When we get home, Shadi, who's looking a smidge droopy, excuses themselves with a polite smile. Zevran watches them trudge upstairs out of the corner of his eye, and when their/my bedroom door closes, he glances at me.

I pat his shoulder and shrug. "I think it's because we had that argument, but they might just be tired out. Too much peopling, you know? Only thing to do is leave them to it. They'll probably sleep, maybe try to pray or listen to some music." I smile. "They'll be all right, don't worry."

He shoots me a slick grin. "Oh, of that I have no doubt," he says smoothly. "There is a doctor in the house."

I snort. "Come on, you. Let's have a browse through that file while we have a minute. Should we do it inside, or outside?"

Wicked Van, sinful Van, forcing poor, innocent Zevran to make a decision. He hems and he haws– only briefly, though, of course. After a glance out the window, he looks back at me.

"I simply cannot decide," he says breezily, turning and making for the kitchen. "Perhaps you can choose, while I make tea for us both."

"Uh… huh." I raise an eyebrow and follow him over to the kitchen bench. As he takes two mugs, I reach out and touch a finger to the window pane. Cool, but not unbearable. To Zevran, though, it certainly could be. It's a bastard not knowing what's a comfortable temperature for him.

"You know what I could really use?" I muse aloud.

I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't, I shouldn't, I shouldn't, because now Zevran fixes me with a brazen grin.

"Oh, my lovely Van," he purrs. "Whatever it is, I guarantee I can give it to you. You have but to name your wish."

"Right," I say with a cheery nod. "So you're open to the idea of me putting a thermometer sticker on your arm so I can get an idea of your body temperature in various conditions? If we went outside now, once it dropped too low, I'd know you were uncomfortable and I'd bring you indoors again."

Oh, come on, why are your eyes sparkling at that? What comeback have you thought of, toad man?

He hums delightedly. "A sound plan. There are many diverting things we could get up to in here. And what would you do with me if I got too warm, hmm?"

I smirk. "Drop you in the ocean with a length of rope 'round your ankle, I expect. And when you were cool enough, I'd reel you back in like a big oul' fish."

His snort coincides with the kettle's cheerful ping as it hits the boil. I add milk to my tea, and Zevran shudders a little when I bring the milk carton too close to his cup.

"I do not understand why you would spoil your drink this way, Van," he mumbles, taking the carton back to the fridge and closing the door firmly.

I shake my head. "You're a bloody heathen, you are. A heathen toad man. Now: indoors or outdoors? Or both?"

Zevran holds his cup in both hands and looks longingly over at the futon. "Your lounge is very soft…" he murmurs.

"Our lounge," I correct him, "and yes it is. That's decided, then! Indoors it is."

We bumble into the living room and adopt our little spots on the futon. Zevran's always on the left end, near the doorway, but god bless him, he's sitting with his feet curled under him, just like Squeaky. It's such an odd thing to be delighted about without context, but sweet, cautious Zevran is comfortable enough to put his feet on his own furniture and I'm so happy I could puke.

Frankly, even if it were a damn fool reason, we could use the optimism as we eye the monstrously large book. The heaviness of it, it turns out, isn't for the sole purpose of terrifying public servants. Absolutely everything anyone could want to know about the social service branch is in this bloody thing.

"Christ merciful Jesus," I mumble softly as we browse the pages of contents. "'Cash supplement for minority groups,' 'Free electrical safety check for rural and remote households…' God, I need to talk to my patients about this shit. I'm sure they don't know about half of them." I sigh and shake my head, leaving the welfare section to thumb through for registration services.

"Mmm!" Zevran says; I pause. "There are whole pages dedicated to education services? My my, and to think I left my papers from the University of Orlais back in Antiva."

I chuckle. "Ah, well. Maybe you can do it all again here, huh? Not like it'll cost you much."

"Ho-ho, Van! Could you imagine me at university?" He laughs like it's a real joke, and slows to a stop when I raise an eyebrow and shrug.

"Sure," I say. "Why not? You're probably smarter than most of the people who go there. If there's something that interests you, once we've got you registered we'll enrol you. You'd probably have to study from here through the internet, though, unless you wanted to move out to the big city." I wave a hand in the direction of the front door. "Closest university campus is a fifteen-hour drive from here."

Zevran hums thoughtfully. "I will need to earn my keep here somehow, and it seems being an assassin is no longer an option." He chuckles and adds, "Well, the option."

"Eh." I shrug yet again. "There's no keep to earn. If you're happy with things the way they are, we can stay like this. I make enough money to keep us both comfortable."

There's something terribly, helplessly selfish about the surge of hopefulness I get at the thought of him staying in Camphor Bay. I couldn't imagine much worse than a stranger– one I'm dependent on– making me feel unable to pursue my own freedom by guilt.

I clear my throat. "Of course, you need to decide what's best for yourself. Whether it's a life halfway around the world or in this house, that's for you to choose."

Zevran freezes. I freeze. But then I remember the reason we came in here.

I give the book a pat. "Right! Well, I've said my piece. Let's get on to the bureaucratic shit, shall we?"

We proceed to scour the table of contents like it's the most riveting thing to make it to print. By the fourth page, we're on to something.

"Registration…" I tap the heading. "That's what we want. Let's see, there's civil registration by area: city, regional, rural, remote, settlement… registration of a Summoned individual by area… mmm…" I grin at him. "Looks like we're spoiled for choice. Do you want to start reading about the Summoned options first? Or will we go straight to civil registrations?"

Zevran leans a little closer and hums. "Well, it cannot hurt to know all our options with the Summoneds, surely. Perhaps there is a way I can register without them knowing who summoned me, no?"

"You never know," I shrug.

"Page 884, is where it begins." He reaches over, takes a handful of book, and opens it out to exactly the right page. With a chuckle, he adds, "That bodes well, do you not think?"

"Reckon it does."'

After a couple of hours of promising starts, dead ends, and a bout of writer's cramp between us as we take notes on the side, we've scoured the section and have a small list of undesirable options. Several of them are vying for the position of Plan A, only because we can't decide which of them is the Least Worst.

When Shadi emerges from my room, they walk straight past us into the kitchen. "Who's having tea?"

"Oh god, me please," I croak. Several bits of me pop and crack as I sit up straight for the first time in unhealthily long, and Zevran sounds like a cement mixer when he does the same. "You'd better do one for Zevvo too, baby," I add. "He needs something to oil the joints a bit."

Zevran snorts. "Tea will do that, hmm?"

"Tea fixes everything," Shadi calls from the kitchen. "Ask Baba."

He looks at me expectantly, and I nod. "Baba swears by it. You can go to him with any problem– pain, sadness, virus, can't sleep, too sleepy, anything! And the first thing he does is hug you and make you tea."

Zevran wobbles his head thoughtfully. "I am inclined to think he is correct, truly. And certainly, where tea fails, a good Antivan brandy will help the rest."

Shadi comes in, masterfully holding three mugs and not spilling a single drop from any of them as they stride over. We heap on effusive thanks and praise for them as they pass us our own teas, and when one hand is free, Shadi playfully flicks it at us and takes the spot beside me.

"How's it all looking?" they ask, giggling a little as I let out a long groan. "That good, huh? Let's see…" Shadi takes the notepad off the coffee table and peruses it, their eyebrows drawing into a deep frown. They look up at me. "Evangeline Zegna Amell," they hold up the notepad and pointedly tap the page with Zevran's beginner's handwriting, "Your penmanship is getting worse each year. This scrawl is an affront to my eyes!"

Shadi turns to a suspiciously still-faced Zevran and conspiratorially adds, "There's a stereotype here that doctors have shitty handwriting, you know, Zevran. And Vannie here isn't doing much to disprove it."

I bite down on both my lips for a moment. "Baby," I gently take the book and turn back to my own notes, "If you look closely, you'll see that this," I flip back to Zevran's again, "looks nothing like my handwriting."

Shadi freezes. Claps a hand to their mouth. A blush darkens their cheeks. A vein appears on Zevran's temple.

I'm 99% sure he's trying not to laugh, but I shoot Zevran an apologetic look anyway before adding to Shadi, "He's learning to write the alphabet, baby. They don't use it in Thedas."

Their eyes squeeze shut. "Oh, fuck," they squeak.

That's the finish of me. I can't help it. What a bugger of a day it's been. My restraint, my reserve, my dignity, all of them are long gone now as I crylaugh into my hands. It takes several tsks and a (gentle) swat on the shoulder from Shadi before I right myself.

"Sorry, sorry," I choke, wiping my eyes. "Just been one of those days where we all put our foot in it. Had to be your turn at some point, baby."

Shadi groans; Zevran finally lets himself snort. I decide that peace, and my point, have been made.

"Shitty options galore," I continue after a moment. "Can't register Zevran as a Summoned person–"

"No?" They frown. "What if we got someone to write an AU about him, made a character similar enough to him?"

I shake my head. "We checked, but it'd look too suspicious. Takes time to write the AU, and then says here the AU registration process takes months and it's dated in their system. Never mind that it usually takes years to summon someone."

Shadi puffs out a sigh. "True. I had a feeling it was like that, but I hoped you'd find a loophole somewhere in that fuck-off big book..."

"We are not without hope, I do not think," Zevran chimes in now. "The civil registry options, they could perhaps work."

At this, Shadi, a sloucher by trade, sits up straight and looks at Zevran with interest. "Yeah?" they say, nodding encouragingly. "Will you tell me about it, Zevran?"

Zevran, appearing to understand the good posture as an apology for the handwriting remark, takes it with his usual graciousness and nods.

"Registering in the city or a regional area," he says as I pass him the notebook, "requires me to apply for what they are calling a 'off-record birth certificate.' To do that, though, I need proof of my mother and father's existence here, which, well…" he shrugs. "Perhaps we can forge the documents."

Shadi nibbles their lip. "I don't like our chances at fooling a computer, to be honest. It's pretty hard to fudge documents these days. What else do we got?"

Zevran, not to be dismayed, turns back a few pages with a flourish. "There is a remote option, for here in Camphor Bay! If I can have residents vouch for my presence over the years, no documents are needed. If we know people willing to fib a little, surely this is quite straightforward."

"A-ha!" They grin. "Now we're cooking. How many do you need?"

"Four people."

Shadi starts counting off their fingers demonstratively. "Vannie, me, Mom, and Baba… there we go! Four!"

"Mmm, that's not the problem," I say with a sigh.

"Huh?"

I heave the huge bastarding dossier open and point at the criteria. "One: 'The applicant shall supply an extensive account of their life prior to registration.' Two: 'Four persons shall provide accounts of having seen and interacted with the applicant in the region dating from the time they had met until the time of application. Two of these must have witnessed the birth.'"

"Yeah, and?" Shadi shrugs. "We make up a story we can all agree on. Mom and Baba saw him get born. Parents died undocumented. No sweat."

"Yes, but consider that the Social Services Registry Office is going to ask some questions about this. Like why people like Mom the School Teacher knew there was a child roaming North Stretch Shire and did nothing."

Zevran chuckles offhandedly. "They would not really worry about such things, would they? In Antiva, there are many orphaned urchins who live in little clusters together beside the marketplaces and under the bridges. I guarantee you nobody has thought to look for them, and they are the lucky ones."

Well, doesn't that just take the breath out of Shadi and me. We sit there speechless, with Zevran's eyes darting between us.

"Darlin'," I say after moment, "There's a lot wrong with this place, but anyone who said it was acceptable to leave a small child to fend for themselves would get the tar beaten out of them." With an effort, I close the big file and put it back on the coffee table. "We are going to need a watertight story for you if we go this way, and then we'll need watertight stories for everyone else, too."

Zevran glances down at his hands, and then up at me. "... Do you think this is impossible?"

Shadi shakes their head before I can even react. "It's not impossible, no," they say, "but Vannie's right. We'll need to put a lot of thought into this and have every what-if planned out."

I smile and give Zevran a small pat on the shoulder. "Yeah. That's right. We'll work something out, don't you worry. And if this falls though, we'll find something else."

"Yeah!" Shadi shoots Zevran a broad, gleaming grin. "We won't stop 'til we get your bit of paper. No doubt about it!"

As a small smile comes to him, Shadi's off the lounge like there's a rocket up their arse. "All right, you two sad fucks. Get outta here while I make some dinner." They put a hand on their hip and point toward the nearest exit. "I'll message you when you can come back."

I shrug at Zevran as we get to our feet. "The boss has spoken, I guess, Zevvo. What do you say we hit the beach and have a look at the rockpools?"

"Fantastic idea," Shadi trills, frog-marching us through the kitchen and out the back door without so much as a toodle-oo.

Nary a word is said between Zevran and me as we take the sandy track down to the shore. The dirt road up to the top of the cliff climbs alongside us, baring its weatherbitten innards of deep red soil and spindly tree roots. Out to the other side, though, the beach is endless. The foredunes are blanketed with spinifex and anchored by the occasional beach camphor or pine, and the air is thick with the syrupy sweetness of it all.

I draw in a lungful and sigh. "I love the smell of the beach here," I say to Zevran with a smile. "These trees are only found in Camphor Bay, so you won't smell this anywhere else."

Zevran smiles with a thoughtful hum as he cranes his neck to get a look at the foliage. "The scent was the first thing I noticed when I woke up in Camphor Bay," he says. "Very rich, very fragrant. I look forward to smelling it each morning when I go onto the verandah for a little sun."

I don't know why I'm so thrilled to hear that, but I feel like if I get any lighter, I'm going to float off. I can just see the headline now in the local rag: New arrival likes smell of local trees; only town GP dies of acute euphoria.

I need to get a grip before I frighten the poor bastard again. My mouth leaps into action before I can do anything.

"You know," I babble, "when the school teaching period was over and the students all went on holiday, Mam, Mom, and Baba would pack us kids up and we'd drive out here." I point further down the beach, away from the cliffs. "We'd pitch a tent up on the grass and live off the land until school started again."

I don't mention it's because teachers only get half-pay during holidays and we would have gone hungry for days at a time otherwise, and as Zevran grins at me, I don't regret the omission.

"Mmm!" He rubs his hands. "Think of it, my lovely Van! You could catch a fish, and I would make the finest chowder this side of the portal."

"Huh. I was never the one to catch the fish," I ponder aloud. "That was usually Baba, Linney, and Moustafa. Shadi and I were the ones setting up everything else." I shrug. "I could probably learn, though, right?"

Zevran shrugs back. "Why not? Failing that, though, I could always catch the fish and you could make the chowder."

I tut under my breath and gently bump his shoulder. "Toad man. Come on, these rock pools aren't going to look at themselves."

We've come on a great day. The intertidal zone is teeming with life this afternoon. Zevran's absolutely enraptured– so much so that I hand him my phone and let him go nuts with the camera. He hums and coos and asks all sorts of questions I can't answer, and doesn't seem to mind my ignorance one bit.

When we're summoned home an hour later, Zevran has an entire photographic presentation of our discoveries ready for Shadi as we hoe into the plum chicken and vegetables they've whipped up. It's all amazing. Shadi's got compliments and questions galore on the pictures and their contents for Zevran, and Zevran keeps things from getting effusive by asking questions of his own- on the food, on the sea life, on Shadi's life. And, of course, complimenting the chef throughout. Those do get effusive, and Shadi revels in it.

By the time dinner's over, they're whisking Zevran away to my piano so I can clean up, and the house fills to the rafters with their top-shelf show-off songs. Fantaisie Impromptu, Flight of the Bumblebee, The Heart Asks Pleasure First, on and on they go, with Moustafa's shadow hanging over them the whole way. Nimble-fingered, brilliant Safsaf, all fireworks and iridescent dragonfly wings, invited to study at the top conservatories before his high school certificate was guaranteed. Even in death, he eclipses Shadi. You can hear the points in Didi's technique where Mom took them aside and crushed their heart to bits before the third round of failed conservatory auditions could pre-empt her. Shadi hates playing, Shadi loves playing; why they're still doing it is beyond me.

But they are, and Zevran has no idea about that, or about their uneven trills, or impaired hierarchies or insufficient expression.

Or he's pretending he doesn't. He's cross-legged on the floor nearby, leant back on his hands with his eyes shut, and when Shadi looks over their shoulder and sees him soaking in their notes like sunlight– their notes, not Safsaf's– they turn back to the keys with the most thinlipped, grim smile I've ever seen.

In the kitchen I dry the same plate for thirty minutes, remembering the boy who shone while his sibling fills the silence partway.

At 11 o'clock, when Shadi's gone to bed and Zevran is making for his own room with the day's polaroids lovingly cradled in his hands, I call to him from my sprawl on the futon.

"Hey, Zev."

He turns around. "Mmm?"

"Can I make a suggestion?"

Zevran comes back down the stairs, nodding as he does.

"Well, maybe not a suggestion, but something that's useful to know if you intend to frame those pictures."

"Oh? Do enlighten me, my doctor. I am in suspense now." He perches on the armrest of my couch bed and smiles down at sleepy, pyjama'd me.

"Ah, now you're setting yourself up for disappointment, as my suggestion isn't worth suspense," I chuckle before launching right into it.

I reach out and tap the back of a photo. "It's safe to write on the back of the photo paper. It won't bleed into the colour. People take pictures quite frequently, so we often put the date and occasion so that we can keep track of what happened that day." I smile up at him. "We'll have to get you an album-- a storage book for photos- so you've got somewhere to keep them all."

Zevran gives a low purr of a laugh. "You know, if someone had told me a week ago there would be enough pictures of me to fill even half a page, I would have cut their throat."

I blink, dozy and amused. "Of all the wild things to happen, that's the one that warrants a throat-cutting?"

"Every man has his tipping point, I suppose," he quips cheekily.

"Hah. Good thing I'm not a man, then," I half murmur to myself, feeling like a relic from the mythical age of the gender binary.

He chuckles at that. "You have me there. I shall have to choose my words more carefully around you, no?"

Zevran slowly rises to his feet, stretching a little as he does. "Thank you for the suggestion, Van. I am glad you told me. It would not have occurred to me otherwise."

He regards my drowsed form with a hand on his hips. "And now I think I had best leave you to sleep."

I stifle a yawn so unsuccessfully that I probably look drunk as my nostrils flare and my eyes flutter half-shut.

He laughs again. "Oh, yes. Yes, it is time for Zevran to go. Sleep well, Van."

I wave until he notices, words failing me as my would-be yawn continues to try and force its way out. By the time he returns it, he's a blur and I'm out of it.

§

Nine hours. Nine glorious hours, that's how long I sleep. I feel so much more relaxed in a fuller house, and while it's certainly not a silver bullet for all of my capital-A agonies, it certainly alleviates a lot of them. I'd forgotten what it's like to feel so settled, and I studiously avoid the part of me that feeds off the hormone rush that nervousness brings, prowling around for something to worry about to get another dose.

No, you can take a seat and shut the fuck up. I'm busy being happy.

After I stretch and roll around like a banana on a boat, I'm up and noting with immense smugness as I check my phone that I have beaten my alarm by two minutes. You champion, Van.

I tiptoe my way over to the laundry room, partly because the laundry is directly underneath Zevran's bedroom, and partly because the floor is chilly underfoot and I'm trying to keep the foot-to-floor ratio at a minimum until I can get some socks on.Luckily for me, we did a load of washing two days ago and have a ton of clean laundry.

I grab a pair of socks that are folded so neatly you'd think they were straight out of the packaging. Zevran, of course, folded them when he was helping with the laundry; neat things are seldom my doing. He had caught me admiring his work and pleasantly remarked that he liked the way my slapdash bunch-and-evert method made him think of a two-legged octopus. I laughed so hard I nearly herniated something, but that's by the by.

I pull on the socks, which by the way are dark blue and have pencils on them, hopping and wobbling as silently as I can manage. Since I'm there, I might as well change completely, and I do.

Once I'm out, fully dressed and making my way to the kitchen, Zevran is already there, placing three cups in front of the now-boiling kettle. I can't help but wonder if my noises underneath somehow reached him and he simply left the bed fully clothed. He moves fast if he's managed to fully dress and do his hair, and slip into the kitchen in the same amount of time it took me to get socks and jeans on and throw a button-up over the t-shirt I wore to bed.

He turns to me and smiles. "Ah, you are awake, my lovely doctor! What marvellous timing you have."

I chuckle. "Morning, Zev. Did you sleep well?"

There's still a pause whenever I ask him that. It's much shorter now than it was before, and it makes me wonder if anyone ever asked him that before he came here.

He nods, his mouth curving up deeply at the sides. "In such a comfortable bed as the one you have given me, I have no excuse not to sleep well."

I step over to him, reaching past him for the kettle as he hangs an arm off the counter and gives me a lazy grin. "I think people suffering from insomnia might want a word with you about that theory. People who have trouble falling or staying asleep, that is."

"Ah! You have a name for that." He chuckles and waves a hand. "Mmm, not staying asleep when you wish, that is a part of life. We must simply take what sleep we can and be grateful for it."

I pause while pouring the third cup of tea, quickly finishing the job and setting the jug down.

"No, Zev, not here it isn't," I shake my head a little. "Not consistently."

He raises an eyebrow with his usual polite cynicism. "Oh? People sleep like they're dead on a regular basis in this world, do they?"

I shrug and nod. "Well they usually sleep continuously, yeah. Good sleep is a cornerstone of good health. If you're having trouble sleeping, there are some excellent treatments available that can help."

A distinctly forced look comes to his lazy sprawled posture. I nearly regret saying anything; of course sleeping deeply would be a risk for an assassin, but he needs to know his options.

I hold up my hands. "Of course, whether you accept treatment or not is up to you. I can't, and wouldn't make you do anything, but you should know it's there if you change your mind." I shrug before adding hopefully, "But hey, maybe as time goes by and you settle in, you won't get woken up by the sounds of me pottering around the house."

All right, that was a stupid thing to say. I must have sounded quite threatening, communicating the idea that I hoped he would let his guard down one of these days, and as I should have anticipated, he says nothing, merely fixing me with his loading screen smile.

"I'm… not really going about this the right way," I apologise. "Remember, I don't expect you to trust me. You've been here a week. Maybe one day you'll trust me, maybe you won't. I don't do any of this with the expectation you'll feel a certain way about me."

I get a quirky smile and an arched brow as he says, "You are a strange one, Van."

"That's a very charitable descriptor," I answer with a rueful laugh, taking one of the cups of tea and blowing on it. "Anyway, short day at the clinic for me today. Do you want to come with, or would you rather stay home? Shadi will probably want to spend time with you whichever you choose, if you're open to it."

He doesn't look wholly opposed to anything I've just said, but it must be a little daunting to be left home alone with someone he knows even less than the person he barely knows who he has to live with. Not to mention having any sort of choice in how to spend his day. Decision making is a cognitive skill that takes time and effort to build up, and he hasn't had much chance to practice.

Those are, at least, my theories on why it takes him a moment to answer.

"Then… perhaps I could come with you today?" he asks slowly. "I would stay out of your way, of course. The other office, it is free today, yes?"

I smile and nod. "It is! Great. You'll need to leave Shadi's laptop at home, though. That has to stay secret."

"Naturally."

I hum thoughtfully. "What would be good is to get you a laptop of your own. Take my laptop with you today, maybe, and start looking at which one you'd like."

He gives a wry laugh. "With luck, the next purchase I make will not line the pockets of a charlatan."

An undignified snort is out of me before I can stop it. "Shadi can help you with that while I'm busy, if you let them. They're a god-level shopper, and they can show you how to use those workout machines, too."

"Mmm?" He nods. "Shadi would not mind?"

Now I really laugh. "Mind showing off how much they know? They'll jump at the chance."

And when I'm knocking on their door two minutes later to drag them out of bed, they almost literally do.

"He wants to know how the machines work?" They coo softly, a faraway look in their eyes for a moment before fixing me with a playfully accusing glare. "You should've told me sooner!" They wave away the apology I wasn't planning to give and lean close to me. "Is he downstairs right now?"

I nod, squinting a little at this sudden furtiveness. They catch my expression and shake their head at me.

"It's nothing bad, I just… I thought about it last night and I want to give him the camera." They shrug awkwardly. "Maybe some kinda 'Welcome To Earth' present, or just something to give him a hobby. He can't do much right now, but it's beautiful here, so even taking shots around the backyard and beach, y'know?" They watch me apprehensively. "Is it too much?

I smile and rub Shadi's shoulder. "I think he'll love it," I assure them. "Take it with you today, give it to him while you're in the office together. Show him how it works, where to get the refills and which ones he'll need."

The relief on their face is palpable. They nod and grin, and I leave them to get dressed as I rejoin Zevran in the kitchen. He's busy filling another bowl with his signature fruit salad, and I take a heart-shaped piece of melon and pop it in my mouth.

"You make breakfast fun," I say as I plonk into the chair beside him. "I don't usually get my hands on such nicely-shaped melon--" I stop instantly as Zevran slowly raises his head and fixes me with a capital-L look.

I close my eyes. "Oh god. I… yes. The fruit is nice."

"The forbidden fruit?" he asks, and I open my eyes to see him positively glowing at the childish joke I'm trying so hard not to give into. But… booby joke… it's right there…

With a groan, I let my head sink onto the table with a bonk. "Days like these, I wish I drank."

A chuckle reaches my ears, followed by the sound of food being transferred from one bowl to another.

"Oh, but we are having plenty of fun without alcohol. Here, my doctor, have some more luscious melons instead."

I crack open an eye and see a bowl approaching my face, and when I sit up, I see my own portion of the fruit shapes he's made.

"These are so nice," I murmur appreciatively, taking a kiwifruit flower and eating it whole. "Thank you, Zev."

My answer is a crinkly-eyed smile as he returns to making and placing the fruits into the serving bowl.

The silence lasts a good ten minutes while we eat and wait for Shadi to finish dressing when Zevran speaks up again.

"Ah, Van?"

"Mmm?"

"The tattoo removal, I have been thinking about it."

I nod. "Any thoughts you want to share?"

"Perhaps I would like to do it. Is that still an option?"

"Certainly. If you're sure you want this, you can even start today, if you like."

There is no pause this time as he nods. "Yes. Yes, I would like that."

"Right. Well, you should know that there will be some swelling and blistering, but any discomfort shouldn't last more than a few days. I have some remedies that will minimise the pain."

He appears totally unfazed by the prospect of pain-- no surprise after the life he's had, I suppose-- and nods again readily.

"Right. Well--"

"I'm here!" Shadi trills, ever the one-person parade as they march in and plonk themselves down beside me. They let out a delighted noise as Zevran slides a bowl of fruit salad over to them.

"I'm moving in, Vannie," they declare as they gesture at the bowl. "He spoils me, and I love it!"

I grin at Zevran. "Someone's in the good books. We'll have carrot cake out the arse a week from now, you mark my words."

"My specialty," Shadi explains, making a show of buffing the nails of one hand against their shirt and checking them.

"Have you ever had a contender in the game of false modesty?" I ask through a chuckle.

They give me a lazy smile. "Not a one."

In an about-turn in behaviour, Shadi picks up a banana heart and chews it down with relish. "So you're gonna let me keep you company in the clinic today, Zevran, huh?" Their eyes sparkle a little. "We'll find you a nice computer, get you acquainted with all the workout machines, and-- mmm! I have plans. So many plans."

I glance between Shadi and an amused Zevran and shrug. "The boss has spoken, apparently."

"Don't worry," they continue, taking my remark in their stride as they flutter their lashes at Zevran, "I won't be in your face all the time if you don't want. I can be quiet when it's needed, too."

I snort. "Count on it. My money's on you needing a nap by lunchtime because you'll be all peopled out. Either that or you'll be curled up on the exam table in there, reading on your phone and pretending nobody's there. My poor little introvert."

Zevran chuckles. "Oh, I've known quite a few of those. On occasion, I have even had to factor in 'alone time' with the less sociable of my marks. Fully supervised, of course."

Shadi's mouth falls open. "Are you hearing this, Van? He's doing it for people he was contracted to kill, and Aunt Erica and Uncle Jerry won't give me half an hour's escape at their parties without sobbing that I hate them, my god!" They turn to Zevran. "Bless you. Bless. You."

I'm pretty sure they said it with the genuine hope that Zevran's deity of choice rains down riches and good fortune aplenty on him; there's a suspiciously reverent glaze to their eyes.

Zevran looks hugely pleased with himself, all told, and his puckish smile jumps just a little as I chuckle and add, "Mmm. We've found a real gem in Zev, haven't we?" I glance at the clock on the wall and sigh. "Well, I've got to go, so if you two are coming with me to the clinic, you'll have to be ready to go in five minutes."

The fruit salad disappears in record time and we're in the car shortly after, zooming along the heavily forested road that connects my place to the rest of Camphor Bay. The stereo, of course, is on, though it's not so loud that I need to turn the volume down so I can see where we're going ("No thank you, Shadi, I would like to be able to hear when I'm in my forties.").

Three-and-a-half songs on Gram's playlist later, we're parting ways in the waiting room, with Zevran and Shadi going to the left and me hanging around with a marine life magazine until my first patient shows up.

It turns out to be a busy day but appointments one to five all go quickly enough. I luck out with short tasks like refilling prescriptions and examining a freckle with a dermatoscope, and when I use the extra ten minutes after finishing the documentation to step in and visit my housemates, they're neck-deep in conversation (with Shadi doing much of the talking, of course), scrolling through a selection of laptops.

"Hey, guess who's chosen their star sign!" Shadi waggles their eyebrows at me with a grin as Zevran snorts and shakes his head.

"Oh, I see!" I sit down on the pec deck and look at them with interest. "Let me guess: salmonella?"

Shadi tsks at me before gesturing to Zevran that he should make his announcement.

With a raised eyebrow, Zevran does as Their Majesty says. "Scorpio seems to be the best fit."

"Ooh," I enthuse, "is this the part where we find out you have a stinger? That'd be fascinating."

He chuckles. "I am starting to wish I did now. It feels comparatively boring to call myself a mysterious man and a marvellous lover."

"Hah. Good thing we like you as you are then, right?"

I turn to Shadi as the predictable shutdown smile comes over Zevran. "Say, didn't you recently tell me something about Scorpio being right about now?"

Ooh, Shadi looks thrilled that I brought that up. They nod with smug glee.

"Sure did."

They open the calendar on the computer.

"This is today's date," they tell Zevran as they point at the circle around October 28. "Scorpio starts around here… and ends here. So you have to pick a birthday between now and late November and tell us what presents you want."

Shadi has the biggest shit-eating grin on their face, while Zevran looks like he's just watched himself get pickpocketed. He turns to me, scrutinising me as though I had any input in this.

I shrug. "Should've picked a bacteria like I did, Zevvo, I dunno what to tell you. But you will need a birthday for official purposes anyway, so it's inescapable. Sorry, mate."

A short pause ensues, which I presume to be Zevran trying to find a loophole that will obviate the necessity of receiving birthday gifts. The silence is broken when the defeated party leans forward and points at the 18th of November, the last day Shadi indicated for the Scorpio period. "Then my birthday is apparently on the 18th of November. And I would appreciate knowing your birthdays as well."

I have to pause for a moment to remember, because I'm always mixing up the days. Tim, Mom, Moustafa and I all had birthdays within days of each other, and since we always threw one big party for the four of us, I never bothered to remember whose birthday was whose. After the crash, though, Mom and I couldn't handle a joint party any more, and I frankly didn't want to remember being born at all, let alone commemorate the day of.

Shadi, however, being a typical staphylococcus, is quick to come to my rescue.

"Van's is on the 2nd of August, which is Leo, and I'm 20th of September, which is Virgo," they rattle off effortlessly.

Zevran appears to be downloading the information and storing it somewhere in that brilliant brain of his, and I'm caught between trying to do the same, and wondering whether I'd had any inkling at all that the 2nd was my day.

I shake my head, dismissing it all. "So how's the hunt for a computer going? Or did you spend the entire time sullying this government-sponsored workspace with pseudoscience?"

Zevran laughs as Shadi hisses in a breath through their teeth, clutching their chest like I'd stabbed them.

"Tsk, but you're a harsh one, Van," he chides playfully.

"Huh," I hum idly, "that can't be right. Aren't Leos meant to be warm and passionate and generous? Looks like astrology's shit its pants again." I shrug and add, "You'll find that Shadi and I quibble over this topic from time to time. My suggestion is you side with me, because I have science."

"Yeah, and I'm constantly having to call you to remind you about birthdays," Shadi protests. "Even your own! All because you have nothing to anchor birthdates to."

I give them a blank smile. "Still got science, honeybun. I possess the medical skills to reattach my arse when it gets torn off because I forgot a birthday. So, my lovelies: computer?"

Shadi's quick to forgive my victory as Zevran proceeds to show me a lovely red laptop- some brand I've never heard of before but which Shadi assures me is absolutely top shit, with huge memory repositories and whirligigs that make one thing do something else at an impressive speed. I dunno. The anatomy of electronics never was my bag, and I trust Shadi's judgement.

I nod and smile, hopefully not as ostensibly vacant as the inside of my head actually is. Of course, Shadi knows me like the back of their hand and can immediately see through the counterfeit intelligence I'm putting on display.

Luckily, I know them just as well, and immediately provide a distraction.

"Great! Well, take these and get ordering," I hand my phone and bank card to Shadi, who nods and turns back to the screen straight away. Looks like I won't be ratted out to Zevran as a dyed-in-the-wool technophobe any time soon.

Zevran goes to protest, something about "I thought I would pay for this," but I wave it away and declare the purchase a part of his Earth Living Starter Pack before beating a hasty retreat to my office to prepare for patient number six.

The second half of Saturday's clinic session ends with Anita, who leaves the clinic with a trial prescription for ninth-gen proton-pump inhibitors for suspected gastro-oesophageal reflux disease. No wonder her voice was so creaky.

When the last of the documentation's out of the way and I've cleaned up, I march out of my office, send Kelly home for the day, and then make tracks for Shadi and Zevran.

I hate to say I called it (no I don't), but when I get in there, Shadi's lying on the exam table, curled up like a tiger in the reeds and scrolling through god-knows-what on their phone while Zevran sits and reads the news on the 'puter.

Zevran turns around instantly, and Shadi looks up languidly from their phone.

"All done for the day," I announce. "The last thing to do is for Shadi to go and get your tattoo removal cream, and then we're ready to go." With a nod, Shadi leaves the office, nearly smacking my phone out of my damned hand as I go to transfer some money to them.

Left alone, I catch Zevran touching his bandaged cheek absently before turning back to the computer and shutting it down.

I smile. "You've learned your way around the computer fast. I'm impressed." And he has. Two weeks ago, he'd never had anything to do with electricity beyond maybe a zap from a mage, and now he's unplugging the cables and navigating operating systems better than me.

But Zevran is quiet. The usual debonair veneer is gone, and he looks… numb.

"Hey." I gently nudge his shoulder with the back of one finger and his gaze darts up to me. He lets out a sigh as I search his face for some indication of what's going on, and he returns to packing the laptop away.

"Shadi gave me their camera," he murmurs, gesturing at the little case to the left of Shadi's backpack. "I did not ask for it. They simply… gave it to me."

"Ah, so they finally did it, huh?"

He pauses as he's partway through zipping up the laptop case to look at me with wide eyes. "You knew?"

"Yep. They told me about it this morning." I shrug as his eyes widen a little more. "In our families, we often conspire about gift-giving. It's half the fun."

"I… am not familiar with such habits…" he trails off, shaking his head and looking more baffled than I've ever seen him. "What do I give them for it? What sort of money does one pay for such a device?"

"Nothing, Zev. We don't give gifts and expect anything in return. But," I add quickly as his brows knit exasperatedly, "There are plenty of events coming up where we exchange gifts. Our family celebrates the holiday of Eid al-Adha, which is in two months' time. I can help you pick a nice present to give them for Eid."

A tense moment passes before Zevran accepts with a nod. "Shadi is very kind."

I smile. "They're sweet, aren't they? And fond of you, too, it seems." I pat his shoulder. "I know this whole thing is a huge shift in what you're used to, but you're handling it so well."

And that's his limit. The guy's stiff as a board now. To loosen him up, I give his back a chummy sort of clap. "Too many words? Don't worry." I pick up Shadi's backpack and hang the camera bag off Zevran's shoulder. "Let's go home, huh?"

It takes a minute before he springs back into action, zipping the laptop carry case up and slinging it over his other shoulder like a veteran student. He has a determined smile on his face and gives me a single, firm nod. "Always ready."