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.