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Living with Luke has given Elliot roughly forty-nine new things to be annoyed with him about, but he must have the tact not to mention them, because young love.
Their first posting has placed them at the edge of the Forest of the Suicides in a little nest all their own, with Serene and Golden half a day’s walk away in dryad land. There are many things that Elliot enjoys about this: he has a strange and flourishing garden, a growing vocabulary of harpy terms, and regular jaunts to still-wary trolls who seemingly cannot adjust to Elliot’s natural verve and panache. He is resentful of the fact that he must haul himself into the house by a rope bridge so eternal that his arms are always sore; it is very unfair that Luke can simply flit in and out to his heart’s desire, and also annoying that Elliot must continue to be somewhat athletic in a world that could not take the time to invent elevators.
The nest is not unlike the studio flat Elliot might have taken had he decided to remain on the other side of the border. Of course, it is in a tree, which is slightly different. Its floor is hard-packed dirt and its roof is thatched; Elliot is always finding leaves in his books and the ceiling leaks something terrible when it rains. In those ways it is indeed very different.
The best part of the nest is the bed. It is not exactly a bed, in the most traditional sense. While the rest of the harpies line their sleeping quarters with sticks and grasses, as a nod to Elliot and Luke’s more human preferences their little alcove is padded with pillows and quilts. There is nothing Elliot likes so much as face-planting directly into it at the end of a long day, the soft rustling of the tree oddly soothing as it lulls them to sleep. And Elliot is never cold at night (though he is absolutely frigid the rest of the time) because he is always encased in wings. Speaking of —
Luke is incredibly annoying.
Elliot is preternaturally adaptable, open to new possibilities, and not a little whiner about living in a tree that he must literally climb every day of his young life when he could be doing something else much more valuable with that time. The same could not be said for Luke. Luke is very precise about his surroundings, apparently. Having never lived with him before in any real capacity, Elliot was unaware of this. In retrospect, however, the evidence was there. Luke’s cabin back at the border camp was always eerily spotless, a place for everything and everything in its place. He could not frantically clean a tent so Elliot had never been a witness to it before, but now Luke is always wiping at tables and sweeping floors that are made out of dirt and therefore futile to sweep. He’s always making the books into neat stacks, or picking up anything Elliot puts down for even one second so he can return it to its original resting place. At the end of the night he hovers while Elliot reads aloud and plucks feathers from his hair (another futile gesture, considering the state of Elliot’s hair generally). Whenever Luke discovers another piece of bone pottery, he heaves a sigh that seems to come not just from the depths of his soul, but from the souls of every Sunborn ancestor he has ever had.
In accepting this posting, Elliot believes that Luke may have given in to a latent desire to understand this aspect of his heritage. But he is not going to go easy. Elliot understands and so he tries to be understanding, but he also might snap if Luke tries to dust the branches again.
Of course, there are many things about Luke that Elliot cannot pretend he does not appreciate.
The warmth of his wings, for one. The way he presses an awkward little kiss to the side of Elliot’s neck when Elliot is working or sleeping or doing anything that has absorbed his attention. It’s always awkward no matter how often Luke does it, like he can’t get the angle right or he’s afraid Elliot will make fun of him for trying. Elliot would, just on principle, but he quite likes being surprised by the dry brush of Luke’s lips against his throat at odd moments.
Luke is also not a terrible cook. That makes it all the sweeter that he pretends Elliot is not a terrible cook in return, when one bite of Elliot’s pancakes left him hilariously blanched. Elliot plans to get progressively worse at cooking until Luke’s people-pleasing politeness eventually cracks. Because, as Elliot knows, Luke is a secret jerk and only needs the right circumstances to truly blossom.
Elliot likes that he is one of the few people who knows that Luke is shy, but what he likes even better is being the only person who knows Luke is secretly not shy at all. He only needs the right circumstances; Luke is very precise about his surroundings.
Luke will never dance with someone at a party, and he’s even stiff hand-in-hand with Elliot in a crowd. But Elliot remembers, with a suffusion of warm affection, the first time he caught Luke dancing along while Elliot sang in the privacy of their little nest. Elliot held back on teasing him (just that once, mind; he was playing a long game) and now Luke will dance with him on the hard-packed floor any time Elliot likes. As long as no one sees but Elliot.
Sometimes Elliot thinks about Luke and the unicorn, the hot flush of embarrassment on Luke’s face and his sweater in shreds, when Luke rises naked from their bed in the morning. Or when Elliot wakes to find Luke already standing in their we’ll-call-it-a-kitchen, naked and eating an apple, sunlight straining through the very open boughs and painting his entire body gold.
Or, better yet, Luke straddling Elliot, muscled thighs spread and solid under Elliot’s biting fingers. His body so taut with strain it’s tantamount to showing off, his gold-and-pearl wings extended end to end in the small space. Elliot’s wet dream of a boyfriend. He certainly doesn’t mind that.
There are moments when Elliot loves Luke as much as he is irritated by him, the two emotions mixing to create something strange and new that he has only ever felt around Luke. Late at night they will talk under the safe cover of Luke’s warm wing, like children whispering their secrets in a blanket fort. Elliot never did that, and he knows Luke never did it either. Two solitary kids stumbling their way towards each other in very different ways. Elliot thinks all his secrets are stupidly sad, but Luke’s are sadly stupid because most of them make Elliot terribly jealous.
Luke tells him what it’s like to grow up with a sister like Louise when you are a shy, sensitive boy who panics when pushed too hard. All Louise knows how to do is push, and it’s with such natural charm that Luke felt too guilty to let himself be angry any time his boundaries were crossed. Elliot understands this, as he understands most things. He aches sometimes to think of the little Luke he had so immediately dismissed, but at the same time he thinks a few crossed boundaries are a small price to pay to grow up with a sister like Louise.
He tells Luke that, but he tells him quietly and instead of being angry, Luke is thoughtful. “Well, then you can have her,” Luke says finally. “She’s half yours now anyway.”
And again Elliot feels both things at once: a love so intense it shocks him, and a wriggling little huff that Luke would try to give so freely something that cannot be given at all.
When a skirmish breaks out with bandits and some villagers invoke a treaty Elliot himself had penned, Luke has to venture forth with his troop to deal with it. Elliot is left alone in the nest for the very first time. He does not sit idle. He has more than a few harpy friends now whom he can call on at will, Podarge and Celeano only two of a very impressive number. (Seven.) He can visit with trolls or dally with dryads. There is a stream nearby that Elliot has been floating bottles down for days. Golden invited him over to learn how to knit so they could better pass the time while their partners are away. Elliot has correspondence to keep up on and books to read. He’s busy.
But none of it satisfies the restless anger he feels when Luke is away. Probably jumping from stupid heights and brandishing his sword at people. Putting himself in the crosshairs like the noble idiot he is.
Elliot writes to him, but it takes three tries before he can write down anything besides Luke’s name. Lover, he starts, to be cheeky, but then crosses it out. Lark of my heart and nightingale of my soul, he tries, which would have been the kind of thing Serene read aloud around campfires, but crosses it out. So desperate is he that that all his tact evaporates and he writes —
If you die, I will kill you and have your skin turned into a hat that I will wear scornfully for the rest of my life and any time someone compliments me on it I will tell them I made it out of my idiot boyfriend who could not even stay alive when someone told him to.
I love you, you loser, and you love me. So come back.
Elliot is so tense waiting for Luke to return that he’s caught off guard when he finally does. Elliot is working at his desk, piles of engineering texts to one side (he will bring the Industrial Revolution to the Borderlands, for the dream of central heating if nothing else) and a burgeoning mermaid dictionary to the other, when there is the sudden sound of wings. “I wasn’t expecting you ‘til later, Celeano,” he says distractedly as he turns, and there’s Luke.
He’s smiling a little in his dopey way, dusty from the journey and smudged with dirt. A cut bisects his temple that had been stitched back up and his cheek is bruised, but he is whole and alive. Elliot throws himself at Luke, which almost knocks them both over because Elliot is taller now. It is an eternal surprise.
“You are terrible, I hate this,” Elliot says into Luke’s neck.
Luke’s arms encircle Elliot, too tight in the best way. “I missed you too.”