I can feel the beat of blood in his body, in mine, I’m not sure what’s his pulse and what’s from me. His dick’s trapped between us and I focus on rolling my hips to drag across it so his jaw slackens and his fingers fist my hair.
He comes with a bright cry, eyes bursting open to latch on to mine like he can drag me with him in the pleasure wave. And he does; my own orgasm rips through me in a fervor, relentless and brutal and he’s kissing the moans from my lips.
It’s still early. The fog of orgasm shifts everything dreamlike again, and as our kisses slow, I fight through the haze to clean us off before we tangle up in bed again.
My head on his chest, his fingers card through my hair, slower and slower until he’s asleep again, thewhooshing inhale and exhale of his breath a lulling, symphonic rhythm.
The calmness of this moment has my chest cramping tight.
He faced my parents’ ridicule without flinching. He made sure Orok was okay, too.
IneedThio to be happy. I need him as happy as he makes me, as supported, assafe.
In the low light, I look up at him, watching the interplay of sleep and dreams smooth out his features.
Powerlessness was my driving force behind studying magic. Because we have all this potential literally at the tips of our fingers, so there should never, ever be situations where we’re small and weak and acquiescent.
But there are. With Arasne, with his family, and I can’t do a fucking thing to fix it. Can’t get his family off his back; can’t pay for his mom’s care; can’t intervene in any way that’d help. I’ll be here next to him like he is for me, a firm hand on his back, a shoulder to lean on, but there should bemore. There has to be something else I can do. Something else I can give him, the way he’s given me—
An idea sizzles through me like a lightning strike.
I can do one thing. One of the first things he gave me: his research topic.
That topic is the only thing he’s gotten to choose on his own. He doesn’t want his degree or the life path his family set him on, but figuring out his mom’s topic?
Yes, it’s a huge concept, and yes, it’s dangerous. But it’s too late to incorporate anything new into our main project anyway, so if I found something, it’d be just for him; and I don’t have to give him a complete solution for it to have an impact. We’ve both set aside his project to focus on the measuring cup theory with mine, but I can dive back into his and dedicate the attention to it that it deserves. Thathedeserves.
What good is living in a world with magic if I can’t use it to make him happy?
Three weeks until our final presentation.
Four weeks until graduation.
I tell my parents that I’m busy with school and can’t think about any lawsuits yet. And they, for the first time in my life, respect my boundary. My mom restarts texting me though, asking how I am. It isn’t surprising how good it feels to have her messages filling my phone again, and I respond every time.
Back in the lab, Thio and I run more tests, adding various factors, recording the limitations—and as we work, I poke at Thio’s project with deliberate focus. Every time I find something in evocation texts that I think will work, we try it; but nothing makes a dent at disconnecting a conjurer from their conjured item.
Thio shrugs it off. He never thought we’d make progress on his topic, so these failures aren’t unexpected to him, and if he notes my new levels of ferocity in research he doesn’t say anything. He’s distracted on his own; when he comes back from his meetings with Arasne now, he’s hollow, withdrawn. Not even Nick purring brings him out of the fog. He works in silence until we leave for the day, only to kiss me in the car on the way to his place like nothing happened.
“I just need to make it to graduation,” he tells me. “Everything’s fine.”
I’m the fucking king of things beingfine.And this? Not fine. Not at all.
He doesn’t tell me what Arasne says to him at these meetings, only that he’s trying to keep her appeased with mundane details of our project, but she has to know what he’s planning to do after graduation. And she’s not going to let him go easily.
Neither of us mentions my dad’s offer, but I know Thio’s waiting for me to talk about it the same way I wait for him to bring up his family.
We visit his mom and there are bruises under his eyes from lack of sleep.
Focusing on Thio consumes me those last weeks. I fall into a state of delirious work but Thio and Orok blame it on the end of the semester approaching fast. We’re all stressed, we’re all overcaffeinated and sleepless—but mine is half from writing up the safety net rune paper, and half from researching Thio’s project in every free moment.
The days pass, and the grant presentation looms. We have our final check-in meeting with Davyeras and the advisors, where they give our last tests and concepts their approval. Thio and I put finishing touches on our paper and I think, maybe, there won’t beanything for me to find, no great revelation I can offer him as a buffer against the stress looming post-graduation.
That’s sappy, isn’t it? I want to bring him a research solution on bended knee.
It’s coming for Thio, his future, as unavoidable as mine; but his is the precarious column on which his mom’s care is balanced.
I can’t fix that for him.
