Cursed by a god and hailed hero by the people and all Fray feels is trapped. This big house, a cage, the city walls, a greater cage. Can’t go, can’t leave.
Only he is leaving, but it’s to attend another of these damned soirees. You’d think the festivities budget would have run out by now. This is the third event Fray’s been guilted into attending this month. There had been no plus-ones.
But at least this one will have food.
He’s long since learned, these last few tumultuous months, that being a bright orange tiefling does very little for going about unnoticed. For that Fray had to pay a hefty sum of gold for a simple silvery cloak, enchanted to make the wearer seem too uninteresting to notice. He’s tested its efficacy and was pleasantly surprised: he could scarcely keep his eyes on it even knowing the reason. And it’s pretty enough to soothe his vanity. It makes up for not having the energy to make himself up the way he would have preferred.
He had planned to take it off once at the gala. Something like this would surely set off some magic alarm. Yet he passed over the threshold without incident, and he was politely but distantly regarded.
Well, then. There are much worse things than being comfortably left in peace to eat his body weight in free food.
It’s a bit less romantic than Fray had wanted. He’s not invisible, just boring, and so his shield is only so effective. He’s had to speak to altogether too many people already. He had thought he might at least overhear some gossip, but the only table he can make out won’t stop discussing a play they saw the night before.
But at least he has all the food he could want here in this empty table far to the edge of the room. And wine, and whiskey, and ale. With any luck, he won’t remember coming home for the night and having to fall asleep in a big, empty bed caged within a big, empty house. He had harbored an absent sort of hope that he might see someone he knows, even likes, someone he might be able to talk to comfortably. It’s such a big party—but no.
Fray takes another long drink from his goblet and savours the burn. When he lowers it again, there is someone in front of him. They are heavy stock, their legs ending in split hooves as sure-footed as any mountain goat. The rest of the person before him is in similar fashion, compact yet dense with muscle from top to bottom. They’re so intricately dressed and in such bright colors that for a moment it’s all Fray can see of them. Then the spectacle fades into itself, leaving behind the whole picture. Fray sees carefully coifed black hair and gray skin, tinted with an edge of green, at odds with the pale gold of hoof and horn. It is, indeed—
“Right?” Fray says with a start, any calm he may have gathered to himself gone flying.
They stand somehow both too near and too far. Fray wants to leap to his hooves and embrace them, someone comforting in this still alien place. He does not. It’s been months, and he does not presume to know what Right might want to do with this encounter. He’s never been much a student of body language, and so he cannot begin to guess at their mood. The very faint hint of a smile lingers in their eyes, while their tail-tip flicks restlessly. Are they happy to see him? Annoyed, upset? He can’t tell. Why can’t he tell? Shouldn’t be be able to?
“Yeah,” says Right with an uncertain caution. Their claws hook into the delicate silks and brocades of their beautiful outfit, fidgeting at the hem. Their eyes are the same pale lights as he remembers, set in a face that isn’t quite the same. Fray can’t pick out what it is, and it only makes him flounder further. Right says, “I thought you’d be at this one.”
Flabbergasted, Fray says the only thing that comes to mind. “Why?”
Right shifts their weight from toe to toe, brushing silky black hairs teased into waves from their face. They’re clean, Fray realizes. They’re washed and perfumed and without ripped nails or patches in their clothing. They look stunning. Of course they look stunning, don’t they, and of course it’s a startle to Fray, who only ever saw them at their most beat-down, their most stressed. He becomes aware, at once, of the lazy job he did with his hair, of the fact he’s utterly without make-up, of how he’s slouched here chewing through plate after plate of expensive finger foods. All while wearing what the tailor had referred to as a “fuck-off cloak”.
All options considered, surely the wisest move for Fray to make would be to excuse himself and flee before Right learns what an embarrassment he’s become.
“Fray?”
Instead, Fray snaps to attention, tense with nerves. Right watches him with trepidation. “Sorry,” he says in the voice that still feels like something he shouldn’t be allowed to have. “Sorry. Could you repeat …?”
“I said,” says Right, “I thought you’d be here because your name was on the ‘special guests’ list.”
A sickening sense of unease seeps into Fray’s bones. “Special guests? I didn’t …”
Right watches him trail off. What do they see when they look at him, he wonders. The shock of the thought so rattles him that he shakes himself and rises to his feet so we to escape it. “Well, they’ll wait,” he says with confidence he doesn’t feel. Right watches him with that blank expression all the while. It’s impossible not to feel judged by it, for Fray. But he’s done many things that need judging. “The noise here is doing my head in. Garden?”
In an act of bravery he cannot pinpoint, Fray stretches out his hand to take theirs. He lowers it, unaccepted, a few seconds later. He clears his throat and makes an abrupt turn toward the patio and the decadent garden beyond. He’s not even sure of what he hopes for. Still, the quiet tp-tp of their hooves on the floor after him is a relief.
His mind is a cloud of insects, frightened and suffocating. It’s Right. It’s Right! They’re here, they sought him out. Three months on and their hands finally washed of the business, and they still sought him out. (Fray smothers the ember of resentment that it took them that long, harshly reminding himself, again, that they owe him nothing.) As they break into the garden, it is into air perfumed with food and flowers, the afternoon sky slowly being gilded by sun. It’s a wide area, beautifully landscaped with hedges and water features. Couples and more dot the landscape. Their eyes slide off him, and off Right, too, who seems to have a permanent sort of fuck-off cloak to them even now. This leaves the two uninterrupted as they slow to wander the green, Fray clutching a flute of champagne, Right with nothing but a crunchy breadstick. There, under the eye of a bush trimmed to resemble a merfolk, Fray halts. He looks at Right, who looks back, and Fray looks away first. Right’s moonlight eyes continue to stare.
What’s to be said?
“You look good,” Fray offers, and hopes it doesn’t read as inept as it feels. “Bright colors look—you look good.”
“Oh,” says Right, and seems to snap out of wherever their head had been. “Yeah. I had help, I mean, but.”
Beat.
“Thank you,” Right adds abruptly.
No return compliment, Fray notes with dimming enthusiasm. That’s fine. It’s okay. He knows he looks like a mess anyway. Still, the wind goes out of him. He has to sit down on the wide lip of the pot housing the merfolk shrub. “So,” he says, eventually, after another long five seconds lurches past, “What’ve you been … up to?”
“Nothing,” Right says with a shrug.
Silence begins its uncomfortable crawl over them once more.
Fray says, “Nothing?”
“Nothing interesting,” Right amends. Their breadstick is not being eaten so much as hollowed out with their claws. “Didn’t leave my room for the first month, remembered how to talk the second.” Crumbs fall to the grass. “Not sure what month three is turning into, yet.”
“Oh,” says Fray, feeling all the more selfish for that hidden seed of resentment, of where have you been? They had been trying to get back on their feet, just like him. Of course they were. He casts about for more small-talk, a skill he’s been forced to acquire in the last few months, but does not find any before Right speaks up again. “You still up in that mansion?”
“Hell,” Fray says, rubbing at his eyes. “Yes. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.”
“Mm?”
“Too big. Empty. Different.”
He regrets the admission as soon as he says it, but Right just hums in acknowledgement. “Wish I had better news to share,” Fray says with a faint laugh. The champagne in his hands is getting low and he feels no more confident. “It’s either alone at home or the mascot work,” and he illustrates the latter with a general gesture toward their surroundings. “Can’t bear either.”
Right nods slowly. Why are they looking at him like that? What can they see that he cannot?
Right says, “Has it been safe, there?”
“What?”
“Your house. Are you safe?” Fray blinks blearily at them. Right seems to take the hint, and says, enunciating each word, “Does that god leave you in peace?”
As has happened every other time he’s remembered the ease with which he was discarded by the center of his entire world, Fray feels his gut twist and his head grow light. “Yes,” he says in a small and hurried voice. “Y … yes. They … I’ve not seen them.”
This, at least, seems to mollify Right. They nod, seemingly to themselves. “Good,” they say with emphasis, and then with further conviction, “Very good.” Something about it pours guilt down Fray’s spine. It freezes his nerves, deadens his synapses. He can think of nothing to answer with. Instead he stares down into his flute of champange and wishes it were full again, then throws back what remains. The bubbles swirl and sparkle against the tender skin of his mouth, almost-but-not-quite painful. Then he makes the mistake of biting his lip, and the sting of his pointed teeth digging into the sensitive skin transports him months and miles away. Right’s kisses were the most open display of their emotions he had yet seen.
When Right speaks again, Fray has to ask them to repeat themselves. It’s with a touch of guilt that he realizes he has no idea how long he’s been standing here in mute stand-offishness. He tries to fumble ahead of the conversation, seeking something to save face with, when what Right says actually sinks in. “Aren’t those enchantments expensive?”
“Which one?” Fray says, like a liar. He can’t feign ignorance long, not when Right gestures at the cloak. “Oh. Yes. Kind of unreasonable. But …”
But what, Fray? But if you have to keep being the center of attention you’ll walk into the sea? But another few parties like this where you’re expected to be on the host’s arm for everyone to question again will see you behead yourself?
“But it’s worth it to the last copper,” Fray says. And then, startling himself: “Being orange doesn’t make you very inconspicuous, you know.”
“I can’t say I can relate,” says Right, and there is a small smile that goes with it. It jolts down Fray’s brainstem like psionics. It shakes things loose he had shelved and closed off from himself. He is, without warning, absolutely sick with longing.
But he just smiles back.
They’ve wandered through the party. They’ve spoken on none of the things Fray had fantasized talking to them about. There hasn’t been the slightest opportunity for Fray to drop to his knees and beg Right to allow him back into their life. Don’t be stupid, he tells himself, don’t be selfish, and don’t assume. Don’t assume that Right doesn’t—they said it themselves. They’ve been having just as hard a time, probably worse. Did they not approach him of their own volition, or did they not approach him because they have not approached anyone at all?
Right says, “Have you heard from Shadowheart at all?”
Shadowheart. Fray blinks several times, fidgeting with his cloak. “Just a letter,” he says. “About a month after it all. Said she was thinking about farming flowers.”
“Specific.”
“She’s kept Scratch, too.”
“Mm.”
The small talk withers and dies. Fray watches the way it flops helplessly between them for a few seconds before making his best effort. “So,” he starts, and finds himself unable to look Right in the face. “What’s ahead for you?”
The two of them speak, briefly, on the topic of Right’s plans. Gunsmithing, well into their apprenticeship. A market with growing demand and wealthy clientele. A promising future.
“What about you?” asks Right, after another long pause. “Any luck with getting, uh… untieflinged?”
Fray suppresses a wince. A dozen thoughts race through his head, each more nervous than the last. When did he become so nervous? So easily frightened?
He takes a bracing breath. “I’m—not. I’m not trying.”
That, finally, provokes a reaction. Right’s eyes widen, the pale glow of the light that spills from them growing brighter. But they do not speak. The silence becomes unbearable. “I don’t,” Fray says, as slowly as he would have before his transformation, “think I want to turn back.”
Right examines him. They do it with ears forward and piercing eyes, their whole body held perfectly still. Fray feels as if he is being hunted. He awaits their judgement, wondering—will Right think him a fool? Think less of him? Their thoughts, as ever, are a mystery to him. He waits with bated breath for their verdict.
Then Right says, “Oh,” and takes a bite off their hollowed-out breadstick.
This is, by far, the worst thing they could have said. No input. Comments kept to themself. It sets Fray’s mind to racing with flat-out paranoia. He fumbles to think of anything to say, anything at all, and fucks it all up at once. “So would you—would you like to see the house, sometime?”
“I’ve seen it,” Right says, and of course they have, back when Fray first received it. He feels stupid for even asking. He tries again.
“Then … maybe a drink soon? Lunch?”
“Maybe,” Right says after a thoughtful pause, and Fray wants to scream. He’s been away too long. He’s forgotten how to even talk with them. Surely it wasn’t this hard before. Surely Right is letting him down gently. The longing in his chest begins to grow spikes and leach acid. He wants to flee. He’s just trying to figure out his escape routes when Right says, “You should come by the gunsmithy sometime.”
Somewhere a cicada drones. Fray’s eyes are fixed on the gleaming strands of a spiderweb in the rafters of the house.
“Really?” he asks.
“Mm,” says Right, with no apparent idea of the lifeline they’ve just tossed him. “I’ve just started work on my first rifle. I want you to see it.”
“Really?”
The emphasis must be obvious. Right cocks their brow and peers at him. “Is that … bad?”
“No,” says Fray, and drops the empty champagne flute he’s spent the last ten minutes fussing with. It falls to the thick turf, spared from smashing by springy grass. He stops to pick it up, but Right beats him there, and in the end he finds himself being offered the glass by the stem. He reaches for it, then falters. “I wasn’t sure if you would want to see me again,” Fray says, soft, and takes the glass.
Or, tries. Right’s fingertips lock around the glass, keeping it in place even as Fray tugs. When this catches Fray’s eye and he looks at them in confusion, it’s again to that blank, sharp expression. “I want to see you again,” they say, enunciating the words like Fray is a small child. He isn’t bothered. “There. Is that what you needed?”
It’s not condescending or mean-spirited. It’s meant in its literal sense, its direct meaning. No room for questions. “But,” Fray says anyway.
“But?”
“I—I don’t know.” Right looks at him. “I! I didn’t hear from you for months,” says Fray pleadingly. “I heard from everyone else. Even Astarion. I just thought … you must want to put the whole thing behind you.”
“I do,” says Right, still looking puzzled.
“Including me.”
“No?” At Fray’s harrowed look, Right chews their lip. “I didn’t reach out because I was … I wasn’t well,” Right says. “I needed time.”
I needed to know if I threw my life away for someone who doesn’t care, Fray thinks dully, then recoils from the thought. Has he always been like this? He hasn’t. He’s sure of it. Instead Fray shakes himself. “Of course,” he says, trying to put the earnestness for Right’s well-being ahead of his petty jealousy. “I should’ve thought of that.”
They shrug. “I thought you would show up, to be honest. I kind of thought you would show up on my door one day and go, ‘Okay, time to stop lying in bed all day.’ It was a surprise that you didn’t.”
“I didn’t think you’d want me to track you down.”
“If I didn’t want you to track me down,” Right says with a confidence so thorough it circles back to a mundane statement of fact, “you wouldn’t be able to find me.”
When they look at Fray again, they freeze, which is not a terrible response to the sight of someone hurriedly wiping tears from the corners of their eyes. “Then I was worried for nothing, hey?” he says in a voice he does not quite have full command of. It wobbles and warbles. “Hells. Oh, hells.”
Slowly, Right unfreezes, looking now like a cautious cat. “Did I … say something wrong?”
“No,” says Fray. He releases his grip on the champagne flute, slipping his hand further up Right’s wrist to wrap his fingers around it. He dares step closer, invading their space. They do not flinch away, instead watching with a steady gaze. “No,” he repeats, feeling breathless and dizzy. Disbelieving. Giddy, even with the tears now spilling from the corners of his eyes. “This is how much I missed you, is all.”