“So,” Sorrel asked as he drove away from his friend’s house a week later, “how did you like your first game night with our friends?”
Our friends, he had said. I wasn’t sure if he meant his and his family’s or his and mine, but honestly, I did feel like I had several friends there.
Sorrel, of course, but also Riven and Ren, Honey, Sophie and Audrey, Devon, and even Knox and Beatrice. Drew, Sorrel’s police friend, I didn’t know as well, but he’d been working with us to try to deal with the construct. I’d also met Nathan, Sorrel’s platonic soulmate, and Nathan’s boyfriend Miles – both of whom I’d talked to on the phone the week I’d kept Claire but hadn’t met in person yet – as well as Honey’s boyfriend Kade and Nathan’s brother/Sorrel’s employee, Benji. All of the people seemed pretty nice and accepting of me, although Sorrel had warned me in advance that Kade was shy and probably wouldn’t talk much to me, so at least I wasn’t surprised when that did, indeed, happen.
“It was nice. I don’t think I’ve played party games with people in years.” Middle school, maybe? Possibly before that. Back when some kids would still invite me to things before they gave up entirely.
“You can blame Benji, probably, for game night being a regular thing. We used to do it sometimes, but it was more random, you know? After Ren and Riven started dating, though, and especially after they got their own place, Benji somehow decided we should start having regular game nights and all of us went along with it.” Sorrel smiled a bit. “That’s often how it goes with him – he gets an idea in his head, runs off with it, and we all get taken along for the ride. Not that I’m complaining – it’s actually been great to have some time with friends that doesn’t have to do with threats to the city or constructs or whatever.”
“Your friends all seem nice,” I informed him.
Sorrel threw a glance at me. “Your friends, too. You told me you agreed to be friends with Riven, and Devon’s your relative and looks up to you a lot. Ren and Honey like you, too, and I know they appreciate everything you’ve done, for me and with the whole construct thing. Knox seems to like you pretty well, and Beatrice actually calls you by your name. She still won’t do that for me – she only bothers with that if she likes someone.”
I was willing to accept his assessment, but it actually made me happy that I had so many people I could consider friends. Most of my life, people were quick to exclude me when they couldn’t understand me, but this circle of people was doing their best to try to include me and accept me even if they didn’t fully understand.
“You and Nathan have been friends a long time?” I asked calmly, although underneath I was kind of curious about that relationship.
“Yeah, his family used to live next door to us, we would wander in and out of each other’s houses all the time. I realized we were soulmates at some point.” Sorrel looked thoughtful. “Platonic for me, because I’m straight – and yes, I know that’s weird for a fairy – but there was a time, a long time, actually, that he had feelings for me. I’m glad he has someone else he cares about that way now. I think he and Miles are actually great together.”
I was somewhat surprised to discover Sorrel was straight, because he wasn’t kidding, that was unusual for a fairy. Most fairies were pan, to my knowledge.
“Miles is,” I paused, trying to come up with the right word.
“Miles has a difficult past because of an abusive ex, that’s all I know. Well, and he’s soulmates with Riven and Nathan, and Riven’s adopted him as his brother.” Sorrel shrugged. “They were really all quite adamant that we become friends and I not scare him off. It took him a while to warm up to me, but we’re friends now, too. He hasn’t told me about his past, but I know Nathan, Riven, and Ren know, and I’m okay with it taking a while for him to trust me about that – or if he never tells me. I hope he does, because he’s with my best friend and is basically family now, but if he doesn’t, that’s okay, too. It sounds like whatever he went through was pretty bad.”
Ah. Maybe that explained it. He’d seemed nervous, but not because he was shy or introverted, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It’d also interested me that he’d spent most of the evening in his shifted form, but he’d shifted when he’d gotten overwhelmed by Audrey, so maybe he was more comfortable in his shifted form?
“Riven adopted him?”
“Unofficially,” Sorrel explained. “Apparently they understand each other, are platonic soulmates, and then they both were only kids, so they just decided they could be each other’s family.”
“That’s sweet,” I responded calmly. I wished I could express just how nice I thought it was that they were adopting each other like that. I hadn’t come from their background, but I did understand the idea of having biological family who didn’t understand you and hanging onto someone who wasn’t biologically related but was so close to you anyway that you didn’t care.
Sorrel pulled up in front of my apartment building. “I’d walk you up, but….” He said apologetically while glancing towards the back seat, where a sleeping Claire was securely fastened in her carseat.
“No problem,” I assured him as I unbuckled.
“Elizabeth?” Sorrel’s voice stopped me before I got out of the car. “I don’t know if I said this properly, but thanks. For saving me, for helping us with the construct, for training Knox and Ren, for protecting Riven from the witch – I don’t think we could have beaten it without you.”
I felt embarrassed but happy with his thanks. “You’re welcome. I’m glad I was able to help.”
Actually, it’d been nice to get involved in something like this just because I wanted to, because I was trying to help protect people that mattered to me. No one was giving me orders that sometimes didn’t make sense, I was doing this on my own and helping figure out how to deal with the threat. It was a nice change to do something just because I wanted to.
Sorrel waved goodbye as I left his car, but I saw a flicker of something cross his face, like he’d wanted to say something else but hadn’t.
As I got back to my apartment and prepared for bed, I wondered what it was that he wanted to say. Something further about the construct? Something about game night? Or…about something else?
I laid back on my bed, thinking. We’d been talking about Sorrel’s soulmate, which brought a question to my mind. When I closed my eyes and thought of the word “soulmate,” Sorrel’s face flashed into my mind. Every single time. From what I knew about how familiars identified soulmates, I was pretty sure that meant he and I were soulmates, but shouldn’t he know that by now? Fairies figured it out quicker than many species, from what I knew. Was that possibly what he wanted to bring up? I didn’t know that it would change anything with us – maybe that was why he’d decided to be friends with me and worked to figure me out – but it was kind of nice to know that we were connected that way.
My mind drifted a little to the other thing I’d learned tonight and I mentally frowned at myself. Learning that Sorrel was straight changed nothing about us. We were friends, and even if he’d been pan, that wouldn’t be more or less likely to change. Did I want it to change? I wasn’t sure. The only time I’d considered a romantic relationship with someone before had been the snow leopard shifter, and he and I were really not a good fit for each other. Sorrel…well, we were a good fit, or at least I thought so, based on how our interactions so far had gone. But that didn’t change the underlying problem.
It was one thing to be friends with someone who couldn’t express emotions. It was another thing to be in a romantic relationship with them. To consider having them be your kid’s parent. Would Sorrel be happy with a partner that could never really express how she felt about him? Or with Claire having a mom who wouldn’t be able to show her love for her? I did care about Claire, I actually liked her a great deal, but it was hard to think that anyone would want someone like me to be her parent. Even if Sorrel was willing to overlook my issues for himself, could he do that for Claire?
I sighed and shook my head a bit. I was getting sidetracked. Did I find Sorrel attractive? Yes. Did I like hanging out with him? Yes. But friends could do that. I didn’t need to consider more, I didn’t need to think about the possibility of anything more. Was I potentially interested in more? Well…yes, but I wasn’t about to be greedy. Too much of my life, I hadn’t even had friends. Now I did have one, a good one – and several others besides that I got from meeting him – and I didn’t need to ruin that by wondering about romance. Friendship was fine. I could be happy with that. I would be happy with that.
Semi-satisfied with my pep talk, I decided to go to sleep and hope that maybe tomorrow, that thought would be purged from my mind.
~~~~~
Unfortunately, the thought only seemed to get worse. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Sorrel kept making random comments that could almost be taken as flirty, which kept feeding the thought whether or not I liked it. Nor did it help when he had me babysit Claire and she always seemed happy to see me and babbled away excitedly about everything while eagerly grabbing at whatever piece of clothing was nearest her. I couldn’t deny that she was really cute and I might be getting pretty attached to her.
“You are quite a grabby baby,” I informed her as I pried her tiny fingers from my collar. “Perhaps one of your toys instead?”
“Eeee!” She clapped her hands together excitedly and happily reached for the toy.
E or Eeee. I’d noticed she seemed to be saying that more lately. Sorrel had discussed the other day how he wasn’t sure if she was actually trying to start saying words – like Nana for Nathan or Mimi for Miles – or she was just making sounds generally. If it wasn’t just a sound, she might actually be trying to call me E, which was probably about the best I could expect from a baby. Elizabeth was kind of a mouthful for someone with only two teeth.
I let her crawl around on the rug and get excited over every toy she found, then abandon it for the next one, then get excited about the first one when she “rediscovered” it, and so on. It was kind of amusing how excited she was about everything.
“Okay,” I told her as I picked up a baby book. “We have to get you started on books early because it’s important that you like books.”
She blinked at me and happily moved her arms up and down. I took that as consent to start reading to her.
By the time Sorrel arrived, Claire was sleeping soundly, tightly hugging a stuffed cat Honey had given her that she seemed particularly fond of.
“Thanks,” he told me softly when he realized she was sleeping. “I didn’t expect to have an emergency call but sometimes those come in.”
Emergencies in his line of work probably weren’t that uncommon, particularly given that he was the only vet at his clinic. “Have you considered hiring another vet?”
“Yeah.” Sorrel accepted the tea I offered and sank onto the couch. “I should actually hire at least one more vet, realistically. My staff are all supernaturals, though, intentionally. Trying to find another vet who’s also a supernatural is actually not that easy – they’re out there, of course, but they’re not necessarily here in Avenglade. The easiest way to hire a vet would be to know someone already in vet school and just plan to hire them, rather than posting generally when I know most of the applicants would be humans. It’s not that I have anything against humans, it’s just,” he rubbed the back of his neck, “I use magic to help heal some of the patients, so that’s an issue. Plus, one of my vet techs who always helps behind the scenes is great with animals, surgeries, anything we give her – she’s not good with humans, though, and tries to stay in the back areas where no humans are and avoid any clients that are humans. We work with her on that, and it’s not really an issue. But I can’t really hire a human knowing she’ll be very uncomfortable and might likely leave. It’d be better to just find another supernatural.”
That made sense to me. Besides, it was his business – if he wanted to just hire supernaturals for his own peace of mind, I was pretty sure he was allowed to.
“How did the emergency go? Is the pet okay?”
Sorrel nodded, looking relieved. “Yeah, thankfully a minor surgery but it could have been worse. It’s good the car wasn’t going faster when it hit him.”
We spoke for a little longer about his work, Sorrel apparently not wanting to wake Claire up to go home.
Comments (21)
See all