Archive of Our Own ^beta

The vinyl seat of the diner was slightly sticky against the small of Gorgug’s back like it always was; but he pressed himself further into the booth anyway, trying to obscure himself from the stern looking waitress. He’d asked for a booth with the assumption that soon there would be seven other people around him. He checked his crystal again. Antiope and Danielle had cancelled right after he sat down, Ostentatia next, then Katja, Penny and Zelda one after the other in quick succession. 

That just left Sam. He couldn’t imagine she was coming to Girls Night (being a girl not required, hence his invitation). She was the one that liked him being there the least, he was pretty sure, though she seemed to have relaxed a little since he and Zelda had called it quits in senior year. She was gay it turned out and he was- he wasn’t sure. Quietly obsessed with his best friend and bandmate? A little more out the door of their relationship than he would like but also maybe a little aromantic? Some mix of them both that included dreams about Fig kissing him where he always woke up crying for some reason? 

They were still friends though, which meant once a month he came to this diner with the Seven and they all drank milkshakes and laughed too loud and shared every piece of gossip they’d collected about their coworkers and the people they had gone to high school with. (Of which there was usually a high degree of overlap.) Except it had been a few years now and more often than not Girls Night got cancelled for date nights and family things and he should have known better than trying to show up early because now he was taking up a booth by himself in a fairly busy diner with a quickly melting milkshake for no reason. 

The bell above the door rang and he didn’t bother looking up from his crystal. He felt the bench across from him dip downwards as someone sat, still not looking up he refreshed the text thread one more time. “Look, I thought I was waiting for some friends. I'll be out the booth in a second.” 

A sharp laugh he recognised. Recognisable enough that now he looked up. 

Sam Nightingale sat opposite him, one sharp eyebrow raised and half smile revealing perfect, straight teeth. “Well, I don’t want to keep you.” 

He felt a blush start to rise on his cheeks immediately. He stared up towards the ceiling, hoped the way the fluorescent lights made his eyes blur would stop him from feeling so flushed. Or that when he looked down she wouldn’t be there, just a strange trick of the light to tell Fig about during a long night of band practice. 

She was, of course, still there when he looked back down. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought with everyone else cancelling-” 

That laugh again. It didn’t help the blush he could still feel. “I get it. I was driving and didn’t see the text thread until I was at the door or you would've been alone all night.” 

He sputtered with the (unfortunately correct) implication that there was no one waiting in his apartment for him. Sam took the opportunity to pull his milkshake towards herself, wrinkling her nose as she took a sip. “Ugh, strawberry.” 

She pushed it back across to him and he decided not to think about the line of glittery lipgloss that now marked his straw. Some of his drink always got stolen, this was no different than normal. Except it sure felt different, just the two of them facing each other. Knees so close together under the table that they were almost touching. 

He knew objectively that Sam was pretty, they all knew that. She had been, at various points, an actual model . But it was, again, different when that pretty was directed just at him, rather than split into parts. Her hair fell in these soft sort of vintage waves, the sparkling colour of a sun soaked ocean against the cooler blue of her skin. She was wearing a short sleeved white shirt, with a more open collar style he was sure Fabian would know the name of. After she finished rejecting his milkshake choice she rested her head on her hand. Her nails were sharp and painted dark blue and she was looking at him like she could see he was looking at her. Like she could see what he was thinking. 

He was still blushing. 

“If you drove all the way out you could get your own milkshake?” Another raised eyebrow. “I mean you could keep stealing mine but you don’t seem to like it.”

She didn’t say no or move to leave so he waved to the waiter. “A vanilla malt milkshake please. And some fries. Thank you.” 

“How did you know what milkshake I get?” 

It was his turn to laugh, ignoring the way it sharpened the way she was looking at him. “We’ve been doing Girl’s Night for, like, five years at this point. I pay attention.” 

She hummed in response. He took a sip of his milkshake, still choosing to ignore the lipgloss mark that matched her mouth. Was it weird to think she had a nice mouth? It sounded like something Adaine would say was weird and Fig would say was fine. But she did. She was biting her tongue slightly between her teeth and her lips were shiny and sweet looking. He had definitely been staring at her for too long so he forced his gaze back to the ceiling. 

She stretched her legs out underneath the table, in a way that knocked their legs together just a little. Gorgug considered moving, putting space back between them. But he didn’t, he chose instead to lean his ankle into the place where it touched hers. He couldn’t tell but he thought when he did she smiled, but that really might have just been a trick of the light. 

When he told it to Fig, he would say he wasn’t sure how he’d ended up on a date with Sam Nightingale. You don’t go on dates, she replied. He pretended like it didn’t sting as much as it did. 

He didn’t go on dates because of her, is the thing he almost spit out. Would have spit out if he was braver. Probably. Because she held his hand on the tour bus and her hair smelt like cinders in a way that made him dizzy and when she laughed she would always look to him to see if he was laughing too. He didn’t go on dates because of the dreams where she kissed him or he kissed her where it felt like the universe was falling into order. Dreams that had been happening more and more frequently recently, unavoidably present in his mind. 

He didn’t go on dates because of her . 

He didn’t say any of that, just smiled in a way he knew Adaine would clock was a little too tight around the edges. If Fig noticed she didn’t say anything either. 

He kissed Sam on what he thought was their fourth date, though when they’d talk about it later she would say it was their first. He would disagree but not that much. She would argue but not that much. 

They were at the diner again. One time had been an accident, two was strange, three was starting to mean something. Four was a routine. Or a habit. Their milkshakes were on the table before she even walked through the door and he was fiddling with the straw of his to distract himself from how clammy his hands had become. 

This time he was watching the door when she walked in, got to watch as the set of her shoulders relaxed just a little when she saw him at their usual table. And it was weird to think of the table as thiers now. Before it had been something for Girls Night but now it was just for them, her ankles brushing his and the two of them leaning into each other, voices shielded from the rest of the world by the wall of their bodies. It was nice to have something that was just his . 

And he was starting to understand Sam better too, how to get her to laugh so hard it was like the crash of a wave and how she wanted to like strawberry milkshakes because she liked how pink they were. Which was to say when she sat down she took a sip of his milkshake first, leaving the same glittery mark on his straw as always, his straw taking on the bubblegum taste of her lip gloss. He couldn’t help thinking that that’s what kissing her would taste like, sweet as spun sugar. 

He wondered if, underneath the lip gloss, her mouth would taste like the ocean, just a little, sweat soaked summer skin. She smiled at him from across the table like she could tell what he was thinking. 

They were at the diner for an hour, maybe two. And it had started to get dark out, some stubborn September light sticking around but night quickly approaching. Gorgug offered to walk her to her car, like he did every time they’d met. Later he’d find out this yes was the line they crossed over into a first date. He still wasn’t sure then what it was about this time that meant she agreed. 

Today she was in a blue jumpsuit with a v neck and short, cuffed sleeves, a silver pendant that looked like a mirror shard draped between her collarbones. When he stood from the diner booth she was almost as tall as he was, already tall frame extended by shoes with platforms and a thick heel. Her whole outfit looked like it was made for her and a voice in the back of his head that always sounded like Fabian informed him it probably was. More than any of that though, she looked beautiful. And when he stood she looped her arm through his, linking them together as they moved towards the door. 

It was only as they passed through the door that he thought of Antiope and Ostentatia for maybe the first time since they last cancelled Girl’s Night. He wasn’t sure which of them dealt with the press, though he knew it was one or both of them, not least because they were both more than a little scary. But he knew that they did. That there was a reason photos of Girls Nights past weren’t plastered in every single tabloid this side of Spyre. 

He thought of Lola as well. She was going to fucking kill him if Fig didn’t do it first. He could already hear Lola’s voice, saying “I can’t keep the cameras off you if you don’t tell me where you’re going,” unspoken insults falling off the end of the sentence. 

Sam was a model and a TV star. He was the drummer of a band that weren’t quite as big as they used to be, but he still couldn’t go to the grocery store without getting recognised. They both used to fight in two of Aguefort Adventuring Academy’s premier teen adventuring parties. All of this occurred to him in quick succession as he simultaneously remembered how much the flash of a camera when it was dark out hurt his eyes. 

He felt a shiver pass through Sam where she stood next to him and he closed the link of their arms tighter, until their sides were pressed together. 

She turned even closer, stretched up a little until her mouth was almost brushing the shell of his ear. Distantly, he was still aware of the flashing cameras but the world narrowed down until it was only her mouth and the smile he could hear in her voice.

“Let’s give them something to take pictures of.” 

He turned to look at her as much as he could without losing contact. At that moment staying in contact with her felt like the most important thing in the world.  

He leant in to her, keeping his voice low in the hope it would come out steady. “Where’s your car?” 

She pointed to a powder blue convertible three cars down the street. He probably could have guessed, if he had looked around. But he was happy for the opportunity to stay in her space a little longer. They walked together, silence soundtracked by the click of the cameras. He was just glad no one tried to talk to them, sometimes an adventurer's reputation still came in useful.

Sam was cold against him in a way that was sort of pleasant and he liked this routine he was forming with her. And she was so damn pretty. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt like this about a person, if he ever had before. Whatever was growing in the spaces between them was nice. Uncomplicated. Things with Fig had always been complicated. 

He didn’t know why he thought of Fig in that moment. Or he did, but he didn’t want to be thinking of her. And that was a new feeling that sat somewhere between nice and a sour taste on the back of his teeth and gods , he was still thinking of Fig.  

An idea came to him and maybe it was stupid. Maybe he was stupid. But he was moving before he could stop himself. He was sure he’d had worse ideas. 

He turned towards her until they were facing, letting go of each other's arms. He used the arm that had stayed free to reach for her. Her skin was so soft he almost stopped entirely, worried about the roughness of his own hands. He kept going instead, tipping her head back just a little and watching as whatever sharp remark she was about to make faltered in her throat, leaving a ghost of a smile in its place. 

The kiss lasted a second at most. Gorgug knew when he kissed her the cameras must have kept going, he was sure they must have been silhouetted in the camera flashes. But he couldn’t force his brain to think that when it was so caught on how soft she was. And how he had been right about the lipgloss and ocean salt taste of her mouth. 

He pulled back before he started to feel faint. Dizzy and nervous and- And he wanted to kiss her again. Fig and Lola and the press be damned.  

Sam was silent in front of him, lips still slightly parted and still inexplicably glossy. Seconds dragged out between them where he didn’t dare say anything, in case whatever moment he thought had been between them shattered like the mirrored glass she wore around her neck. 

The look on her face didn’t change but eventually he thought he had to break the silence. There was too much now. He thought the air had started to chill around them both, but it was probably just autumn creeping in. “Sorry-”

Before the word was even out of his mouth she kissed him again, with none of his fear or his nerves. She kissed him and for a second his mind was completely blank. There was no space for anything, no fear of whether this was a good idea or what might come next, just her mouth on his and her arms wrapping around his neck and the fabric of her jumpsuit where his hand had landed on her waist. 

This time she pulled away and when she did she smiled at him like she always did, with all her teeth and a look in her eye like she knew some big secret of the universe. She probably did.

“Goodnight Sam.”  He pressed one more kiss to her cheek for good measure and her smile softened. 

“Goodnight, Gorgug.” 

When Fig had seen the pictures she had sent them straight to Lola. 

That wasn’t true. 

She’d stared at them first, zoomed in on the way Gorgug was smiling or Sam’s arm linked through his or a hundred other little details. A strange slimy feeling settled across the bottom of her stomach. Gorgug didn’t go on dates. He certainly didn’t go on dates with Sam Nightingale, who they had all thought definitely had a thing for Zelda back in the day that meant she barely tolerated Gorgug. And he deserved better than tolerated. He deserved- 

That wasn’t the point. Sam Nightingale had never used to like him. Gorgug didn't go on dates, especially not the type where the press caught him and he let them. 

She had texted Lola two words, “ how bad?” with the photo that made her stomach the flippiest. Gorgug’s hand just brushing Sam’s cheek, looking at each other like the rest of the world didn’t exist with their mouths still slightly parted. Her phone buzzed with Lola’s reply. “ It’s gonna be a fucking circus.” 

If Lola was going to be anything she would be honest with them, and normally Fig appreciated that. This time it just made her insides feel like they were curdling. The Sig Figs had been around nearly ten years. Ten years without leaked press photos or scandal or their faces plastered across the tabloids. That was why she was upset. This wasn’t what they did. 

And it was normal to be upset about her friend not telling her something. Sure, he’d mentioned going to the diner with Sam and she’d rolled her eyes and he’d gone quiet, mouth pressed into a thin line. Then he smiled the smile he thought she didn’t notice. The one that was more like a fracture forming in his face, too tight and too controlled. The smile he only did when he was choosing not to say something because he knew she’d react. Because she was always too much. But that shouldn’t matter. 

Another text popped up on her crystal, this time in the chain she shared with Gorgug and Lola. “ The studio. Now Please”.

Fig wasn’t sure why she was included in the now please. Now please was the time where she’d caught them sleeping on the same couch the summer after graduation, cheap bachelorette party veil still tucked in Gorgug’s hair. Now please was the first show they were late to because Fig had been anxiously chain smoking clove cigarettes against the back wall of the venue. Now please was no good and she hadn’t even done anything wrong. 

She sank deeper into the sweater she was wearing. Gorgug’s sweater. She couldn’t even remember when this one had made its way into her apartment, or if she’d picked it up in the studio or the last time they were out for dinner. It felt wrong to be wearing it now, when she closed her eyes the image of Sam and Gorgug flashed across the inside of her eyelids. 

It was too simple to say Gorgug was hers, but she had maybe thought it was true. He wasn’t hers necessarily , but they were each other’s. Fig-and-Gorgug. One person in two parts; like the story of soulmates her mom had told her as a kid. He kept her grounded and she- She did something for him, because otherwise why would he have stayed? They were meant to make sense together. They had always made sense together. Her breath wobbled in her lungs. 

She took a deeper breath holding the counts like Jawbone had taught her and Adaine at the start of their sophomore year. They were just some pictures. It probably didn’t mean anything and if it did that was Fine. She was Fine. 

She changed out of his sweater before she left. 

Lola’s voice was cool and calm by the time Fig got to the studio. Fig couldn’t understand how she was keeping it that way when it felt, inexplicably, like she had lost all control. She didn’t even know why she felt like that. It was fine if Gorgug wanted to kiss Sam Nightingale. Sam was tall and pretty and they had both known her forever. And she was always decent enough, even if she was always a little cold to them and had been friends with Penelope Everpetal back in the day. That was long enough ago that it seemed petty to hold it against her. Fig was still considering holding it against her. 

Gorgug was sat on the couch outside the office and Lola was talking to him like maybe he was a little stupid. Fig clenched her hands at her sides, that wasn’t fair. He wasn’t stupid. It’s not like she knew what he was right now. But not that. Never that. And Lola shouldn’t have been talking to him like he was. Even from across the room she could see that he was picking up on it too and it was making his eyes all watery. 

She slid into place on the couch in time for Lola to stop talking abruptly, shoot a look between the two of them, and set off for her office. 

Fig looked at Gorgug. He didn’t look at her. Just stood and followed silently along with their manager, his shoulders slumping forwards. That was less fine, if she was being honest with herself. But she could manage it. Would manage it once they were out of Lola’s office she was sure. 

They sat in the matching chairs on one side of Lola’s desk. Lola sat on the larger, more imposing chair on the other, leaning back and pinching the bridge of her nose. 

“I’m going to be honest with you two; because you aren’t kids anymore and we’ve worked together long enough. The whole word thinks the two of you are, you know-” she sighed. “Look even I did. And I know the two of you. I was impressed that you’d kept it out of the press all these years. That takes some effort. On my part as well to keep them away from you and nix awkward interview questions.”

Another sigh. Gorgug was rigidly still by her side, his fingers digging into the arms of his chair so tightly it was beginning to splinter. 

His voice sounded like something splintering too. “So you’re telling me that I can’t kiss anyone else because people think Fig and I are dating when we aren’t and never have been.” 

Fig was relieved that Lola didn’t turn to look at her in the way she was now looking at him. Like she was trying to boil his blood. “Of course I’m not saying that. And I never would. But you’ve now put all three of us in a situation that could’ve been avoided if you had given me a heads up when it happened two days ago. ” 

Her own voice sounded small. “A warning would’ve been nice, just so I could expect my phone blowing up, you know.” 

“Have either of you considered that I like her? And that I kissed her because I wanted to and I wasn’t thinking of either of you?” Gorgug’s voice came out louder than she had thought it would and it took all she had not to shrink back. She always tried not to shrink back. To show him that no matter his rage she wouldn’t be shaken from his side. Not that this anger was one that she recognised. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was presenting a united front. 

Fig dug her nails into her palm.

She felt a little embarrassed when he said that, hot blush rising on both of their faces. Didn’t want to admit that no, it hadn’t occurred to her. If she was being honest with herself, she maybe hadn’t realised Gorgug wanted to kiss people. Which was maybe a little stupid and a little selfish. 

But she had never really thought about it and the realisation was making her feel a little sick, like something in her insides was splitting. 

Of course Gorgug wanted to kiss people. And people wanted to kiss him . He was handsome and lovely and- And maybe she was less fine with this than she had thought she was. Just a bit. Less fine with it than she would like to be at least. 

She turned to him, swallowing down the taste of bile accumulating in the back of her throat. “Are you happy? Does she make you happy?” 

He nodded. 

“Then let’s figure this out. We can make a statement later today. Not mentioning the photos. Just we heard your concern and we’re good. The band is alright and we’re excited for the new single next month. Right? Easy.” 

He smiled, grip on his chair lessening and Lola nodded grimly. This was fine, she thought. Or it would be. She could make it fine. 

They were drinking cheap wine in her apartment a month later before they talked about it again. Kristen called it bad decision wine, for the way it always forced words up and out of their throats, spilling whatever they were trying to keep locked in the hollows of their bodies out and onto the carpet. 

Gorgug took another sip, straight from the bottle. Fig didn’t watch the muscles in his throat as he swallowed. 

He really was handsome. She found herself thinking that more now. Looking at all the pieces of him, hands wrapped around a drumstick and nervous bite of his lip and- All the little things that made him up. Cataloguing them the way she thought maybe other people were seeing him, that he wasn’t just handsome but hot. The more she looked at him the more she noticed it, though maybe she had been for a while. The more she looked at him the more surprised she was that no one else had noticed before. 

Until Sam. Sam, she supposed, had noticed. 

They still hadn’t talked about any of it really. The kiss or the press or the knife's edge in his voice when he made it clear that they had never dated. Which was true, so she wasn’t sure why her mind kept bringing her back to it like a skipping record. Trying to pinpoint whether the sharpness was just anger or something closer to disgust, that people could have ever thought someone glowing like him would date something like her. 

She took a sip of the wine. It was usually sweeter, but her anxiety made it taste sour in the back of her throat. “So,” Another sip. “How’s Sam?”

He looked at her for just a second in a way she didn’t recognise. Like she was a stranger sitting cross legged on the floor with him. 

“She’s good. We’re good. I think.” He sounded breathless. Light. Fig thought she might be sinking through the floor. “Still mostly just going to the diner.”

He paused, images of them kissing over milkshakes rushed to fill in the space behind her eyes.

“We got breakfast the other day. That was- It was nice.” She tried to tell herself they probably met at the diner, but another image came to meet her instead. The two of them wrapped in Gorgug’s grey sheets, hair still sleep mussed and the impossibly high shoes Sam liked to wear propped up by his door. 

She couldn’t ask him if she was right, wine drunk buzz fading enough that it was no longer helping words wrench themself free from her. She took another sip from the bottle instead, and leant her head against his shoulder letting his voice coat her in warmth as she drifted away.

“I think you should meet my friends.” Gorgug didn’t know why it felt like such a hard thing to say. It definitely was nothing to do with the distant look in Fig’s eye every time Sam came up. 

Sam laughed. “I know your friends.” 

He sighed. They were at his place, dates at the diner swapped for meals eaten at the table in his kitchen. He was doing the dishes, up to his elbows in soapy water and facing away from her. It had felt easier to say when he wasn’t looking at her and he didn’t know what that meant. 

“I know you know them, but you should, like, meet them. With me.” 

“Oh.” He turned, wiping his hands against his pants to see a smile break across her face. “You think this is getting serious. What’s next? I meet your parents?” 

He wasn’t sure how to read the tone of her voice. It had been a few months now, with no more press incidents or getting yelled at by Lola incidents and he thought maybe something good was growing between them. At least it was when it was contained in the walls of their apartments or the house she kept by the beach. Kissing her still felt a little bit like a miracle. That someone like her could want to kiss him. 

The next step, if one of his parents' binders he’d found stuffed in a box under his bed was to be believed, was seeing if whatever the good thing was could survive outside. That wasn’t exactly what they’d written, but he’d had to flip through page after page of “establishing chemistry” to get there. He thought what they were trying to say at least was that if their lives stayed totally separate in the outside world then they weren’t dating, they were just hooking up. And he found himself hoping they were dating. Dating Sam sounded like another type of miracle. 

“Would that be the worst thing in the world? Getting serious, I mean.” 

She considered it for a second, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, something he’d never seen her do until they were sat behind closed doors and some of her glamour dropped. “Maybe not. In a few months or so.” 

“How about next weekend? Fig’s birthday is-” 

“No.” For a second he felt the temperature of the room drop, like being plunged into icy water. 

“No?” 

Another pause, Sam started tapping her fingers on the table. “No. I- I’m not being that girl. Whatever was going on with you and her- I don’t know. But I think that would be a bad idea.” 

“Nothing has ever gone on with me and her.” Sam laughed again. It was colder this time, sharper somehow. “Why do people keep thinking that?” 

He’d thought maybe sometime after graduation there had been something there. A little spark. But Fig clearly hadn’t felt it and no one else had known. Well, Adaine had known, but none of them could help that. He’d spent years forgetting it, or trying to; and for the first time it felt like he was succeeding. 

“Who else was thinking that?” 

Gorgug thought maybe he knew now what sailors felt like, when they fell prey to a siren's song. He could feel himself taking a step forward into something dangerous, clear from the thunderous look on Sam’s face, but he couldn’t have stopped himself if he tried. “It was just something Lola said, when those pictures broke. That she thought Fig and I were- Well- Something.”

“And are you? Something? ”

“What?” 

“Like you said, people keep thinking it. Even in high school some of us talked to Zelda about it. I just don’t want to look like an idiot.” 

Silence fell in the kitchen and she stood to leave. He crossed the room to meet her, both hands coming up to hold her face. Some part of him was surprised she let him. 

Gorgug made a final decision. Whatever it was with Fig, whether it was there or not there, was over. He would choose for it to be over. Move on for real this time. “You’re not an idiot. And there’s never been anything there. She never liked me like that. I want to be serious with you. ” 

He kissed her and this time there were none of the flash bulb fireworks of their first kiss but it still made him a little dizzy, even with the decision he was making still sitting heavy in the back of his throat. He still found it surprising when she kissed him back. 

Gorgug wanted to talk about it with someone, was the thing. Couldn’t talk about it with Fig because she’d get that strange sick look on her face. Couldn’t talk about it with Riz because he’d hate it. Fabian because he’d tell everyone. Adaine because she’d tell Fig and then he’d be back to the strange sick look only with added guilt from the fact she heard it from Adaine and not from him. 

And so really that only left Kristen. Who wouldn’t have been his first option but she and Tracker were seriously on again so at least he wouldn’t have to hear about how love is dead for real at least .  

And maybe it was just that she was in town to run one of her support group network things and he didn’t want to go to band practice while the look on Sam’s face when she had asked if there was something between him and Fig was on his mind, but talking to Kristen had started to seem like a decent option. He knocked loudly on the door of the apartment she was staying in while she was in town, a little studio that was almost directly between his apartment and Fig’s. 

They always both offered her a place to stay and shared a joint look of relief when she said no. He loved her more than words but she and Tracker really did come through a place like a hurricane. Fig had looked at him once, when she was staying at his one night to escape the noise and she’d grinned around the words I thought we were supposed to be the rockstars. He’d offered Fig his couch, offered to take it himself. She’d slept in his bed anyway and they’d fallen asleep holding hands. 

The memory felt a little bit like splitting open, so he grabbed onto the edges of himself, pulled them back together before Kristen opened her door. 

She was hugging him before the door was even really open, arms around his chest so tight he couldn’t breathe through the physical force of her affection. He hugged her back and his chest loosened but for a reason he couldn’t place he still felt choked up. It was probably just that they didn’t get to see each other all that much anymore. That was probably it. 

He managed to keep the words trapped inside his mouth until he was sat at Kristen’s kitchen table, cradling a mug of hot, strong-smelling tea. It was probably one of her and Tracker’s herbal blends made far sweeter than he’d choose to take it, but he knew he would drink it anyway. Because she made it like that. Because she insisted it was better for him that way. 

“I really like Sam Nightingale.”

Kristen raised an eyebrow. “I thought she was gay.” 

He heard Tracker sputter a laugh from the doorway, a door in the hall opening and closing as she chose not to get involved in the conversation. 

“ You think that about everyone. You still think that about Hallariel.” 

“She just gives off a vibe- '' Her volume rose for a second before she cut herself off. “You’re not going to distract me. Why’d you say that first thing like it was a problem?” 

“I didn’t?” 

“No. Shh. You did. I wanna say congrats man but you’re bringing a really weird energy.”

He pressed his hands to his face, hoping some of the blush he could feel crawling across his skin would be soothed by how cold and clammy his hands felt. He felt sixteen again, texting Zelda to ask her out for the first time. He felt like the world was spinning around him, and he was getting lost in the movement. “You’re terrible at giving advice.” 

He could see her grin even through his fingers. “You still came to me, though.” 

That he couldn’t argue with. Wouldn’t have even tried. Because he could’ve gone to any of them and he’d made his reasons why he couldn’t but some of them were thin. It was just- He’d wanted to talk to Kristen. Maybe not talk to her. Her advice was genuinely terrible. But to see her at least. Gap in her front teeth from where she’d never gotten braces and the constellations of freckles across the bridge of her nose. 

They knew each other. They had to. They’d died together and he liked talking to her. 

He sighed. “Yeah. I did.” 

The grin grew wider. “Yeah. You did.” 

They took sips of their tea, comfortable silence stretched between them. Kristen was loud and she was busy so there was something settling in the way she was quiet around him. Or maybe that was just what he was telling himself because the alternative was more of her opinions on his love life. 

He kept himself from talking by taking even sips of his tea, focusing on not wincing at how incredibly sweet it was. That worked for a while but then his tea was done and he still wanted to talk to Kristen about it. Even if it meant more of her advice. Terrible or not. 

“I invited Sam to Fig’s birthday last month.” Kristen winced. “Why that face? Don’t pull a face. We’re getting serious- I think we’re getting serious. You brought Tracker.” 

“Well, yeah. But Tracker’s been around forever. ” She paused, chewing on her lip the way she had when she was nervous since the very first day he had met her. “And, well, me and Fig aren’t-” 

He could feel himself scowling but he didn’t say anything. Kristen’s honesty would at least be somewhere between gentle and loving and getting his head stuck in a bucket of cold water. She wouldn’t pull the punch at least. She’d never learnt how.

Kristen tried again. “Well you and Fig are- Different, you know? We all love both of you but we also know like- You two would choose each other. Did you- Did you at least tell Fig you’d invited Sam?” 

The blush on his face darkened. That had maybe been a mistake. Asking Sam before he’d asked Fig even though it hadn’t come to anything. Sam hadn’t come. The mistake went unnoticed. He thought of the slightly unfocused look in Fig’s eyes when they’d talked about Sam last. It hadn’t been bad. 

It could have been bad. 

The only thing worse than inviting Sam would have been uninviting Sam. And he would have, he knew, if Fig had asked him to. 

Kristen sucked in a breath. “No.” Something between a laugh and an outward breath. “Really. You didn’t ?” 

Gorgug put his face in his hands. The spinning of the world around him intensified. He had maybe fucked it somewhere along the way. 

“Okay. Well I take it she said no? Considering she wasn’t there? And because there were no minor fires or news stories that Fig had thrown something at you?” He didn’t move. Kristen kept going. “That was fucked up man. You shouldn’t have done that to either of them, you know, if you do really like her.” 

“I do- Like her, I mean.” 

She reached across the table to swat at him, knocking over her thankfully mostly empty cup of tea in the process. “Then act like it, idiot.” Gorgug leant back and her hand missed him, she pulled it back like the not-contact had burned her, settling instead for scrubbing her hands over her face. “Sorry. That was maybe too far. But- Just- Woof. You know?” 

“Yeah. I mean- I know.” 

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” 

Gorgug stood up to get a handful of paper towels to dab at the cool puddle of liquid Kristen had made on the table. Tried to think of a good answer in the few seconds his back was turned. 

“Better.” He said, setting his shoulders as he did. “I’m going to do better.” 

“Good.” Kristen replied. And he was thankful she didn’t question him any further because he knew, somewhere in the cavity of his chest, that he wasn’t sure who he meant better for. If better for both of them existed, or if choosing one would send him spinning wildly off path, away from the other. 

Riz didn’t live with his mom anymore. He lived two doors down in a slightly different corridor of the Strongtower Luxury Apartments, which, Fabian argued, was in fact funnier. 

Fig found the smell of the place comforting. Not the apartments. Riz’s apartment didn’t smell like Gilear’s used to, thankfully. (The smell of beans and yogurt on the turn still haunted some of her pyjama shirts.) But the smell of the corridor hadn’t changed. Like carpet that was older than her and someone cooking with butter down the hall and always the faint trace of chlorinated pool water even though no ones sure the building ever had a pool. 

She thought that it was the same for Adaine and Kristen and honestly even Jawbone sometimes even though he wouldn’t admit it. And that's why she, Adaine and Kristen would find themselves in Riz’s apartment so often. He complained about it, sure, but he never really wanted to keep them out or he would’ve changed the locks. They saw him do it to a room in Mordred one time, when Fabian kept trying to sneak a peek at his birthday present. Years later they’d still not managed to get back into the room. 

Riz was studiously ignoring the three of them on his floor, perched cross legged on a table above them pinning little pieces of his paper to his wall. Fig flopped down onto her back, pressing herself into the itchy carpet. Adaine had stuck glowing stars to his ceiling at some point, imbued them with enough of her magic that they moved around like a real star chart. Fig thought she remembered Riz telling her once that he had solved a murder using them. 

Adaine poked at her, a sharp finger in her side. “What’s going on?” 

“Nothing.” The petty teenage part of her replied. She knew something was itching at her, knew talking it through would probably help. But she was bored of talking things through. Maybe it would be fun to just watch something burn for once. 

Adaine poked her again. 

“Hey !” 

Three more pokes in quick succession. Fig wondered when Adaine started shaping her nails so sharply. She tried to squirm away from the onslaught, knocking into a table leg causing Riz to squawk where he sat. His face appeared above her, almost owlish, over the table's edge. 

He blinked down at her. She blinked back up at him. 

“If you don’t want to get poked, don’t lie to her. We can all tell something’s off, I think it’s-” Riz paused, considered getting involved. “Nevermind.” 

He disappeared back behind the table's edge. 

Adaine folded her arms. “What he said.” 

Kristen was sat a little way away, her back pressed to the couch. “Yeah. What he said.” 

She took a deep breath, focussed back in on the little glowing stars. “I think- I think Gorgug’s upset at me? Or something’s going on with him?” 

“Oh.” She didn’t look at Adaine, but she could still hear in the shape of her voice that her posture softened. That the hard line of crossed arms and sharp nails wobbled. “I mean- Has he done something to make you think that?” 

“I don’t know? I mean- Things just feel-” She swallowed hard around the selfish lump in her throat. The high heeled, bubblegum lip glossed shadow in the room loomed over her. “Different.” 

Kristen answered a little too fast, their speech overlapping. “What do you mean by that?” 

Fig pressed the heel of her hand into her eyes. Swallowed again. Tried to figure out how to explain that a room with Gorgug in it had always felt one way and now it felt another. “I just- After those photos- I don’t know. He doesn’t really text me first anymore.” 

The admission felt like a tender thing. A purpling bruise on the centre of her chest.

“Oh.” Adaine said. “Are you sure?” 

The bruise grew a little bigger. She sounded silly and petty and wretched even to her own ears. Didn’t need it pointed out to her. She knew. She knew. She knew. Could already hear the streams of its probably nothing and you’re overthinking it and all the other little pieces of reassurance that her friends would be ready to throw at her.   

She maybe, really, just wanted- needed- Adaine to believe her. 

Kristen was Kristen and Riz probably wasn’t listening but if Adaine, slow and solid and reasonable Adaine, believed her then it meant there was probably something there. Something other than purple bruises and a hungry vortex where she thought some of her organs should be. 

“I mean- I think I’m sure.” 

“Well-” Kristen said, voice a little loud. “It’s probably- I don’t know? Bad timing? He and Sam are-” She cut herself off and the sudden silence of the room was filled by the rush of blood in her ears.

“He and Sam are what ?” 

Adaine placed a steadying hand on her arm and she fought the urge to pull it away. She felt like she was on fire. Like she might burn Adaine’s hands and a charcoal imprint of herself onto Riz’s floor. 

She pulled her eyes from the stars on the ceiling to focus on Kristen’s face. Her cheeks were so red it seemed to overtake her. She’d never been good at keeping secrets. 

“What are you hiding?” 

Adaine had turned to look at her too. It hadn’t seemed possible but the flushed skin of her face grew even redder, masking her freckles in the violent blush. 

“Not hiding anything!” Kristen pulled her lip nervously between her teeth. “Just- He came to see me the other week. Seems like things with him and Sam are-” Another pause. More clearly nervous this time. “Good. New. I don’t know. You know how it is.” 

Despite themselves, Fig and Adaine did not, in fact, know how it was. Neither of them really dated. Adaine by choice and Fig from, well, she guessed a lack of it. Her mom was constantly asking if she was looking. If the prospect of a wedding and grandbabies was on the horizon. She'd always taken the questions. Waved them away. Suddenly she was very deeply aware of the feeling that she was falling behind. That there was an absence in her life that maybe she would have wanted to be filled. 

An absence that maybe she should have been doing something about just like Gorgug had. She thought of the pictures again, the soft look on his face. The sticky feeling that coated her skin every time she had to text first again . 

“Right.” Her voice wobbled. “Of course.” Tears started beading at the corners of her eyes, misting into steam. 

She was being unfair. She knew she was and she hated it. Gorgug happy was good. Gorgug happy was what she wanted. Always. Gorgug finding happy somewhere else, somewhere that wasn’t her apartment with his mugs already in the cupboards, his hoodies already in the closet, her voice already echoing through the recording booth, well that was something she had never really considered. 

Before Sam Fucking Nightingale it never seemed like something she would have had to consider. 

She was being unfair. 

Gorgug found himself in the diner like he had once a week every week for- He wasn’t sure how long. Eighteen months or so. They’d paused every now and then. A few weeks after he’d talked to Fig and then Kristen in that order and the world had felt flipped and tight against his skin. A month or so at the point where they’d stopped going to separate apartments. When his toothbrush was permanently at hers and there was a drawer with all of his hoodies, safely tucked away. 

The diner was special. The diner made it real. The diner was a first kiss and the first breakfast after an easy fall into the same bed and the one time they had talked about two and a half kids and a white picket fence. 

The ring box sat heavy in his pocket. 

The ring was, he thought, by far the most expensive thing he owned and if it all went well he would only own it for a few minutes more. The question he was about to ask sat right up  behind his teeth. Ready to burst through at any moment. 

It was a diamond. A big one. With lots of little ones around it on a gold band that made the sparkle of it seem kind of blue. He’d got her ring size from The Seven and recommendations on how to look at a diamond from Ostentatia alongside the offer for her to come shopping with him. He hadn’t taken her up on it. He wasn’t sure if she’d been offering as Sam’s friend or his. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. 

He thought if he’d talked about it more, Ostentatia’s wouldn’t have been the only offer he had had. His parents still talked about making each other's engagement rings. About how they’d accidentally planned to propose on the same day. And, if anyone was wondering, that Wilma had gotten there first. He was sure, if he had asked, they would have loved to make something for him. Something for Sam. But he looked at their rings, small and distinctly Gnomish, and he couldn’t picture them on her hand. 

He’d taken Fabian shopping instead. His most fancy and opinionated friend. 

It had been fine. They’d found something that looked right. 

Sam slipped into the booth. He hadn’t seen her that morning, she’d had something she had to leave early for. She was wearing a short, sleeveless sea green dress with a little white collar and another pair of her platform boots. She smiled when she saw him, a quiet type of smile he wasn’t sure anyone else got to see. 

She didn’t take a sip of his milkshake anymore. She’d given up on trying to like strawberry a few months back, with a sigh. But he missed the routine of it. Her taking a sip and wrinkling her nose and leaving the same glittery lip mark on his straw every time. Not that he’d tried to explain that to her. It felt too small, too personal, to explain how much a smudge of lipgloss had actually meant to him all this time.  

He leaned across the table to kiss her. His parents would always be wretchedly in love. He’d always be the drummer of the Sig Figs. Her mouth would always taste like lipgloss and ocean salt. Things would keep changing but these things wouldn’t at least. 

“You look,” He paused a little breathless. “You look really good. How was your day?” 

She smiled again and launched into the details as she always did. He let them wash over him, trying his best to take in as much as he could. Coworkers that pissed her off and projects that were going right and the bits that made her smile like she was proud of what she was doing. His brain kept slipping away from her voice as she talked. All he could think about was the ring box in his pocket. A life coloured in shades of blue. 

She paused, hand finding the little shard of glass she always wore around her neck. “Are you listening to me? What did I just say?” 

His cheeks burned as he tried to pull the information from his uncooperative thoughts. 

“You weren’t!” She smiled open mouthed; he couldn’t see what was going on behind it. “Well what were you thinking about that was so important.” He could at least understand the teasing joke behind that but it was an opening and he wasn’t sure he was going to get another one. 

Gorgug reached for the box in his pocket, shaky hands nearly fumbling it as he placed it on the table between them. 

Sam looked at the little blue velvet box. She didn’t move towards it. He looked at her. Fiddled with the edge of his shirt cuff. 

“Gorgug?” He thought her fingers tightened around her necklace. “What is that?” 

“I’m supposed to open it, aren't I? Shit-” He lunged forward, opened the box so that she could see what sat inside it. 

Her mouth formed a perfect circle. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her speechless before. That was either really good or really bad and he was in too deep to bail so he was going to find out either way. 

“I just thought-” He sucked in a breath. She still wasn’t talking or reacting and the air was starting to feel thinner, his skin too tight. “We should- I’m doing this wrong. Fuck.” 

Another breath. 

“What I’m trying to say is I love you. And things are going well. And I want to get married. To you. I think we should get married. If that wasn’t clear from well-” 

“Oh.” 

“Oh?” Gorgug could feel his eyes getting watery in the way they did when he was ready to cry and he really didn’t fucking want to cry in this diner with a ring that cost what felt like a fake amount of money on the table in front of him. He didn’t really want to cry at all. 

“Okay.” 

“Okay like okay, yes. Or-” HIs throat went dry. “Or okay like this was a-” 

“Okay like- Like I think so, okay. I think we should do it.” She pulled the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth. “I think we should- Should get married. Let’s do it.”

The guy was fine. It was important that he was, for the most part, totally and perfectly fine. That, unfortunately, made the whole thing feel worse. He was one of a long line of totally fine dates that various Bad Kids were setting her up on. 

Adaine chose smart people with good postures. Riz didn’t choose anyone, didn’t see the point. Kristen had a talent for finding people who seemed to live in the woods. Fabian chose people who were often insufferable with tastes she couldn’t afford, pirate warlocks, or, on a few notable occasions, both. 

Gorgug didn’t choose anyone. Not only did he not choose anyone, he expressed no opinions about people chosen by the rest of them or the competition that seemed to be emerging between Adaine, Kristen and Fabian. Instead whenever the topic came up, which it only seemed to when all six of them were together, he got quieter than normal or changed the topic loudly or went to the bathroom and avoided the conversation entirely. 

The entirely fine guy had been chosen by Adaine, as they mostly were. Adaine was incredibly good at selecting people who would provide an acceptable evening and whose name she would not remember in the morning when they, inevitably, had left each other behind for separate apartments. 

At least the freaks Fabian picked made for good stories. 

She was, she thought, becoming more and more resigned to dying alone. Maybe in a cottage in a small village that the local children avoided. At least then she would be a good story even if she wasn’t going to be happy. 

She tried to tune back into the guy, knowing Adaine had a list of questions prepared in her head to quiz her on. After the first four dates where she hadn’t been able to recall a single fucking thing about the stranger Adaine had started doing the quizzes. Said Fig was probably a bad date and not giving them a real chance and if she just listened - 

Well, then maybe the dates would be going better. 

Her skin felt too small. The guy was talking about some quest he went on when he was sixteen which would have been impressive if, at sixteen, she hadn't faced the Nightmare Forest and become an archdevil. It wasn’t his fault he was mediocre. It was maybe her fault that she was being a bitch. 

She checked her crystal under the table again. No texts. She’d meant to be at band practise but Gorgug had cancelled last minute. Told her he was celebrating and that she was welcome to stop by if she wanted to talk about it so she’d told him it was good he’d cancelled because she needed to too because she had a date she was like, so , excited about and- 

Well, she hadn’t had a date at the time but now she did. And after texting her “Oh, sure. Okay” she hadn’t heard anything from Gorgug. 

Adaine had been a little surprised when she’d asked for a last minute date. Gorgug was celebrating, she had said, though hadn’t said celebrating what. No one had. It reminded of the way her mom had used to treat her, right after her horns had come through. Like every little thing might have been the one to split her open, reveal the pulsing, burning core of herself in another bloody outburst. Shouldn’t she be too old for this by now. 

That’s probably what Adaine was going to say in the morning when she inevitably went back to Mordred after this date where Adaine would be waiting up with a cup of cocoa. She would be nice when Fig got back, they’d debrief and then, in the morning, she’d say what she was really thinking. Only once she’d had the chance to sit with it. 

Adaine wouldn’t say it meanly of course. She wasn’t mean with them. Well, she was sometimes with Fabian, but he had dated her sister so he really sort of deserved it. But she’d say what she thought. And she wouldn’t pull her punch. It was probably going to be along the lines of what are you avoiding and why is it Gorgug and if you feel something you should tell him.  

She knew what the congratulations were about. Or she could guess. Gorgug should have never taken Fabian if he wanted it to be a secret, even if she wasn’t sure if it was a secret or just another thing he hadn’t told her. A list of them was starting to grow. 

There was something she should probably tell him as well, even if she wasn’t sure what the final shape of it was. But it was something like she missed him and something like she loved him and something like she was so glad he was happy but gods she wished that happiness could have involved her more. 

Her date cleared his throat. She put her crystal away. 

“I don’t know what your issue is. I just- If we’re doing it we’re doing it right? I just think we can have some press shots done when we do the photos.”

“I don’t want the press at my wedding, Sam.” And he never let himself get mad anymore, angry even less. It felt too out of control, now that there were no fights anymore but this time he slipped into his anger like a winter coat he had almost grown out of. 

“Why not?” She stepped into his space, tall enough in her heels that she didn’t have to look up at all to make eye contact with him. That had always been a good thing. They were on a level playing field or something like it. But under the full freezing weight of her attention he felt a little too much like a butterfly waiting to be pinned. Studied and scrutinized and dead. 

Gorgug stepped back. Sam didn’t follow him. 

“Why don’t you want them there? They’re gonna find out eventually. Why not have it be from us?” 

“Why not have it be private? Why not elope?” He managed to keep his voice level. Keep it from wobbling even a little. The anger had burned away any of the tears that could’ve been forming thankfully. He didn’t want to cry. She hadn’t seen him cry and it felt important somehow that she didn’t. Like that would change things somehow. That probably wasn’t fair. He couldn’t bring himself to mind. 

“Because it’s not a secret. Because I don’t want a quiet little wedding and a little house in the suburbs and you know that. You-” And maybe he really was being unfair, he thought, because she wasn’t close to tears. Not exactly. But certainly the closest to tears he’d ever seen her. She took a deep breath to steady herself. Whatever tears he thought he saw an impression of disappeared. “You must have known that. When you asked me to marry you. And if you didn’t know that or you didn’t want that then-” 

She stopped herself with another sharp intake of breath. The shadow of the thing she had almost said hanging over them both. 

They didn’t fight. He and Fig didn’t fight. That was one of the things that had always made them good. They didn’t fight. They didn’t need to or they didn’t want to or- Maybe it was they used to have nothing to fight about. 

Gorgug thought they were probably about to fight. That was something that kept happening. The fighting. 

He didn’t know where it kept coming from. Not the fights necessarily, but the energy for them. He’d never had this type of energy before. Not even when they were still adventurers. But now it sat singing under his skin, buzzing, like it could build up too much and if it did he would explode into a shower of mess and viscera and feelings he couldn’t quite place. 

This fight was about who he had chosen to be his best man. The one person standing up behind him at his wedding. Or, more accurately, who he hadn’t chosen. 

He felt heat start to radiate off of her, like it always did when she was angry. His barbarian textbooks always had her fingertips burnt into them after one rant about Porter or another. For once, he wished she would just calm down. “Why are you so mad at me right now?” 

Fighting was better, Gorgug supposed, than the brief flash of something else that had moved across Fig’s face in the seconds before she had decided she was angry. He had thought he could deal with her anger without feeling like he was burning up. He had been wrong, of course he had been wrong, but he’d thought- 

Well it didn’t matter what he had thought. 

She looked close to tears and he felt it, the itching feeling in the back of his throat but she didn’t say a word, just pressed her eyes closed and for some reason that was enough to set his anger off in parallel with hers. She had started it. It wasn’t fair that he was now subject to carry her sadness and anger with his own. 

“Tell me Fig. Why are you mad at me right now and I’ll do something about it. I promise.”

She stayed silent. 

“Right. That’s what I thought.” He knew the next words that left his mouth were Sam’s not his, but he couldn’t have stopped them if he tried. “Because I haven’t done anything. I’m just happy for once. And you can’t stand that I could be happy outside of your shadow.” The words hit her like a physical impact but he could barely see her over the way his vision was going dark at the edges, a rush of adrenaline pouring through him so fast he thought he could feel as it soaked into each of his muscles. 

Gorgug didn’t like the words he had said. Didn’t like the way her face was crumpling at the edges because of them. Didn’t like the way all the air was shimmering from the heat coming off of her. Didn’t like any of it. 

It was a thing Sam had said, once, when he’d mentioned that things with Fig had been different. And she hadn’t meant it the way it had sounded coming from his mouth not hers. When she said it it sounded like it could maybe be right and the thought had stung and the words had stayed there somewhere in his body but they weren’t there anymore they were in the air between him and Fig and-

He thought he might be having a panic attack. 

She sucked in a breath that sounded a little bit like she was choking and he couldn’t help but understand what that felt like. The new lack of air in the room. 

“Okay- Well. Right. That’s not- That’s not fair.” Fig wasn’t close to tears now she was past them. He could see them beading up in her eyes and then evaporating when they touched the skin of her burning cheeks. She wrung her wrist with her hand, rubbing the spot where they’d used to wear matching friendship bracelets until they’d both fallen off. 

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He was crying too. He was sure of it. But the adrenaline was making him numb enough that he could barely hear the words he was saying, feel anything over the pounding of his own heart. 

They were both silent. Fig pressed the heel of her hand into her eyes; he wasn’t sure if she had looked at him yet. “I just- I don’t know why you’re doing this. Doing any of this. You don’t have to-” She slammed her mouth shut. “Nevermind. Do what you like.” 

She was sort of staring at him now but not like she normally looked at him. Like he was some new person claiming to be her friend. Like at some point he’d burned out all the parts of himself that she liked. That’s what it felt like. At some point he’d become someone she didn’t like. Something vestigial. Just there to go through the motions and play the drums. 

“I didn’t- I didn’t ask for your permission.” 

“That’s not what I meant.” 

“Course not.” 

Her hand was back at the place where the friendship bracelet had used to be. He couldn’t remember why they hadn’t got new ones. She sighed. “I just- Why-” Another heavy breath. “Forget it okay. Let’s just forget it. And move on and- I’ll see you at the studio on Monday. Have fun with Fabian I guess.” 

She turned on her heel and was out the door before he could say anything else. Her sweater was still draped over a chair where she’d left it. Now that he looked closer at it he thought it might have been his sweater, once upon a time. Not that he could remember the last time he’d been able to wear it. He must have grown out of it right after high school. 

Gorgug picked it up and put it in his bag anyway. He’d give it back to her the next time he saw her. 

It was the summer after senior year. They had been out all day and then the Bad Kids had arrived and suddenly they were planning to be out all night too. Fig looked over at Gorgug, and waited for him to smile. She knew this press shit took more of a toll on him than it did on her and it still weighed heavy on her. 

He smiled. She felt her shoulders relax a little. 

Fig leaned over to him, having to rock up on her toes to even try and reach his ear.  “I know it’s been a long day. We can bounce if you want, you can say I’m tired.” 

“Are you? Tired?” 

“No. I think I’m fine but if you are-” 

He smiled a little more. “I’m okay. Might be an early one but- It’ll be nice to see everyone.” 

He was right, it would be. It was something she thought- hoped they were still getting used to fresh off the back of graduating, not seeing each other every minute of everyday. Well- She still saw Gorgug that much but that was different than all of them together in one place making the air electric with how much they were all laughing. 

They’d done some interviews and then some meet and greets and the rest of them had been there in the green room when they came back in, sprawled across the couches and the floor. All of them being back together had felt a little like breathing more easily.  

After that they’d all piled onto their pokey little tour bus. Gorgug couldn’t stand with his shoulders straight in it if he didn’t want to hit his head on the ceiling despite her increasingly frequent reminders to Lola that they needed a bigger one. All six of them crammed in together really felt like they were stretching the boundaries of the thing. The Thistlesprings had needed the Hangvan for some folk festival thing or they would’ve taken that instead; they both knew it would have been comfier than the bus they were renting. 

She wasn’t sure who had poured the first drink. The first was cheap-ish tequila which meant probably Kristen and then some type of sweet wine that was probably Fabian’s idea but could have been Adaine’s. Fig was a few drinks in now and burning up. It wasn’t even the alcohol, she thought. She was sat criss cross on Gorgug’s bed, his sheets rucked up around her and him squished up next to her and it sort of felt like she was sitting inside his chest, like the world outside of the two of them was slightly smeared. 

She bonked her head against his shoulder, hair falling around her face where it had come undone from the plaits she normally kept it in. She should teach him to plait her hair, she thought, with all his artificer training he’d probably be good at it. She could feel his eyes on the back of her head. 

He leant closer towards her, their faces were placed wrong for him to kiss her but for a second she thought he just might. Her hair must be tickling his face. 

“How are you doing?” 

She blushed, wondered what he would say if he knew what she was thinking. Not that she had thought it before. At least not that she had thought it often. 

She sunk her teeth into her lip before she spoke. “Good. I’m doing good. I kind of zoned out. What’s Kristen yelling about now?” 

Gorgug leaned in closer. “She’s telling us we need to do something crazy while we’re young. She suggested she and Riz get married because- I’m not sure. I couldn’t quite follow her logic-” 

“We could get married.” Her face was on fire. “I mean-” 

“I heard that!” Kristen yelled from across the bus. “No take backs.” 

Fig swallowed something that was a little like fear and a little like excitement. There were far worse things in the world than knowing Gorgug was staying by her side. Not that she needed anything like marriage to know that. 

Gorgug paused. “We can’t actually get married.” 

Kristen was fussing them both now, had pulled some cheap veils from Adaine’s jacket and was trying to secure them in both of their hair. “Course not.” She dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand and Gorgug’s veil pitched to the side. “But we can do it here and we’ll know.” 

Which was how Fig found herself stood outside the tour bus so Gorgug could stand up straight in her pleated skirt and his hoodie while Kristen conducted something that could have been a marriage ceremony if you didn’t really listen to it. 

“I now pronounce you band mates and Bad Kids!” Kristen pronounced with a flourish. “You can now kiss if you want to.” 

Fig did want to, was the thing. Her whole body was humming with something that could have been want and could have been the wine and gods- She wanted to kiss him. But she didn’t know what he wanted and she couldn’t tell what the look on his face was. Something she couldn’t quite read but was almost painfully sweet to look at. 

Gorgug leant forward.

Fig held her breath. 

His lips brushed the top of her cheek, almost the corner of her eye. His breath was warm against her skin and she could smell his cologne and she pushed down the disappointment that that was all he wanted. 

Gorgug’s suit was too tight in the shoulders, Sam thought. It was the right colour, a deep teal that looked good against both of their skin, and he’d folded his pocket square right but it was too tight in the shoulders. It was too tight in the shoulders and it was making the fabric pull weird and making him hunch forward a little. She hadn’t been able to make his fitting, something had come up, but she didn’t think she would have had to. Fabian was supposed to be there and she figured he at least would pay attention to the details. 

Gorgug looked- She wasn’t sure. Surprised maybe, that she was actually walking down the aisle, Rebecca Nightingale at her side. Sam tightened her grip on her arm and Rebecca squeezed hers in return. 

The music didn’t feel like it was quite reaching her ears as she reached the end of the aisle, hugged her mother and then took her place opposite Gorgug. Antiope stood between them ready to officiate. Ostentatia, her maid of honour stood behind her, stepped forward to squeeze her hip and then stepped back into line. 

Gorgug still looked surprised. “You look- I mean-” He swallowed hard, all the muscles in his throat moving. “You look wonderful.” 

And she did. She knew it. If she could control no other part of the day she could control that. She’d looked at a long line of shimmery mermaid dresses but none of them had felt right. She’d surprised even herself by going for something else. Her dress was a blue so pale it read as white in the bright light of the church, with a deep sweetheart neckline and lace cap sleeves. The skirt was not quite a full circle but it held its shape well and she knew it moved beautifully when she walked. She’d had it made just for her and it was almost sweet. It made her feel sweet. Which she thought she should. Sweet felt right for the day. Sweet felt right for Gorgug. 

She took a breath, held it, released it. Took another. The ceremony started. Antiope was talking. She still sort of felt like she was in a bubble of water and everyone else was on dry land. Like this was happening to someone who looked like her, who held her shoulders the same way but wasn’t quite her, a difference somewhere in the centre of her chest. 

The ceremony moved forward. Antiope was still talking. Gorgug looked pale, like he was about to faint. She thought she might understand how he was feeling. 

Antiope paused. “And if there are any objections, speak now or forever hold your peace.” 

The whole room was a held breath. She kept looking at Gorgug, wished Antiope would keep talking. Her hands felt sweaty. Her hands never felt sweaty. 

There was a rustling somewhere in the seats. The room breathed out but she didn’t, she just closed her eyes and hoped whatever it was was over quickly. Didn’t they know she’d planned this. She’d worked for this it was meant to be- 

“Um. I’m- I’m sorry. But- Don’t. Don’t do this.” A shaky voice came from the pews. 

Antiope’s hand was on her shoulder, Ostentatia’s on her hip. Sam kept her eyes closed for a second and, for the first time in a while, breathed all the way out. 

When she opened her eyes Gorgug had gone completely still, looking not quite at her, not quite at the voice in the crowd. He was looking at some undefined middle point, his eyes not quite focusing and his face drained of blood. She didn’t know what she was thinking. She never quite knew what he was thinking. 

If he wouldn’t look she would. She had to. 

Fig Faeth stood in the second row of her wedding, her friends sitting around her looking shocked. She wore a red shirt tucked into a circle skirt that her hands kept smoothing over, brushing new wrinkles into. Her eye makeup was normally dark and heavy but today it didn’t look smudged in the way it normally did. Her eyes were still wet and it looked like she probably hadn’t been sleeping. 

Gorgug still wasn’t moving. They both looked a little heartbroken. 

Oh, Sam thought, they didn’t know. 

Ostentatia’s hand squeezed her hip. 

Fig started crying where she stood, tears falling silent down her cheeks; she pushed them away with the heel of her hand. 

Sam wondered if she was going to start crying too. If at some point this was going to become something that hurt. She couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t imagine Fig’s shaking hands or the fact Gorgug still hadn’t moved. Still hadn’t even said a word. 

If nothing else she was worth more than someone who didn’t say a word. 

She turned to Ostentatia. “Let’s go.” 

The hotel room was small and neat, Gorgug’s stuff already packed into his backpack. Fig knew she was standing awkwardly but there wasn’t a chair and Gorgug was sitting on the bed so she couldn’t sit on the bed because then they’d be sitting together on a bed and-

He laughed. “I think I just got left at the altar.” 

She laughed too, a snotty hiccuping sound. “I mean, I think that’s maybe my fault.” 

He twisted his tie between his hands. “Yeah. Maybe a little.” 

“Sorry.” Fig wasn’t sure if she meant that. But then she wasn’t really sure of anything anymore. 

She’d objected at his wedding and he hadn’t quite looked at her but Sam had. 

Sam had and then her shoulders relaxed and she turned and walked away. By the time Gorgug had remembered to look at her she’d already been gone and Fig hadn’t. Fig had still been standing there, away from Adaine and Kristen because she hadn’t known what she was going to do, fidgeting and crying with her heart in her throat. 

The chapel had emptied pretty quickly after that. When it had become clear a wedding wouldn’t be happening. 

That she had stopped a wedding from happening.  

“Sorry.” She said again. 

“It's- It’s okay.” He wrapped his tie around one hand, unwound it. Wound it round the other, unwound it. Started over. “Sorry. I- I kind of feel like I’ve just woken up. Like-” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Weird day, I guess.” 

She couldn’t stop herself from laughing again, the sound still a little fragile around the edges. “Yeah. I think- For sure. Weird day.” 

He looked away from her. “So- Why’d you-” He paused. Pulled his bottom lip between his teeth. Decided the question was worth it. “Why'd you do it?” 

“Oh. Yeah.” Fig turned the moment over in her mind, the hollow feeling in her chest and the heat in her hands. She replayed it again and again, trying to pinpoint the moment where it had turned from an idea, a silly one at that, to her standing up at his wedding and objecting. She couldn’t find it. Not one moment, but instead nearly two years of them. Two years of watching him slip further and further away from her until all they were were bandmates, barely even friends. “I- I don’t know- I mean. I did it because- Because I couldn’t imagine you doing it. Going through with it and us falling apart completely and- I don’t know.” 

Silence stretched between them . 

“Sorry. That’s so- Selfish. ” 

“Yeah. Maybe.” 

Fig pressed her hands into her eyes. 

“Thank you though."

“Thank you?” She stared at him. “You aren’t mad at me?” 

She watched as Gorgug thought about it, the relaxed set of his shoulders despite the fidgeting of his hands. The way he was here and talking to her and not chasing after his runaway bride, apologising over and over again for her and her actions and her stupid bleeding heart. 

“No. I don’t think so. I think- I’m glad someone said something.” Gorgug slipped his crystal out of his pocket and she swallowed the urge to ask if Sam had texted him back. If all of this had been nothing but an interruption. A postponement. She hoped that wouldn’t be the case. Sam deserved better than an interrupted wedding and Gorgug sitting and talking to her. Not that she liked Sam but- Gorgug had. Gorgug did. And Gorgug had good taste in people and maybe she had been being unfair. 

Maybe. 

“I’m glad I said something. I think I am.” Fig smoothed her hands over her skirt again. “I wish I’d said it sooner- I shouldn’t have made a scene like that.” 

Gorgug laughed. “Sooner might have been good. Do you know how expensive weddings are? It was crazy. Everything cost so much and when I would suggest other things Sam- Well. I think we had different visions. I hope she’s okay.” 

“I hope she’s okay too.” 

The next week didn’t pass quickly, but, well it passed. At least it passed, Fig thought. It passed and despite everything the Bad Kids were still talking to her. Gorgug was still talking to her.

She thought about texting Sam on the first day. Didn’t. On the second day, didn’t again. On the third day she just sent flowers. She didn’t send a card, that felt like it would have been rude. 

The week after what should have been Gorgug’s wedding was, shockingly, normal. The Bad Kids texted him. So did Sam. Not often but enough. They asked after each other, she asked him when he would be picking his stuff up from her apartment. That should probably have been a sign of- Well of something. That all his stuff could be removed from what he’d never stopped thinking of as her home in a little under a week. 

He was sort of bored of people asking him if he was okay. That was maybe another sign.

Fig noticeably, infuriatingly, hadn’t really been texting him. He thought maybe he didn’t understand her anymore. Didn’t understand the person who would stand up his wedding and then wouldn’t even sit on the same hotel bed as him. She’d chosen to pace and to fidget rather than risk their legs brushing together. 

They’d talked around it until late at night. He’d told her about Sam, the good parts mostly. Because there had been good parts. He needed her to see that. But even as he did it it felt like a healed wound. A closing chapter. A story he would tell maybe, some years down the line, how he almost got married to the wrong woman and she almost got married to the wrong man. 

He’d almost- almost- asked her to stay the night. He’d caught the question before it hit the space between them. It would have been stupid anyway, Fig had chosen to sit on the floor rather than sit with him. She’d never want to share a bed with him and he hadn’t meant anything by it just-

He maybe didn’t want to be alone. 

He maybe, really, had missed her. 

So he was glad when the Thursday after the day he should have got married she texted him “ meet me at the studio? band practice? ”

Band practice was normal. Band practice was moving forward and his chest starting to move in a regular time and a sign that maybe, just maybe things could go back to something like they had been. Go back to a place where he knew all his friends and he knew himself and wasn’t the man who had almost had a church wedding with the wrong woman. A place where he had dreams of kissing Fig, of a fake wedding in the back of a tour bus, and didn’t wake up crying. 

He thought he maybe liked a past version of himself better. He didn’t want that to be true. 

The studio was the same as it always had been, though with more photographers waiting outside the door than normal. A little spark of anger stirred in his gut, if it wasn’t for photographers two years ago that felt like a hundred he wondered if he wouldn’t have got himself into this whole mess. They weren’t going to get an interesting photo anyway. Just him in his hoodie, not crying, not angry. Just there.

There because Fig had asked him to be- but they didn’t know that part. 

Once he got into the building it was like the world hadn’t changed at all. Everything was the same shape it always had been. A sweater Fig had stolen from him draped over a chair at the mixing desk. A drum kit set up just the way he liked it. Fig recording her vocal tracks over and over and over again, looking for some quality to them that he couldn’t hear. 

Fig still there , all chipped nail polish and messy dyed hair and platform boots that made her just the right height for him to rest his chin on top of her head. Not that he would do that. That was too close to- To something. Something that felt like it was probably wrong considering, well, the all of it. 

She was sitting on one of the desks, something Lola always told her not to do, chewing the end of her pen while trying to unsnarl some tangle she heard in the song. Another thing he couldn’t hear. Gorgug thought it had been right three tangles ago but wouldn’t deny each time she proclaimed she had fixed it; it had been a little better. Eventually it would be better enough and she would grin, shaking out excess energy from her hands or rocking back and forth on her feet. 

Since getting to the studio he couldn’t stop thinking about her. That wasn’t true. Since she stepped up at her wedding, since they toured at eighteen, since corn nearly killed them together on the first day of school he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. But today it was a problem. Today it was blood rushing in his ears blocking out every other thing and the more he thought about it the more it felt like coming apart at the seams. The more it felt like running out of time. 

He’d nearly missed it. Nearly missed her. 

He’d already blown up his life once, Gorgug thought, what was one more risk. One more kiss. He hadn’t thought the last one through, he thought he’d been thinking this one through since he was fourteen and could barely speak without stuttering and she gave him drumsticks and chose him and- 

Maybe he’d done enough thinking. 

Gorgug closed the space between them, standing in front of her. She put her pen down and he watched her mouth form the start of a question but before she could say it he kissed her. 

For a second the world stood still. For a few, she didn’t kiss him back. 

There were worse ways to end the world, Gorgug thought, than getting to kiss her once. 

Then, slowly , her hand found its way to his waist. 

Fig Faeth was kissing him back, her hand tangled in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him impossibly closer, and it didn’t feel like anything would ever end, ever again. 

It took every atom in his body to pull back. To breathe. The hand in his shirt tried to tug him back towards her, to keep kissing her. He was breathing as hard as if he had just taken a sequence of hits. This close to her he could see a split in the corner of her lip and the places where her mascara had smudged under her eyes. 

His world had become impossibly small in the moment between not kissing her and kissing her. Narrowing itself down until all there was was her sitting on a mixing desk and him trying not to kiss her again and again. 

Gorgug Thistlespring thought he might be the luckiest man alive. 

“We should-” He sunk his teeth into his lip, hoping the sting would ground him a little so that he could get the words out. “I should have asked. Sorry. We should- We should take things slow-”

A frown flickered across her face. “Right. Of course. Sorry. I shouldn’t have-” 

“You didn’t-” 

“Do you- Do you want to take things slow?” She looked nervous. Delicate. He realised he still wasn’t touching her and he wanted to scoop her into his arms. Keep her in his chest until the dark patches under her eyes faded away and her hands didn’t shake so much. He thought if he touched her, he might stain her. 

“I want- Fuck . I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt anyone else. I don’t want to make another mistake. I want to kiss you again.” 

She paused. Gorgug didn’t know if he had ever been nervous like this type of nervous. Like something too full and about to spill over. 

“Do you think this was a mistake?” Tears started to bead up in the corners of her eyes. 

“No-” His voice came out too loud. “ No . Just- My record recently hasn’t been the best. I got- I got left at the altar you know?” 

She smiled, a small watery thing. “Yeah Gorgug, I know.” 

Fig tipped forward, her forehead hitting his shoulder. His heart stuttered for a second before he let himself put a hand on her back, right as her shoulders started to shake. It took him a moment to realise she was laughing. Small and quiet, but laughing all the same in a way he didn’t think he had heard before. That was another lucky thing, he thought, that there were still parts of her he hadn’t heard before. That there were still pieces of her for him to learn. That that would have been the case even if he hadn’t spent the past years the way he had spent them. 

A laugh slipped from his mouth, something like joy or sheer fucking wonder that he hadn’t lost her. Not as friends and not as something else. Something he wasn’t sure of yet. 

“I think- I think I need to take things slow maybe.” He breathed out. She didn’t move away but her laughter quieted. “I think I want to take things slow. I want to get this right.” 

Fig looked up at him, her eyes wide again. “I can do slow. Slow sounds- Good.” 

“Good.” 

“Good.” She smiled, still small, still quiet, but more solid this time. Close to the smile he had been waiting for, the moment where she unravelled all the tangles and was left with the shimmering thing that she had been looking for. “Does slow mean I can’t kiss you again?” 

“You can-” In an instant there was no air in his lungs, words stalling in his throat. He tried again. “ Please.”