you’re here,” Riz mumbles, going on his tiptoes to aim his words closer to Fabian’s ear. “If I had to do this alone I don’t know if I’d get through it without a cyanide pill.”

“Oh, come on. It’s just like high school all over again.” Fabian points out a group of PTA moms. “The popular girls.” Then a cluster of dads crowded around someone’s car, marveling at the paint job or something. “The jocks. These are perfect metaphors.”

“How many times did I die during high school, Fabian?” Riz asks, raising one eyebrow in that way he does when he knows he’s won. “I’m looking for a ballpark number.”

“Come on,” Fabian repeats, because he knows if he gives Riz an estimate he’ll just dig himself into a deeper hole.

Riz rubs his hand together and thinks, scanning the block like it’s a battlefield. “We should go talk to the Humberts.”

Fabian groans but follows anyway. “If you insist.”

It’s boring, primarily. Everyone in this neighborhood is so goddamn boring. It’s been a long time since Fabian’s interacted with this many non-adventurers and he really remembers why, talking with all the sales associates and tax accountants that share a block with him. Riz has grown so much since high school, has mastered the art of smiling and nodding, a plasticky grin that stays on his face as if it’s pinned up at the corners, waving and exchanging pleasantries. He does, at one point, bury his face in Fabian’s arm and mumbles, “this is torture. And I should know, I’ve been tortured before.” And Fabian didn’t know that, but it’s a little more than he’s willing to unpack on his neighbor’s front lawn, so he pats the side of Riz’s head and makes awkward eye contact with Mr. Smitt from church.

Sometime an hour or so in, Fabian gets roped into discussing cars with a group of men he’s never really spoken with before, just nodded at across the street from his porch and passed the donation basket to on Sundays. He doesn’t actually know much about cars but his father did, and Bill Seacaster was determined enough to pass all his living knowledge onto his son that Fabian knows enough to keep afloat in the mind-numbingly boring conversation.

He escapes the group with a little bit of his brain still intact and finds Riz manning someone else’s grill, passing a seemingly endless supply of hamburgers to a vaguely appreciative crowd that comes and goes around him. At a break in the demand Fabian sneaks up as best he can, and though Riz notices him coming almost immediately he catches him before he fully turns, burying his hands in his hair and resting his chin on the top of Riz’s head. They don’t make a lot of unnecessary physical contact in public settings like this and Fabian misses it, the easy affection they’ve always shown for each other. Long gone are the days when Riz had to beg Fabian to call him his best friend; it’s been years since they’ve had to even ask the other for a hug, they’ve got a sort of telepathy when it comes to touch. Riz leans his head back and his hair tickles Fabian’s neck. “Hey,” he says.

“Hello, the Ball,” Fabian greets. “I was stranded without you. I had to talk about cars.”

“I’m sorry,” Riz says, humor coloring his voice, and reaches up to pat Fabian’s hand in consolation.

There are a few people looking at them. Not many, not as many as there have been before, but a couple scattered around, peering over the rims of their cups. And Fabian hates it here more than he’s ever hated anywhere, and he can’t stand the terrible fucking people in this town, so he tilts his head down and presses a kiss to the crown of Riz’s head. Riz huffs out a little laugh and tosses a few more hockey pucks of meat on the grill. “Don’t get bold,” he murmurs, and it sounds like an endearment but it’s a warning above anything else.

Fabian musses Riz’s hair and retracts his hands, standing up straight and pulling Riz into him, arms winding around his chest like two nesting dolls standing before the grill. Fabian can’t see Riz’s face but he can see him shake his head almost imperceptibly, and again with that gentle, disbelieving laugh. “Nobody tells Fabian Aramais Seacaster to not get bold,” he retorts.

Riz laughs. “Get off me, you’re hindering my grill skills.”

“Oh, my apologies.” Fabian lets Riz go with one last lingering touch, hovering just by his shoulder like an annoying ghost. “Your grill skills, huh?”

“I had an interesting conversation with a young girl,” Riz says, successfully directing the conversation away from his ‘grill skills.’ “She asked me why I loved you. Might you have anything to do with that?”

Elizabeth, then, continuing her quest to unearth all of the Seacaster-Gukgak secrets. “And what did you tell her?”

Riz shrugs and flips some hamburgers with a spatula nearly the length of his forearm; it’s quite a sight to behold. There’s a mild grin on his face as he looks down at the grill, nothing like the performative smile he had plastered on when they were talking with the others. “The truth.”

There’s a group of kids, maybe college age, all huddled together looking at them. Sort of like how Elizabeth had looked at them at that first church picnic, there’s nothing malicious in the stare, these kids are just watching and observing, taking in data. The truth, Fabian’s thoughts echo. So he grabs Riz’s face and plants a kiss on his temple. When Riz pushes him off Fabian can still taste the remnants of sweat and sunscreen on his lips, the proof of summer. “You’re insufferable.”

One of their neighbors walks over, a young mother whose name Fabian can’t really place. “Hi,” she greets them, sheepishly drawing out the vowel like she’s about to invite them into a multi-level marketing scheme. “A few of the moms were talking and we would really prefer it if you kept the PDA to a minimum, you know, when you’re around everyone.” She offers a meek little smile, the intentional docility of it setting Fabian’s blood aflame.

He wishes more than anything to just cut her clean across the jaw, a nice hard right hook. But he hasn’t punched anyone like that in over a year; he doesn’t even know if he would be able to anymore. He’s gone soft, he thinks, but sensing the way Riz bristles beside him, the same thought process inevitably running through his head, he thinks maybe there’s a time and a place for softness. “We’ll think about it,” Riz says, saccharine and cutting, his smile a little too sharp, and hands her an overcooked hamburger on a flimsy paper plate. His ring glints on his outstretched left hand in the light. The woman looks at him, down at his ring, then back to Fabian, and takes the plate with a tight jaw.

When she’s out of earshot, Fabian murmurs, “if I start hitting people, will you get fired?”

“I’d advise against it,” Riz whispers back. “But god, I want to sometimes.”

Fabian sighs and squints against the afternoon sun as he looks out over the street, crowded with people he loathes talking to. Riz wipes his forehead, smearing a bit of charcoal across his brow. Fabian reaches out and wipes it off with his thumb, the very same spot that he had kissed just a moment ago. “Let’s get out of here. We have no obligation to be a part of this, it’s not like you’re getting any information flipping burgers for these assholes.”

Riz thinks for a second, gnaws at his bottom lip with his teeth, looking off into the distance as he contemplates this. “We shouldn’t.”

“What, do you think they’re going to talk about infiltrating the capitol while they’re playing bocce ball?” Riz frantically gestures for him to keep it down as another two of their neighbors, a couple Fabian’s pretty sure are the Bancrofts, come toward them to grab food. And nobody tells Fabian Aramais Seacaster not to get bold, so he runs his hand through Riz’s hair and rests his fingers at the nape of his neck, messing up those excellent curls for the second time today. “Let’s get out of here,” he says again, more purposefully this time, when he knows the Bancrofts can hear.

Riz hands them a plate each and stealthily steps on Fabian’s foot. He can see them, as they walk away, tilt their heads in toward each other to gossip, to whisper to each other about the marital habits of the gay folks down the street. “Fine. You win,” Riz acquiesces, and shuts off the grill. They walk back to their house, offering mild greetings to the people they pass, and Fabian has never been so glad to leave a party.

It takes everything in Fabian not to put a sock on the front door handle just to really rub it in.

But they spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on the porch, chewing ice and watching their neighbors live it up in their happy little homophobic way. Riz reads a book, one he’s spent weeks talking about reading but never getting around to, and Fabian just regards the block party from a comfortable distance, trash talking people as they embarrass themselves playing cornhole and passing on vague rumors he’s heard to Riz, who isn’t paying attention one bit.

In the evening they forgo dinner in favor of eating chips in front of the TV and enjoying popsicles neither of them remember buying in the yard, tilted over at the waist so that they drip onto the grass instead of all over their feet. It feels like college again, or the summer breaks when the others were at college when Fabian would come home, when they would get ice cream and eat it on the sidewalk, sweating in the summer heat and reveling in their youth.

That night, they lie under the sheet as the fan whirs doubletime, and Fabian says, “I’m sorry if I was too bold today.”

Riz laughs a little, a lazy action, not really committing to it in the languid thickness of the humidity that chokes the little bedroom. “You weren’t. I wish I could afford to stand up to these fuckers a little more often.”

“It is fun.”

“Yeah,” Riz mumbles, and rolls over to fully face him. Fabian watches the outline of him, traced by the moon, the curve of his back and shoulders and the pointed outcropping of the silhouette of his ears. There’s a temptation there to broach the distance, to pull Riz into him and hold him. Instead he reaches across the hollow space between them and finds Riz’s arm, sticky with stale sweat, and lets his hand drape over Riz’s wrist. Riz shivers a little but doesn’t move away.

It’s too hot to sleep so for a long time he doesn’t, Fabian’s fingers around the soft skin of the inside of Riz’s wrist, just thinking about the party, how thrilling it was to touch Riz in front of everyone, a rebellion even just in the small amount of skin contact they had made. In another world, one where Riz didn’t have a career on the line, maybe one day they would stand up in the middle of church and Fabian would kiss him, really stick it to the man. In that world it would be a true disobedience to do that, to kiss his husband, not a ploy by the government. How exciting it would be, being a revolutionary, one whose revolution is simply being in love with someone like that.

When he wakes in the morning he’s alone, and it hits him that he fell asleep last night to the idea of kissing Riz. When the object of that reverie knocks on the doorframe to offer Fabian coffee, he can’t help but notice the way his gut shifts, like a car turning over.

Ah, fuck.

~

There’s a bag on the front doorstep with a small note tied to the handle. ‘11 PM MONDAY NIGHT UNDER THE OLD BRIDGE. BOTH COME,’ the note reads. Inside the bag are cookies.

Fabian, against his better judgement, brings the bag inside, where a still-yawning Riz takes it from him immediately. “What’s this?” He asks, blinking blearily in the sunlight despite the fact it’s almost noon. “Ominous note, okay. Oh, cookies.” He picks one up and gives it an experimental sniff. “Either almond cookies or cyanide cookies, what’s your bet on?”

“Knowing our neighbors, cyanide.”

Riz licks the cookie clean across, leaving a soggy track in the powdered sugar, like he’s a kid claiming it as his own. “Almond.”

“There weren’t better ways of testing that?” Fabian teases, taking the apparently unpoisoned cookies and depositing them on the counter, a safe distance away from Riz’s tongue. “What do you make of the note?”

“Either it’s someone who really wants to suck up to us or someone who really wants to kill us themself when we get there,” he says with a shrug. “You don’t have anything planned Monday night, do you?”

“You know I don’t. Does this town even have an old bridge?”

“It’s down by the river,” Riz grabs a mug half full of day-old coffee, one that was a gift from Adaine, bright yellow and the size of his head with curly lettering that reads, ‘you are my sunshine!’ It’s stone cold, but he takes a sip anyway and grimaces. “They probably mean the tunnel that runs underneath it, it’s all dried up now. A lot of empty booze bottles when I went to scope it out.”

“You scoped it out,” Fabian says, shaking his head with an incredulous sort of laugh.

Riz nods slowly. “The first few days we were here when you were at work.”

Fabian grins and thinks, what a dork. “The game is afoot.”

Riz points at Fabian with all the weight of a disappointed parent. “Absolutely not.”

On Sunday they sit in their usual pew, eight rows in on the right side, and Riz eyes everyone that passes as if trying to see who’s got homicidal tendencies buttoned up under their suit jackets. After a month some people have actually started to say hello to them. There are still lots of folks who walk with their eyes trained resolutely ahead, like if they make eye contact with Fabian or Riz they’ll have to acknowledge them. But the Humberts greet them before the service every week and plenty of people wave across the room.

Fabian’s not stupid, he knows these people will never fully like them, but it’s nice to at least be treated like a living being. He’s not as paranoid as Riz, who analyzes every interaction with sharp eyes, seeing disaster and subterfuge in each word.

Fabian thinks Riz is great, but sometimes he can feel his blood pressure rising just through proximity.

They don’t find any sufficient evidence of a murder plot on Sunday, so at 10:00 on Monday night they get ready to set out. Fabian says nothing as he sees Riz tuck his gun into the waistband of his slacks, resting just above the small of his back, concealed and deadly. Riz has got a license to kill, and Fabian can’t judge. After all, he’s got Fandrangor stowed away in the backseat of the car just in case.

They drive in silence, radio off, cruising slowly through the empty suburban streets to avoid too much noise from the engine, just like Stealth Mode from back in junior year of high school.

Fabian parks two blocks away in the parking lot of the train station and they walk, Riz darting ahead and concealing himself behind big blue mailboxes and the trunks of trees. Fabian just tries not to let his shoes be too loud on the grass.

They’re alone when they find the tunnel, at least as far as they can see. Riz is on high alert, eyes frantically scouring each and every corner where an assailant could hide. Fabian just stands and waits, knees bent, ready to spring into action if needed.

They wait for ten minutes before a car pulls up. Riz’s ears flatten back against his head as the headlights illuminate the tunnel in a ghostly white glow. The music that’s been blaring from the radio, loud pop stuff, silences with a sharp click as the car goes off.

Out of the car climbs four teenagers, only a few years younger than Fabian and Riz.

“Oh, thank god,” one of them sighs in relief. “I thought you weren’t going to show.”

In the darkness of the tunnel, Riz’s eyes gleam gold. “What’s going on here?” He demands. “Were you the ones who left the note?”

“Calm down,” the other teenager says, holding out their hands in surrender. “Yeah, we left the note. Just us. We wanted to invite you here, it’s our spot.”

“Who is us?” Fabian asks, and Riz shoots him a glance as if to commend him for asking the right questions.

“We,” says the first teenager with a flourish, “are the secret gay underground.”

Riz blinks, once, hard. “I’m sorry?”

A third teenager laughs a little, awkward and young. “Okay, it’s not as cool as it sounds. It’s just the four of us- that we know of- and we meet up here to hang out and be ourselves, you know? And then you came to town, and we’ve never had people like you here before, and we wanted to invite you to join us.”

It stands out to Fabian, the way the kid says ‘people like you.’ It’s not the way the Humberts had said it that evening in early June, when they were still a mystery. The teenager had said ‘people like you,’ but Fabian knows deep in his gut that what they had meant to say was ‘people like us.’

Riz crosses his arms and the teenagers cower a little. “The threatening note, that was you?”

“Yeah, sorry,” the second one says sheepishly, gesturing to their friend. “Alex is kind of going through a spy phase.”

It’s so rich in situational irony that Fabian can’t help but laugh and say, “alright, well, I’m Fabian Aramais Seacaster. You?”

“I’m Alex,” the first teenager says, a gangly brown-haired human boy in a multicolored button-down short sleeve shirt.

“Margot,” says the second teenager, a red-headed girl wearing a flannel shirt about five sized too big for her.

From the backseat a third teenager raises their hand in greeting. They look younger than the others, but not by a lot. “I’m Arisha.”

The last teenager is unlike the rest of them in that she’s a half-elf, pointed ears and austere cheekbones, with a t-shirt that’s been cut into a crop top and black lipstick smeared across her mouth that was clearly applied in the moving car. She reminds Fabian of Fig back in the very beginning of high school, desperately trying to rebel without all the real tools, attempting to fashion a punk look from the same wardrobe she had in eighth grade. “I’m Uristine,” she says with a grin to Fabian that seems to speak solidarity from across the dark tunnel. “We’re all in college except Arisha, they’re a senior in high school. Listen, we know this is weird, and you can totally leave if you want, but you know…”

“We’ve never really met, well, gay adults before,” Alex says, and Fabian can see Riz visibly wilt, all his trepidation and distrust melting out of him through his feet. Fabian feels it too, a sort of protectiveness that overpowers any sort of paranoia that might still be sticking around. And god, when Fabian agreed to this whole operation he didn’t think he’d end up being some kids’ gay mentor. He’s really not even very good at being gay.

“Okay,” he says, rubbing at his temples with the heels of his palms, trying to relieve the constant headache that Riz seems to have. Fabian thinks it’s just chronic caffeine withdrawal. “Okay. My name is Riz Gukgak, it’s very nice to meet you.”

The kids seem to be pros at getting the party started, hauling out folding chairs and beach towels and laying them out on the dirty ground. Margot and Arisha carry out a cooler half-full of melting ice, in which a few cans of beer float, the cheap and crappy kind that only people under the drinking age enjoy because it’s the only kind they can get their hands on. Uristine plugs her crystal into a small portable speaker and plays tinny, washed-out indie pop-rock that Fabian is positive he’s heard before from his own friends’ playlists.

It’s funny how much they see distant reflections of their friends in this new generation. Kristen’s inquisitive eyes in Elizabeth from down the street, Fig’s stumbling teenage rebellion in Uristine. It makes Fabian wonder if they were nearly as unique as they thought they were in high school, or if somewhere out there is another young prodigy with doting parents, who, against their best intentions, are inadvertently screwing their kid up for life. Probably. Almost inevitably.

They chat and drink and Fabian and Riz get to know the kids. Alex does theater in college and apparently he’s quite good at it, though his parents don’t think it’s a stable career. “To hell with stable careers,” Fabian says with an absent wave of his hand. “Name one famous person with a stable career.”

“The pope,” Riz mumbles, lip around his beer can.

Margot is the Humberts’ daughter, the one Fabian had seen in the picture frames on the mantle. She cut her hair about three weeks into freshman year, but unlike Fabian’s other beloved ginger friend, avoided an unfortunate mullet and went straight into a conservative but flattering crew cut. She’s studying architecture, which Fabian finds intriguing; architecture seems like an old person’s game, not something suited for a fresh-faced 19 year-old. But she seems passionate about geometry and flying buttresses, so he listens and smiles along as she explains.

Arisha is boisterous and fun, as if trying to make up for their youth. They don’t drink, just sip periodically from a bottle of iced tea with contentment. Like Alex, they’re the kind of person who’s always talking not because they love the sound of their own voice but because they genuinely have interesting things to say. They’ve got a sharp sense of humor and a laugh like the crack of a whip.

Uristine is a lot more understated than Fig was at her age, level-headed and sly. She’s not as talkative as the others, but her jokes are biting, even if you have to crane your head to hear. “You know Fig Faeth?” She interrupts at one point during a story about Riz’s first day of college, which had involved emergency surgery, the fae wilds, and a truly disturbing quantity of yeast.

“Know her? She was the maid of honor at our wedding!” Fabian announces, and he can see Riz file this detail away for later, the mental folder of fake facts about their fake marriage. “Adaine’s still mad that she didn’t make the cut, but Fig won the battle royale and what’s fair is fair, I say.”

“Christ,” Riz mutters under his breath.

“That’s so cool!” She says with glee, and Fabian would consider calling Fig if not for the fact that Uristine might genuinely burst a blood vessel right there if he does. “Do you know Gorgug too?”

Riz smiles and darts a glance down at Fabian, who’s lying in his lap all stretched out on the colorful beach towel, and Fabian doesn’t think he’ll really ever get over the thrill of this, spinning a story with Riz like the world’s most high-stakes improv game. “He was the best man.”

“So what do you guys even do?” Alisha asks, leaning forward, elbows on their knees. “You seem too cool to be, like, actuaries or something.”

“I’m pretty boring,” Riz lies, and Fabian knows this line like the back of his hand. “I work in the government, just a lot of pencil-pushing and paperwork.”

“I sail the seven seas,” Fabian announces before they can ask any more questions about Riz’s work. They’ve practiced this, Fabian directing the attention away from Riz, the half-bard pulling focus from the rogue as it should be. “Captain Seacaster at your service.”

Margot’s eyes light up. “Like a pirate?”

“Not quite,” Fabian corrects. “I’d be more accurately described as a… sailor of dubious legality.”

“So cool,” she murmurs into her drink.

“Are you actually a captain? Do you have a crew and all that?” Alex presses.

“I did. They’ve gone off without me now once I settled down with Riz. My first mate took over, if I remember correctly. That is, if they haven’t mutinied against the bastard already.”

Riz rests his hand on Fabian’s chest, just to the right of his neck, and seems to not even notice the action. His thumb absently begins to brush back and forth absently across the collar of his shirt, a small rainbow like a windshield wiper, back and forth and back again. He looks down at Fabian with an easy smile and asks, “if I was on your ship, would I be your first mate?”

Fabian hums in mock contemplation. “You’d be my bosun.”

“Is that a good thing?” Fabian’s silence makes Riz’s thumb still against his collarbone and he shoves Fabian a little, rocking him gently in a motion that seems far too tender. “Is that a good thing?”

“Fig Faeth could be your shantywoman,” Uristine pipes up.

“Oh, she’d eat that up,” Fabian agrees. He laughs and looks at Riz, the curve of his jaw, the absent and content look on his face as he lets Fabian use him as a pillow. “What’s my favorite sea shanty, the Ball?”

Riz’s expression instantly turns to one of panic, which was exactly Fabian’s goal. “Uh, it’s- it’s Bully In The Alley, isn’t it?”

“Wrong,” Fabian says with a grin.

Riz groans and tips his head back, and this is a dance they’ve done before, teasing Riz by scraping the very bottom of the seemingly never-ending barrel of information he’s got stowed away in that little green head of his. It’s a common game in their friend group, random questions like ‘what’s my favorite kind of cheese?’ and ‘who was my fourth grade teacher?’, and Riz always gets it every time. Riz snaps in victory and says, “it’s the Mingulay Boat Song.”

“Bingo,” Fabian says, and closes his eyes again, comfortable and warm in Riz’s lap. Thinking of the song unspools a bit of fondness in his stomach, just below his ribs, with a hazy memory of his father singing him the old shanty as a boy before he went to bed. That’s something he pities about these Newport kids: there’s just no culture here. Just church clothes and white bread. “I know your favorite sea shanty, Riz. It’s Rolling Up, Rolling Down. Guess I win best husband.”

Fabian hears the distinct sound of Riz smothering a laugh above him before he says, “actually, that’s not my favorite. You wouldn’t let it go until I picked a favorite, so I just… lied.”

Fabian gasps and sits up, nearly smashing Riz’s nose with his forehead as he does so. “I knew it!” He exclaims, grabbing Riz by the shoulders and shaking. “Your favorite is Tow Rope Girls and you just lied through your fucking teeth!”

He can read Riz, that’s the thing. Ever since the whole Baron incident, really. He’s got a few substantial tells: his voice lowers, a forced sort of casualness, and he picks at his cuticles absentmindedly. His spy training ironed a lot of them out, but they’re still there with the little things, like whether he unloaded the dishwasher or whether he actually sent the email he was supposed to or not. Like favorite songs. And Fabian had thought it was weird that he had said his favorite was something else when Tow Rope Girls always made him smile like the sun whenever Fabian played it. “It reminds me of you,” Riz gets out between wheezing laughs.

It reminds him of Fabian. And Fabian can read Riz, he sees the way he’s laughing without care and his shoulders are loose and relaxed under Fabian’s grip, and he can tell that Riz is telling the truth. It’s these things, these little moments of candidness, that send Fabian spinning, desperately trying to grab onto any foothold in the endless gulf of where they stand, the two of them. FabianandRiz. “It does?” It sounds too weak, too honest, but Riz just grins back at Fabian with that smile that could melt the ice caps, because they’re best friends and this should be easy, but it never has been for Fabian.

“I would listen to it while you were away sailing! I missed you, is that a crime?”

Best friends, Fabian thinks, and lowers himself back down onto Riz’s lap. It took them a long time to get here. Fake husbands, best friends, one and the same.

Riz listened to sea shanties in college when Fabian was away. Tow Rope Girls is cheesy and happy, a returning song. A homeward-bound shanty in the sheets and the shroud. And Riz listened to it in college while Fabian was away, waiting for him to come back. Probably playing it low from his crystal alone in his dorm room, or blasting from the radio in his car, or drowning out the outside noise in his headphones on the shuttle bus. “You win best husband,” he concedes, and Riz must be pleased with that because his hand migrates back to Fabian’s collarbone, fingers resting just under the fabric of his shirt collar, thumb tracing a clean arc across the skin.

They decide to play Never Have I Ever, because the others are still young enough that the excitement of the game hasn’t worn off yet. It’s been a long time since Fabian’s played a game like that with his friends simply because they already know everything about each other. Truth or Dare just ends up as Dare, and even then they struggle to come up with anything that none of them have done before. But these kids seem into the idea of Never Have I Ever, so they turn off the music and play.

“Never have I ever been out of the country,” Margot begins, and almost everyone except her and Arisha drink. It’s an easy starter question, but it doesn’t give Fabian a huge vote of confidence about how the game is going to go.

“Never have I ever… gotten a tattoo,” Uristine says, giggling, already a little drunk. Riz and Alex drink. “Show us!” She cries, and Alex obliges, pulling up his shirt to show off a tattoo above his hip of a flock of birds in flight. It’s nice but tame, and Riz, who’s never been very good at holding his alcohol, strips off his shirt without a second thought.

“I got them my sophomore year of high school,” he explains, pointing at the intricate array of ink across his torso and arms.

“Who’s Garthy O’Brien?” Alisha asks.

“Only the hottest person you’ll ever see,” Fabian reminisces. Riz nods knowingly, because everyone who’s ever met them knows. “Here’s a little trivia, Uristine: they fucked Fig’s mom.”

Riz swats Fabian lightly on the arm.

“Put your shirt back on, the Ball,” Fabian says, rolling his eyes. “No one wants to see your freaky tattoos.”

Riz sticks out his tongue but obliges, and then it’s Fabian’s turn.

“Never have I ever… gotten dunked in a trash can.”

Riz lifts one eyebrow. “Oh, is that how we’re going to do this?” He asks in a terrifying deadpan, and downs his shot with equally frightening intensity. “Never have I ever taken a human body part as a trophy, check and mate, motherfucker.”

“Okay- no, no, no, you shot off Biz Glitterdew’s hand and you offered to bite Dayne’s eyeball out for me! Glass fucking houses, the Ball!”

“I’m sorry, you shot off someone’s hand?” Alex interrupts, half in horror and half in delight.

“Just a few fingers,” Riz waves him off. “You wanted to cut out Daybreak’s heart, if I remember correctly.”

Fabian scoffs. “But I didn’t, because I’m so healthy and well-adjusted.”

“I’m sorry, what the fuck is going on?”

It can be easy to forget that other people are there when he’s locked in with Riz like that. But there are the poor teens, looking on with thinly veiled terror as the cool adults reveal their gruesomely checkered past. “This is just what marriage is like,” Fabian quips, and Riz laughs and rests his hand over Fabian’s mouth, shutting him up. He doesn’t take over the conversation, though, just laughs until he snorts. It’s a good sound, and it makes Fabian laugh too, his breath hot against Riz’s palm. The other kids join in, drunk and silly, and they’re all just laughing so hard it feels like their guts will burst underneath a grimy old tunnel drinking shitty beer, reveling in the shared experience of being young and queer and stifled in this fucking town.

They continue the game, and Fabian and Riz get out far quicker than the others, fast enough that they all decide to ignore the competition aspect of the game and just keep going. “Never have I ever had sex with my friend’s sister,” Riz says with a stupid, smug grin. Fabian hates him, but he loves him a little bit as well.

“Fuck you,” he responds, and drinks. Uristine drinks too.

They get drunker and rowdier and the teens all start talking about their first kisses, which is apparently a popular thing for teenagers to talk about. Fabian remembers the days.

“My first kiss was this boy named Ben who always smelled like peanut butter,” Uristine laments. “I bet Fig and Ayda had a great first kiss. She’s so cool.”

“No she’s not,” Riz says with a laugh, because smearing Fig’s name to fans will never get old. “Her first kiss was in freshman year of high school, she disguised herself as a resident medical student and conducted a months-long affair with a doctor. We tried to talk her out of it, but then there was that, uh, the police chief, was it?”

Fabian snorts into his drink. “Like Kristen being your first kiss was any better?”

“At least that was legal!” Riz argues, ignoring the titters from the audience. “And your first kiss tried to kill us less than an hour later, I’ll remind you.”

“Yeah, but it was hot when she did it,” Fabian says with a loose shrug.

Riz buries his head in his hands, but his shoulders shake with laughter. “Shut the fuck up, I hate you so much.”

“You love me,” Fabian teases, drawing out the word and wrapping his arms around Riz in mock affection.

And Fabian doesn’t think he’ll ever really understand what exactly was going through Riz’s head when he grins like the devil and mumbles, “I can kiss better than Aelwyn.”

Riz is proud and intense and ruthlessly competitive, and it’s really no surprise at all that he takes it to a place of sport. And Fabian’s just as drunk as Riz, like a horse with blinders, so he plays along and retorts, “oho, bold statement, the Ball!”

“You married me,” Riz murmurs, freeing his arm from Fabian’s embrace and twisting around a bit to press his palm to Fabian’s cheek. “You didn’t marry Aelwyn.”

They’re so close, all at once, and Fabian can smell the beer on Riz’s breath. Fabian’s arms around Riz, who’s spilling halfway into his lap, and their faces no more than three inches away.

Fabian can hear the others, the cacophony as they chant ‘kiss! Kiss! Kiss!’, but it sounds like he’s underwater, their calls distorted and distant. Riz smiles wide, teeth bared, and there’s a mischievous glint in his eyes that sends a thrill through Fabian that’s only partly out of apprehension.

Not for the first time, Fabian marvels at the fact that he was chosen for this top-secret long con. It’s him, not anyone else, that’s looking down at Riz’s infectious grin; he could get anything with that smile, anything at all. That’s what he’s focused on, that smile, nothing else, so he doesn’t even really notice it when Riz leans up and

~

It was Riz’s junior year of college, in the deepest throes of finals week, and Fabian was trying to get him to relax.

He was only in town for a few days before setting out again, a shipment of rum and some other less honorable goods to be delivered by the end of the week at the very southernmost tip of Solace. Fabian had come to see his friends, catch up, and maybe experience some of those college parties he had heard so much about, not sit around and watch Riz work himself to the bone over his exams.

“Nolo contendere,” Fabian read flatly off a flashcard, splayed out on Riz’s lofted dorm bed.

Riz leaned back in his desk chair and steepled his hands in front of his mouth, thinking. “‘I do not wish to contend.’ The defendant doesn’t confess to committing the crime but agrees to be punished as if guilty.”

“Correct,” Fabian said, flipping the card to the back of the stack. Another word he didn’t understand stared up at him in Riz’s spidery handwriting. “Can we take a break? I didn’t come all the way here to be your study buddy.”

Riz sighed like Fabian was the most substantial obstacle to his learning this side of Fallinel. “If Adaine were here, she’d study with me.”

“If Adaine were here she’d tell you to take a shower,” Fabian corrected. “I’m not going to be your enabler, the Ball.”

“Come on, read the next card. If I don’t pass this final I can’t take forensic chem next semester.”

“You’re going to pass the final, you’re one of the smartest people I know.” Fabian took the cards and, in front of Riz’s betrayed eyes, tucked them into his pillowcase. “Come on, you need to relax. Destress.”

Riz scoffed. “This is college, there’s no such thing.”

“Look, I’ve seen you do this before. You push yourself too hard, you burn out, then you’re no fun all summer. I am begging you to take a break for your sake and mine.” He sat up, bedsprings creaking beneath him, and swung his legs off the mattress so that his feet dangled down and just barely avoided kicking Riz in the face. “I’m going to play some music.”

“Fabian, don’t you dare.”

Fabian pulled up a playlist Fig had made for him, titled ‘indie rock for when you’re sick of sea shanties.’ Riz groaned like the slow ignition of a dying car, planting his face directly onto his desk. “Loosen up, the Ball!”

“I’ll loosen you up,” Riz threatened halfheartedly.

Fabian just grinned. “You’ll have to step away from the studying and come up here to turn off the music.”

“I’m going to rip you limb from limb,” Riz growled, getting up out of the desk chair he’d been glued to the entire time Fabian had been there and clambering up on top of his bureau to scale the lofted bed. He had to sort of launch himself up, but didn’t aim too well and landed almost fully in Fabian’s lap. Fabian threw his crystal across the room onto Riz’s roommate’s empty bed, and for once his Bloodrush training came in handy in his adult life as it bounced gently on the pillow, blaring music merrily from the opposite wall. Riz let out an unhinged sort of cry, the kind that implied he was ready to murder. “I despise you.”

“Oh, you and everyone else,” Fabian laughed.

Riz stifled a smile, biting down on his bottom lip that was already a mosaic of little bruised spots and crusted over cuts. “God, I just- you’re so annoying, you know that?”

Fabian ran his hand through his hair absently and Riz tracked the motion the whole way. “I’ve heard that said before, yes.”

“Fabian, can I kiss you?” And it was so fast that he barely even registered all of the words before nodding, a loose silly thing, not trusting his own voice to not say something stupid.

“So goddamn annoying,” Riz mumbled, half a whisper, and before Fabian could shoot back another snarky retort he lurched forward and kissed Fabian fully on the mouth.

It was unexpected for more reasons than Fabian could possibly relate in a timely manner, because Riz just didn’t do this kind of thing. Fabian had been a part of a few ill-advised makeout sessions with his friends, sure, what teenager hadn’t, but never with Riz, of course never with Riz, who had exactly one one-night stand in sophomore year of college and had called Fabian immediately after, halfway to a panic attack.

But Riz was really kissing him now, and as stated before, Fabian was no stranger to kissing friends. So he played along, he gave Riz the yes-and, and the flashcards went entirely forgotten with the pressure of Riz’s lips against his in the forefront of Fabian’s mind.

Years ago, some time vaguely after graduation, Kristen had let it slip that Riz had had a monster crush on Fabian all through high school. The news had hit Fabian like a truck, but maybe it shouldn’t have. He had never been the most insightful.

And maybe, Fabian thought, kissing Riz like this more often wouldn’t be terrible. It wouldn’t be terrible at all, it would be pretty great. Riz was cool and Fabian’s best friend and he would be lying if he said that he hadn’t had a serious glow-up during senior year and was actually kind of hot now. Fabian was a big boy now, he could admit that yeah, the weird goblin briefcase kid had grown up and would actually be kind of nice to do this with. Dating, maybe. Platonic kissing, definitely. Who knows.

And Fabian would never know, because Riz pulled back with a slight look of horror on his face and a deep flush across his face staining his cheeks a brownish red. Fabian opened his mouth to say something, god knows what, and closed it again.

Riz’s jaw worked as his eyes darted frantically around the room, searching for any excuse to break the silence. “I should, uh, probably get back to studying,” he said awkwardly, the words coming in fits and starts.

“Yeah,” Fabian said, and a quick glance at Riz’s desk clock revealed that fifteen minutes had elapsed since Riz first came up onto the bed. His crystal still innocently played music from across the room.

Riz slipped off of the bed, masterfully landing like he probably did every morning, and settled back down into his desk chair. Fabian still hadn’t moved, a little too shell-shocked to do anything more than watch Riz. “Thanks for the stress relief,” Riz joked weakly.

And of course, obviously, the kissing had been stress relief, a way to boost the endorphins, but Fabian still couldn’t help but feel a little snubbed. From what he wasn’t sure, so he pushed it down and retrieved the flashcards from inside Riz’s pillow and resigned himself to a boring rest of the day.

He was no stranger to platonic makeout sessions, and now all he had done was add Riz to the roster.

Nothing had to change.

~

kisses him. Fabian can kind of hear the kids screaming, a kind of gleeful feral response, but it’s drowned out by the blood rushing in his ears.

He distantly registers that heart-squeezing feeling he’s felt with past lovers, whirlwind and passionate, but the way that his chest constricts mainly just feels like how Adaine describes an anxiety attack. It’s better than that kiss they had shared years ago, less sloppy and a little more skillful.

Fabian’s got Riz’s full weight in his arms, the angle of it a little too unwieldy, and he shifts so that Riz is more upright, accepting the risk that the changed position means that Riz is almost fully sitting in Fabian’s lap.

It’s not awkward like it was the first time, even though it should be. But they’ve been best friends for going on a decade and mastered the art of working in tandem a long, long time ago, so it’s as easy and natural as it would be, say, canoeing together for the first time.

Riz does everything with a sort of single-minded focus and kissing is no exception. Fabian’s grown up enough to admit that in the years since college Riz has turned into a good kisser. Serviceable at the very least.

Riz pulls away and his hands are cradling Fabian’s face, thin fingers cold against his cheeks. He must see something funny in Fabian’s expression because he laughs, tipping his head back, nails digging slightly into the flesh of Fabian’s neck.

And for the second time in his life Fabian is left dumbfounded after being kissed by Riz, his brain moving at half speed. Riz’s laughter trails off and he pats Fabian’s cheek fondly, leaning forward to whisper in his ear, “shut your mouth.”

Fabian’s jaw snaps shut so quickly his teeth clack, and with a dry swallow schools his face into something that makes it look like this, being kissed by Riz, is nothing out of the ordinary.

Margot buries her face in Uristine’s shoulder and whines, “I want to fall in love!”

“I know,” Uristine says, patting Margot’s head in condolence, shooting a glance at Fabian and Riz that seems to imply that she’s heard this a million times before. “I know, Mar.”

It had been Riz who had pushed Fabian away that first time. For lack of a better word, planted them solidly in the friendzone. And Fabian’s fine with it, Riz’s friendship is one of the dearest things in his life, but then Riz will do something like this that sends him reeling, a figurative swipe to the ankle that knocks him off-balance. Riz had kissed him. And he didn’t need to; he could’ve told the kids no, he could’ve waited for Fabian to take initiative, he could’ve done any number of things other than what he did. There was no need for them to kiss, it didn’t help national security, it didn’t advance the case.

And how often does Riz do something that doesn’t advance the case?

Fabian isn’t very talkative for the rest of the evening. Riz stays in his lap, payback from Fabian using him as a pillow earlier in the night, and it’s a little hard to concentrate on Alex’s story about a summer camp he was a counselor at when Riz keeps his hand on top of Fabian’s wrist and absentmindedly rakes his nails across the skin, just light enough to feel.

They all part ways when Arisha falls asleep just after two, their head lolling down on Alex’s thigh. He picks them up with no small amount of difficulty, hauling them over to the car and depositing them in the backseat. Fabian and Riz wish the kids goodnight and walk back to their own car, silent and content as they move under the orange streetlights. They don’t talk in the car, or as they get in the house and kick off their shoes by the door. They don’t say anything to each other as Fabian places Fandrangor back next to the bookshelf and Riz pulls the gun out of his waistband and secrets it away in his briefcase. They’re both thinking of a mere few hours ago, when they left the house in anticipation of a fight.

When they get into bed, Riz clicks off the light right away, not staying up to read like he normally does, and lies on his back, staring up at the ceiling, while Fabian lies on his side and watches him. Usually they lie like two concave curves, facing in opposite directions, not touching and not talking. Tonight, though, Riz breathes slowly and looks at the ceiling and Fabian resists the urge to reach out and hold his hand. Instead, he says, “you kissed me.”

“I did,” Riz answers.

His mouth is ever so slightly parted, and his chest rises and falls with each breath. “Why?” Fabian asks.

Riz turns, maneuvers himself to face Fabian, convex curves. “What do you mean, why?”

“You didn’t have to.”

There’s an empty space between them, the shared blanket drawn taut between their shoulders, a cold distance of unoccupied mattress. Fabian can feel the air from it, the chill, and wants nothing more than to share the space, to feel someone else’s body heat instead of the vacancy that presses against his skin from all angles. It’s been a long time since he’s held someone, since he’s shared a bed and felt warm. There were women on the sea and men too, but they never stuck around for more than a few nights, always gone by the next port town, and Fabian was left alone again. Riz looks at Fabian with that singular focus, eyes roaming his face like he’s taking in a crime scene.

“No,” is all Riz says.

Why did you do it? Fabian almost asks, but doesn’t. Instead he reaches across the aisle, seeks out Riz’s waist, and wraps an arm around him. Riz rolls over a full 180 degrees and slots himself into the curve of Fabian’s outline. It feels unspeakably poignant, lying pressed together like this, chest to back, the back of Riz’s head resting against the notch of Fabian’s neck and their ankles knocking together.

And Fabian is overcome, like being thrown from a ship and feeling the water rush over your head, and for the first time he feels terrified of it. Riz’s ear twitches absently and Fabian watches the motion, imperceptible as it may be. It’s late and the kids looked up to them as cool gay role models and how much of a gay role model is Fabian if he can’t even do this, can’t even handle falling in love with his best friend.

He’s overcome, seawater filling his nostrils, bordering on choking, and Fabian cranes his head down to press a kiss to the corner of Riz’s jaw.

There’s a moment where it feels as though Fabian might drown, and he remembers being a child and falling overboard and his father’s strong hands pulling him up out of the water. Now, though, he’s just floundering in the waves, overthinking kisses and things he’s said, calling Riz his bosun and being too bold at the block party.

But then Riz draws Fabian’s hand up to his mouth and kisses the tender inside of his palm, lingering and sweet, and Fabian feels himself being hauled up into the air, and as he takes a desperate gasp of breath Riz laughs softly to himself.

They lie there until they fall asleep, Riz’s hair tickling the underside of Fabian’s chin and Riz’s breath hot against Fabian’s palm. When they wake in the morning, they haven’t moved at all.

Chapter Text

We know our codes and ciphers,
but what’s a cipher for?
A bunting-tosser doesn’t toss a bunting anymore!
-The Last Shanty

August

There are new developments in the case, or at least that’s what Fabian can surmise by the way Riz withdraws, hiding himself away in his little office (it used to be a laundry room, but what are the Bad Kids if not ingenuitive?) and coming out only to eat and go to church events, poring over papers at meals and frantically typing on his computer as Fabian thanklessly refills his coffee cup for him.

This is the bad part of Riz’s job, the side of his friend that’s been there ever since freshman year. The spiraling, the hyperfocus, the absolute commitment to the case.

And Fabian is lonely. He hasn’t been lonely in a while, ever since he came ashore with Riz. So he backs away too, lets himself surrender to the relapse, and sketches plans for a new system of masts for his ship, charts paths in pencil on old maritime maps that he’ll never actually travel. He goes to work and he listens to the gulls cry above him and he misses the sea, where he was lonely and empty but at least he knew where he stood. He was comfortable on the water, and it’s vastly different from being in this suburban dystopia where he doesn’t even have the consolation of a friend and a hand to hold anymore.

He knows he should help Riz, support him, but he can’t figure out how to without sacrificing his own heart at the same time. Because that’s how it always has been, right? They’ve always been like this, ships passing in the night. Riz crushed on Fabian in high school, back when he was so dumb the thought wouldn’t even cross his mind. Then Riz grew out of it and kissed Fabian for fun in college and made him think that maybe there was something there, some interest in that dusty, cobwebby part of himself, the part that likes people for longer than a night. And then they were apart for years and moved on like they always do, until Riz called and propositioned and Fabian fell like the idiot he is. He thinks vaguely that this must’ve been how Riz felt in high school, like Fabian’s little sidekick, always trailing just behind and relentlessly infatuated with someone who doesn’t care, who’s got bigger things to worry about. This is how they always have been, Fabian thinks, putting the puzzle pieces together for the first time. Always one beat behind the other, never quite falling into sync.

So Fabian doesn’t push it. He brings Riz coffee even when he doesn’t ask and he doesn’t propose dinner plans that would take longer than an hour and he picks up the slack that Riz drops around the house, washing dishes and making beds in a house built for two but inhabited by one. He goes long mornings and evenings without seeing Riz, coming home from work to a note on the counter reading, ‘out on business. Keep a keen eye.’

Fabian accepts the challenge and keeps a keen eye on Riz. He watches for those days when the self-isolation dips into danger, bringing him snacks and encouraging him to email his boss on the porch instead. He takes care of Riz, his fake husband, and ignores the loneliness. He goes to work, he makes Riz coffee, he cuts clean new sailcloth just to have something to do with his hands.

He’s going to leave when all this is over, he decides. Head back out onto the sea. Well, first he’s going to fix the masts: the foremast has got some rot and there’s weather damage on the boom. But then he’s going to cut his losses and leave again. It’s easier that way.

He sits on the porch steps and plans for leaving, gets a head start on all the things he’ll have to deal with before setting out. He gets up and walks circles around the yard when his legs cramp and despises the way he’s become a prisoner of this house, tethered to a post somewhere in the bedroom, a far cry from the free man he used to be, obeying the whims of the wind with no concerns about who he had to leave behind.

But he’s grown up now. He knows better. So as the sun reaches the top of the tree by the fence that hangs low with fruit he goes back inside to check on his best friend.

Riz is sitting on the kitchen counter, not doing anything, just slowly sipping from his mug of coffee. It’s such a bizarre scene that for a moment Fabian thinks that something is wrong, that maybe Riz was fired or the church blew up or he’s actually an imposter sent to sabotage the whole thing. “Morning,” he says, voice scratchy from lack of use, and that’s definitely Riz.

“Good morning.” Fabian tries to bite back a smile, tries not to let it show just how happy he is that Riz is actually here with him in the kitchen, head out of his laptop and talking with him. “There’s a peach tree in our yard, you know.”

Riz hums absently. He looks exhausted. “I did not.”

“The peaches are ripe now. I might make a pie.” It’s a fool’s errand, Fabian knows that, but otherwise the fruit is just going to go to waste. “What do you think?”

“Follow the recipe,” Riz says with an amused snort and hops off the counter, padding back out into the hallway, silent in his socks and pajama pants. He’s gone by the time Fabian opens his mouth to call after him. It’s just him in the kitchen again, the lingering smell of coffee the only hint that Riz had even been there, and the wave of loneliness hits Fabian again.

So instead of feeling sorry for himself he gets to work, finding a bag from the grocery store that didn’t quite make it into the trash and going out to pick the peaches. They’re soft and beautifully pink, the platonic ideal of a fruit. He finds a recipe in a cookbook that came with the house, abandoned behind the fridge, and follows it to a T. He has to make two separate trips to the store, once for cornstarch and once for dwarven vodka, the likes of which he hasn’t bought in years. He makes the crust with the vodka, so close to freezing but never quite achieving it, and puts the rest of the bottle directly into the trash, not even bothering to dump it down the sink. He doesn’t want this house to smell like his did in high school.

The pie comes out of the oven golden brown and bubbling at the edges, sweet and perfect, with crystals of sugar sprinkled over the top like the world after a snowstorm. Riz doesn’t come out to see it.

“Do you want some pie?” Fabian asks, ducking his head into the office and averting his eyes when he sees Riz frantically power off his computer. He forgets, sometimes, just how many state secrets pass through the house that he’s not privy to. “It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.”

“I’m not hungry,” Riz says, and doesn’t look up from his work. A large clue board takes up the wall space above the washer and dryer, sticky notes and tape and red thread. There’s a sheet over it when Fabian comes in to do laundry and he has to resist the urge to peek every time.

The pie, whole and untouched, sits on the counter and mocks Fabian. He doesn’t want to eat it without Riz; he’s not even a big fruit fan, and he definitely wouldn’t be able to finish it all on his own. So instead he wraps it up nicely and decides to bring it to their neighbors, Elizabeth’s family. It pains him to give such a gorgeous example of his newfound baking prowess away, especially to the religious homophobes down the street, but he figures that a kid in this environment could use all the dessert they can get.

So he walks over in the stifling August heat and he can smell the salt air on the wind but pretends not to notice. This is his life, at least for now.

Elizabeth’s mother, he’s pretty sure her name is also Elizabeth but Betsy, actually, answers the door. “Mr. Seacaster,” she says, too surprised to sound cold.

“I brought a very, very late housewarming gift,” Fabian greets sheepishly, holding out the pie, and he realizes how stupid that sounds.

Betsy looks at the pie and then back up at him. “Usually housewarming gifts are for the new arrivals, not the other way around.”

“I know,” Fabian says with an easy laugh. He catches a glimpse of Elizabeth sitting at the kitchen island eating lunch, and she must hear his voice from down the hallway because she turns and waves at him. “But I found out we have a peach tree and decided to make this, but neither Riz or I really like peach pie, so… I figured someone else might appreciate it more than us.”

Her gaze flickers back down to the pie, then back up again, a constant ricochet. “Well, thank you. That’s very kind.” And she takes the pie with cautious hands, as if a snake might jump out. “Do you need anything else?”

Fabian waves her off. “No, no. Have a good day.”

The screen door slams and before he makes it out of earshot he hears Elizabeth say, “can we have it as lunch dessert?”

“You should never take food from strangers,” Betsy chastises her in response, “and we don’t know how clean those people keep their kitchen.”

“They’re not strangers,” Elizabeth protests, and as Fabian reaches the street he hears the definitive sound of a perfect peach pie hitting the bottom of a trash can.

~

Fig and Ayda get married in Elmville. The wedding is sweet and beautiful, and Fabian is eternally grateful to be separated by a safe couple of hours from what was inevitably a tiefling-sized bridezilla of the most extreme.

They’re all in the wedding party, all the Bad Kids and Garthy O’Brien too, in matching maroon outfits. Fabian’s not a fashion person, anyone who knows him would be able to tell that, but even he can tell that Ayda’s dress is stunning. They had heard secondhand all the way down in Newport about the chaos of trying to find the perfect wedding dress and just how many salespeople Fig had intimidated into showing them the good stock. Fig is wearing a suit, a sleek black form-fitting thing with a deep red tie that matches her glistening horns and Ayda’s bouquet.

The ceremony is sweet and beautiful, and luckily Kristen and Adaine had convinced Fig to not deliver her vows in song form. According to Gorgug, he had been in favor.

Everyone cries.

The real fun comes at the ceremony, which is held in the ballroom of a nearby hotel. It’s bound to be wild, given the mix of Elmville locals and Ayda’s friends from Leviathan. Fabian gets introduced to a lot of them, who respond to his outstretched hand and greeting of ‘Fabian Aramais Seacaster, son of the late Bill Seacaster’ with a handshake and their name and the title of ‘library card holder.’ Ayda beams with pride at each of her library patrons, the few pirates on the island with an interest in booklearning.

Adaine gives the maid of honor speech, and Fabian is assured there was a lengthy battle in choosing who would deliver it. But she steps up to the mic in her maroon dress with a smug satisfaction and leaves Fig weeping from laughter. There’s a certain confidence in her deadpan delivery, teases that she’ll know will land and inside jokes that have been percolating in their friend group for years.

And maybe Fabian should feel a little down like single people usually are at weddings, but for once he doesn’t feel like the one left out while the others reach for their futures. He has a good time, despite it all.

He dances, of course, as soon as the music comes on. There are flutes of champagne being passed around like hot potatoes and it’s not hard to get drunk, invigorated by both the alcohol and the excitement of the evening. Sweaty and exhausted, Fabian emerges from the dance floor maybe two or so hours after he started to find Riz standing alone, leaning his hip against one of the tables and surveying the scene. He looks a little tipsy and a little lonely, so Fabian walks right over, driven by some bone-deep instinct to want to make Riz smile.

“Hey, the Ball. Some party.”

“Do you think they’re going to divorce?” Riz asks absently.

“Excuse me?”

“Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce,” Riz explains, like that at all softens the blow. “Do you really think it’s going to last?”

Fabian frowns and joins Riz in leaning against the table, watching Fig and Ayda dance. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it does,” Riz responds, affronted.

“They’re happy now.” Off on the other side of the room, Ayda says something that makes Fig erupt with laughter, loud and clear, and Ayda glows in the joy of it. “Does it really matter if they’re not happy in thirty years?”

Riz peers up at Fabian, cranes his neck like he always has to in order to look Fabian in the eye. “You’re too tall,” he mumbles. “Sit so I can see you.”

Fabian, drunk and stupid, would do anything Riz asked of him, so he plops himself down cross-legged on the floor. Riz stays standing, a few inches taller than Fabian at this angle, and takes Fabian’s face in his hands. Fabian shivers and Riz giggles in a way that would seem frighteningly out of character if they weren’t both feeling so wild, running his thumbs across his cheekbones. Fabian just stares as Riz touches his face, traces the outline of his skull with his fingertips, never making eye contact. He runs his nails across the cut of his jaw, maps the rough edges of the scar that replaces Fabian’s eye with his ring finger, pawn shop wedding ring gleaming rainbow in the party lights, rests his thumb on the soft, fleshy part of Fabian’s lower lip. Neither of them say anything, but there’s a feeling of electricity at the base of Fabian’s spine like lightning striking too close. “I never get to see you up close,” Riz murmurs. He tilts Fabian’s head to the side and Fabian allows him to move him around like a living doll; it’s worth it for the sensation of Riz’s fingers on his skin, analyzing his face as if it’s something fascinating and treasured. “Do you remember,” he asks vaguely, grazing the apples of his cheeks, “in college, when I was in college, when I kissed you?”

And of course Fabian remembers, he’s never even come close to forgetting, and suddenly he feels a little dizzy. Riz is too close, and when Fabian tries to pull back his head hits the edge of the table. “Riz,” he says, low and inarticulate, “do you want me to kiss you?” He didn’t know he was going to say it, it just comes out. He expects Riz to step away, to take his hands off of his face, but he doesn’t. Riz just stands there, so close, and his chest heaves with breath, and he looks utterly terrified.

“Of course I do,” he exhales, and Riz says it like it’s an obvious fact of life but it hits Fabian like a punch to the gut.

There’s a moment of awkwardness, Riz hovering over Fabian and uncomfortable staring, and Fabian figures that the two times they’ve kissed, Riz has done the actual hard part of initiating and it’s probably Fabian’s turn at this point. So he puts his hands on Riz’s waist and pulls him in and they’re kissing, just like they have exactly two times before, and Fabian feels the floor spin under him. Riz stumbles a little, thrown off-kilter by Fabian dragging them together, and he sort of falls onto Fabian, half in his lap and digging his claws into the flesh where Fabian’s jaw meets his neck like he’s holding on for dear life.

Fabian can distantly hear people yelling, but yelling in a different way than they were before, yelling about them, but he doesn’t really register it. He feels that same underwater sensation as he did beneath the bridge with the secret gay underground of Newport, like he’s got to pop his ears. Riz smiles against his mouth and Fabian laughs a little just to get rid of some of the excess energy that still pools in his gut, a sizzling kind of warmth that demands escape, that demands action.

It’s not as innocent as it was under the bridge. It’s messier, more honest. And it’s not like it had been innocent at college, when they still were figuring each other out and Riz had kissed three people ever before him. But, objectively, this one is certainly better. They’re comfortable and drunk and Fabian isn’t drowning again, but he feels like he’s dived too far down and there’s a pressure in his head that threatens to rupture his skull and send him to an early grave. Riz is going to be the death of him, he thinks hazily. A gun tucked into the waistband, that’s the kind of person he is. Dangerous in his thrilling intrigue.

Riz shudders under his touch and Fabian just desperately wants this to mean something, to be more than a drunk fling. Fabian is no stranger to making out with his friends. But Riz is, he’s never been driven by that kind of shit. ‘Somewhere between asexual and gay,’ that’s how he describes himself. And Fabian knows this, and Fabian accepts this, but it confuses him all the more because of it, the spontaneity of it all that seems so contrary to the core of Riz’s character.

Riz pulls away first and wipes at his mouth, lips glistening with spit that may or may not be his own, and mumbles absently, “alright, Seacaster.”

That same energy bubbles in his throat and Fabian laughs, far too loud and far too wild. “Honorable work, Gukgak,” and gives Riz a messy salute.

Riz breaks down giggling, burying his face in Fabian’s shoulder, and as Fabian struggles to regain his breath through his laughter he thinks that this might be just as good as the kissing.

The song changes to something slower and gentler, and Fabian has known Riz for almost a decade and he knows undeniably that this is Riz’s favorite song in the entire world.

“We’ve got to dance,” Fabian gets out between his own giggles.

“No way,” Riz shoots back, because he doesn’t dance, that’s one of his things.

Fabian gets up, brushes the ground dust from his pants, and reaches out to Riz with a stern, “come on.”

“You suck,” Riz says, but takes Fabian’s hand anyway.

This song is calmer than the others they’ve played tonight, and most everyone here is dancing with their plus one, the dance floor filled with couples slow dancing, all hands on hips and deep looks into each other's eyes. But Fabian and Riz aren’t actually husbands, just friends who apparently kiss sometimes, so they keep a few inches between them as they dance like a couple of hippies, loose and silly. Riz’s dancing is mainly comprised of a sloppy step-touch and shaking fingers, as if he’s attempting to do jazz hands for a Fosse routine but can’t quite figure it out; Fabian knows him well enough to know that this is just what he does when he’s filled with so much happiness that his body can’t contain it all, the remainder escapes through his jittery hands.

Fabian looks at Riz, dancing like a fool in his unbuttoned suit jacket, and his head feels too sizes to small for his brain, which seems swollen with the love he feels for this stupid little goblin man. The Ball, briefcase kid, best friend. They mouth along to the lyrics and when Riz tips his head back in laughter Fabian thinks him beautiful, and when the song ends and Riz stumbles back to his chair and waves Fabian off in a silent direction for him to go back and dance without him, Fabian thinks him wonderful.

They part ways as they leave the elevator. Fabian is sharing a hotel room with Ragh and Riz is sharing with Adaine; after almost three months they both jumped at the chance to sleep in separate rooms.

Fabian undresses quickly and falls into bed, eager to sleep and a little less eager to wake up with what promises to be a brutal hangover. Ragh cannonballs onto his own bed, twin singles that both of their feet hang off the ends of.

“Hey, dude?” Ragh asks slowly, his voice rough and low in the quiet of the unfamiliar room.

“Yeah?” Fabian mumbles into his pillow.

“I don’t want to pry or anything, but… did you make out with the Ball at the party or did I totally make that up?”

And Fabian is still pretty drunk, so he laughs and says, “I absolutely did, man.”

“Was that like, did you mean to, or was that a ‘we’re bros and our masculinity is strong enough to handle a little platonic kissing?’ thing?” The ‘like we’ve done’ hangs in the air unspoken. “Cuz I feel like you should make sure the Ball is in on that, I dunno how up to date he is on bro-code or whatever…”

“No, I meant to,” Fabian says, and it still sounds like he’s laughing even though he doesn’t want to anymore. “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him.”

Silence fills the space between them, heavy and demanding rectifying. “Shit, dude,” Ragh mutters. “I’m sorry, man. That’s hard.”

It’s not like Fabian has told many people about his crush- his love, who knows- so he doesn’t quite know what to expect from that kind of confession, but it sure as hell wasn’t that. But Ragh has been there, he remembers. With Dayne, who Fabian personally disemboweled in freshman year of high school, but he’s been there before. He knows the right thing to say because he’s been where Fabian is right now and Ragh is right, it is hard. It’s fucking hard to be in love with his best friend of a decade, clever and snarky and obsessive and sweet as he is. It’s hard to be in love with someone who will always love his work, love doing the right thing, more than Fabian. It’s hard to love someone who doesn’t even say thank you when Fabian refills his coffee anymore.

Fabian doesn’t realize that he’s crying until he feels it on his pillow, the soggy cotton making his skin crawl. “Fuck,” he whispers, wiping his eyes, but tears keep coming. “Fuck. Ragh, I-”

“It’s okay.” Ragh is propped up on one elbow, watching Fabian with such compassion that he feels it like the sun on his face. “I get it, dude. Let it out.”

Fabian keeps wiping away tears until they finally stop, eyes red and raw. “I thought I was done with this shit in high school,” he says.

“You graduated six years ago and you’re still hanging out with your friends from freshman year,” Ragh points out. “Of course crushing on your best friend is going to feel like high school all over again.”

“If I tell you something that’s the biggest secret anyone’s ever told you, will you promise not to tell anyone? It’s a matter of life and death.” Ragh nods and Fabian sighs, mushes his face into the pillow. “I’m working with the Ball on a case. Being his arm candy, really. We have to pretend to be married.”

“Fuck,” Ragh says, which seems to be the word of the evening. “That’s rough.”

“And it sucks because Riz’s job is so shit and somehow he’s the only one who doesn’t notice it but it also sucks so much because I don’t want it to end.” Fabian’s never said that before. He’s never even thought it. But it’s true, isn’t it? He doesn’t want to stop calling Riz his husband. He doesn’t want to stop sleeping in the same bed as him, eating dinner with him, coming home to him after work. He doesn’t want to stop this perfect acting exercise, performing romance with someone he’s secretly in love with. It feels a little bit like a con, but who does it hurt, other than Fabian, in the end? “I don’t want to be alone when it’s over.”

“He’s not going to dump you as soon as the case is through,” Ragh assures him. “You’ve been through tougher shit.”

“I know,” Fabian mumbles. “Fuck, I know. I know. The Ball wouldn’t do that.”

“It’s hard,” Ragh says, and lies back down. “But if it’s any consolation, he seemed really into that kiss tonight.”

“It’s not,” Fabian tells him, “but thank you.”

When he wakes in the morning there’s a moment in which he doesn’t remember where he is, where he just clocks the unfamiliar ceiling and the empty space in the bed where Riz should be and thinks that something is horribly wrong. But then Ragh’s snoring breaks the illusion like a foghorn through the harbor and Fabian remembers everything, the kiss and the conversation and the reason why it feels like someone put his head in a bear trap.

They leave early that morning. Riz downs three cups of coffee in preparation for the two hour drive back to Newport, even though he’s not driving. He has some thing against sleeping in the car, always has, so he just stares twitchily out over the highway and bitches about Fabian going ten over the speed limit as if nothing had happened the night before.

Fabian can’t stop thinking about it. He knows he shouldn’t, he knows it was a stupid, spur of the moment mistake that he needs to stop thinking about but he can’t, he physically can’t.

Riz sits with his knees pulled up to his chest, fingers tapping a frantic tattoo against his ankles, and Fabian’s mind loves to remind him that those fingers had cradled his face mere hours before, even when his mind really should be helping him keep an eye out for their exit.

Their respective hangovers prevent them from turning up the radio or anything that would actually be entertaining. Riz doesn’t do anything other than pointing out directions and huffing when Fabian misses turns. He’s usually not this bad at driving, but… his head’s not in it today.

When they get back to the house, Riz immediately darts off to his office. Fabian catches him before he disappears forever, hand around his thin wrist. “Wait,” he blurts, not even sure what to say.

“This is a bad idea,” Riz says impassively. “I need to message my supervisor, I’ll see you at dinner.”

He leaves Fabian standing in the hallway alone, arm still outstretched, fingers still forming the shape of his arm.

~

Fabian wakes up some time after 2, moonlight streaming in through the window, and instantly feels too hot. It’s stifling in the little room, the August heat thick and oppressive, and Riz’s arm slung around his hips doesn’t help; in fact, it only makes him feel warmer. Neither of them made a conscious choice to sleep this closely when they got into bed, but it seems like weeks of cuddling has wormed its way into their muscle memory, causing Riz’s sleeping form to latch onto Fabian when touching seems to be the last thing he wants to do in the daylight hours. But Fabian’s too hot, he’s sweaty and desperately thirsty, so he gently detangles himself from Riz and gets up as silently as he can, keeping a close eye on his sleeping friend to make sure he doesn’t wake up.

He goes to the kitchen and drinks two glasses of water in five gulps and goes outside, where it’s at least marginally cooler.

In Elmville, it was always loud at night. There was always something going on, especially at Seacaster Manor, but even if you were deeper in the suburbs there was the distant rumble of the highway and noise from some group or another out and up to no good. In Fabian’s time, that group was usually the Bad Kids. Here, though, it’s as silent as the grave. A few crickets sing from the bushes, but every house lining the street is completely still and quiet, the only sign of life the porch light kept on at each house out of an abundance of caution.

Riz finds him an hour later on the porch surrounded by sailcloth, pulling the enormous pieces of canvas together with a loose whipstitch that would make his father and Cathilda shudder. “Found you. I’m supposed to be the disappearing one, you know.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Riz sighs gently from behind Fabian, the sound almost inaudible, harmonizing with the hum of the cicadas. “Is that for the boat?” He asks, coming to sit next to Fabian on the stoop.

“Ship, the Ball. ‘Boat’ makes it sound like she’s some dinghy.”

Riz rolls his eyes fondly. “Fine. Is that for the ship?”

“It is.” Fabian ties off the thread, the simple square knot he’s known since he could walk, and stretches his back out with a crack. “I’m leaving again, when we’re done with this.”

“Oh,” Riz says. “You didn’t mention that before.”

Fabian shrugs. “It’s a new development.”

There’s a long moment of silence as they both sit and process. The sky is heavy with thick grey clouds and Fabian can smell rain coming in the air. He makes a mental note to close the windows when they go in. Days like these are his favorite, overcast and ominous, because the wind of the storm front brings in sea smell from the harbor. With the breeze in his hair and his eyes closed, Fabian can almost imagine he’s back on the water. And Riz must be able to read minds, because he asks, suddenly, “what’s it like? Sailing?”

“Wonderful,” Fabian sighs, and he falls back onto the porch, hands beneath his head, and after a moment Riz joins him. “It’s not like anything else in the world. There’s something truly magical about the ocean, I think. And the freedom on the open sea; it’s unmatched, the Ball.”

Riz hums, low and absent. His knees stick up into the air, feet in the dirt, head mere inches from Fabian’s. Fabian thinks that they ought to lie on the ground more often. “If it’s so great, why did you leave?”

“You asked me to,” Fabian answers.

“You could have said no.”

They’ve had this conversation before, this back and forth in which Riz is somehow entirely incapable of understanding that there was no way Fabian could’ve possibly turned Riz down. “It’s lonely. I wanted to be with you.”

“Lonely,” Riz echoes.

Fabian thinks for a few seconds, tries to find words to appropriately explain how it had felt, being stuck in the strange liminal space of the endless ocean while his friends lived and moved on without him. How it had felt to watch his friends get married and get jobs and grow up. Fabian still feels 18, stunted, but he nevertheless can’t shake the desire to go back to the water. “There’s nobody out there with you,” he explains slowly. “There’s your crew, and there are towns when you come to port, but for the majority of the time you’re just alone on the ocean with people who aren’t your friends, they’re more like hirelings, you know? And they all have jokes and relationships but it’s hard, being the captain, and not being able to really bond with them. My papa used to say that your crew was more likely to put a knife in your back than take one for you. I think he was wrong, but… anyway.”

“Then why did you stay for so long? Why go back?”

“Because it’s wonderful, the Ball. It’s wonderful and terrible at the same time, why can’t you see that?” Fabian sighs, runs his hands over his face. “Do I wish I could’ve formed real connections out there? Absolutely. But I wouldn’t trade that life for the world.”

I would trade it for you, his mind sings, and Fabian tries to squash the thought. I would give it all up to wake up next to you every morning. “I feel that, too, with my job,” Riz says. “It really does suck a lot of the time. But I’m doing good work, I’m making a difference. A lot of people can never claim that.”

“Life isn’t all about doing the most good,” Fabian counters. “It’s about being happy, too.”

Riz doesn’t say anything. When Fabian turns his head to look at him, he’s got his eyes closed. Fabian mimics him. It’s nice, feeling the breeze on his face. “I’d like to take you sailing one day, the Ball. There are some mornings when the fog is so thick that when you look out, you can’t even make out the horizon; it’s just blank grey as far as the eye can see. Just you and your ship alone in the void.”

“Sounds terrifying,” Riz says absently.

“You don’t know terrifying until you’ve braved a true storm. I tell you, that’s what makes a man.”

Riz snorts. “With all that we’ve been through, you seriously think a storm is the scariest thing?”

“Just wait.” Fabian sits up as the first raindrops begin to fall. “I’ll take you sailing and you’ll see.”

“I can’t wait.”

~

They reach a breaking point when Fabian goes a full 24 hours without speaking to Riz. It’s been a long month, and the loneliness Fabian feels so strongly has morphed into anger: anger at his friend for bringing him into this case and then abandoning him. He has a whole plan for how to chew Riz out when he gets home and waits in the bedroom for him to arrive, running over his mental script, quietly seething. At around 12:30 Fabian feels his heart rate kick up as he hears the front door’s locks click open and Riz’s shoes on the hardwood, but when Riz enters the bedroom, bathed in a moonlit glow, the only thing Fabian can bring himself to say is, “I miss you.”

“Why are you still up?” Riz asks, not even looking at Fabian. He goes about his homecoming routine absently: watch on the bureau, shoes by the closet, tie hung on the back of the door.

And Fabian can’t remember anything he wanted to say before, because all his mind can repeat is how much he misses Riz, how much he wishes this past month could’ve gone differently. Riz turns to face him and his expression, slightly confused but unguarded, exhausted after a hard day’s work, fills Fabian so wholly with love that there’s no room for anger. “I miss you,” he says again.

Riz tilts his head just so. “I’m right here.”

“This is the first time you've talked to me since Tuesday. I haven’t seen you in 24 hours straight.”

“There’s some really important stuff happening in the case right now-”

“You’re my best friend, Riz.” Fabian’s curtness seems to catch Riz off guard because he stops short, arms hanging limply at his sides, and inhales sharply. “I don’t want to do this without you. I don’t think I can.”

Riz doesn’t say anything, his mouth hanging open like a dead fish in the market. Even now, even like this, Fabian finds him beautiful.

“You’re not a robot, Riz. You can’t work like this, you’ll kill yourself. You need to let me help you sometimes.”

“This isn’t something you can help me with, you know this-”

“Then help me,” Fabian cuts in. There’s still a little fight there, a little bit of fury behind his words, but Riz doesn’t seem to hear it. “That’s your life goal, isn’t it? Doing good? Helping people? Help me by being my friend, Riz. That’s all I need.”

Riz sighs, deep and pained, and sinks down onto the bed next to Fabian, head tilted up to the ceiling. “You deserve more than that.”

“No I don’t,” Fabian says with a gentle laugh. “You’re a hell of a lot better than I deserve.”

Riz smiles a little and shakes his head, probably holding back some line on what he thinks Fabian does and doesn’t deserve, and says, “look. I’ve fucked up a lot lately. I’ve been pushing you away and I might have just fucked up the case and I totally freaked about the kiss and that’s my fault, I know it is.”

“What do you mean you freaked about the kiss?”

Riz puts a hand on Fabian’s wrist. “Let’s talk about this in the morning, okay?” He asks, thin green fingers cold against his skin. “I’m tired, and this conversation deserves more coherency than I can give it at this hour. I just- it scared me, you know? Relationships within parties never usually last and they usually end messily and I didn’t want to lose you. I still don’t. I know I’ve been a sort of shitty friend to you and I’m sorry, I really am.”

Fabian’s head feels overfilled, thoughts sloshing around like water in a jug, a constant echo of ‘relationships within parties never usually last.’ Because unless he’s hallucinating this whole conversation, it sounds like Riz… wanted a relationship. But he can’t vocalize all this, especially not this late, so he just says, “you could’ve come home earlier.”

Riz just flicks the side of Fabian’s head, and it feels like going back to normal, a little bit. Riz gets into his pajamas and climbs into bed and Fabian holds Riz to him like the dearest treasure on the planet, and Riz seems to understand why because he holds Fabian back, arms slung loosely around his waist like nothing ever happened.

Fabian falls asleep and waits for the morning.

Riz leaves early, long before Fabian gets up for work, before the alarm beeps a droning song into the empty quiet of the small bedroom.

But Fabian wakes up when Riz starts to move, brought to consciousness by the squeak of the mattress and the opening and closing of dresser drawers. He keeps his eyes closed and hopes that if he pretends to sleep, he’ll be able to scrape by a few more hours before he has to get up for real.

He tracks Riz’s motion around the room by sound alone, the soft padding of his socks on the floor, the running water in the adjacent bathroom, the barely-there snap of his watch clasp. It’s still fairly dark against Fabian’s eyelids, and he can guess confidently enough that the sun’s barely begun to come up.

He doesn’t know where Riz is off to. The clicking of him loading his gun offers a slight clue, but Fabian will probably never really know his true destination.

Before Riz leaves the room he hovers by the bed and Fabian tries to breathe as evenly as possible. Without a sound Riz touches Fabian’s forehead, feather-light, brushing a rogue piece of hair out of his face with gentle fingers. He lingers just over Fabian’s temple, and believing him asleep, murmurs fondly down at Fabian, “you’re so…” and the final word is lost forever, dissipated during its journey from Riz’s lips to Fabian’s ears.

When the alarm clock goes off Fabian wakes up in an empty bed for the first time in a long time. He gets up, gets dressed, and tries to ignore how quiet it is in the little house without the sound of the shower running or distant footsteps or someone else’s breathing. He stands in the kitchen and waits for the coffee to brew and as he pours it he realizes that he’s made twice as much as needed without Riz there to share the pot.

It’s frightening how quickly he was able to grow so accustomed to this life. How easily he fell into a pattern, climbing into bed with Riz at the end of the day and making coffee for the both of them in the morning.

He thinks of his father.

He gets it now, why Bill Seacaster came ashore, even if he still misses the rocking of the waves sometimes. And he spent so long trying not to become his father, but this was the inevitability, wasn’t it? They always were so alike.

He goes to work and hauls crates and ties knots in the blink of an eye and thinks about what Riz had said that morning, the last word that he couldn’t quite hear.

Annoying, maybe. Insufferable. ‘You’re so annoying,’ Riz had said in college, before he had kissed him. It sounds like an endearment coming from his mouth. But maybe it’s not that. Maybe he had called Fabian beautiful, or wonderful, or some other affectionate word that Fabian can’t even imagine Riz saying to him.

Maybe it was sweet and maybe it was snarky and maybe it was something that Fabian will never fully figure out, but he thinks that the only thing that matters is the way he had said it, the absolute aching softness of it, the way that he had touched Fabian’s face like it was a priceless work of art.

He thinks about the conversation they were supposed to have that morning that starts looking less and less probable as the sun climbs higher in the sky. He wonders, not for the first time, if it’s really worth it, loving Riz, if Riz will always prioritize the job. It’s a useless train of thought. Of course it’s worth it; love can’t be quantified.

When he gets home in the late afternoon, the summer sun still shining, he’s greeted by a note on the counter he hadn’t seen that morning that reads in Riz’s spidery scrawl, “home before dinner. Stay on your toes. Big things afoot.”

For Riz, dinner can mean anything between five and ten, so Fabian prepared to wait. It isn’t until he’s watched a movie, swept the kitchen, put a load of laundry through, and played every song he knows on the guitar that he thinks maybe Riz is running a little late. It’s only about eight, but there’s something in his gut that’s telling him something’s off, that adventurer’s intuition that’s never wrong.

So he takes stock of the facts. The car is in the driveway. Riz took his briefcase with him. Riz took his gun with him, which isn’t a common occasion. Riz left a note on the counter warning Fabian, which is a common occasion. Riz left before he usually does, which means something urgent came up either late last night or early in the morning.

More facts. Fabian is in love with Riz, he’s fairly confident in putting this in the facts list at this point, and that may be clouding his judgement. Fact. Riz is capable. Riz is clever. Riz is damn good at his job. There’s nothing that Fabian can do except wait.

So wait he does. He checks the house for bugs and goes to bed, hoping to hear telltale soft footsteps in the hallway. He doesn’t sleep much. When his alarm rings in the morning, he lies there alone, thinking, worrying. He calls in sick from work.

Fabian isn’t good at staying still, just like Riz; he’s a doer, a man of action. He polishes his sword by the light of the television and falls asleep on the couch, weapon in his lap, around eight in the morning when the exhaustion catches up to him.

The longer he waits the more often he finds himself looking at the clock, the more often he finds himself bouncing his leg and picking at his nails and running his hands across his face, bad habits that he tried to shake off long ago.

He calls Riz four times before evening falls. He gives up after four- nobody misses a call that many times.

There’s a gadget that Riz gave him, back when they first moved in, that’s secreted away between the pages of a very old copy of Les Mis, courtesy of the pawn shop. Riz explained, so long ago but also not long ago at all, that in an emergency he could press the button on the side and send a brief message. Riz’s side of the little gizmo is hidden in one of his many articles of double-purpose clothing, either his hat or his watch or his left shoe. Fabian’s not sure. He was never told the specifics. But he finds it, a slim gray piece of metal, holds down the button, and says, “Riz, it’s Fabian. Let me know if you’re alright.”

And he stands there and waits by the bookshelf for a response. Ten minutes elapse, the cool metal getting warm in his hand, and no message back. Fabian sits on the couch, places the gadget on the coffee table, and waits.

At nine o’clock Fabian makes a decision.

He is not going to spend another night alone.

Fabian does what Riz made him promise to never do- he goes snooping through the laundry room. The little office is an absolute mess, papers and post-its and filled-up white boards. There’s nowhere obvious to start, to go about looking for some way to help Riz, so Fabian begins to tear the office apart.

First comes down the large sheet pinned up over the large corkboard that Fabian knows houses clues: it’s covered in papers, pictures, and newspaper clippings, all coded through some unknowable organizational system of multicolored pins and string. Fabian tries to make sense of it; it seems that Riz has identified the leaders of the group, the brains of the operation, and the grunts. He’s got them all sorted on the board, their neighbors and community heads all filed under colorful pushpins marking them as the enemy. It’s unnerving, to say the least. It’s one thing to know that you’re a part of espionage, to know that the people you’re interacting with on a daily basis are demented cultists, but it’s another thing to see it laid out so clinically, so coldly.

Next comes the drawers. The desk has three drawers, the top one of which is full of pens and office supplies, the middle of which is crammed with more loose papers, and the bottom of which is home to a cardboard box stuffed with file folders, one that Fabian remembers bringing into the house when they first moved in. He looks through that first.

It looks to be a collection of dossiers on the case, the people involved, the town; everything Riz could possibly need to know. And in the back of the box is one Manila envelope labeled “AGENCY CONTACTS.”

Fabian grabs it and opens it with the ferocity of a child tearing apart presents on their birthday. Inside the folder is one piece of paper, 8.5 by 11 inches, with one sentence written on it in Riz’s recognizable scrawl: “for my eyes only.”

It immediately strikes Fabian as odd, because he’s known Riz for a decade and he knows that it’s simply not the kind of thing he would write. “Confidential,” maybe, or “classified.” But it’s too colloquial, too slangy, and not at all something that Riz would naturally say.

Which means it’s a clue.

Riz loves puzzles; he loves solving them and he loves laying them. And this, this is a puzzle. An intricate puzzle he’s laying for Fabian in case of emergency, and goddamn if this isn’t an emergency.

“For my eyes only,” he wrote. It’s unlikely that it would be a red herring, as he does need to keep his contact information somewhere. Somewhere in this house, most likely. But it’s hidden so that only Riz can find it.

Or only Riz can see it.

Fabian sets down the folder with the slow, half-absent movement of a realization. Fabian is over six feet tall. Most people in this neighborhood are humans, somewhere between five and six feet.

Riz is four feet even.

It takes two hours for Fabian to find it, searching the little house on his hands and knees, looking for something, he doesn’t even know what, tucked in a place only someone goblin-sized would think to look. He finds it, ‘it’ being a small thumb drive, taped to the underside of the oven door, well-obscured and concealed through a turn of phrase only Fabian would consider odd.

Fabian takes the thumb drive and, knees screaming in pain, crams it into the side of Riz’s laptop. He goes through no fewer than ten passcodes before he gets to the database, but all of the steps have been coded specially for him, it seems, with security questions like, “what’s the Hangman’s birthday?” and “where was my first romance partner from?”

The passcodes lead him to a contact database full of names that Fabian doesn’t recognize, agency higher-ups and coworkers that don’t exactly come to office parties. At the bottom is a phone number labeled “in case of emergencies.”

It’s steadily approaching midnight, but an emergency is an emergency. Fabian shuts off all of the lights in the house visible from the outside: better for the neighbors to think that they’re going to bed at a reasonable hour. On a street like this, keeping your kitchen light on for too long can be a death sentence.

Fabian sits in Riz’s office, the only room bright and insulated from the outside world, and calls the emergency number.

“Name and clearance level,” a monotone voice says after three rings.

Which is sort of a problem Fabian hadn’t really expected. He pictured it more like spy 911, where you just call and they fix your problem, no questions asked. “Fabian Aramais Seacaster,” he answers by habit. “I’m Agent Gukgak’s partner on a case, I think he’s in trouble.”

There’s a pause on the other side of the line. “Who gave you this number?”

“Agent Riz Gukgak, I’m living with him. I think something bad has happened to him.”

“You shouldn’t have this number,” the voice says.

Fabian could scream. “I’m telling you,” he spits, “that one of your agents is in trouble.”

The voice sighs, as if deciding to entertain Fabian’s ridiculousness. As if this is all one big joke. “Give me any information you think might be important.”

“He’s been away for over 24 hours,” Fabian explains, too stressed to even get angry about the operator’s flippancy. “He left early yesterday morning and I haven’t been able to contact him since.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s technically all, but-“

“A field agent not contacting a civilian for a day is hardly cause for panic,” the voice says, bland and disinterested. “I’ll look at the databases and see when he last checked in with his supervisors. Would it… make you feel better if I informed you of the results?”

Fabian knows he’s being patronized, but he can’t bring himself to care. God, he just wants Riz to be alright. “Yes.” Fabian can feel a headache coming on. “…Thank you.”

There’s some quick typing on the other side of the line, frantic clacking that only accelerates Fabian’s heart rate. “Alright, Mr. Seacaster, it seems that, like you said, Agent Gukgak has not reported to the agency since yesterday morning. While that’s not necessarily a bad sign-”

“Not reporting back for that long, is that common?” Fabian interrupts. He realizes, suddenly, the intensity with which he’s gripping the phone. He loosens his hold and feels the blood rush back into his fingers, knuckles white and tense.

There’s a long, excruciating pause. The voice sighs. “No.”

“He’s in trouble, isn’t he.”

“Mr. Seacaster, I don’t want to say anything that might concern you-”

“I’m pretty fucking concerned already!” Fabian forces himself to take a breath, rubs at the sharp pain that’s gathered at his temple. “Look, I just want to help. Is there anything, really anything, that I can do?”

“All you can do is wait,” the voice says, which was exactly Fabian’s fear. “Let us know if you’re able to contact Agent Gukgak. Delete this number from your phone.” And with a click the call is gone.

There’s a particular kind of helplessness that comes with the inability to act. The paralyzing incapability to make a difference, the powerlessness.

The helplessness always arrives first. It hits like a wave, or a tsunami, or a cold-cock to the jaw. It feels like being alone in the desert, like you’re slowly running out of water and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Or like you’re running out of time. The helplessness hits and then comes the wondering why, the questioning of what’s holding you back from doing something. What’s the worst that could happen? That’s the inevitable question. And maybe for anyone else the answer would be something inconsequential, but Fabian knows his answer. He ends up dead. Someone ends up dead. Riz ends up dead. And then comes the helplessness again, the kind that takes your heart and grips it in a tight hand, the blood and sinew leaking through each individual finger. The helplessness ebbs, like it always does, and is quietly replaced by anger. A deep, seething fury.

It’s this anger that’s running through Fabian’s veins when the sun comes up in the morning. He didn’t sleep, he didn’t even try. True to his word, he didn’t spend another night in that fucking bed alone.

That morning Fabian decides to do something. He goes to the library and finds books on scrying and carries them out wrapped tightly in a paper bag. It’s a shot in the dark- he’s hardly the Bad Kid with the knack for divination magic- but there’s no reason not to at this point. He tucks the bag under his arm and hurries out to the car while still trying to look casual enough to not let anyone in on his plight.

Fabian’s unlocking the door when he hears footsteps behind him and thinks nothing of it. Whoever’s walking behind him clearly isn’t trying to be stealthy or disguise their steps in any way, so it’s almost definitely just another library patron looking to learn.

Then the hand clamps over his mouth.

The thing about going to an adventuring high school is that while normal teenagers were learning algebra and cantrips, Fabian was learning how to handle this. Fabian-brain turns off and adventuring-brain goes on in a second, muscle memory from before he had even had his first kiss. Fabian thrusts an elbow back and drives it into the stomach of his assailant, hard, whipping around to see exactly what he’s facing.

There are three men standing, weaponless but ready to attack, by his car. They’re wearing dark sunglasses, hats, and surgical masks, the kind of disguise that will hide features without drawing too much attention. For a moment Fabian thinks that his father’s name has caught up to him and he’s being mugged by three very stupid robbers, but then the sun catches on a necklace around one of their necks, a thin chain on which hangs a small, gold-plated ear of corn. Realization dawns on Fabian like the rising sun. Riz is kidnapped and now the Children of the Harvest are coming for him too in front of the public library, of all places.

The man with the necklace surges forward, and Fabian still can’t fathom what their battle strategy is other than to try and muscle him into the open door of the rusty hatchback with heavily tinted windows parked next to Fabian’s car. Good, he thinks. A fight with an unprepared enemy is like a Mumple lesson.

Fabian grabs necklace man’s outstretched arm and twists it behind his back, throwing him to the ground. He lands an easy one-two on a man with blond hair, a clean punch across the jaw and one in the stomach. The third man comes at him ready to swing; Fabian catches his fist and brings his leg to the back of the man’s knees, sending him to the pavement.

While the three assailants are getting up, Fabian does what he usually never resorts to: he runs away.

He throws himself into the front seat of the car and guns it out of the parking lot, breaking an innumerable amount of traffic laws on the drive back to the house. There are no kidnappers waiting outside, so Fabian rushes into the house and turns it into a fortress.

It’s practically textbook at this point, given how many times Riz has explained how to do this. Sofa in front of the front door, deadbolts on the windows, blackout curtains drawn, a weapon within arms reach in every room.

Fabian lights a fire and watches.

He’s not a diviner, so it really doesn’t go well at the start. He’s just sitting in front of the fireplace, staring into the flames like a madman, when for all he knows crowds of cultists are trying to break down his door.

But it’s for Riz, so he tries.

He tries to remember the after-school meditation lesson that Yelle Barkstock led that one time, the one that Gorgug forced them all to go to. He sits perfectly still, or at least tries to, and focuses all his energy on clearing his mind, on focusing solely on the flames and what they can tell him.

He hears it first. It’s a small adjustment, the quiet of the house to the quiet that the fire is showing. The loss of the noise of the lawnmower next door and the air conditioner humming. It’s just more silent, somehow, even though Fabian knows he hasn’t gone anywhere. This is what scrying is, he presumes.

And then, slowly, the flames start to change shape. They start to move less erratically, the tongues of fire joining together and twisting as if with a purpose. And the purpose is to present this to Fabian: a loose picture of a goblin man bound to a chair, head lolling down toward his chest, undressed to his undershirt and slacks. All the things that would help Riz in this moment, the sly pieces of arcanotech, the vest and tie and cufflinks, are gone. The picture isn’t perfect, and Fabian can’t tell all the things he would like to, like if there’s blood on Riz or if he’s dead or sleeping.

Out of the winding flame comes a hand, which grips Riz’s hair and yanks his head up, rough enough to wake him. Fabian feels a wave of relief. There’s a moment where Riz’s face shows trepidation, just a split second, before his expression sets into one of grim determination.

“Are you ready to talk?” A voice says. Fabian distantly recognizes it in that way that gnaws at the back of his mind, and he racks his brain to try and figure out who could be speaking and where in the hell he knows him from.

Riz just grits his jaw and says nothing.

The hand pulls Riz’s head sharply back, yanking the hair so that his neck is almost tipped entirely 90 degrees. Riz looks up at the hand’s owner and betrays no emotion. “We’re happy to let you rot here forever,” he says. “As long as you’re not running your mouth to the government, what happens to you is none of our concern. And if you don’t say anything and you end up dying here…” the hand lets go of its grip on Riz’s hair, but Riz doesn’t move, just keeps that steely gaze trained on his interrogator, “it’s really no skin off our back.”

There’s a long stretch of silence. Riz rolls his head as if trying to crack his neck. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the room as Riz unlocks his jaw and wiggles his fingers, trying to stretch out muscles that have been confined to a very uncomfortable looking wooden chair for three days. Then Riz looks around once, twice, and starts to pick at his bonds with his fingernails, wearing away at the rope with those goblin claws that have always served him well. Fabian can’t help but feel a little reassured by this, that his friend is competent enough to help himself, even if Fabian is useless.

Riz stops suddenly and Fabian can hear distant footsteps, then another hand appears, this time holding a glass of water. It’s a different hand than before, and it takes Riz’s chin in the crook of its finger and tilts it up to feed him the water like he’s a stray kitten lapping thirstily at their first taste of milk in a week.

Fabian half expects Riz to spit the water back at whoever’s giving it to him, but Riz is smart, smarter than Fabian’s hot blood has ever made him, and he forgoes a bit of dignity to accept the water that he probably hasn’t had in days.

The hands disappear from view and a voice replaces them. “I’ll reiterate what we need to know, in case it hasn’t sunk in yet.” Riz meets the second interrogator’s gaze evenly and emotionlessly. “We need to know everything you and your superiors know about us and we need to know the names of those you work with. Easy, isn’t it? That’s all we want, and then we’ll let you go.”

It’s a bold-faced lie, and Riz doesn’t fall for it. He keeps his mouth shut.

“Fine. Waste away if you really want to. Just remember what we can offer if you talk.”

Fabian’s not sure what they offered, but Riz’s face darkens at that.

There’s a long silence. It doesn’t seem like Riz is alone, given the resolute way he stares straight ahead. It’s a standoff between him and his captor, one that Fabian has no doubt he’ll win.

The flames start to flicker, making the image of Riz waver and twist. The fire seems to be moving less purposefully, more like a normal fire, and Riz begins to fade away, the shape of him looking more and more like shadows in the fireplace.

“Fuck,” Fabian mutters, and tries to remember what Yelle Barkstock had taught them years ago, but there’s no point in trying to calm his breathing when he had Riz right there and he’s now disappearing before his eyes. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” It’s exponential; the more the picture becomes muddled the more Fabian stresses, and the more distracted he gets the more the picture distorts. First go Riz’s legs, lashed to that wooden chair, and the flames move upward to engulf his body until only a head remains. The sounds of the interrogation chamber fade away and as Fabian returns to his world, he becomes aware of the very thing that caused his concentration to break: a very persistent knocking at the door.

“Fuck. I’ll be there in a moment!” He calls out, watching in despair as Riz’s facial features become harder to make out. “Riz, I-”

And Riz turns his head, just a fraction, to look in the direction of Fabian in surprise, before the fire overtakes him.

Fabian wants to cry, wishes he could, but he really doesn’t have the time because the person at the door will not shut the fuck up. There’s no peephole, but Riz was prudent enough to get a small camera trained on the front porch that could be watched from inside the house. On the porch stands a woman, one that Fabian recognizes vaguely from church but can’t remember the name of. She’s pleasant-looking and unassuming, possibly purposefully so, but what sets Fabian’s hair on end is the van parked at the end of his sidewalk, as if just waiting to receive a captive.

Fabian grabs a sword from where it’s propped beside the door, sitting calmly next to the coat hanger like it belongs there, and cracks the door, letting the deadbolt go taut as he peers through the two inches of open space.

“Mr. Seacaster? Is that you?” The woman asks.

“Yes, it is. Hello,” Fabian responds, because he was raised to have manners, thank you very much.

“Do you mind if I come in? We’re thinking of starting a seaside outing club at the church and were wondering if you would like to join.” She smiles pleasantly, but there’s something nervous in her eyes, as if she heard about Fabian’s easy takedown of the three men in the parking lot and is hoping the same doesn’t happen to her.

With the Bad Kids, Fabian never really had to do a lot of deception. It was usually Fig doing some crazy shit that would either get people to leave them alone or kickstart combat, but either way it fixed the problem. But Fabian can’t disguise himself as this lady, so instead his brain lands on, “Riz is really sick. An awful bug, really, and terribly contagious. I just cannot in good conscience allow you to come into the house where there might be all sorts of… germs hanging around.” He throws in a weak cough to sell it.

The woman looks a little startled. “Oh. Uh, well, would you like to step out onto the porch so we can talk? I just don’t want us to be having a conversation through the door.”

“But I might infect you if I go out there and breathe on you,” Fabian says, and he’s positive that it’s incredibly obvious he’s lying through his teeth, but as long as it makes the woman and the van go away, he doesn’t care. “Besides, I think I just heard Riz throw up, and what kind of husband would I be if I didn’t go check on him, right?”

“Mr. Seacaster-”

In one breath, Fabian blurts, “I really need to go, this is a very bad time, I’ll see you on Sunday!” And slams the door in her face.

He watches through the window for a long time, waiting for the van to leave. It doesn’t. Nobody exits or enters, it just… sits there by the curb, waiting.

Fabian calls the emergency number again.

“I told you to delete this number,” the voice on the other side says. It’s the same voice from the first time.

But this call, Fabian has no time for bureaucratic bullshit. “Look, I know for a fact that Agent Riz Gukgak is kidnapped and being held for information by the Children of the Harvest. Now, I don’t know where they’re keeping him, but-”

“How do you know this?” The voice asks, just as dispassionate as the night before.

“I scried on him, so I don’t have a lot of information you could use to help, but I know for a fact he was kidnapped by the Children of Harvest, are you hearing me?”

“It’s highly illegal to scry on a government agent,” the voice says.

If Fabian was a barbarian, there’s no doubt that he would be raging. But he’s not, so he tries to keep his voice level as he snipes back, “I cannot express to you how little I care. My friend was kidnapped by a cult that you’re actively tracking, and you need to do something about it.”

The operator sighs. “Mr. Seacaster, do you know how many agents go missing in action every year?”

“I don’t see why that relates,” Fabian answers coolly, even though he does, even though the thought chills him to the bone.

“Listen, sir, I just answer the telephone. I’ll relay this information to people who can actually help, but I don’t want you to… expect undue results.” Before Fabian can say anything in response, the voice adopts a fake chipperness and says, “thank you for calling. Have a nice day!”

The phone goes cold in his hand before Fabian thinks to put it down. It’s a horrible proposition, that Riz would just… never come back. He might not bounce back from this one. That’s the ultimate sacrifice, Fabian realizes. Not a clean shot to the head, not a sword thrust through the heart, but being slowly starved to death in uncompromising silence, unwilling to speak out and save himself for the sake of a cold, uncaring government. That same stubbornness that makes Riz such a great spy- that makes him such a good friend- being his own downfall. Because there’s no question about it; if nothing tips in Riz’s favor, he’s going to rot down there in the clutches of a cult that, by all means, they should’ve already been done with in freshman year of high school.

Then that unshakable storm of emotions descends over Fabian again: the helplessness of knowing exactly the problem but having no concrete way of fixing it, the heartbreak of possibly never seeing one of the most important people in his life again, the fury of seeing the whole wheel of their lives laid out before him, the never ending cycle of putting their lives on the line for people who couldn’t care less, saving the world for the fair price of a pat on the back and a lifetime of trauma. It’s bullshit, being an adventurer. It really is. First it was Arthur Aguefort, sending them all over the globe in order to pick up pieces that he had scattered, solving the problems of a man centuries older than them. And now it’s the government, the staunch, austere government, who treats Riz as disposable and asks Fabian how many agents go missing per year as if he knows the statistic offhand. That might be what Riz becomes; a statistic.

Fabian spends an hour formulating a plan. He sits in Riz’s office and cleans his sword, methodical and precise, a well-practiced motion. The van is still parked outside the house, quiet and constant.

Fabian will leave the house and let himself be captured. Hopefully they bring him to the same place, the same building at least, as where they’re holding Riz. Then they break out.

It’s a simple plan, and one liable to go wrong. But it’s the only choice he’s got.

Fabian isn’t property of the Solesian government, there’s no one sitting at a desk waiting for him to clock in, no one to notice his disappearance. If this goes south, Fabian’s gone. Like a ghost from the world. Left to die in some basement, never seen or heard from again. No legacy to live on.

Fabian stands in front of Riz’s clue board and takes deep, long breaths, trying to steel himself for the things to come. He offers an apology to his father. He never understood why Bill Seacaster dragged his boat ashore in Elmville to live on the land, but he does now. He never fully understood why Bill Seacaster would sacrifice his life for Fabian, but he does now.

He loves his father and he hates his father and they’re more similar than he ever would’ve wanted, and part of that includes the deep, steadfast determination to do what needs to be done, even if that includes betraying his own self-interest for the good of others.

He looks at Riz’s insane collage of string and newspaper clippings and thinks of Riz saying, “the things I do for this country,” in that tired, disgruntled voice. Fabian looks at Riz’s handiwork and thinks, the things I do for you.

~

“So you did something shitty,” Jawbone said, rough voice calm. “Care to elaborate?”

“I would not.” It was senior year and Fabian was sitting, heartbroken and halfway to a panic attack, in Jawbone's office for the very first time. It had been Adaine who had forced him to go, dragging him out of bed and making him take off the baseball cap, promising that nobody would be looking at him as he walked the halls. In fact, she had said, people were probably more inclined to stare when they saw Fabian Aramais Seacaster wearing a dirty hat for a bloodrush team he didn’t even root for.

“Well, alright. I’m not a cop, I’m not gonna make you say anything you don’t want to. But if you don’t give me a little more to work with, I’m not sure how to help you.” Jawbone sat back in his large, plush office chair; Fabian looked on with envy. The couch that Jawbone used for his nutcases was lumpy and a little scratched. With a sigh, Fabian realized that he was probably one of those nutcases now. “You did something shitty, okay, but what exactly is bothering you?”

Fabian tried not to look too certifiable, but judging by the way his leg was bouncing a mile a minute, it wasn’t really working. “What if he doesn’t like me anymore?” Fabian mumbled, ignoring the fact that Jawbone didn’t even know who, or what happened; it was just a wild hope that he could do his magic guidance counselor thing and fix it.

Jawbone tilted his head and looked at Fabian like he was a troubling news report. “Listen, Fabian, I’m going to tell this to you straight because you’re an adult and I know you can take it. In your life, there are people who are going to like you a lot, and there are people who aren’t going to like you at all. That’s just life. That’s how the world works. Sometimes, when you do a shitty thing, the consequence is that someone likes you a little less. I’ve fucked up plenty, and I’ve got scores of folks who hate me. That’s part of being an adult. I’m not saying it doesn’t hurt like a bitch to be disliked, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.”

“Oh,” Fabian said, but it was mainly his mouth that made the shape. No sound came out. “What if they’re talking about me behind my back?”

“Yeah, what if?” Jawbone asked. “I want you to explain to my what the worst case scenario is if people are talking about you behind your back.”

“Well- uh…”

“Do you know what the difference is between a good and a bad person?” Jawbone said simply, seeing that Fabian had nothing for his previous question. Fabian shook his head no, mainly too psyched out to make any sort of argument. “The difference between doing a bad thing and being a bad person is regret, atonement, and change. So you do something and then you feel bad about it, so you’ve gotta apologize or make it up to anyone you hurt. Then you learn from your mistakes and don’t do it again. That’s all you can do.”

The guidance office door made a noise like a cannonball closing in the empty halls, and Fabian rode home from school on the Hangman an hour later than he normally would’ve, not playing music or anything, just thinking and trying not to hyperventilate on the highway.

“I need your help apologizing to Riz,” Fabian said as soon as Kristen answered the phone.

Kristen groaned. “Fabian, it’s, like, midnight. Go to sleep.”

It was, in fact, only 11:30, but that was irrelevant. “Please, Kristen?”

“Why do you want my help?”

“You’re a, you know, emotions… expert.”

Kristen snorted. “Thank you for the completely inaccurate compliment, but don’t you think this really should be something you deal with yourself? Last I checked, I didn’t do anything that needed apologizing for; that was you.”

“Is he talking about me? You know, behind my back?”

There was a long silence punctuated by a heavy, long-suffering sigh. “Come on, Fabes, it’s Riz,” she said slowly. “He’s always talking about you.”

“In a bad way?”

“What do you think?” She asked, and it came out a little snappy. Fabian recoiled from the phone. She had a right to be pissed at him, he thought. He had been a pretty crap friend for the last few days.

Fabian sat in that quiet for a while, wondering whether or not to hang up. Kristen said nothing.

At long last, Fabian mustered up the courage to speak again. “I need to come up with some way to apologize to him. Something sweet, and authentic, but also big and spectacular enough that he knows I really mean it.”

Kristen made a noise that sounded like she wanted to sigh again but stopped herself at the last moment, a kind of aborted gasp. “What makes you think he would want something big and flashy?”

“It’s Riz. I would do anything for him.”

“Yeah,” said Kristen, in that soft, musing way that made it seem like she knew more than she let on. “Ever wonder why?”

~

The van is still parked outside.

Fabian takes another breath and thinks of Yelle Barkstock and her wellness class, thinks of Riz Gukgak, thinks of all his friends, and rests his hand on the cool metal of the doorknob.

His phone rings.

Fabian picks it up with fumbling fingers, half expecting a telemarketer. When he sees Adaine’s name flash across the screen, he’s so relieved and heartbroken that he could cry. Does he have to explain what he’s about to do? Does he keep it a secret? Which is more of a betrayal?

“Fabian?” She says when he picks up, her voice is calm enough but obviously confused, something dark roiling under the surface. “Riz is on TV.”

Chapter Text

Sailing ships and sailing men will sail the open waters
Where the only thing that matters is the wind inside the main,
So all you loving mothers keep your eyes upon your daughters
For the sails will mend their tatters and the masts will rise again!
-Day Of The Clipper

September

There’s a swarm of police cars outside the church when Fabian arrives, one more audience member in the crowd of Newport citizens watching their neighbors get carted away to the county jail. The cultists come out in a long line, one after the other, from the front double doors, handcuffed and scowling. Some of them shout things out at the assembly, hollering about hellfire and damnation and casting stones. At the top of the steps, watching the wretched parade pass, is Riz, hands on his hips and a pleased look on his face.

This was the scene they were showing on TV: Riz triumphant, front and center, in nothing but slacks and an undershirt, bruised and gaunt and dirty. It seems that one of the cops took pity on his state of undress, because when Fabian arrives he’s got on a standard issue police jacket about three sizes too big.

Fabian walks to him.

Riz notices Fabian's approach and he can see something shift in Riz’s eyes, resigned satisfaction changed to a righteous indignation. Fabian sees exactly what goes through his mind, the first true understanding that the people that have tormented them for months are being put away by his own hand. Fabian sees the way his jaw works, the way he searches for one last revenge.

And suddenly, so abruptly that it makes Fabian jump, Riz screams, “fuck you!” at the departing cultists. The force of it lifts one of his legs off the ground and draws his hands into fists, and the words are spat with a venom that frightens even Fabian. There’s a rage there, one that Fabian hasn’t seen since maybe freshman year, since Riz shot off Biz Glitterdew’s fingers one by one in an arcade. There’s fury in his eyes, pure and unmasked, and Fabian knows that nothing could hold back Riz in that moment, that not even the force of nature could defeat 4 feet of raging goblin. “Fuck all of you!”

He’s shaking from the intensity, his hands and legs quivering, but he’s still so full of power and energy that he grabs Fabian’s wrist when he gets near enough and draws him in with unparalleled strength, and with one hand clasped on the back of his neck, pulls him down and kisses him, hard, on the steps of the church where both of them know full well everyone can see them.

Fabian can hear their audience quiet and the din stop as everyone turns to look on in shock and horror as Riz kisses Fabian like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. It’s more angry than passionate, but aren’t the two just different shades of red?

This is Riz’s final revenge, it’s both of their final revenges, after months of toeing the line of making their onlookers uncomfortable without endangering themselves, but Riz put those shitheads in cuffs and there’s nothing they can do but watch from the windows of the cop cars as two nonhuman men make out like teenagers on the steps of the church.

Months ago, Fabian had fantasized about this, about kissing someone like it’s a revolution. And maybe that’s not quite true to reality, maybe he’s not waving a flag from a parapet or a barricade, maybe he can’t in good faith call this a revolutionary act. But by god, is it a sweet rebellion.

Half an hour ago, Fabian was going to sacrifice himself for Riz. He was going to walk through his front door, weaponless, and surrender just like that. And if he’s being honest, as Riz digs his teeth into Fabian’s bottom lip, he was slightly disappointed when the live feed started on the TV and the van had peeled out of the driveway, speeding down the road in the opposite direction of the church like a bat out of hell. Because if he doesn’t make some big act of putting his life on the line for Riz, what does he have to show for those three days alone?

Back in senior year of high school, Kristen had told him to ask himself why he would do everything and anything for Riz. She knew, he realizes, even way back then. She could see the way they were drawn to each other, the way their twin martyr complexes seemed to reflect each other like two mirrors pointed face to face, showing nothing and everything at the same time.

And Fabian was so sure that the only way to prove love was to give everything up for someone, but maybe he’s wrong. Maybe the truest act of love is survival. Maybe it’s fighting tooth and nail to be able to kiss someone on the steps of a church.

Fabian pulls away first because he’s convinced that Riz is going to eat him alive if he doesn’t. But Riz doesn’t seem to mind, he just holds Fabian’s head in his hands and looks at him with eyes that are clouded with leftover vigor, chest heaving from the exertion of the emotion, and says, “I’m in love with you.”

“Yeah, the Ball,” Fabian says, because, in that moment, his words aren’t quite working and because, in that moment, nothing has ever seemed more obvious. “Me too.”

And Riz kisses him again.

~

Other than Riz’s outburst at the church, closing a case is… boring.

Riz has to make a lot of phone calls and submit a lot of paperwork, so he holes himself up in his office while Fabian packs up their belongings.

“You touched my stuff,” Riz says when he sees the state of the office. “I can tell.”

“I can tie you up in the basement if you want,” Fabian teases. “If you’d rather I hadn’t helped.”

“I could’ve used your help with the twelve guys I took out weaponless,” Riz grouses good-naturedly.

Fabian scoffs. “That can’t be true.”

Riz shrugs, but his mouth is twisted like he’s trying to conceal a grin. “I guess you’ll never know.”

They’ve accumulated more stuff than they began with, little knickknacks bought under the auspice of making the house seem more ‘lived in’ and realistic. In all honesty, they were just little trinkets that they wanted for some reason or another: a faux Tiffany lamp they found at a yard sale for $10, fridge magnets in the shape of pastries, a beeswax candle in the shape of a bear. Fabian packs them all in a box and doesn't cast a single glance at the bag they’ve put aside for donations.

He does donate the smaller, necessary things that the agency didn’t provide, things like plates and cups and window fans that they bought for reasonable prices at big chain stores that sell house goods and clothes and coffee all in the same building. Things some real newlyweds could actually use some day.

Fabian packs the all set pieces they strategically placed around the house and thinks how funny it is that this playacting actually ended nicely, with love confessions instead of tragedy, and thinks that maybe, by some distant chance, it was their battered copy of Hoyle’s Rules of Games on the shelf or the little white board, adorned with stupid jokes, that changed their fates in some way.

They go out for dinner in another town that night. They don’t want to risk showing their faces too brazenly around town, having put away some of its most valued community members. It’s a treat, they decide, driving fifteen minutes to a restaurant where people only know them from the news.

Riz looks happy. He’s got a cut over his eyebrow and a black eye and a split lip that glistens with Vaseline, but his hair is still damp from the shower and he doesn’t look quite so gaunt now that he’s got some food in him and he had smiled when Fabian put balm on the rope burn on his wrists and ankles for him. He seems satisfied, yes, that he solved a case, but moreover he seems happy, and Fabian keeps looking for a better word to describe it but can’t find one.

When the waiter comes to take their orders she does a double take when she sees Riz and the state of him. She shakes it off quickly and professionally, but there’s a moment when she sees the wedding rings that they have yet to take off and she sizes up Fabian and narrows her eyes ever so slightly, and Fabian feels a little sick at the implications of it. But there’s one TV among the countless Bloodrush games being broadcast noiselessly in the restaurant that’s playing the news and Fabian watches as she sees the replay of the afternoon’s events from the kitchen, and when she comes back to the table with their drinks she looks apologetic.

“Was that… you on the TV?” She asks, eyes wide.

Riz huffs a small laugh and ducks his head. “Yeah.”

“I’m going to ask my manager about getting your meals for free tonight,” she says, “since you’ve, uh, been through so much.”

Riz buries his head in his arms when she leaves. “I wish they hadn’t televised it. My boss is having a shitfit.”

“Get your head off the table,” Fabian scolds, flicking his forehead. “I don’t want your hair all over where I’m eating.”

Riz lifts his head good-naturedly, leaning his chin in his palm and sighing. “I’m a secret agent, you know? I’m good at being secret. I liked being anonymous.”

“They have a diorama of us in the Museum of Questing History,” Fabian reminds him. “What’s done is done, the Ball. I’m sure in a few weeks they’ll stop airing the story and no one will recognize you anymore.”

“Thanks, Fabes,” Riz says with a laugh.

And he looks happy, happier than Fabian’s seen him in a long time, and he gets the feeling that a weight has been lifted from Riz’s shoulders. Fabian relates.

The thing is, neither of them were surprised. They knew. Deep down, haven’t they always? It’s been like this since the first day, since Riz launched himself into a corn monster for Fabian and expressly only Fabian. Everything had felt so confusing just weeks ago, when they kissed and didn’t talk and loved each other like it was a fault. And now that it’s in the open, now that the entirety of Newport knows, everything seems so simple. They’ll love each other and they’ll overcome any sort of shit the world throws at them. They’ve been doing it for long enough anyway. Riz reaches across the table and takes Fabian’s hand in his, cold skin against warm, salt water against ink, best friends. And Riz looks happy. Fabian feels happy.

There’s still so much unknown, so much uncertainty in the future, but it’s so simple now, sitting in a restaurant booth in Greenville.

“We should talk,” Fabian hazards, even though it pains him to do so.

“Nope,” Riz says, absently turning and maneuvering Fabian’s hand in his to examine the ring on his finger. “I’m being like you. For once in my life, I want to do something without thinking about the consequences for a couple hours.

Fabian laughs, but shrugs in agreement. “Fair enough. But, ah, one time I tried to be you and ended up eating glass.”

Riz shoots him an incredulous look, even though he’s heard this story a million different ways from a million different people already. “I’ve never eaten glass.”

“I can accept that it wasn’t a very good impression.”

The food is just alright, but it’s hot and nobody gives them the stink eye while they eat, so Fabian calls it a success. They do end up getting the dinner for free, despite Riz’s insistence to pay. They leave quite a large tip.

They go wandering through the town center of Greenville, a cute little place old enough to have a historic district of brick storefronts and cobblestone streets. It’s quaint and quirky in every way that Newport is quaint in its uniformity.

It’s a brisk evening, that kind of late-summer, early-fall weather that doesn’t completely warrant a jacket but makes you truly face the fact that autumn is coming on strong. They meander through the town that neither of them have any knowledge of, hands in their pockets, mapless. Eventually the winding streets lead them to a pier overlooking a wide river, where Fabian goes out to the farthest point he can and takes up residence leaning against the railing. Riz joins him, looking out at the lights on the water.

There’s a nice breeze blowing through, kicking up the light waves in the river. A small boat goes drifting by, a little powerboat with a whole bunch of people crammed on the deck drinking beer and blasting music. Fabian turns his head ever so slightly to be able to watch Riz as he rests his chin on his palm and watches the boat pass with a satisfied smile. There’s a healthy flush to his face the color of fresh-grown moss brought about by the breeze and the chill, just a little dappling of it on his cheeks and nose. He looks almost ethereal in the yellow light from the lamps that dot the pier despite the sickening color of his black eye and the sheen of the salve on his cuts. Riz turns and sees Fabian looking at him; he grins and looks away, the kind of clandestine smile of two kids making jokes across the classroom.

They were those kids once. It seems unbelievable to think that they’re all where they are after one detention spent together by chance in freshman year. But now they’re here, FabianandRiz, standing at the edge of a pier in fucking Greenville of all places.

Riz is still smiling out at the water, as if remembering an old joke, and Fabian has thought him beautiful for a long time. Longer than this stupid mission. And maybe Riz thinks the same way too, maybe when he had touched Fabian’s temple that one morning and said something that Fabian couldn’t quite hear he was saying something that didn’t quite reach Fabian’s ears until the steps of the church that afternoon. He could ask Riz now, he realizes, what he had said. But he doesn’t really want to. It’s funny how life works sometimes.

Sometimes you need to know the answers and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you just trust that someone loves you like you’ve been trusting them for a decade.

Fabian takes the ring off his finger. It’s left a dent in the flesh, one that will probably fill back out over the course of the night. When he wakes up in the morning, it’ll be like he was never married, which, legally, he never actually was. He holds the ring between his thumb and his index finger and takes in the world through the small golden circle like the lens of a camera. The metal is already fairly tarnished, scratched and covered in a dusty, dark finish. He thinks of tossing it in the river, of hearing the satisfying sound it’ll make when it hits the water, but then thinks about how much his friends love keepsakes and thinks better of it, pocketing the ring instead.

“Thought you would throw it in,” says Riz absently, miming dropping a ring into the water with a little pop of the lips.

“Me too.” Fabian leans on the railing and looks down into the dark waves, the seemingly endless murky black of it. “It was starting to turn my finger green.”

“Oh no,” Riz intones. “What a disaster.”

“I figured someone would want to put it in a scrapbook or something like that, right? Better to keep it.”

“Yeah,” Riz mumbles, twisting his own ring around and around, the light dancing across it in an even, constant motion. And in one swift motion he wrenches the ring off his finger and flings it out over the water, just a tiny glint of gold in the night.

“What the fuck, the Ball?” Fabian demands, but he can’t fight laughter.

Riz smiles like the sun and shrugs easily. “I’m being like you.”

In the distance, a ship’s horn sounds two short blasts, changing course to port. It’s distant and washed out, but Fabian picks it up all the same. He’s leaving soon; it all came faster than he expected. Off to sail again, take his ship and a smaller crew. And Riz will go back to his job, go do something equally as awful as this, without the only thing that made it bearable.

Riz says he’s being like Fabian, he’s doing things without thinking (which is honestly more of a Fig move than one of his), becoming a worse spy and a happier person. Fabian had questioned whether Riz would ever prioritize a relationship above his duty and now that thought seems foolish and unwarranted: it had been Riz who kissed him on the steps of the church, broadcasted their indecorous behavior on the news, put the case and his security as a government agent at risk, and he didn’t do it because of devotion to his job.

A sigh involuntarily escapes Fabian, one of those that comes when the body just needs a good, deep breath to clean things out and dust out the cobwebs; it draws Riz’s attention. “You really love me, huh?” Fabian asks.

“Idiot,” Riz responds, which means yes.

“We could go together,” Fabian posits. “Wherever that may be. You could come adventuring with me. I could go back to Elmville with you, see everyone again.”

“Maybe,” Riz muses, just a word to fill the space.

Fabian shifts his head to look at him, the vague expression on Riz’s face, as if he’s thinking about other things. “I’m serious,” he presses. “I would go with you. Wherever the wind takes us.”

“I know,” Riz says absently. “I know you would, Fabian.”

The salt air of the ocean passes through, mixing with the brackish smell of the river. They’ve had this conversation before, why Fabian would pull his ship out of the sea and put down his roots when Riz asked. And the answer was always just that, because Riz asked. They had never looked into it further. But with the new information that comes to light, maybe Riz knows a little better, knows that the answer has never been that simple. “I would do anything for him,” Fabian had said, way back in senior year, nineteen and oblivious. Maybe Riz knows a little better, maybe he’s sharpened the vision on the lens he looks at Fabian with. Because Fabian’s putting it all on the table like he always does, he’s dramatic and fatalistic and loves a big display, and in the past it’s felt too much like confession but now it just feels like confirmation, and Riz, for the first time, takes it without doubting it. Doesn’t give him that incredulous look like he thinks Fabian doesn’t know what he’s implying, just smiles a little smile to himself and gently accepts it.

“I really do love you,” Fabian says, eyes trained on a distant light on the opposite riverbank. “I want you to know that and I don’t want you to do that Riz thing where you question people’s love for you because it’s stupid and it always has been, we all love you so unconditionally it’s not funny. But. Myself especially.”

Riz laughs and shakes his head a little. “Come on, man.” And Fabian knows him well enough to mean that he knows this, that he accepts it, and that the overwhelming barrage of emotion is making him antsy. “It’s getting cold. Let’s go home.”

And Fabian wonders how long they’ve been thinking of the house as home.

As they walk back to the car, shoulder to shoulder like a couple of teenagers, Fabian says “does this all feel too easy to you?”

“It won’t be for long,” Riz responds gravely. It’s the kind of statement that makes Fabian doubt, that could either speak to dark clouds ahead or to Riz’s tendency to always, in every walk of life, be waiting for the other shoe to drop. That’s just how he is, constantly poised for things to go ass over teakettle with no warning.

There are valid things for Riz to be worried about: putting his job at risk, beginning a relationship with one of the less reliable members of the party, all the nasty paperwork of finishing a case. He’s picking at his cuticles again, and Fabian hasn't seen the ever-familiar scabs around Riz’s nails in a long time, so he digs into his pocket and pulls the ring out, presenting it in his open palm to Riz, who looks at it with wide eyes. “What, do you want me to be more romantic?”

Riz takes the ring and holds it in his hand like one would spare change. Fabian pries open his fingers and slips the ring on, gleaming gold against cool green. If you want something done right, do it yourself. “You’re picking at your skin again.”

“Oh,” Riz says quietly, looking at the dot of blood pooling at the corner of his pinky nail. “Thanks.”

Fabian keeps walking, but Riz takes to spinning the ring instead of tearing at his cuticles, so it’s a mission well accomplished. “Anytime, the Ball.”

~

Fabian’s packing up the car when he spots her from a distance, coming down the sidewalk at a fast clip, flip-flops slapping the pavement, looking around as if someone might catch her doing something wrong. She’s got her hands clenched tight around the straps of her backpack, and Fabian thinks she might just be coming home from school.

Elizabeth comes loping across the lawn, half at a walk and half at a skip, and comes to a halt in front of Fabian. “Mr. Gukgak arrested my dad,” she says, simple as that.

And Fabian could lie, he should, he could do the legal thing and tell her that Riz couldn’t get involved in the police’s business, that it wasn’t his place to do anything, that he was just a mid-level bureaucrat with no connection to what happened to her father. But she’s a sharp kid, and Fabian’s not even sure he could lie to her without her seeing through it right away. She’s a smart child, intuitive. Fabian can see it in the way she’s looking at him with those wide eyes, analyzing his reaction to those words with a decisive gaze. It reminds him of Riz. “I heard,” Fabian says, hedging his bets.

“Now they’re saying I can’t stay with my mom. That they’re going to put me in a new home.” She rocks a little where she stands, toes pointed inward, shoved deep in the pockets of her cutoff jean shorts. Still a child.

“I’m sorry,” he responds, and this time it sounds like a confession, but it’s the only thing he can think of to say to give this little girl the answers she deserves without causing a breach in national security. It would be worth it, though, to unveil a government plot if it meant giving a young child a little bit of closure.

“Wasn’t your fault. What did my dad do?” Elizabeth asks, dirt on her heels and a sunburn on her nose. Fabian’s heart aches for her, the way her childhood is going to end in upheaval; those are the grey areas of what Riz does, the conviction of doing the right thing but the knowledge of the small casualties that fuel the greater good.

Fabian tries to keep his face neutral, to not let show the dismay he feels looking at this kid. “It’s my understanding that you’ll get a file on your 18th birthday. Until then you’ll just have to wonder.”

Elizabeth nods slowly and gestures to the car. “Are you leaving?”

“Riz and I… we move around a lot.” It’s true, objectively, Riz goes all over for cases and Fabian hasn’t had a permanent address since high school. Just the implication of it, that Riz and Fabian travel together, is what isn’t exactly honest.

Elizabeth stands awkwardly for a few moments, opening and closing her mouth as if trying to figure out how to say something. “I’ll miss you,” she mumbles at last, and Fabian remembers that night under the tunnel with the secret gay underground of Newport, how those college kids had said they’d never had queer adults in town before. “It was funny seeing you in church. You never knew the words to things.”

“You could tell?” Fabian asks, and he’s surprisingly affronted. After three months of this he would’ve thought he’d be better at faking it.

Elizabeth grins. “Everybody could.”

“Listen,” Fabian says, inspiration hitting him like a bolt of lightning down the spine, and pulls the first piece of paper he touches out of Riz’s briefcase. It’s a receipt for tissues and anxiety medication from the pharmacy downtown. There’s a pen in there too, and Fabian frantically scribbles down four names on the back of the receipt, guessing at the spelling and handing it to Elizabeth, who examines it with an inquisitor’s curiosity. “Those are a couple kids in town who’ll support you through anything you might need, okay? Tell them Fabian and Riz sent you. You’re going to be okay, Elizabeth. I know it.”

Her smile turns a little watery. “Thanks, Mr. Seacaster.”

“Yeah, kid.” It comes out a little softer than Fabian intended it to. “I’ll be wishing you swift winds and pleasant skies.”

“You too,” she replies, even though she clearly has no idea what he means, and goes off down the sidewalk.

~

Fabian gets a new boat.

He loves his ship, he really does, but she’s not working for him anymore. He wants something smaller, more intimate, something that can fit a crew of maybe two or three or can be piloted alone if the need arises. So he gets the goddamned scalper who’s housing the ship for now to keep her for a little while longer, forking over more than he ever should need to, all for a man to just put a lock on a warehouse, and buys a used boat from an old friend, a modest sailboat with good bunk space and lots of flaws to love.

It’s got an engine. It’s a sailboat, primarily, but it has a secondary engine in the back, small and with just enough horsepower to move the boat, and Fabian looks at it with dread. An engine, he assures himself, would make a lot of things easier, even if he rarely uses it. But still. It’s a change. He almost doesn’t buy the boat because of it, almost backs out of the whole deal and goes back to his old ship. But then Fabian thinks of Riz, how he says he’s being like Fabian, and the bravest thing that Fabian can do now is be like himself, or at least be like the Fabian that Riz thinks he is.

So he finds another old friend with a pickup truck that he can borrow for a few days and tows the boat down the highway to park it in the driveway of the little house. As it sits there, blocking the sidewalk, Fabian sees the two side by side and realizes just how much he’s grown used to this house and just how soon he’s leaving. It’s not that he’s grown to love it, not really, but it’s become so familiar that it feels hard to part with that day-to-day certainty.

But he throws himself to work on the boat as Riz buries himself in the last of his paperwork. Checking for leaks, replacing some corroded nails, testing the sails. That kind of thing. Making sure the thing actually floats.

Fabian’s elbows-deep in the engine when Riz emerges from his office for the first time that day, blinking in the sun. “There’s my favorite federal employee,” Fabian teases, and Riz grins wide, wider than he should at a mediocre joke.

“Not anymore,” Riz says calmly. “What are you up to?”

“Bad fuse,” Fabian answers without thinking, and his brain doesn’t catch up to his mouth for a couple seconds. “What, did they fire you?”

An immense feeling of guilt settles over Fabian almost immediately. If they fired Riz over his stunt at the church, for doing one selfish thing in a lifetime of entirely selfless acts, Fabian wouldn’t think twice about hunting down Riz’s boss and showing them how they handle betrayals on the sea. And if they fired him because they think, for some godforsaken reason, that he did a bad job on the assignment, then they’re simply not smart enough to be Riz’s boss at all.

“I quit,” Riz clarifies, and there’s something odd in his voice, something light and giddy, and Fabian takes him in like he did at the restaurant where he appeared so plainly happy, but now he looks eager and nervous and calm and terrified all at once. “Fully detached. Well, they’ll hire me back whenever I want- I’m the best agent they have- but for now I’m gone, no strings attached.”

“It can’t be that easy,” Fabian says, because the disbelief still hasn’t fully cleared from his head. He retracts his hands from the engine only to find them smeared to hell with grease and motor oil. It smells foul, but a little nostalgic at the same time.

“It can be if you play your cards right.” Riz looks proud, smug, and if Fabian’s being honest, kind of hot. “They want me enough that they’d rather part with me on good terms than messy ones.”

And for all that Fabian and everyone has been encouraging this for years, it’s still completely unexpected when it happens. Riz is… devoted, painfully earnest in his passion for his work in a way that Fabian never fully understood but always respected in the distant way you respect the honorable duty done by a field medic or a front line protester. But maybe the devotion was a front for something deeper, a connection not to the work but to the effect. He’d said before that he enjoyed doing good in the world, that few could claim that. And he’s throwing that away, at least temporarily, and for what?

To be happy, Fabian’s mind supplies. To be happy, just like Fabian urged him to be.

God, he hopes more than anything that Riz gets to be happy. He deserves it.

Fabian wipes a bead of sweat from his forehead with the heel of his hand. “What are you going to do now?”

“Nice boat,” Riz says in response, and he’s so clearly dodging the question that Fabian wonders if he’s bluffing badly on purpose so that he asks what’s wrong.

“Thanks,” Fabian plays along. “This engine is going to be the death of me. There’s corrosion in the wires, too, and I’ve got to replace the fuel filter.”

Riz frowns and looks at the motor as if he’d be able to deduce how to fix it before shrugging and suggesting, “just call a mechanic down at the shipyard.”

“I have standards, the Ball,” Fabian scoffs, and picks his tools back up. Riz watches as he works with a detached sort of interest. He often feels observed by Riz, like an ant under a microscope, but it feels different somehow. More approving, more casual. It reminds Fabian, in a way, of high school, when he’d work on the Hangman in his driveway shirtless and pretend not to notice the cars of girls that would drive by far below the speed limit, pretend that he couldn’t feel their eyes on him, pretend that he didn’t secretly love the attention. It reminds Fabian of high school, when he’d work on the Hangman shirtless and Riz would sit on the stoop and read, but whenever he looked out from under the chassis, Riz was always already looking.

Apparently the biggest adjustment that comes from falling in love and being loved in return is recontextualizing.

“Can I help?” Riz asks eventually. Fabian knows this is just Riz building up the courage to say whatever he really wants to say, but he humors him anyway and lets Riz unscrew some minor nuts and bolts, just to let him feel included.

It’s hot, heat like July stifling the afternoon, one of those dying days of early September that thick the air with humidity as a desperate last grasp to hold onto the crown of summer. They work side by side, sweaty and covered in engine grease, until Fabian decides to finish for the day, declaring the sun far over the yardarm and retiring to lay on the bow of the boat, stretched out and languid in the fading light. Riz joins him but doesn’t lie with him, just sits with his back against the fore-mast with his knees to his chest.

“When you start sailing again,” Riz begins, slowly, gently, “where do you think you’re going to go?”

“South,” Fabian answers.

“Why?”

“I like traveling southward. Always have.”

Riz hums in understanding and says nothing more. The sun is warm and cozy on Fabian’s skin, like being wrapped in a blanket right out of the dryer. Some kids go rocketing down the street on rickety bikes, shouting over the clacking of their wheels. In the sky, far above them but close enough that Fabian feels as though he could lift an arm and reach, a flock of birds erupt from a tree, all buffeting wings and screeching calls.

It’s a wonderful moment, one of those scenes that makes you feel so unbelievably comfortable, as though you could stay there, in that position, forever. But something in Fabian makes him feel like every moment he’s spending not talking with Riz is a moment wasted; they’re leaving Newport in a day or two.

Instead of talking, though, Fabian just shifts his foot so that his leg sits next to Riz’s, a small circle of skin contact that feels so very large.

Fabian can’t wait to be doing this on the sea for real, lying out in the sun, listening to the sails strain against their ropes, feeling the gentle rocking of the waves against a boat at anchor. He can’t wait to feel the sun and sky, safely alee, and smell the salt and the decaying seaweed. He can’t wait to show Riz how to work the rigging, how to use a cleat, how to tell which way rain will come. He can’t wait to sit on the bow with him and look out over the never ending horizon, watching clouds roll in or perhaps a spectacular nautical sunset, then stargaze when it gets dark. Riz has probably never seen stars like there are on the water. He can’t wait to show Riz the stars and then go below deck when they’re tired, to sleep in a small cabin bed like lovers do, hearing the lapping of waves against the hull and the seagulls wheeling high above.

A large crow squawks from atop the mainmast and Fabian reenters reality like one awakes from a nightmare. A jolt and a gasp, the rough coming to of realizing what’s true and what’s not.

What’s true is that Fabian will experience all of those things and more, but Riz will not. Riz will return to Elmville and get some other job, or maybe go and beg for his agency position back. Fabian will sleep alone on the ship except for one or two nights a month. He’ll see the stars and think little of them, he’ll listen to the seagulls with a familiar ambivalence, like ordinary people living next to extraordinary landmarks. Someone’s got to have a house down the street from the Grand Canyon, he figures. And to them, it’s nothing special until someone visits and marvels at the view out the window.

And it strikes him that Fabian doesn’t want to go back on the water without Riz.

“Fabian,” Riz says suddenly, as though he hadn’t even expected the name to come out of his own mouth.

Fabian doesn’t respond outright, doesn’t open his eyes or lift his head, just gives a little hum of acknowledgment.

“You said, on the pier. You said that you would go with me, that we could go together. Wherever the wind took us.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you really mean that?” Riz asks, quiet and a little breathy. As if he took in more air than he needed for the sentence, as if he expected to say more.

Fabian does open his eyes at that, peers at Riz, who’s very pointedly looking up at the sky. “Of course I do. Have you ever known me to go back on my word? I’m a Seacaster, the Ball.”

“I know.” Riz sighs, a heavy thing, and finally makes eye contact with Fabian. “I know. But… you genuinely wouldn’t feel burdened, or indebted, or anything like that, if I was going to… not go back home?”

Fabian pushes himself up onto his elbows and squints against the sun. There’s a painful kind of anxiety that Riz exudes sometimes, gnawing at his lip and picking at the skin around his nails, like his nerves are trying to destroy him from the inside out. Like he’s trying to tear himself apart little by little. “If you have something to say, then say it.”

“I want to come sailing with you.”

Fabian laughs at this, and Riz’s face falls. It really was like he had read Fabian’s mind, wasn’t it? And Riz is looking like he’s just made a colossal mistake, but all that Fabian can feel is buoyancy. There are so many loving ways that he can respond to that proposition, but his mind instinctively returns to that night under the goddamn bridge and the fact that Riz listened to sea shanties when he was away during college and instead he says, “you can be my bosun.”

Riz shakes his head with a smile. “God, you’re insufferable.”

“And you’re a little dick,” Fabian retorts, echoing the sentiments of his grandfather all those years ago. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?”

“Fuck, I guess we are.”

The sun is so warm, slowly but surely slipping behind the trees, bathing the street in the glow of golden hour. “Lovers,” Fabian posits.

“Boyfriends.”

“Suitors.”

“Sweethearts.”

“Paramours.”

“I’m not dating Ayda Aguefort,” Riz laughs. “You call me that and I’m texting Fig to get a handle on her wife.”

“Not husbands anymore.”

“No,” Riz agrees, twirling the ring on his finger. “Not anymore. Good riddance.”

Fabian grins in tandem with Riz, and above them the sky turns a dusty pink. “Good riddance.”

That night, their last night in Newport, they order pizza in their empty house and plan to eat it on the ground like true newlyweds, just like they had the first day.

The pizza, half plain and half pepperoni with anchovies, the same order it’s been for years, is delivered by the same teenager who brought it to them that first time, the only difference being that he looks as though he might’ve gotten a better face soap. Fabian sees the way he eyes the bare living room as he takes the money with an odd confusion, and he wonders if the pizza boy thinks they spent the summer in an unfurnished house or if maybe they were just ghosts all along, never changing, stuck in stasis.

“I, uh, I heard you guys are, like, undercover cops,” the delivery boy awkwardly starts, drumming on the brim of the baseball cap he holds in his hands as though he intends to knock the right words loose. “But are you guys actually, like, together? Like, are you gay for real? If that’s not a weird question to ask.” He winces a little at the end, like he already knows it’s a weird question.

It’s a funny thing to be asked, because what would the answer have been even a few days ago? “What’s the holdup?” Riz calls from the other room.

“The pizza guy wants to know if we’re ‘gay for real,’” Fabian reports with a laugh.

“Gay as in happy or gay as in dating you? Because I’ve never been one of those things a day in my life.”

“He’s joking,” Fabian assures the delivery boy. “He’s frequently happy.”

He just blinks. “Sorry,” he mumbles, maybe belatedly for his question or maybe because he didn’t know they’d actually answer. “Uh, enjoy your pizza.”

“Have a good one,” Fabian wishes, and the boy’s back off down the street in his hatchback with the dented fender and bumper stickers for various elementary school sports teams.

He wonders who the delivery guy is and absently realizes that he’ll never be able to learn.

When Fabian shuts the door and comes back inside, Riz is lying flat on the floor, hands beneath his head and legs crossed at the ankle. Fabian puts down the pizza and mirrors his position. “Does it feel real to you yet that we’re leaving?”

“Nothing ever feels real to me,” Fabian answers. “Jawbone once said I over-romanticize.”

Riz reaches over and rests a hand on Fabian’s arm, heavy and unmoving. “Am I real?”

“Who’s to say?”

“You’re a shithead.”

Fabian grins. “Oh, sure, but your shithead.”

“I love you,” Riz says.

“I know.”

“I know you know,” Riz says with a smile. “I just enjoy being able to say it.”

~

They don’t even stop in Elmville before leaving.

Spontaneity is the name of the game, and Riz keeps saying that they’ll just go back and see the others soon enough, often enough that it seems as though he’s reassuring himself. They launch from the Newport marina like true citizens of the town. It’s an odd feeling.

In the car, towing the boat down the road in a big rickety trailer bought for cheap from an old salt down at the docks that had asked if they were the ‘queer cops from TV,’ Riz puts Adaine on speakerphone so that they can say goodbye. They always had something special, the two of them: intellectual, introverted, asexual. A good match. Fig’s joked before that they would be dating each other, had they been straight. Fabian’s glad that isn’t true.

“If you hurt Riz-“ Adaine says to Fabian at one point, half joking, and Fabian can’t help but interrupt.

“I’m sorry, is this a shovel talk? I hurt Riz and you'll what, exact revenge?”

“Yes,” Adaine responds, chilling in her calmness. “I’m stronger than you and I’ll grind your bones into dust.”

“Noted.”

“Tell the others we’ll miss them,” Riz says.

“Of course,” Adaine assures him, and hangs up.

They eat lunch before launching the boat at a little dockside seafood shack. The folks in the booths recognize Fabian and wish him safe travels; Riz seems to be relieved to be the one people notice second for once, ever since they got on the news.

They each get a lobster roll, the kind you only want to take a wager on in a real authentic place like this one, the kind that’s hot and fresh and positively dripping with butter, ten dollars cheaper than it should be for the amount of fish stuffed in the bun. Plenty of restaurants in the area claim to serve the best lobster roll in Solace, but Fabian believes you can only get a truly good one at stops like this that can’t even be called a ‘restaurant.’ He’s had a lot of seafood in his life, an occupational hazard, but it’s never been as satisfying as this lobster roll, as sitting in a hard wooden booth while across the table, secret agent Riz Gukgak tries in vain to lick melted butter from his chin.

“You’re going to have to jump in the water after this,” Fabian teases. “You’re disgusting.”

“You took the napkins,” Riz complains, finally caving and wiping at his mouth with his hands. “I’m trying to make do with what god gave me.”

“Which one?”

Riz shrugs. “I don’t know, someone spiteful.”

“I think it was an artist,” Fabian says. “Whoever made you.”

“Wow. Poetic.”

“That’s all the poetry you’ll ever get out of me. Hope you enjoyed it.”

Riz doesn’t say anything, just smiles, shakes his head in disbelief, and takes the last fry from the shared basket.

It still seems daunting, setting out again, even considering the countless times Fabian’s done this. They say never to move in with someone you’ve just started dating, he’s pretty sure ‘they’ would have a lot of thoughts about living on a sailboat together 24/7. But they got through months in a Newport ranch house alone together and nobody ended up dead. It was close, though.

God. A few days ago, Fabian was going to surrender to being kidnapped in the distant hope of saving Riz. He was going to put his head on a silver platter for a long shot and now he’s sitting in a lobster shack drinking ice water that’s just a little too salty from glasses that are just a little too grimy.

The world feels hopeful and mournful, nostalgic and young at the same time. The weather is perfect. And Fabian just said he was done with poetry, but kissing Riz has made him start thinking in purple prose.

Tonight, they’ll watch the stars and Fabian will speak in poetry like the men he reviled as a boy and Fabian doesn’t know what Riz will say, but it’ll be poetry to him.

The lobster rolls are finished too quickly. They lament the loss of their lunch, gone too soon, and joke with the teenager at the counter who takes their money. They step outside and are affronted by the smell of salt air and Fabian feels ready, now.

~

It was sophomore year, late sophomore year, long after Fabian had gotten over any hangups about lying on Riz’s dirty-ass office rug. They’re lying there now, just the two of them, shoulder to shoulder, a couple hours past midnight. Neither of them have checked in a while.

Fabian did like Riz’s office. It was homey in a messy way, with clutter and knickknacks on every available surface. Books stuffed under the chair, photos pinned to the wall, calendar hung on the lampshade. Full to bursting. But it always felt welcoming in its disorder, like you couldn’t possibly be judged within the walls of a room that was so beyond judgement itself.

The conceit of it was that they had been working on a paper, at least that’s what they pretended. Really, it was an excuse to indulge in those hours after a study session, brain-tired and laid open.

So there they were on the rug, one that Riz had gotten for a dollar seventy-five at an estate sale, which probably meant it was haunted up the wazoo.

“Maybe we could write about the cycle of generations, you know?” Riz suggested, mumbling through the sleep that was steadily creeping into his voice. “The repeating names, the way it all comes back to the two families, right?”

“The incest.”

“We can’t write about incest in an essay-“

“Sure we can,” Fabian argued. “It isn’t against the rules, is it?”

Riz sighed. “Okay, we won’t write about incest in our essay.”

“You won’t. I’ll do whatever I damn well please, the Ball.”

Outside the office a firetruck went screaming by, and Riz seemed to wait for it to pass before scoffing and saying, “god, don’t I know it.”

“Oh, you love it.”

Silence fell between them. There was the ever-present din of the traffic on the street outside and the hum of the window fan, sometimes the occasional stomping from the floor above, but it faded into the background quickly. Fabian remembered the first time he slept over at the office, partially by accident, when what was intended to be just a casual movie night ended with everyone unconscious and snoring on the floor. Fabian had stayed up until the sunrise, unable to quiet his brain among the never ending noise. But it was familiar now, and Fabian had grown to almost like it. It was comforting, in a way. The sense that you weren’t alone in the world, that there were people in those cars driving by at all hours of the night.

“Did you know,” Riz began, “that the Seven Maidens have a marriage pact?”

“A what?”

“They all agreed that if they’re all single by forty, they’ll just marry each other.”

Fabian frowned. “I- do they just pair off? Isn’t the whole point that there’s an odd number of them? This is the strangest plan I’ve ever heard.”

“It was my understanding it would be like… a big polycule,” Riz suggested. It’s funny to see him talk with his hands while he’s on his back, like a turtle trying to flip over. Hands just waving in the air without abandon.

“That can’t be legal.”

Riz shrugged. “I’m almost certain it isn’t, but I pity the town clerk that tries to come between them and a marriage license in twenty years.”

Quiet overtook them once more. They were a far cry from who they were in freshman year, the way that they were friends through circumstance, always talking, always desperate to fill any dead space. And, unlike how they had been the year before, Fabian was proud to call Riz his friend now. Baby steps. Progress.

They had hung out with the Seven a few times. There had been a couple joint parties, a joint group excursion to a shitty burger place, that kind of thing. Fabian liked them. He liked their energy, the way they resonated off each other so harmonically. He liked the way they all were so open about their love for one another. Fabian loved his friends, but he wasn’t sure if he’d ever said it to them. Out loud, in words. He’d only said it through things, tangible, like backup in battles and business cards.

“Must be nice,” Fabian mused.

“What is?”

“A pact like that. The certainty of it.”

Riz shrugged haltingly, as if he second-guessed the motion. “Nothing saying we can’t do the same thing.”

“I’m taken,” Fabian scoffed.

“So is Zelda, and she’s a part of it, isn’t she? There’s no saying that you’re going to be with Aelwyn forever. In fact, statistics suggest otherwise.” Riz rolled over on his side to face Fabian, who just turned his head. He looked tired, first and foremost, heavy grey-green bags beneath his eyes, and Fabian knew for a fact he hadn’t gotten over four hours of sleep for three days. But with the tiredness came an easy lack of inhibitions, and Fabian had rarely seen Riz look so open, so welcoming. “You said it would be nice to have that certainty, and that’s what I’m offering. If we’re single at forty we’ll get married for, like, tax benefits. I’m not totally sure how it works. We don’t have to fall in love with each other or anything, we can just get a house and live together as best friends.”

“Forty is a long way away.”

Riz smiled, loose and small. “Then we downsize. If we’re single by senior year, we take each other to prom.”

Fabian reached his hand out and Riz took it, a nice firm handshake, a businessman’s handshake. “Deal.”

~

Things move fast. It feels like life is on fast-forward, and things that should feel monotonous seem to slip by like water through the fingers. Maybe preparing a ship to sail is better when you’re teaching someone how. Maybe it’s better when the person you’re teaching keeps smiling at you like that.

It feels like a month ago that they had been lying on Riz’s shitty office rug and making a stupid pact, one they never expected to follow through on. But they went to prom together. They got matching boutonnieres and everything. A Seacaster keeps his promises.

And back then, forty had felt like a lifetime away. It still does. But they’re just starting to stare down their thirties and they’ve already finished their plan, in a way. Get married. Get a house. Be best friends forever.

It’s another beautiful day. Soon the sky will become grayer and the water will turn black, but not quite yet. Right now the sky is the most perfect shade of blue and pure white foam laps at the shore. It’s warm and sunny and the water is gentle, so Fabian might have to break in his new motor earlier than expected. Either that or tack all the way out until open water. Riz sits on the bow and ties knots, nimble fingers moving fast, gnawing on his lip as he concentrates, legs swinging freely. He looks so at peace that Fabian doesn’t even want to ask him for help with anything else.

But it goes fast. The boat is off the trailer and in the water in the blink of an eye and then they’re standing on the port side by the cleats that tie them to the dock, eyes locked, silently asking if they’re really going to do this.

“You’re sure we don’t want to go back to Elmville first?” Fabian asks for the last time.

Riz shakes his head once, then again. “No. We deserve to move forward. This is moving forward.”

“We can always go home,” Fabian reminds him. “Anytime, so long as we don’t sail too far out. We can just skirt the coast, if you want.”

Riz stares at the cleat like he can untie the line with his mind. “All our friends moved away,” he says, half to himself. “What’s really tying us to Elmville anymore?”

After marrying and siring a child, Bill Seacaster still held out for over a decade before coming ashore for good. He never did go out again after carving out his own spot in Elmville, but chose short jaunts in little dayboats when the spirit struck him, and rarely at that. Fabian can count on one hand how many times his papa took him sailing once they moved. Fabian wonders if that’s going to be him, if he’s going to end up back in Elmville, washed up and tired. Offering snuff powder to his kid’s friends, always pining for the good old days.

But he was happier in Newport than Bill Seacaster ever was in Elmville, he thinks. He made pie. He worked a blue collar job at the docks. He went to bed and slept next to his best friend, the very one he fell in love with, every night. Maybe he’ll end up like his parents, with one official bedroom but a well lived-in guest room, but hopefully not. And in the end, isn’t that all that it comes down to, hoping?

There’s no way to know how the future will go. At the wedding, Riz had asked him if Fig and Ayda would divorce, and Fabian had told him it didn't matter. Because god, it really doesn’t.

Fabian’s done thinking about his father. He’s dead. Fabian watched it happen and enacted it by his own hand. Bill Seacaster is nothing but a legacy and a series of scars across Fabian’s mind, and the future will be whatever it will be. Fabian can go through the trouble of forcing the wind to his will or just travel leeward.

Right now, the sun is so very bright and the sun is so very blue and Riz has got his hand on the bow line, ready to let the ship go, gold ring glinting in the light.

“Alright,” Fabian says.

And together they sail off toward the open ocean.