“Sure I did. I told you the same way you told me, by announcing the fact in front of a group of our peers.” Elliot would have left it at that, a week ago, but he was trying to make things better between them now. “It’s true that perhaps repeating the exact same thing you did was maybe not the most mature moment of my life.”
He thought this was a truly magnanimous and mature gesture, but Luke appeared to be lost in thought and to have missed it completely.
“About the class announcement. I wanted you to know, but I didn’t want to tell you. You always made fun of me,” said Luke. “I didn’t want you to make fun then.”
“I wouldn’t have!”
“I didn’t know that, Elliot,” said Luke. “Harpies can’t read minds.”
It was the first time Luke had referred to himself as a harpy, which Elliot thought was promising.
“Yeah, all right,” Elliot grumbled.
“I’m not like you,” said Luke.
“Obviously,” said Elliot. “No need to rub it in.”
Luke shook his head, puzzled but plunging ahead, the way Luke did, with fear pushed to one side in a way Elliot had never quite been able to master. “I mean, I don’t always know what to say to everyone, and I can’t go get anyone—apparently anyone—that I want, and I can’t—”
“Oh, right,” said Elliot. “Because Serene didn’t dump me and break my heart.”
There was a long pause.
Eventually, Luke asked: “She did?” in a tone that expressed not just disbelief that Serene would do that, but disbelief that Elliot’s heart did that.
“She did,” Elliot confirmed. He did not look at Luke, but at his own hands, knotted in fists as if he could defend himself, or keep hold of something. That had never worked. He let his hands open, and let go. “I wanted to stay friends with both of you, and I pretended it hurt less than it did. I wanted to be with her, and I couldn’t manage to make her want the same thing. I couldn’t manage it with Jase or Myra either. Look, I don’t think about bisexuality—”
“What’s bisexuality?” asked Luke.
“Dating people called Jason as well as people called Myra,” Elliot said. He thought of several other terms: he should probably write Luke a list. “Why is language in the Borderlands so weird? Some of it’s modern, and some of it’s medieval, and I guess that makes sense with the influx of a certain amount of new blood to the training camp every year, but how do some words and phrases transfer, while others don’t? Why do you know the word ‘jerk’ and not the word ‘bisexual’?”
“I guess people say the first word more,” said Luke.
Sometimes Luke said things as if they were very simple and obvious, and it adjusted Elliot’s worldview a crucial fraction. Elliot sat absorbing this latest.
“I think you were going to talk about your feelings,” Luke continued, stumbling over the word “feelings.” They had both been talking more slowly than usual, as if negotiating a forest full of traps. “Could you do that before you give me the lecture on linguistics?”
Elliot was proud that Luke accepted the lecture was coming.
“I don’t think about who I go out with in terms of persuading as many people as possible to have fun with me,” Elliot said. “It’s that way for some people, and that’s fine, but it’s not for me. I think about it in terms of—infinite possibilities. I think it’s beautiful the possibilities are infinite, but it also means you make a choice. Like choosing how to spend your life, where you’re going to live, what your life’s work is going to be. Except in this case, the possibilities are people, and they have to choose you back.”
“Oh,” said Luke. “I didn’t—know you thought about it that way.”
Elliot rolled his eyes. “Well, that much was obvious, Sunborn. I may also have made my announcement when I did because you are always insinuating that I throw myself at everyone within range, and I didn’t particularly want to tell you and hear that.”
“I wouldn’t have!” Luke exclaimed.
“I didn’t know that, Luke,” said Elliot. “Nobody can read minds.”
Because Elliot was a jerk, all the time and mostly on purpose, he mimicked the way Luke had said it. He was sorry the next instant, because of how sorry Luke looked.
“Yeah, well,” Elliot said. “We both know now.” He found all this sitting close sharing sunset confidences unsettling, so he got up and added, in a loudly reassuring voice: “Don’t worry about Dale. He’ll get over me being a jerk. You always did.”
“You’re not a jerk,” said Luke, and smiled up at him. “I mean, you’re not always a jerk.” He hesitated, then added: “And when you are a jerk, I usually like it.”
Ever since the march home, Dale had been complimenting Luke, and taking care to spend time with Luke, and ignoring Elliot with extreme prejudice. Elliot understood perfectly. It was going to be very awkward when Dale and Luke actually got together, but Elliot felt he was prepared.
The Borderlands were at peace, and the Border camp felt at peace, for a change. Peter and Myra seemed happy together, against all odds. Adara was in many ways terrible, but she was openly cutting a swathe through many gentlemen and several ladies in the Border camp, and Elliot was pleased for her. Podarge the harpy turned out to be an even better correspondent than Serene’s cousin Swift, and wrote Elliot regular interesting letters. Serene was happy with her missives from her beloved Golden, which sometimes contained pressed flowers and embroidery and sometimes contained very polite and gentlemanlike criticisms of Serene’s moral character. Luke was being treated well by the Border camp, he and Elliot were getting along, and he was going to be happy with Dale.
It was an enormous shock when Luke asked Elliot out on a date.
Elliot was trying to teach himself trollish via a two-hundred-year-old book by a man who’d had a traumatic break-up with a troll. This meant a lot of commentary along the lines of “This is how trolls say I love you. FOOTNOTE: BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT!”
“You realize you can’t have a quarrel with a book,” Myra observed. “Quarrels have to go two ways.”
Elliot stopped clutching his hair with despair and smiled at her across the library table. “I’ve always been able to hold up both ends of an argument all by myself.”
“I shouldn’t doubt you,” said Myra. “Nobody else has ever managed to fight with Dale Wavechaser.”
“What can I say,” said Elliot. “I have a talent.”
Myra was quiet for a moment. “He’s really going after Luke.” She paused. “I mean, I always figured they might end up together, but if he starts dating Luke and keeps hating you, won’t that be—an uncomfortable situation?”
“That’s my middle name,” said Elliot. “Did I never tell you? Elliot ‘Uncomfortable Situations’ Schafer. I make situations uncomfortable, then I deal with them. It’s a really bad superpower.”
“We’re in our last year at Border camp,” said Myra, and she sounded a little sad. “We’re going to be sent to our new postings, and we have to decide where to apply. We won’t all see each other every day, not the people we love or the people we hate. Everything’s going to change.” She took a deep breath. “Peter and I are going to break up. I want to go live among the dwarves, and he would never want anything like that. I think we can stay friends, but just in case we can’t, I worried about which one of us you would choose.”
Elliot winked at her. “You shouldn’t worry.”
Myra tried not to smile, but did not entirely succeed. “Don’t you worry? If Serene goes back to the elven woods to be with her sweetheart, and if Luke goes with Dale wherever he’s posted, that you might lose touch and drift away from each other?”
Elliot worried. He just tried not to. He’d come back to the Border camp to be with them, the two people he loved, and he knew they both had obligations to family, to each other, to their duties, to their loved ones, which meant they might both leave him.
Drift away, Myra had said casually, as if it was not a terrifying phrase. Elliot
could imagine being a boat, untied and unanchored, floating out to sea, with nobody looking for him.
He had only just worked out how to be with Luke, when they were both friends and knew it. He was afraid to think about losing it all.
“Serene’s Golden writes great letters. Maybe Golden will be another of my penpals.”
His attempt to sound light and laugh it off failed. Myra looked at him with her grave dark eyes.
“I’ll be one of your penpals,” she told him.
“You’d better,” said Elliot. “Dale Wavechaser, I suspect, will not.”
“No,” said Myra, and hesitated. “I was—surprised to see Dale running after Luke like he is. I would’ve thought Dale would be bothered by the harpy thing.”
Elliot opened his mouth, anger already sparking, but fury was quenched in the dark pools of her eyes.
“Dale hardly ever speaks to me,” Myra said gently, reminding him why she might know better than Elliot what someone’s attitude to nonhumans was. Elliot bowed his head, and Myra added: “He barely looks at me.”
“Dale is an idiot,” Elliot bit out. “And I told him so.”
“Did you?” said Myra. “I wondered what the fight was about.”
“I wasn’t nice to him,” Elliot admitted. “I was horrible to him, actually. But he said stuff about Luke I wouldn’t listen to from anyone. I’m not sorry.”
Myra made a face. “Did you tell Luke? I’d want to know something like that.”
“I didn’t,” said Elliot. “Luke has liked Dale for years. I wouldn’t know how to say it. And I’ve . . . in the past, I’ve been known to be . . . my interactions with Luke and my whole personality is . . .”
“Abrasive,” Myra suggested. “Deliberately off-putting but also accidentally off-putting.”
“Thanks, Myra,” said Elliot. “You get me.”
“I’ve been around you when Serene and Luke were sent off to war,” Myra said. “I remember. Also Peter sometimes wakes up crying from the traumatic dreams.”
Elliot shook his head. “Peter’s the weak link. But you see why I can’t be the one to ruin Luke’s life. He’d assume I wanted to, or that I thought it was funny, or I was exaggerating. I can’t do it.”
“No, I see what you mean,” said Myra. “Still, what if Dale can’t go through with it?”
“Go through with what, exactly?” Elliot asked, and paused. “I mean, no need to be explicit, I’ve seen many pictures in Peter’s private pornographic materials.”
“His what?”
“Never mind,” Elliot said firmly. “Forget I said anything about that.”
Myra regarded him suspiciously, then gave up. “I just mean, if the harpy thing bothers Dale that much, Luke’s going to see it sooner or later. I’m worried Luke’s going to get hurt.”
“Well since you put it that way, that’s a very reasonable concern,” said Elliot. “And I am also deeply worried! All right. Do you think we could sell Dale to pirates?”
Myra stared. “No, Elliot.”
“We have to do something!”
“No, Elliot,” said Myra. “We don’t. I was just talking. I was simply discussing our classmates and their relationships like a normal person. We do not have to sell anybody to pirates.”
“I’m a problem solver,” said Elliot. “I want to solve a problem.”
“I think I’m getting a migraine,” said Myra, gathering up her books.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“I really like you, Elliot,” Myra said. “But I can only take so much. You understand?”
He understood. There were many people who could not take as much as Myra: at least with Myra, he was pretty confident she would come back. He waved to her, a little disconsolately, as she went.
He could not concentrate on his trollish now. He read the line “Troll flesh has the appearance and texture of stone, but is not actually stone (FOOTNOTE: But their hearts are truly made of stone!)” four times. He pictured Dale breaking Luke’s heart in six different ways before he registered Luke coming up to his table in the library.
He felt a little better, then. Dale could not break Luke’s heart while Luke was in the library.
Elliot could not keep Luke under his eye at all times, though. He could barely keep an eye on Luke now, when he was trying to work out how trolls used tenses.
Luke actually looked pretty tense himself.
Maybe the heartbreak had already happened.
“Do you want to come to the Elven Tavern with me?” asked Luke, which was not a heartbroken thing to say.
He did not look heartbroken, exactly, Elliot decided, though he had never seen Luke heartbroken, so he could not know for sure. His shoulders were held stiff, wings clearly straining under the leather, and he was both staring at Elliot and trying to avoid Elliot’s eyes. Maybe he had news. Maybe he had terrible news. Elliot scanned Luke’s face. Elliot was not certain that he was great at analyzing people.
“Well, sure,” Elliot answered, when Luke started looking freaked out about the silence. “Let me finish up here. You go get Serene.”
“No,” Luke said. “I mean, do you want to go—with me. Just us. So we can—talk.”
It was terrible news, then.
“Oh my God,” said Elliot. “Are you sick? Is it harpy cancer?”
Luke started to laugh. Elliot started to talk about the statistics for harpy cancer. Luke would have known about the statistics if he had read the papers Elliot had written out for him. Luke was making his own life difficult, and he only had himself to blame.
“I don’t have harpy cancer,” Luke said, once he was done laughing. “Do you want to go out on a date with me?”
Oh, that was nice. Very nice. Very hilarious. Elliot had really thought they were learning to treat each other better.
Elliot regarded Luke with loathing. “Ha. Very funny. I don’t have time for this, and this book is not properly citing its sources.”
He got up and hit Luke over the head with the book by the troll’s ex, perhaps hitting him harder than a truly committed pacifist would have. He went and found some different and with any luck more helpful books on trollish, and came back to find Luke waiting for him, book pushed aside, leaning back in his chair. He looked down at Luke, feeling lost.
“Seriously,” said Luke, face tilted up to Elliot’s, and he did seem serious. He seemed almost vulnerable.
Elliot understood then. Something had happened with Dale, and it had not gone well.
He remembered Dale saying there wasn’t a lot of choice at the Border camp if you liked guys, and his discussion with Luke, so Luke knew for the first time that Elliot was a possible option. He could understand Luke, even: understand feeling bruised, and looking to someone you trusted not to hurt you. He could even understand it if Luke wanted to spite Dale, show him that he could take what Dale had wanted. Elliot himself had used Dale to get revenge on Luke.
When you cared too much about one person, other people seemed to matter less, and sometimes you treated them as if they did not matter at all.
Elliot thought of his father, who had wanted his mother or no one, Serene, who had wanted Golden, Adara and Myra, who had wanted Luke, and Jase, who had wanted a compliant figment of his own imagination. He thought of Serene last year, almost-offering to be with him again because she thought she could not be with the one she really wanted. He had not taken her offer then, and he would not take Luke’s now. Everyone Elliot had ever wanted to love him had loved someone else better: had wanted someone else more.
“Seriously,” Elliot responded. “That’s not a good idea.”
“What happened between Luke and Dale?” Elliot asked Adara Cornripe the next day at lunch.
“Please don’t sit down,” said Adara. “I can’t be seen associating with you sober, in daylight, in lunch-table intimacy. My social standing would not recover.”
Elliot hovered his lunch tray over the table, as if he were going to put it down. “Talk fast.”
“T
he word is that they were in a clinch and Luke’s wings came out and Dale freaked,” Adara told him, eyeing the tray as if it were a grenade. “But it was Luke who called the whole thing off.”
“What else could he do?” Elliot asked.
“I don’t know, Dale might have come around,” Adara said. “I mean, would Dale be the first person in the world to react to a sexy situation with ‘What is that and oh no, what is it doing?’ Clearly not.”
“If you’re the one who introduces body negativity into the sexy equation, you’re the one who should do the groveling, and the weeping, and the ‘baby, please take me back’ talking,” said Elliot. “That’s mathematics. Sexy mathematics.”
Adara’s gorgeous face turned thoughtful. “Does Luke want Dale to come crawling back, then?”
“I assume.”
“Then I won’t make a plan to ruin Dale’s life,” said Adara. She saw Elliot’s startled look, and shrugged. “I owe Luke. Besides, if he was into it, I’d fly him all around the Border camp like a bad bad flying pony.”
“Aw, I’m so touched, I feel like putting down my tray.”
“Do not do that,” said Adara.
“What would you think about selling Dale to pirates?”
“I think you’re ridiculous and not amusing, Schafer,” said Adara. “Don’t you dare put down that tray.”
“What are you doing, Elliot?” Luke asked. “Come on.”
He put a hand between Elliot’s shoulderblades and pushed Elliot, gently, in the direction of their usual lunch table. Elliot stepped away from him hastily, and went.
Elliot knew then what had happened, that it had been just as he suspected, and he was sorry for Luke and angry with Dale in equal measure.
He tried to forget what Luke had suggested, and when he could not forget he tried to remember it wasn’t serious. Not that Luke would make a joke of such a thing, but that Luke had been hurt and searching for a solution. Luke was new to romance.
In Other Lands Page 46