Show Me How to Get Off the Ground

Normally, Kabru liked to go out on Friday nights and party, which for him usually meant drinking and getting laid. It gave him the rest of the weekend to recover in case he indulged too much, and still left enough time to get some studying done… But tonight he didn’t feel up to it. That was why at 7pm he was sprawled out on the big sofa in the dormitory’s communal living room, half-listening to the local radio station and half-watching a muted rugby match on the telly, while sipping from a glass of vodka periodically.

The building at Earthdigger University that housed the student dormitory was a traditional urban block structure that had once been multiple attached townhouses and merchant buildings, but over time had been renovated into a cluster of semi-attached buildings that included the student center, the gym, and the dormitory for need and merit-based student housing. Kabru, who received both types of scholarship, lived in the dormitory.

Established in the year 1532, Earthdigger University was one of the oldest schools in the world that specifically catered to the short-lived races. As such, its curriculums were designed around shorter lifespans, which meant that tallmen and halflings actually had a chance of graduating before old age got them. Long-lived races didn’t normally attend Earthdigger, and those that did were usually looked down upon by their peers for having a lesser education. Short-lived students tended to see them as interlopers, taking up space in a school meant for them because they’d failed to get into some other, more prestigious school that was exclusive to the long-lived races.

Despite all of this, Earthdigger was unusually popular across all races, thanks to its location in Sadena on the southern coast of the Eastern Continent. The weather was subtropical, so it was almost never cold, it rained frequently but usually only for short bursts of time. The beaches were beautiful, the architecture old but well-preserved, and the public transportation and other infrastructure was some of the best in the region. It was close to the Eastern Archipelago and its many tallman island nations, and far away from the United Empire and its hostile attitudes towards races the elves deemed inferior.

(Which was all of them, of course.)

It was considered by many to be a party school, somewhere you enrolled to spend time clubbing and going to the beach rather than studying, but they also had an excellent medical program, which was why Kabru had chosen Earthdigger.

Because the party lifestyle was so common it meant that if he’d wanted to, Kabru could have gone on the prowl for somebody new to fuck and there would have been no shortage of acceptable candidates… But even thinking about the effort required was enough to discourage him completely.

Until recently he’d been going out with an older man named Mohan, but after realizing that Mohan had lied about being single, Kabru didn’t want to see him anymore. He’d been ignoring his texts for weeks now.

Kabru hated the idea of being involved in someone else’s infidelity, and felt like an idiot for not figuring out that Mohan was married sooner. The older man had charmed him so much that Kabru had let his guard down, and now he was paying for it with a bruised ego and an aching heart.

The music on the radio faded out and advertisements began to play: a local repair company promising to fix plumbing or air conditioning problems in under 24 hours, a mobile phone service with cheap long-distance rates for calls with 12 different Vestran countries and…

“Are you lonely? Does it feel like you’ll never meet that special someone? Have you given up on dating?” The female radio announcer asked. She had a Sindhi accent, and as she read the ad copy, she dipped back and forth between Common and Sindhi, which was typical for Masala Radio, since they mostly played Sindhi-language music. Even though Kabru was badly out of practice with the language, he was able to understand the gist of what she was saying since Sindhi and Common were part of the same language family, and shared many words and even some grammar rules.

“Why not give traditional match-making a try?” She continued, and Kabru sighed, rubbing his face with both hands in frustration. He hoped the ad wouldn’t last too long, the irony of it was getting under his skin like a splinter. “At Happy Nest, we only employ the most experienced and empathetic marriage brokers to help you find your perfect match. They’ll have you fill out a simple survey and match you with someone according to physical preferences, religion, caste, income level, desired lifestyle--”

The only reason Kabru didn’t switch off the radio or change the station was that Masala Radio was the only Sindhi radio station in town, and he didn’t get a lot of opportunities to listen to people speaking in Sindhi. Mohan spoke Sindhi with him sometimes during their dates, and it had been one of many things he enjoyed about spending time with the man. Listening to the radio blunted that hurt a little.

On the plus side, at least when he was just listening to the radio, Kabru could hear someone speaking his native language without having to worry about responding and sounding like an idiot. He hadn’t spoken Sindhi seriously since he was about ten years old, so his vocabulary was stunted. He’d humiliated himself once, trying to talk dirty in Sindhi during sex. He’d unknowingly used a childish euphemism for penis, and Mohan had laughed so hard that he’d gotten red in the face. It had thoroughly ruined the mood, and put a huge dent in Kabru’s pride. After that he’d been too embarrassed to try and speak in Sindhi again beyond simple yes and no, but he enjoyed it when Mohan spoke to him anyway.

“--Remember, the initial consultation is free, so give us a call, don’t delay! Let Happy Nest find your perfect match today!” The advertisement’s musical jingle signaled the end of the ad, and Kabru sighed with relief as the station ID played, and they faded into another Sindhi pop song.

Hearing the sound of somebody coming in through the dorm’s lobby, Kabru lifted his head to watch the open space between the living room and the central stairwell to see who it was. He instantly recognized his room-mate Lycion by his tall but otherwise shapeless silhouette, and the jingle of his many accessories. Lycion was an elf, and had a plethora of ear and face piercings, including a half-dozen safety pins in one of his ears.

It was a running gag in the dorm that if someone found a stray pin, screw, or other bit of metal hardware and Lycion was around, they’d invariably ask him if he’d lost it, and most of the time the elf would thank them, and then promptly shove the found object into any unoccupied piercing hole he had available. He’d wear it like that for a while too, usually until it fell out, or Kabru nagged him enough. Lycion was lucky he’d never given himself an infection with his antics.

Lycion was studying computer science, and though Kabru knew how to use a computer well enough for day-to-day things, the stuff Lycion did went way over his head.

Of course, wherever Lycion went, so did Fleki, Lycion’s… best friend? Lover? Whatever the relationship was, they were inseparable, like when zoos paired nervous cheetahs up with a dog to keep them calm.

Fleki was a petite elf with thick tufts of matted blonde hair and several tattoos that ranged from tacky to offensive. She didn’t actually live in the dorm, yet somehow Kabru saw her in the common areas more often than anyone who actually lived there.

She didn’t sleep in their room with Lycion, not since the watermelon bong incident last year… But she had to be sleeping somewhere in the dormitory to be around so often, Kabru just had no idea where. Maybe she just didn’t sleep?

Fleki was studying to become a technical spellcaster, and claimed she wanted to become a familiar operator. But she rolled her eyes every time Kabru suggested she might need to pass drug checks to hold down a job like that.

Kabru didn’t know what kind of grades either of them were earning in their classes, but they hadn’t been expelled in the two years he’d known them so they had to be at least passing.

“Aw man, are you listening to that Vestran crap again?” Fleki asked, wrinkling her nose as she flopped down onto the sofa beside Kabru, though her target had been actually landing on top of him. Kabru just managed to sit up in time to avoid getting body-slammed (a typical Fleki greeting).

“Hi Fleki, hi Lycion,” Kabru said flatly, doing his best to avoid spilling his drink while clumsily swinging his legs around so he could rearrange himself into sitting upright.

“The women sound like they’re huffing helium when they sing,” Fleki continued with her critique as she kicked off her boots and put her feet (clad in mismatched novelty socks) up on the coffee table. “And I can’t understand anything the DJs say with that accent.”

Fleki’s loud dislike of Sindhi music was probably not even genuine, but Fleki loved scandalizing people and getting into arguments over every possible topic just for the hell of it. Kabru had learned to ignore it.

Kabru loved all kinds of music, but being a medical student, he had very little free time… And being a scholarship student, he had very little money to spend on things that weren’t essentials. He would have liked to buy albums as they came out, so he could listen to the entire thing as the artists had intended, but he couldn’t. Instead, he just listened to the radio and tried to stay up to date on what was coming out.

He could have afforded to buy all the music he wanted back at his foster mother’s house, but asking her for money was absolutely the last thing Kabru ever wanted to do. If he was ever really desperate, he could always call her… But so far, he’d been away from her house for four years and hadn’t had to ask her for anything. He wanted to keep it that way.

“So, how’s the game going?” Lycion asked, turning the volume on the radio down, but not off, attempting to create a compromise between Fleki and Kabru’s preferences. He carefully set his oversized bag down on the floor and sat in the empty space next to Fleki. He was larger than her in every direction, but somehow managed to take up less room.

“It’s Merini versus Astagiran, and it’s been slow,” Kabru replied, taking a swallow from his vodka.

“Pfffbttt,” Fleki made a prolonged farting sound by blowing air between her pursed lips. “Why are you even watching this? Aren’t you normally out somewhere by now, Mr. Casanova?”

“Morbid curiosity,” Kabru replied, refusing to acknowledge the second question. “Someone has to win, I want to see who.”

“What happens if nobody scores all game?” Fleki asked. “Can you have a tie with zero points? Or do--”

“What are you drinking?” Lycion spoke over her, leaning both arms on top of Fleki’s head, pushing her down and out of his way. “And can I have some?”

“Water,” Kabru lied, and Lycion gave an amused-sounding exhale of air, swinging one of his long arms out past Kabru, trying to grab his glass of vodka. Kabru responded by transferring his glass to his other hand and extending it out as far as he could, out of Lycion’s reach.

“If it’s just water, why won’t you let me have some?” Lycion asked, laying himself across Kabru’s lap while still reaching, crushing a shrieking Fleki in the process.

“Trade me something and I’ll get out the bottle and share,” Kabru said.

“We’ve got beer and weed,” Lycion offered, no longer stretching to try and physically take Kabru’s glass, instead just laying limply across his lap and on top of Fleki, who had given up on pushing Lycion off, and was instead attempting to eject herself out from under Lycion, and into the narrow space between the sofa and the coffee table.

Eventually she wound up in a heap down there, with both legs up on the coffee table and her head on the floor.

“Do you have anything that doesn’t taste like shit?” Kabru asked, trying not to laugh. “I’ll take a brownie or a biscuit or something.”

“Hell yeah, I just made fresh brownies today,” Fleki said as she clambered to her feet. “I’ll go get them…” she paused and gave Kabru a sarcastic bow, complete with archaic hand gestures, like she was performing a religious ritual. “... If I’m allowed to enter the sacred dwelling unsupervised.”

“You can go in our room, just don’t light anything on fire.”

“No promises!” Fleki replied with a cackle, turning to run off.

“Take my laptop upstairs since you’re going!” Lycion shouted after her, which caused Fleki to circle back into the living room to grab Lycion’s bag, before thundering her way up the stairs with all the discreetness of a tap-dance troupe composed entirely of elephants.

While she was gone, Kabru got up and went to the dorm’s kitchenette, got his bottle of Grey Guhin vodka out of the refrigerator, and grabbed a pair of glasses for Fleki and Lycion.

By the time Kabru got back to the sofa, someone had turned the radio off entirely, turned the sound up on the telly, and there was a plastic container full of home-made brownies set out on the coffee table.

Kabru poured his friends their drinks, sat back down, and helped himself to half of a brownie. He didn’t often use cannabion because he was wary of going on a bad trip and having to deal with hallucinations or paranoia… But tonight he really wanted to knock himself out, go to sleep and wake up without any memory of how he’d spent the evening. Cannabion would help him get there faster than vodka alone, and sitting here with friends while he took it would probably ward off any particularly bad side-effects.

“I can’t believe nobody’s scored yet,” Fleki said, her attitude mellowed considerably with the addition of a shot of vodka and an edible. Generally Kabru found Fleki better company when she was high. “It’s been going on for an hour already. Why are they even broadcasting it? Just put up a screen that says ‘sorry, no rugby tonight, everyone too shit’.”

“Merini could win if they traded out three players,” Kabru said. “Unzum, Goldbane, and Kurki are what’s really holding them back.”

“I mean at that rate why not trade the entire team?” Lycion joked.

---

A little while later, Kabru heard someone in the lobby again, and he felt his mood lift when he saw it was Daya. He liked Daya’s company, and knew that her presence might make Lycion and Fleki tone down their antics. He waved to get her attention, and Daya moved to join them.

Daya was a gorgeous dwarven girl in her mid 60s, a muscular blonde with a dignified personality. She was probably the most level-headed person Kabru knew.

She came from a noble family up north, but she’d been disowned for refusing the arranged marriage her family had set up for her. She was trying to make it on her own here at Earthdigger, and she had an athletic scholarship for axe-throwing, a sport that upper-class dwarves participated in with the same kind of genteel enthusiasm that upper-class elves had for equestrian dressage. Kabru knew that she’d almost qualified for the International Games last year, but a wrist injury had kept her off the roster. He hoped she’d make it in, this year.

“Hanging out in the dorm tonight?” Daya asked, leaning against the arm of the sofa next to Kabru. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Kabru said, trying not to sound defensive, even though it was a fair question. He didn’t think he’d ever spent a Friday night hanging out in the dorm doing nothing before.

“He’s sulking,” Lycion said with a knowing smirk, and Kabru kicked him in the leg. “Ow! And violent.”

Thanks to sharing a dorm room, Lycion knew more about Kabru’s personal life than anyone else, and Kabru felt well within his rights to kick him for babbling about it without his permission. Kabru generally tried to keep his personal life as private as possible, but despite his best efforts rumors tended to get around anyway. That meant Kabru had a reputation of being a bit of a slut.

“What’s he sulking about?” Daya leaned around Kabru to bypass him in favor of asking Lycion.

“I’m not sulking,” Kabru said, even though his friends seemed determined to ignore him.

“He’s having a fight with his sugar daddy--”

“He’s not my sugar daddy!”

“You have sex with him, he buys you stuff,” Lycion said. “He’s your sugar daddy.”

As if triggered by the conversation, Kabru’s mobile, laying forgotten on the coffee table, buzzed with a new message, rattling against the wooden surface. Daya and Lycion traded conspiratorial looks, and both of them lunged for the mobile at the same time that Kabru did. Lycion got to it first, while Daya shoulder-checked Kabru back onto the sofa.

“Ooh, he’s been messaging you for weeks! He wants it bad,” Lycion said, scrolling through all of Kabru’s unread messages. “Aw, he’s practically begging you to talk to him. Wants to meet up tonight. What should I tell him?”

“Don’t tell him anything!” Kabru yelped, lunging for his mobile and trying to wrestle it out of Lycion’s grip. The elf passed the device off to Fleki, who ran to hide behind Daya now that Lycion was compromised. The two girls peered at the phone as Lycion caught Kabru in a headlock, pinning him down against the sofa.

“Guys, seriously quit it,” Kabru protested weakly, most of the fight rapidly leaving him. More than anything, he just felt sad and tired. He didn’t have the energy to argue with them.

“Why don’t you want to talk to him?” Daya asked, reasonable and direct as ever. Unlike Fleki and Lycion, Kabru knew she wasn’t asking so she could make fun of him but because she genuinely cared and wanted to help.

“We’re just not seeing eye to eye,” Kabru said with a defeated sigh. “We both want different things from each other that neither of us wants to give. So it’s just… pointless to meet with him anymore.”

“Have you talked to him about it?” Daya asked.

“Well, no,” Kabru said after a little hesitation. “But I don’t need to talk to him about it to know that it’s true, I--”

“I think you should at least try to talk to him,” Lycion said.

“I think… If you’re this certain of it, you’re probably right,” Daya admitted. She tended to side with Kabru, which was one of many reasons that she was his favorite. “But--”

“But?” Kabru said, sighing as Lycion finally let him go.

“Maybe he’ll pleasantly surprise you. You should at least give it a chance. It’s not like you’re doing anything else tonight except getting drunk and watching two of the worst teams of the season fail at playing rugby.”

---

Same place? He’d texted Mohan, ignoring the man’s other messages (they were all some variation of ‘why aren’t you answering me?’ and ‘are you okay?’) in favor of a curt response. Even though Kabru had let Daya coerce him into doing this, he still wasn’t happy about it. It felt like a waste of energy.

Yes, the man texted him back shortly after. Room number 185.

Kabru knew that he stood a much better chance of Mohan listening to him and taking him seriously if he looked good, so he cleaned himself up and changed out of his everyday clothes.

He put on the short black tunic with the silver fringe that Mohan always seemed to like, the earrings that the man had gifted him a month ago, and some bangles around his wrists. As a finishing touch, he lined his eyes with kajal before throwing on a jacket and taking the subway out of historic downtown, where Earthdigger was, to the more modern part of the city where most of the skyscraper buildings, nightclubs and fancy hotels were.

Kabru entered the hotel lobby with the practiced ease of someone who belonged there. He’d done this enough times now that he knew confidence was key. The people at the front desk paid no attention to him, and he was able to find the lifts without trouble.

At least it was a nice hotel, Kabru thought on his way up. One of the things he liked about Mohan was that the man wasn’t stingy, and he always took Kabru to nice places.

Kabru found the door to 185 slightly ajar when he arrived. Standing in the hall and listening in, he could hear the faint sound of the financial news report on the telly. He knocked on the door and waited.

“Come in,” Mohan’s pleasantly cultured voice replied. Like Kabru, Mohan had grown up in Maalinus, the capital of the United Empire, and he’d had an elven education. It was one of several things they had in common, though unlike Kabru, Mohan had not actually been raised by elves but had only lived alongside them.

Kabru stepped inside wordlessly, and once he was certain that it was only him and the older man in the hotel suite, he shut the door behind himself. Kabru caught a brief glimpse of a news anchor talking about the stock market before the television screen winked into blackness. Mohan set the remote down and closed the distance between them.

“My lovely boy,” Mohan said, his voice nothing but fond as he reached out and took Kabru’s face in his hands, drawing him in closer with a gentle touch. Mohan obviously liked what he saw, and Kabru could feel the way his eyes drank him in, how his attention roamed all across his face and body appreciatively. “Why haven’t you answered any of my messages? What’s wrong?”

Kabru hated the way such a small thing warmed him up inside, hated how weak he was in the face of simple acts of kindness. The problem was, he liked Mohan too much. This would all be so much easier if he was just tolerating the man. But Mohan was handsome, fit, educated, and pleasant to be around. He was generous with his money and his favors, he was good in bed… The only thing Kabru didn’t really care for were some of his political opinions, but he supposed that was inevitable. An established older man was never going to see eye to eye with a twenty-six-year-old student like himself.

“Nothing’s wrong, I was just too busy with class,” Kabru lied pointlessly, stupidly hoping he could just avoid the topic and that Mohan would let him. Mohan was a doctor; he knew how draining medical school was. Maybe he’d just accept Kabru’s lie. Maybe they could just have sex and not talk about any of it, and Kabru could swallow his own feelings and just act normal. It would be nice to have sex with Mohan. The man always made Kabru feel good, and it had been two weeks since he’d had any sort of physical attention, so he wanted it…

“Kabru,” Mohan said in a tone of voice Kabru knew meant he didn’t believe him. He didn’t say it, but Kabru could practically hear the unspoken I’m not stupid, I know you’re lying. “What is it? Is something wrong at school? Or… did I do something?”

Kabru already knew in his gut that Mohan was unlikely to see himself at fault for anything. He knew that what was bothering him wouldn’t matter to Mohan: if it did, he wouldn’t be doing any of this in the first place.

Kabru hated how much he wanted to just brush it all under the rug. Pretend that it was okay. “It doesn’t matter,” he said quietly, averting his eyes and trying to push the man’s hands away from where they were cradling his face. It didn’t really go the way Kabru had imagined it, and Mohan’s hands ended up holding his wrists instead.

“Why do you say that? For two weeks you’ve been completely ignoring me!” Mohan was getting frustrated with him, and in the past Kabru probably would have felt bad about that, but right now a small part of him was glad. The man deserved to feel frustrated and upset.

“Does your wife know about us?” Kabru felt the angry words leave him before he could stop himself. Damnit. Now there would be no avoiding it, no pretending that everything was fine. Understanding - and maybe some annoyance - flickered across Mohan’s face.

“No, of course not,” Mohan said, frowning. He let his grip on Kabru’s wrists go slack, and Kabru pulled himself away, wandering further into the hotel suite to stand by the window, uncomfortable with how close they were to each other, with Mohan’s scrutiny.

“So she thinks that you’re… What, working late?”

“Let me clarify: she doesn’t know about you, specifically. She’s aware of what I’m doing in a general sense. We have an understanding between us, and frankly it’s none of your business.”

“I had no idea you were married when we started doing this,” Kabru said, absently toying with the bangle bracelets around one of his wrists.

“Of course I’m married,” Mohan said with an air of bewilderment, as if he couldn’t believe Kabru needed to be told such things. “A man my age, of my social standing? My parents arranged it. She’s a good wife, she takes care of the house and our children. I have no complaints--”

“So then why are you doing this?” Kabru demanded. “Obviously something is lacking if you want to keep seeing someone like me.” He’d found pictures of Mohan’s wife online after learning of her existence from a conversation he’d overheard at the Medical Center. She was very pretty, and Kabru could easily see how he might have reminded Mohan of her. They had the same dark skin and pale eyes, similar facial features. She probably came from the same region of Vestra as Kabru. “If she’s such a good wife, why don’t you just ask her to wear a strap-on or something?”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Mohan said tersely. “In fact, don’t talk about her at all. What the hell has gotten into you? You’ve never been so--”

Rude? No, I’ve always been sucking up to you, flattering you, trying to get and keep your affection, Kabru thought bitterly. He could feel Mohan standing at his back now, and it made him tense up, instinctively anticipating violence, even though he didn’t think Mohan had a violent bone in his body. He wasn’t a bad man; he just didn’t think there was anything wrong with having a lover outside of his wife, and of course never had any intention of his relationship with Kabru being more than a limited-time physical affair.

Of course. Obviously. Kabru was stupid for ever thinking it might be otherwise. And he was even more stupid for letting himself be upset about that fact. He should have known better.

“I think we shouldn’t see each other any more,” Kabru said, crossing his arms over his chest defensively as he stepped away from where Mohan was cornering him against the windows. The finality of the statement made him feel sick and anxious, and he hated saying it out loud. It would have been so much simpler to just never answer the man’s calls again and pretend like none of this had happened.

“You’re being ridiculous and melodramatic,” Mohan said, following after Kabru but not making any attempt to restrain him. “What are you hoping for? Any man my age that suits your tastes will be married. If he’s not, it’s because no woman can stand him. What do you want from me, Kabru?”

Leave your wife, Kabru wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat because he knew that it wasn’t even true. If Mohan were willing to do that, Kabru would never have been able to trust the man not to do the same to him someday. Go back in time and treat me worse so I don’t have to feel this way.

“Nothing,” Kabru said quietly. “I don’t want anything from you anymore.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Mohan said, and the conversation circled the drain hopelessly a while longer, Mohan trying to browbeat Kabru into agreeing with him until Kabru was finally able to force himself to leave.

Kabru had liked a lot of things about Mohan, but the thing he liked least was how much he reminded him of himself.

---

It was barely ten o’clock when Kabru stomped his way up the stairs and flopped down on his bed in a fit of temper. Thankfully Lycion wasn’t around.

Stupid, he thought to himself as he deleted Mohan’s number from his phone.

For a while he just lay there feeling sorry for himself, watching the occasional lights from cars driving past, trying not to think about how genuinely hurt Mohan had looked when he left or how he could have been having really good sex right now if he’d just been able to keep a lid on his feelings and get over his stupid hurt pride…

Speaking of sex, Kabru could hear someone else starting to go at it nearby. That or there was a ghost in one of the dorm’s washing machines again. He hoped it was the former: the whole possessed washing machine situation had meant they’d all had to do their laundry off-campus during the time it had taken to get an exorcist to deal with it.

I could still go out, it’s not too late for a Friday, Kabru thought. Have some drinks and get picked up by someone new… Even considering it made him feel tired instead of excited. His stupid heart wanted Mohan, he didn’t want anyone new, and if he wanted to get more drunk than he already was, he had a second bottle of vodka tucked away that could get him there without the hassle of leaving his room.

I’m going to take a shower, Kabru told himself. I’m going to stop thinking about this, and I’m going to go to sleep. I’ve got a lot of studying to do this weekend.

He dragged himself out of bed and to the men’s communal bathroom, pausing at the door just long enough to make sure whoever he’d heard having sex wasn’t doing it in the bathroom. Satisfied that the place was unoccupied, Kabru slunk in and started to undress.

Although Earthdigger University was primarily an institution for the shorter-lived races, it had been founded by dwarves, who had designed the bathrooms in traditional dwarven style: individual stalls with showers in them. Though Kabru preferred the communal baths he’d grown up with in the elven lands, he had to admit that dwarven showers were nice when he wasn’t confident in the personal hygiene of the people around him. Plus showers were a much quicker way to get clean.

He paused at the mirror to take out his earrings, and as Kabru held the pieces of jewelry in his hand, he considered throwing them out. Mohan had given them to him after all. At least sell them, the practical side of him said. That’s worth a couple of meals or a textbook next semester…

The metal was a silver color, probably real silver, and the gemstones were a dark blue. They were pretty, and they matched his eyes. He always got a lot of attention when he wore them. They looked good on him…

The urge to just throw the earrings in the trash and be done with the whole thing, to be done with Mohan and his good taste and nice presents rose up in his throat like vomit, and Kabru shoved the damned things into the back of his shower cubby. Stop thinking about it, he chided himself.

He put his clothes into the cubbyhole as well, grabbed his basket of toiletries, and stepped into the nearest stall, where he braced himself against the initial burst of ice-cold water and gradually relaxed as it warmed to something tolerable.

So Mohan didn’t love him. So what? Love was an unrealistic expectation to begin with, a total non-starter. Most people never found any kind of love, and he was being silly if he thought that his own experience would be some kind of exception.

People loved what someone else could do for them, and every relationship was on some level transactional. Either you were lucky, and you found someone to make a fair and amicable transaction with, or you were unlucky and ended up wandering from one unrequited love to the next, feeling used. There was no such thing as a genuinely selfless act. Even people who just felt good doing good deeds did them because they made them feel good.

As if in protest against his own train of thought, he could feel the sense-memory of his mother creep through his brain like a fog, a phantasm he could only remember in fragments. Warm hands that had hardened too young from scrubbing laundry in the river… An embrace that smelled of sandalwood and mehendi… And a voice like a bird, always singing or humming something, teaching him songs to go with every chore to make the work easier.

Sometimes he stared at himself in the mirror and tried to reconstruct her face, working backwards from his own features to unearth some hidden memory that would fill in the gaps. In the end, all he had were the pitiful scraps he’d managed to scavenge from the ruins of his childhood.

She’d loved him, of course. That was something Kabru felt deep in his gut. His mother had loved him…

But then again… A parent that took good care of their child would have someone to take care of them when they inevitably needed it. Insurance against old age. So it wasn’t exactly selfless either. A child was an investment; even if people didn’t think of it that way, it was still true…

It’s all the same, Kabru told himself, turning his face up into the spray of the showerhead to scrub the makeup from his eyes. So stop thinking about it.

---

Kabru was still thinking about it two hours later when Lycion came home and fell into his own bed on the other side of the room, fully dressed.

“What’re you doin’ in bed?” Lycion drawled, face-first in his pillow. “How come you’re not out with Mr. Mohan?”

“We broke up,” Kabru replied curtly. He’d changed into sleep clothes with the intention of going to sleep, but despite his best efforts sleep had failed to materialize. Now that Lycion was home, under normal circumstances Kabru would probably have been able to sleep, sharing a room with someone else made sleep come easier to him… But unfortunately right now, Kabru felt wide-awake and distressingly sober.

“Aw man, I’m sorry. Is he letting you keep the kids in the divorce?”

“Shut up,” Kabru snapped, not in the mood for Lycion’s sense of humor.

“Yikes, forget I asked,” Lycion said, rolling onto his back with a sigh. “If you’re in a bad mood, you should have another brownie. Fleki--”

“I know Fleki has stuff,” Kabru said tersely, sitting up abruptly and stomping to his wardrobe to find something to put on. He swapped his pyjama pants for a pair of jeans, pulled on his boots, and threw a jacket over his T-shirt.

“Where you goin’?” Lycion asked, brow furrowing.

“I don’t know,” Kabru replied. “Just out.”

“M’kay,” Lycion mumbled, rolling back into his pillow. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

---

Kabru spent a solid twenty minutes pacing in a loop around the block that encompassed the dormitory, hands shoved into his pockets, trying to bleed the bad mood out of his system with physical activity. He would have gone to the gym to work out, but it was in the middle of a major renovation and wouldn’t be open for a few more months. He would have gone to the park for a run, but it was dark out, and the park was usually pretty quiet after dark, and Kabru didn’t fancy the idea of getting assaulted or mugged just because he was the only idiot wandering around the park at this hour.

Eventually, he ended up on a bench outside of the dorm building, flipping through the apps on his mobile, looking to see if there was anywhere still open and serving food. He’d missed dinner at the dining hall thanks to the meet-up with Mohan, and at the time he’d completely lost his appetite, but now he was starving.

He was checking the menu of a halfling pub to see if they served real food as well as drinks when a notification from Embr popped up.

Kabru occasionally used the dating app to find new hook-ups, and his first instinct was to ignore the notification. He wasn’t in the mood for that sort of thing right now. He was tired and hungry…

But he did want a distraction.

He tapped the notification and once the app finished loading, saw that the reason he’d gotten it was that a new profile that matched a lot of his preferences had just been posted nearby. Huh. An 80% match? Well, now he was curious…

The photo was…bad, clearly taken by someone who didn’t know how to use the camera on their mobile. Kabru had a better view of the untidy kitchen in the background of the photo than of the person it was supposed to be showing him. He skipped past the photo to look at the rest of the profile.

Kabru wasn’t sure what he’d just read, but it certainly wasn’t what he’d expected from an Embr profile. He scrolled back up to look at the profile photo again, wondering if the whole post was some kind of weird joke. Studying the man in the picture more carefully, he realized with a start that he’d seen him before. They were in the same art history class! Kabru usually saw him lurking in the back of the auditorium wearing a hoodie and sunglasses, hunched over his notebook and drawing instead of taking notes.

He hadn’t even realized that the man was an elf until now. Usually he could see a hint of the ears even if they were covered up, but there was no sign of them on this guy. Kabru had thought he was an exceptionally petite tallman or maybe a really big halfling.

Elves thought small ears were unsightly, and any part of the body being deformed or damaged was extremely taboo. Was his classmate an elf with small ears? Or maybe he’d been in an accident that had mangled them? Either would explain the unusual level of disregard for his appearance.

Elven beauty standards were brutal; external appearances were often equated to personal worth and inner goodness in a very literal way. Of course nobody could live up to such ridiculous beauty standards on their own, so there was a titanic cosmetics industry, and elves devoted almost as much time to personal grooming as they did to gossiping. Your average elf wouldn't be caught dead going out in public without a face full of makeup.

So elves that didn’t try to fit into that perfect mold tended to become isolated and then even more unkempt, which meant elven society rejected them even more harshly… It was a merciless downward spiral.

But… Was this profile even really his classmate? He couldn’t imagine someone who seemed so socially withdrawn posting on a dating app at all. And the contents of the profile and what the guy was asking for seemed so strange and fetish-y that Kabru had the sinking feeling that this had to be some kind of cruel joke.

Before he could think about it much longer, he sent the profile a DM.

Lycion had told him not to do anything stupid, and Kabru had lasted for maybe an hour. If ‘Mithrun’ turned out to be the man from art history, then he wasn’t too worried, and if it was someone else, at least they were meeting in a public place. Kabru would be able to get something to eat and then get the hell away from whoever did turn up.

Thankfully, the White Weasel was only a halfling pub in the sense that it was run by halflings, and most of the clientele were halflings. The tables and doors were only a little smaller than usual, and all the menu items were available in small and large sizes. Kabru took a seat at a booth near the door and waited.

He spotted ‘Mithrun’ before the other man spotted him, and he was who he said he was, which was both worrying and a relief. Kabru was glad that the weird profile hadn’t been some kind of prank, but now he was forced to face the facts that his classmate had some kind of serious problem and he was getting involved in it.

If anything, the elf looked more pathetic in person than he had in the photo. It was too dark out for sunglasses, so for the first time Kabru was able to see Mithrun’s eyes. They were bloodshot, with deep, dark circles under them, and though his messy hair kept falling over one side of his face, Kabru could tell that something was wrong with his right eye. It seemed to not match the left one. Maybe he’d had a stroke? He was dressed in a pair of stained sweatpants that had seen better days, a similarly disheveled T-shirt, and a military-style leather jacket.

He realized as the elf stared blankly past him that Mithrun must not have even bothered to check Kabru’s profile before coming to meet him. It suggested a worrying level of disregard for his own personal safety that made sense only when Kabru reminded himself that the guy was suffering from extreme sleep deprivation…

“Hey, Mithrun!” Kabru called out to him, waving until the man finally spotted him. Mithrun closed the distance between them and slid into the seat across from Kabru. Now that he was closer, Kabru could tell that the stains on his clothes looked like they were from… paint? Hopefully it was just paint.

“Hello, Kab… uhm…” When he spoke, Mithrun’s voice was deep despite his small stature, and there was a scratchy hoarseness to it. Kabru’s eyes darted down to Mithrun’s hands and considered the gauntness of them, the veins he could see slithering across the metacarpals. Dehydrated and malnourished…

“Kabru,” Kabru told him helpfully. “Are you on anything right now?”

Mithrun stared uncomprehendingly at him for a moment before replying, “What?”

“Drugs. Have you taken any kind of drugs or medicine? Herbal tea?”

“Oh. No.” Mithrun said, sounding completely and utterly defeated. “I’ve been to doctors. They say it’s not something medication can fix.”

“Okay,” Kabru couldn’t help but feel like he was in class practicing differential diagnosis. The part of his brain that loved puzzles and problem-solving was shifting into high gear, and even though he was worried about Mithrun, he was also sort of enjoying the challenge.

“When was the last time you slept?” Kabru asked.

“...Can’t remember,” Mithrun replied, and Kabru got the feeling that the man really wasn’t seeing him, even though they were having a conversation. Mithrun just didn’t seem all there.

“What about food? Water?”

“I drank… um. At some point today… I don’t know. Water.”

“Okay,” Kabru said again. “Let’s order something to eat, have you drink some water, and keep talking. I’ll do what I can to help you. I think eating and drinking would be a good first step.”

“Okay,” Mithrun replied and then proceeded to sit there, staring through Kabru, making no effort whatsoever to look at one of the menus on the table.

“Um,” Kabru said, trying to be diplomatic. “What would you like to eat?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Mithrun said blankly.

“Is there anything you don’t want?” Kabru asked gently, changing tactics.

“Um…” Mithrun hesitated, forehead creasing with thought. “Nothing that’s like… a paste. Mashed. And nothing dry.”

“Got it,” Kabru looked down at his menu and quickly scanned it for something that wouldn’t be too hard on the elf’s stomach but would still give him some much needed nutrients. “How about a ham and cheese sandwich. Think you can handle that?”

“...Yeah,” Mithrun said, and Kabru felt like he saw something, some emotion, pass across the elf’s face, but it was gone before he could even try to identify it.

Kabru flagged down a waitress and smiled brightly at her, hoping to make up for how clearly not okay the elf sitting with him was.

“Could we get two ham and cheese sandwiches?” Kabru asked before turning to Mithrun again. “Are you okay with milk?”

“Yeah…?” the elf replied uncertainly.

“Can I get a hot cocoa for my friend here and a big pitcher of water?”

“That all, hon?” the waitress asked. “No beer or nothin’ else to drink?”

“Well… alright,” Kabru agreed, considering the day he’d had. “I’ll take a beer. Whatever you think’s the best on tap.”

“Sure.”

“Why hot cocoa?” Mithrun asked once the waitress was gone, and Kabru was glad to see some more signs of life in the elf’s behavior.

“Having something warm in your stomach might help you sleep after this.”

“I’ve tried all those things before…” Mithrun insisted though the protest sounded feeble to Kabru. Like Mithrun didn’t have the energy to actually assert any kind of opinion.

“Well, let’s try it again,” Kabru said. “Is it okay if I come over there and give you a quick physical exam?”

“Yeah, sure. Why not,” Mithrun said with a defeated sigh.

Kabru moved over to Mithrun’s side of the booth and scooted in close to the elf. “May I see one of your hands?” Kabru asked politely. He’d done so many practice exams at this point that it came automatically. There were a bunch of things he couldn’t do in a dimly lit, noisy pub, but he’d just start out with what he could do.

Mithrun wordlessly held one of his hands out, and Kabru wrapped his fingers around the elf’s thin wrist, feeling for the pulse. His skin looked downright pasty next to Kabru’s brown hand, and Kabru could see the faint blue-green tint of veins beneath the skin. The elf was cold and stiff to the touch, and Kabru wondered if it was because he was being touched or if he was always tense.

Anxiety? Kabru wondered. Depression? He’s obviously not well, but why?

Though Kabru was trying his best to remain professionally detached, he couldn’t help but think about the fact that he’d found Mithrun on a hook-up app because the man’s stats just happened to line up with some of Kabru’s preferences. Obviously Mithrun was a wreck right now, but Kabru could imagine that he’d look quite good if he was cleaned up. He had the long, slender neck that was typical of most elves, broad shoulders, and a face that seemed perfectly proportioned. His hair was probably pretty when it was washed and combed, and his nails seemed surprisingly well taken care of despite all the other signs of obvious neglect.

Kabru was mostly into older men these days, appreciating the perks that came with dating someone who had money and experience. School left him so exhausted that he didn’t have the energy to go chasing after people and seducing them like he’d done as a teenager. It was so much easier to let people come to him and just let himself get pampered a bit in his increasingly rare free time.

However, he did have a thing for petite elves, too. He’d had plenty of experience with them growing up in Maalinus, where he’d been considered exotic and unusual with his dark hair, blue eyes, and larger tallman stature. Some elves found that combination irresistible, and so he’d never had trouble finding someone to hook up with.

All of this to say that Kabru was aware of how easy it was for him to wrap his hand completely around Mithrun’s wrist and how delicate and small the elf was, even though he was a man and had plenty of masculine features.

But Kabru didn’t really linger on it. It was just another series of observations that were filed away along with details like how cold Mithrun’s hand was, the way his skin didn’t readily spring back when Kabru pressed his thumb into the flesh of his forearm, and how many times he inhaled and exhaled in a minute (about twelve).

Severely dehydrated, Kabru affirmed to himself.

Mithrun’s pulse was slower than his own, but that was normal for an elf. Their metabolisms ran slower than all the other races, which was part of why they lived so much longer.

“Well, your pulse and breathing seem normal,” Kabru said, letting go of the man’s hand. “But you’re dehydrated and very cold and stiff. Am I making you nervous?”

“No, I’m always like this,” Mithrun answered.

“That’s probably part of why you can’t sleep.”

“I’m aware.”

“May I touch your neck?” Kabru asked, and he saw the elf hesitate. “I just want to make sure you’re not sick.”

“I don’t think I’m sick,” Mithrun said, but he also tipped his chin up towards Kabru. “But go ahead.”

“Ruling out all the things that it’s not is the first step towards figuring out what it is,” Kabru said as he carefully palpated both sides of Mithrun’s neck, feeling for the lymph nodes and salivary glands. “Sorry, did that hurt?” he asked when Mithrun grunted quietly.

“No, just not used to it. Tickles.”

“Sorry,” Kabru said, half of a smile sneaking onto his face. “Well, everything here seems in order. I’m going to check your mana levels next. Is that okay?”

“You can do that?” Mithrun asked, brow creasing in obvious confusion. “But you’re a tallman…”

“I was raised by elves,” Kabru said as he held his hands out in front of him and looked at Mithrun in the diamond-shaped gap made by his forefingers and his thumbs touching each other. “And I studied for two years at the Royal Medical Institute. Could you hold your breath for me?”

“Oh.” Mithrun seemed genuinely surprised for a moment, which was nothing new to Kabru. Most people were surprised that he was this far away from home, and most elves were shocked that he’d gotten into the Royal Academy and even more shocked when they realized he’d quit to go to Earthdigger instead.

Mithrun took a deep breath and held it, and Kabru reached out with his magical senses. It was harder for Kabru than it would have been for an elf, but he’d spent enough time honing this particular skill set that it came easily now.

Through the focus made by his hands, he could see the swirling colors of the elf’s mana flowing through his body. The patient holding their breath helped because the constant movement of the lungs and air going in and out made it harder for the practitioner to get a good look. Right now Kabru was getting a good look and…

“Huh,” he said, losing focus and losing his view at the same time. He hadn’t expected it to be so… bad.

“What is it?” Mithrun asked, and Kabru realized that the expression the elf had been wearing until now had just been neutral. Now he was frowning.

“Well, your mana is…” Kabru scrambled to remember all the advice he’d ever been given about how to tell patients bad news. Okay. Start with something positive. “Your magical energy is very high, you have a lot of potential mana that you could tap into.”

“I know that,” Mithrun said bluntly. “I’m a licensed spellcaster. That’s not why you said ‘huh,’ is it? You looked upset.”

Kabru was surprised by how observant Mithrun was, but if the guy had seen through him, there was no point in continuing to try and break the news to him gently…

“Your mana is dangerously unstable right now,” Kabru said. “Hold your breath again? Thank you.” He focused a second time and tried to pin down exactly what he was seeing so that he could describe it to the elf. “Your root level energy is overgrowing every other area. The red is so dark in parts it’s turning black. I can’t even see any other colors through your core or chest… And all the energy from your chest and throat is crowding up into your head. It’s like you’re so deep in survival mode that it’s pushing out all the other energy. Where there should be deep blues and purples, all I’m seeing is green. You’re completely devoid of higher energy.”

“That’s quite a detailed and accurate assessment,” Mithrun said, and Kabru wasn’t sure if he should feel complimented or insulted by his incredulous tone.

“Thank you,” Kabru replied, deciding he’d take it as a compliment for now. “Like I said, I’ve had some training.”

“So I’m out of balance,” Mithrun said. “What can I do about that?”

“Once we get our order, you’re going to eat and drink,” Kabru told him. “Let me look at one last thing, though. Can I see your eyes?” Kabru gestured towards his own face, hoping that Mithrun would get the idea and brush the hair covering his right eye back.

The elf did no such thing, staring blankly at him until Kabru sighed and reached out, delicately pushing the lank, greasy hair back from Mithrun’s forehead. Just as Kabru had thought, the elf’s right eye had something wrong with it. There was well-healed scar tissue all around the eyelid area, and the bony orbit seemed unusually pronounced, creating deep shadows. The eyeball itself seemed sunken in, and Kabru realized after a moment of study that it wasn’t looking in the same direction as Mithrun’s other eye. Oddly it wasn’t bloodshot the way the other eye was.

“Can you follow my finger with your eyes?” Kabru asked, holding up his index finger and moving it right to left, left to right. On reflex, the elf’s left eye followed Kabru’s hand. He saw that the right eye moved a little but didn’t track the same way as the left.

“It’s artificial,” Mithrun said, reaching up with one hand and tapping the center of his unflinching right eye. “That’s why it looks so bad.” He pushed the eye around with the tip of his finger, and Kabru recoiled at the way it rotated freely inside the socket. Mithrun withdrew his hand and blinked, and the false eye slowly drifted back into a neutral position.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” Kabru said, repressing the urge to ask what happened? “I just noticed it looked off, and so I was worried that maybe you’d had a stroke and hadn’t noticed… That happens sometimes.”

“No stroke,” Mithrun said blandly. “Just bad luck.”

They were saved from further awkward conversation by the arrival of the halfling waitress with their food. Kabru moved back to the other side of the table, and for a few minutes they both ate and drank in silence.

“So you can’t sleep,” Kabru said once he saw the elf start to slow down. Mithrun had made his way through about half of his sandwich and was now picking at his chips and drinking his second glass of water. The hot cocoa had been decimated almost immediately upon its arrival. “How long has that been going on?”

“About…fifteen years?” the elf said, face creasing as he paused to do the mental math. “I had it under better control before… But when I moved here and started living alone, it got really bad.”

“When did you move?”

“I think… About a month before classes began.”

“The quarter only started about… five weeks ago?” Kabru said, “So you’ve been on your own for two months?”

“Yeah,” Mithrun said, staring intently at his sandwich and once again making the face of someone attempting to do mental math. “That sounds about right.”

“Well, the good news is that it probably has to do with your change in environment,” Kabru said. “It could be that there’s things about where you’re living now that are making it hard for you to sleep, or that you’re having trouble adjusting to living alone, or…” Kabru paused. “You’re from the capital right? Maalinus?” The elf’s accent sounded too posh to come from anywhere else. Kabru would bet money that he was from a noble house and had gone to a boarding school.

“Yes,” Mithrun replied.

“The temperature is similar here, but it’s much more humid, and the plant life and allergens are completely different. All of that could be contributing too.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” Mithrun admitted, frowning at his sandwich like it was responsible for his lack of insight.

“It’s okay,” Kabru reassured him. “I’ve been here a couple of years now, so I’m used to it, but I always hear new arrivals complaining about suddenly having allergies that they never had at home.”

“Hm,” Mithrun said as he picked up what was left of his sandwich and continued eating it.

“But so, you were posting on Embr to try and find someone to help you get to sleep? How does that work?” Kabru asked, feeling proud of himself for coming up with a polite and discreet way to ask the elf what the fuck his weird profile on the dating app was all about.

“It’s not a sex thing,” Mithrun said tiredly with the patience of someone who had explained this exact thing too many times before, most likely to people that didn’t believe him. “I’m willing to do sexual favors if that’s what someone wants in return, but I really don’t care.”

Of course that was the exact moment that the halfling waitress returned with their bill. Overhearing only the worst possible part of the conversation, she set the faux-leather envelope down on the table while watching them both suspiciously.

“Uh, you two have a good meal?” she asked.

“It was great, thanks,” Kabru said, reaching for the bill, and was surprised when Mithrun’s hand darted out and got it before he could.

“I’ll take care of it,” the elf said flatly.

“We’ll get out of your hair soon, promise,” Kabru told the waitress with a smile. She seemed less receptive to it this time.

“Anyway,” Mithrun continued after she’d gone. “When I was home, there were a few people who could help get me to sleep. When I moved here, at first I tried to tough it out, I figured once I got tired enough, I’d just pass out. But that didn’t work.”

“I went to a doctor. I talked to my therapist. I tried teas, exercise, vitamins… Drugs and sleep spells work but I can’t use those every day. So eventually I tried going to a massage parlor. I was able to fall asleep there sometimes, but when my time was up, they wouldn’t let me keep sleeping. I offered to pay them more, but they said they were a massage parlor, not a hotel, and that I couldn’t stay longer than five hours.”

Kabru wondered if the massage parlor employees had been worried that Mithrun was a homeless vagrant. If he’d looked even half as bad as he did now, it would be an easy mistake to make.

“I tried hiring people to come to my flat, but either they couldn’t get me to relax or they didn’t want the liability of leaving while I was asleep. They were worried I was going to accuse them of stealing things and get them in trouble with the law. So they’d insist on waking me up before they left, which defeated the purpose.”

“So I figured maybe someone who wasn’t a professional might do it, and I tried posting on Craggslist. I found a couple of people that way - but nobody that wanted to make it a regular thing. And then I got banned from Craggslist because they thought I was soliciting sex work.”

Banned from Craggslist, Kabru thought with a barely concealed wince. He could easily understand why they’d thought Mithrun’s postings were something illicit; hadn’t he thought the same thing when he saw him on Embr?

“So I figured, maybe I could find someone on Embr that would be able to help me.” Mithrun turned his gaze to Kabru. “Are you willing to try?”

“Well, you bought me dinner, so it’s the least I can do,” Kabru said, finishing his beer. Of course he had no way of knowing if he’d be able to meet the elf’s nebulous requirements and make him relax enough to sleep… But as a medical student, and someone who had spent a few summers working at a massage parlor, Kabru thought he had a good chance of succeeding. “Besides, we’re classmates, so I want to help you if I can.”

---

“My flat’s near here,” Mithrun had told him as they exited the White Weasel. That turned out to be quite the understatement as they were barely a block away from Rosenhoff Street, and the elf was already purposefully approaching an old but extremely well-maintained building with a massive set of ornately carved double doors. A building like that might have been a business or a house for a wealthy family once, but like many such buildings in the old city center, it had been renovated and repurposed as a block of flats for wealthy tenants.

He’s definitely from a noble house, Kabru thought as he watched Mithrun input a number on a keypad next to the huge doors. There was a smaller door set into the larger ones, and that was the one Mithrun opened, the lock disengaging with an audible clack.

As Kabru followed Mithrun through the doorway, he felt an electric tingle zip through his whole body. The building had an advanced magical security system in place, but that wasn’t surprising, considering its size and prime location.

Inside the large double doors, the old cobblestone of the street outside continued straight ahead into a large, open courtyard area filled with a lavish garden. Several rows of shiny bronze mailboxes covered the wall on the right, and on the left was the building manager’s office.

Kabru tried not to gawk at the garden as he followed Mithrun up a set of stairs. He’d grown up around similarly extravagant displays of wealth in Maalinus, but it was surprising to see this kind of opulence paired with someone as bedraggled as Mithrun. Kabru had expected the man to lead him to a decrepit flat with five other students living in it, not a fancy place like this.

Kabru couldn’t tell if the elf thought there was anything unusual about his living situation, and the fact that Mithrun made no attempt to explain how he’d come to live in such a place further cemented Kabru’s theory that he was from a noble family. To Mithrun, this building was probably ordinary, and, in fact, he likely considered it beneath him. It was dwarven architecture, after all, in a dwarven city. Hardly worth mentioning.

By Kabru’s count, the building had six floors in all, but they stopped climbing at the fourth. Each floor had a covered balcony that ran the entire length of the interior courtyard, lined with doors and windows leading into the different flats. Mithrun’s flat was the third from the stairs, and when the elf unlocked the door and they stepped inside, Kabru was immediately struck by two things.

One, it was a very expensively furnished and decorated flat, and two, it was nasty. Every horizontal surface was cluttered with junk: unopened mail, trash, dirty dishes and utensils. The worst of the mess was centered in the kitchen and radiated outwards, growing less intense as it did.

Even though he’d had a preview of all this in Mithrun’s profile photo, Kabru was still stunned by the extent of the mess. He’d rarely seen anything quite this bad, and he’d shared a dorm room with Lycion for two years.

He’s clearly struggling, there must be something seriously wrong with him, Kabru thought as he stepped around a tied-up trash bag that sat on the floor right by the entrance.

However, there was more to the flat than just expensive interior design and a horrendous lack of housekeeping. There were quite a few canvases propped up against walls and furniture, plus an easel with what Kabru presumed was an unfinished painting. He didn’t really have a lot of time to stop and examine it all, but the impression he got from his first glance around was that Mithrun spent what little energy he had painting… And that he wasn’t very good at it yet.

Is this supposed to be abstract? Kabru wondered, trying to puzzle out what a canvas with blobs of orange, yellow, and red all over it was supposed to be. Squinting at it made him think it might have been a vase full of flowers or maybe an angry bird fighting a snake.

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Mithrun asked, sounding even more tired now that they were inside his flat. “All you have to do is rub my feet until I fall asleep. If I fall asleep. And then you can just leave. Turn the latch on the front door behind you.”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Kabru insisted. “I was just thinking that… well… You might sleep better if this place got cleaned up a little…”

“...Probably,” Mithrun replied, sighing.

“Okay,” Kabru said, taking the lead. “Where do you want to do this?”

“Bedroom,” Mithrun said with so much negativity that he may as well have said morgue or tomb.

Kabru followed him through the mess and into what looked like the flat’s master bedroom. It was less overwhelmingly messy than the rest of the flat, but here there were piles of dirty laundry scattered at random on the floor, and heaped into piles on top of every furniture piece.

“You should take a hot shower first and change into clean clothes,” Kabru said, and he almost laughed at the put-upon, rebellious look that the elf shot his way. “It won’t take as long as you think, and it will help you relax,” Kabru insisted.

“Fine,” Mithrun said, sounding as if Kabru had asked him to choose a limb to cut off. He looked around the bedroom wildly for a moment before approaching a wicker basket full of crumpled clothes. The elf began digging and rooting through the basket and eventually pulled out a wrinkled T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Kabru couldn’t be sure that they were actually clean, but they at least looked cleaner than the paint-stained outfit the elf was currently wearing. The elf sloughed off his leather military jacket, and the heavy article of clothing hit the ground with a muted thud.

“I’ll just wait here,” Kabru said as Mithrun trudged off to what he assumed was the master bathroom. When Kabru realized that the elf wasn’t going to bother closing the door, he rushed over and did it himself, all while trying not to catch a glimpse of the other man in the process of undressing.

He’s gone so long without sleeping that he doesn’t have any social boundaries left, Kabru thought. At least, I hope it’s the lack of sleep and he isn’t normally like this…

He heard the sound of running water through the door, and so he decided to have a better look at his jacket while Mithrun was occupied.

Picking up the leather jacket, it only took Kabru a short while to ascertain that it was the real thing, the type that officers in the UE army wore while they were off-duty. Kabru was inclined to think that Mithrun must have served at some point because the elf didn’t seem with it enough to be wearing something for the sake of fashion alone.

Ancient tradition dictated that the firstborn child of an elven noble house was expected to do military service, but the wealthy could always buy their way out of the obligation. Those that still went through with it these days were usually trying to inflate their personal status or earn social clout. It was about proving their loyalty to the Empire and padding their accomplishments for their later careers in politics or business.

Kabru’s elven mother came from an old military family, and had done her time before she adopted Kabru, but she’d had acquaintances who were still serving while Kabru had been growing up. He’d learned a lot about elven military practices as a result.

Somewhat suspiciously, the patch that normally went over the breast pocket and had a soldier’s last name on it was missing. Kabru could see where the thread had been torn out to remove it because the holes were still visible in the leather, and the leather that had been covered by the patch had much less wear on it than the rest of the jacket.

If he’s a noble, he might not want people to see his last name and find out who he is, Kabru thought. Though it’s equally possible that if he got this jacket second-hand, the original owner removed the name before selling it.

Operating on his working assumption that the jacket was real and Mithrun hadn’t bought it secondhand, Kabru studied the other patches on the chest, sleeves, and shoulder straps. He’d been too busy worrying about the man’s health to really pay attention to them before now.

Mithrun was a Captain, according to the rank insignia, and a member of something called the Advanced Expedition Group for Intelligence and Security. Kabru had never heard that name before, but he immediately recognized the embroidered image that went with it. It was a yellow bird, a symbol that everyone knew belonged to a group of soldiers usually referred to as “the Canaries”. They were an elite special forces unit that did espionage for the UE. Supposedly the bird in their symbol was a skylark, but Kabru had never seen a bright yellow skylark, and the suggestion that they were the canaries in the coal mine, warning the Empire of danger ahead of time, was too potent an image to just be a coincidence.

That knowledge put Mithrun’s obvious depression and his blind eye into a very different perspective, one which made a lot more sense. Kabru had simply held both of those factors as mysterious variables that he needed to solve for if he wanted to uncover how an obviously wealthy nobleman had ended up so badly injured and in such a shabby state… But if he’d been a military officer involved with the Canaries, it was possible that he could have been injured and traumatized in one of the recent wars.

According to his Embr profile, he’s 193, so that means… It has to have been the Second Southern Rebellion. He’s not old enough to have fought in the first one…

Further confirming his suspicions, Kabru found that the shoulder straps on the jacket were marked with several red stripes that indicated Mithrun had been wounded five times during his service. There was a patch on one shoulder that he didn’t know the exact meaning of, but based on the design he thought it probably meant Mithrun was a battle mage, a soldier who used magic in combat. The man had mentioned he was a spellcaster.

Elves were the only ones that extensively used magic in warfare anymore. Most of the races still used magic in other areas, but when it came to fighting, guns and bombs were just more practical. Elven soldiers carried guns with them, but they were typically thought of as a last resort in case they ran out of mana.

When Kabru turned the jacket over in his hands to examine the other shoulder, he nearly dropped it at the sight of the purple, gold, and white embroidered swan. That was the Royal Favor, one of the highest honors an officer could be granted. Most of the recipients only had it awarded to them posthumously due to the extreme nature of the personal sacrifice it required.

“Alright, I’m done,” Mithrun said, emerging from the bathroom suddenly. Kabru dropped the jacket and stepped away as casually as he could, hoping he hadn’t been caught in the act of snooping.

“Okay,” Kabru said. “Why don’t you get in bed and make yourself comfortable?”

The elf laid himself down on the bed, and for a brief moment before he pulled the sheets up, Kabru saw the milky white skin of his legs and arms. Mithrun was virtually hairless like most elves but covered in a surprising number of scars. It made Kabru wonder how bad Mithrun’s injuries had to have been before the no doubt top-class healers had gotten their hands on him. Elves hated scars, so Kabru was certain that someone must have at least tried to fix them at some point.

“There’s a light switch next to the door,” Mithrun said as he stuck his feet out from the bottom of the sheets. “If you manage to get me to sleep, you can turn the lights off when you leave.”

“Sure. I’ll do my best to be quiet,” Kabru said, before he sat down on the edge of the bed. He carefully set the man’s feet in his lap, noticing that even after a shower they felt cold and the tendons were rigid and tight. “You’re really tense. I’m going to guide you through some breathing exercises, alright?”

“Sure,” Mithrun said, his eyes already closed. The elf’s hair was still damp and sticking to his face, and it was probably going to soak his pillow, but Kabru figured it was worth it for him to be clean.

“First I want you to stretch yourself out,” Kabru said, lowering his voice to a gentle, soothing murmur. “Put your arms over your head and reach up as far as you can go. You should feel it in your shoulders and your spine. And stretch your legs out, point your toes. Like a big morning stretch.”

He was glad to see Mithrun following his instructions without complaint, so he kept going.

“Perfect. Hold it like that for a bit -- I want you to take a deep breath through your nose and hold that too. Then let it out slowly through your mouth. In… and out. Just a couple more breaths like this. Imagine there’s a string running through your body, starting at your fingertips, going through the top of your head, down through your body, and out your toes. Right now it’s pulled tight.”

“Alright, go ahead and relax,” Kabru said, watching as Mithrun’s body sagged down against the bed. “I want you to focus on your breathing while I get started on your feet. Breathe with your belly.”

“What is this?” Mithrun asked, cracking his good eye open to squint at Kabru in the dimly lit room.

“Just some meditation techniques. Traditional Vestran medicine. I know elves consider it unscientific, but anecdotally it can help relieve stress and anxiety, and that helps with mana imbalance.”

“All I care about is whether it can put me to sleep or not,” Mithrun said, but despite the elf’s hostility, Kabru was certain Mithrun was already starting to sound more relaxed and drowsy.

“Sure. Just close your eyes and listen to my voice,” Kabru said, and he took one of the elf’s feet into his hands and began to rub it.

Kabru walked his thumbs down the center of Mithrun’s foot slowly, pressing firmly into the spots that corresponded to the chest and lungs, working the area over slowly. He smiled as he heard a quiet groan leave the elf and continued downwards towards his heel.

“I want you to imagine that there’s a flame in your belly,” Kabru continued to speak soothingly. “And when you breathe in and out, you’re trying to fan that flame without extinguishing it. Imagine it growing bigger gradually, imagine the warmth of it spreading through the rest of your body. Down through your legs, down to your toes… Up through your chest, down your arms, into your fingertips… And up to your head and face. Your jaw, your cheeks, the tips of your ears.”

“If your ears are tense, try to relax them, let them droop down against your pillow if you can,” Kabru said, wondering if he’d be able to catch a glimpse of the elf’s ears if he managed to do that. “If you’re clenching your jaw, try to loosen it. Let your mouth hang open. And just keep breathing, in and out.” Kabru walked his thumbs back up from Mithrun’s heel to the ball of his foot and then slowly worked his thumbs across the meaty area just below the toes.

“Feels… good,” Mithrun mumbled with a yawn, and Kabru felt the giddy rush that came with accomplishing a goal. He just had to keep going like this.

Mithrun’s breathing was gradually growing slower and more shallow, so Kabru stopped talking, not wanting to startle him out of his relaxed state. He worked his thumbs down to the center of Mithrun’s foot, kneaded at his arch for a while and then the heel.

He very carefully swapped one foot for the other and began the whole process from the beginning, and he kept going until he was completely certain that Mithrun had fallen asleep.

Kabru gently removed the man’s feet from his lap, set them down onto the bed, and covered them with the sheets. Mithrun’s face was completely slack, his mouth hanging open as he snored quietly, a little drool gathering at the corner. He looked totally exhausted, and Kabru was glad to see him resting.

He padded quietly out of the room, pausing at the doorway and listening to the elf’s breathing to make sure he was still asleep before he turned off all the lights and made his way out.