The candles on the mantle had only been lit once before, as far as Yarne could recall, so it felt particularly special that they were standing in the living room watching as they were all lit, one by one. He'd been transfixed as a child by their shapes, all formed to look like rabbits of different size and colors, and when they'd been lit not long before his twelfth birthday, he'd felt like he was witnessing something that he wasn't supposed to see. His mother had explained that they were being lit to mark the start of the year of the rabbit, a designation important to different cultures for different reasons, but for theirs it meant a year of blessings and growth.
He'd been confused at first, knowing that his mother had once been considered the "last" of their culture, to the point that he'd been dragged along to different speaking events over the course of his lifetime just to join her as the second-to-last of their culture. "Just because it's only the two of us doesn't mean we can't be met with the blessings that taguel received in the past," Panne had gently explained, before lifting Yarne up to have him light the smallest of the candles that day. "You weren't yet alive the last time we were able to light these precious candles, so you aren't as familiar with the traditions as I am. Even still, I foresee many things happening to us in this year, and all future years like it."
"Are they going to be good things?" he asked, timid as he held the lighter in his hands and caused the wick on the candle to alight in flame. "Or are they going to be b-b-bad things?"
"I suppose it depends on your perspective," she replied, kissing the top of his head gently before setting him down and retrieving the lighter from his trembling hands. "After all, the year of the rabbit is the year where everything happens for us taguel, one way or another."
That hadn't made sense to him right then, and no amount of explanation that night did him any favors in making the meaning of her words clearer. His father, unaccustomed to the traditions even though he'd been with Panne for a long time, had to default to his wife when looking for the right way to explain things, and she remained as cryptic as ever when she was asked about what she'd meant. So, for the following twelve years, the sight of the candles burning on the mantle was coupled with the memories of feeling like he was being left out of some secret that his mother was keeping to herself.
When the time came to light the candles again, twelve years after that first instance, Yarne was far too big for his mother to lift to light one—in fact, he was tall enough that he dwarfed her and was able to light the second-smallest candle without any aid at all. "We get to light the candles? For real?" a small voice closer down to his waist asked, and he looked at his mother, who nodded and held out her hand for him to pass her the lighter. Once Panne had the lighter back in her possession, she did what she'd done the last time they'd been setting the candles ablaze, passing it on to the youngest in the room and lifting them so that they could light the last candle.
"How cool is it that last time we lit the candles, it was my first time getting to do it, and this time it's Ribbon's first time!" Yarne excitedly said, backing away while his mother and younger sister got to have the same bonding moment he'd gotten to have once upon a time. "It's like…fate, or something, for it to work out like that, isn't it?"
"It's a blessing, one of the many that this year brings to the taguel." Just like before, the words that Panne chose to say were cryptic and didn't make any sense, but she repeated the same process as she had before, leaving gentle kisses on the tops of both of her children's heads and took the lighter back into her own possession. "I promise you both that big things are coming this year, whether we want them to or not."
From across the room, watching the ceremony with the same respectful gaze he'd watched it with in the past, the kids' father gave a rather forced laugh. "Let's not forget what happened the last time you said that," he pointed out, standing up and grabbing his phone to get a picture of the three by the candles on the mantle. "I don't know how any of us would handle that happening again." He was still chuckling as he got them to pose for the picture, Yarne's long reddish hair just barely missing the flames on several of the candles as he was pushed back into the mantle by his mother and sister.
"Please, Ricken, let's not act like it would be the end of the world. That is what this year is meant for after all." Her voice steady as she looked at her husband like a statue, even after the kids had both stepped away to admire the blazing candles from a distance, Panne ended up shaking her head slightly, almost like she was disagreeing with something only she had heard. "The year of the rabbit has always been a year of changes mixed in with the blessings, and I do intend on making changes this year."
"Can we perhaps discuss that somewhere that smaller ears aren't listening, then?" Ricken suggested, motioning with his head toward both Yarne and Ribbon, neither of which seemed like they were paying any attention to what their parents were saying. "It just doesn't feel right to have that conversation in front of them."
Panne pursed her lips together before nodding. "That sounds reasonable enough, even if you and I both know that I will be getting my way, one way or another." She crossed the room to be with him, leaning down to give him a gentle embrace that he was hesitant to return the favor on, but did so after a while.
"Did you get to light the candles before?" Ribbon asked Yarne, nudging him with her elbow right into his thigh, as they both stood looking at the mantle. "I've never seen them like this, it's really cool."
Enthusiastically, Yarne replied, "Yeah! It was just about twelve years ago, so I was just about your age when it happened. That's the only time I'd seen them lit before today, actually." He looked down at his younger sister for a second, watching as she seemed enthralled with the burning rabbits on display. "Isn't it cool that your first time is my second time, and your second time will be my third time, and so on? That's the kind of thing that…"
He trailed off, half because he realized that Ribbon wasn't listening to him at all, and half because what he was about to say had just struck him with a realization. His eyes went back to the candles, the same exact collection that had been there when he was a child and that he assumed would be there as they all grew older, then he glanced over at his mother, who had taken to sitting down next to his father on the couch, both of them looking at the candles as well. "H-hey Mom, before last time, when were these last lit?"
"It would have been twelve years before then," Panne replied without missing a beat, even though she sounded slightly annoyed at having to answer the question from the older of the children. "It takes place at roughly the same time every time the year of the rabbit comes around. It was a bit later that year, compared to this year anyway, but it's still around the same time as it is now."
Raising his fingers to do some quick math, Yarne had to recount whatever it was he was checking a couple of times before giving a slow nod. "Right, thanks for that, Mom," he mumbled, dropping his hands toward one of his pants pockets and grabbing his phone, unlocking its screen and doing some quick browsing on it before starting to shuffle toward the door. "Oh, man, I just saw a message that I got sent, I've got to get going. I might've promised some friends I'd see them tonight, and you know me, I can't exactly not show up and upset them so I'm…gonna…go now."
"You made plans with friends on the most important night all year?" Her voice raising as she asked, Panne definitely was not thrilled with the attempt at getting out of the house. "I highly doubt that you would do something so foolish. What's your real reason for wanting to leave right now?"
He grit his teeth, not wanting to say the actual conclusion he'd come to, as he continued to shuffle toward the door. "It's the truth, really! I know it's an important night but we did the candle lighting, there's not really anything else super necessary to it, is there?"
"That's a good point, maybe it'd be best to just let him go," Ricken said, trying to keep things from escalating any further than they already had. He put his hands down on Panne's leg, gripping it to keep her from doing anything drastic. "Besides, he's an adult with his own life, we can't exactly keep him here against his will."
"One of three people in the world born into the taguel culture, and he chooses friends over tradition." With a disgusted sigh, Panne turned her head physically and her back figuratively on her son, who took the opportunity to bolt to the door and grab his shoes and jacket. "Perhaps this will be the year that he learns to appreciate some of the finer things our culture has to offer, but for now he's hopeless."
Hopeless, a word that had hung over Yarne's head for as long as he could remember, something that his mother was actively using against him. He didn't respond to her choice in language, pretending like she hadn't just cut him deeply with that single word, and despite his voice breaking and cracking as he said his farewells to his family, he ducked out into the night trying to maintain a brave face. That changed by the time he was out in his car, sitting at the wheel sobbing at how his mother had just tainted a fond memory—the lighting of the rabbit candles—with something that had haunted him all of his life.
There hadn't been any reason to lie to them about why he was leaving, he should have just come clean and brought up what he was pretty sure he'd just pieced together, or at least been honest about where he was going when he left. There were no plans with friends, just a night back in the small house he shared with his girlfriend, who he could have used as a much more believable excuse for needing to go. Instead, he'd incurred the wrath of his mother with her cutting choice of language, and had probably just subjected his much-younger sister to a night of hearing all about his failings and short-comings in the eyes of their parents, most specifically their mother.
Drying his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket, Yarne started the car and slowly drove off into the night, trying not to think too much about what he'd just left behind. There was a reason he didn't live with his parents anymore, not just because he was a grown adult with a real job and a means to support himself, but because he couldn't put up with his mother's expectations of what being one of the last taguel meant. She lived life by the same rules she'd grown up with, and expected her children to do the same, which proved difficult when living in a society much different than the one she'd been raised in. While some traditions were easy to keep, there were other elements that had driven Yarne to being timid and scared of just about everything around him, for fear that he'd be harmed or changed by it in a way that his mother didn't approve of.
Although he could feel himself slipping into thinking about the past, he was unable to stop it, especially when the sight of his sister's face earlier that night popped into his mind. Her joy at getting to light the candles was tangible, and he was grateful to have been part of the ceremony with her, but there had always been a sense that she was meant to be a better version of him and seeing her being held up by their mother had caused conflicting feelings in Yarne's heart. He was over twelve years older than her, a much larger age gap than between any other set of siblings he knew, and when she'd been born he'd already been labeled as a failure and as hopeless by most people around him; it only made sense that he harbored feelings of resentment that she existed in the first place.
But that night, after Ribbon had so sweetly asked if he'd lit the candles before and they'd gotten to talking about how often it happened, a realization had taken hold in his mind that shifted his whole worldview. For twelve years, he'd been convinced that his younger sister had been born to replace him, but she'd been born in the year of the rabbit, just like he had before her. That wasn't coincidence, given how passionate their mother was about the occasion, but he didn't want to address it with anyone. In fact, he wanted for forget he'd ever come to that conclusion in the first place and pretend like he hadn't just discovered some family secret he wasn't supposed to know.
He sighed, bringing the car to a stop at the intersection just down the road from where he lived, watching for traffic until it was more than safe for him to cross. There was nothing that would have made him miss the candle lighting, he'd even made sure to request the night off from work even though he wouldn't have been working it anyway, and yet he'd been driven to leave early for the silliest of reasons. It shouldn't have mattered that he made his realization, but instead of facing it or even pretending like he hadn't been struck by that information, he should have put on a brave façade and pretended everything was fine. He really was hopeless, unable to take anything outside of his perfect little bubble without trying to run and hide from it all.
And of course, heading home after lying to his parents was easily the biggest instance of running and hiding he could've caused. Upon pulling up outside of the house, he once again found himself crying at the steering wheel, not wanting to get out of the car in case he felt obligated to go back and apologize to his mother for getting out of what meant so much to her, but not wanting to go inside because there were lights on in there, which meant he wasn't going to be alone. "What do I do, what do I do?" he asked himself, fiddling with the keys still in the ignition in case he wanted to drive off into the night. "No wonder Mom thinks I'm hopeless, I can't even face my own choices without panicking."
Eventually, after a lot of self-assurance that he wasn't as hopeless as everyone thought, he turned the car off and got out, walking up slick stairs to the front door of the house. Yarne was incredibly proud of the place, which he paid for entirely on his own to start and made further payments on with the help of his girlfriend. It was really their little retreat away from the rest of the world, a place that didn't need to have all of the burdens that everywhere else held. He unlocked the door and, after making double and triple sure that he'd locked his car, stepped inside, slipping out of his jacket and hanging it on the hook behind the door as he locked and re-locked it several times.
The first thing he noticed once his ritual of coming inside was done was that the air smelled vaguely smoky, like someone was in the middle of burning something in a very small amount. "Hey, what's going on in here?" he called out, turning as he spoke just to see that on the kitchen table was a small display of rabbit-shaped candles, all of which were lit and flickering in the dim room light. "Wh-when did we get those?"
There was no answer, and he bounded over to see what was going on, because when he'd left the house empty earlier that day, there hadn't been any rabbit candles anywhere to be seen. "Seriously, am I seeing things? Mom? Did you follow me over here and bring the candles with you?" He was leaning over the table, looking down at the three little rabbits with their flames dancing in the air, almost in disbelief at what he was seeing.
"Your mom brought those over a while ago with a note to put them out and burn them today, guess you just weren't here when she did that." The voice came from behind Yarne, and even though it was a familiar one, just hearing his girlfriend talking to him nearly made him leap out of his skin. She watched him jolt upright and spin to face her, his hair just barely out of range to get singed by the candles. "I didn't understand what the point was until earlier, actually, when you mentioned going over to their place to light their candles. Should I have waited for you to get here to light them?"
"It's kind of a taguel tradition to do it, but I don't know if it's a problem if someone who's dating a taguel does it for them." Putting his finger up to his chin, Yarne took a second to think about how he could get an answer to that, and knowing that it would require asking his mother he immediately decided it wasn't worth the hassle. "Eh, as long as we don't tell Mom that you're the one that lit them, she won't know any better."
His girlfriend stared at him, sizing his entire stance up, to the point that she hadn't fully been listening to what it was he was saying. "Yeah, sounds like a plan. You and her get into an argument about something again? You've got that 'my mom chewed me out about something stupid' look written all over you."
"Huh? Oh, no, it wasn't an argument this time. The other usual thing." Just knowing that he was allowed to start getting vulnerable right then had Yarne's shoulders starting to tremble, and soon enough he was coming over to his girlfriend's waiting arms, her wrapping him in the best hug she could manage given their drastic size difference. "I never get why she thinks I'm hopeless all the time, Kjelle. I just don't get it."
"You and me both," she replied, her voice bitter but the bitterness not aimed at Yarne in the slightest. "You're far from hopeless, you just take things slower than everyone else does. Not that she should blame you, she's the one that raised you like this."
He started to blubber things as he crouched far down to put his head into her shoulder, not wanting to have his face exposed as he was doing some ugly crying. He'd always had friends growing up, but none of them had liked him as a person as much as Kjelle had, even though she had some rough edges of her own that they'd had to work with. She also came from a family of high expectations—even though their expectations boiled down to "do great things and prove you're strong" instead of the expectations that Yarne was saddled with—and they'd learned to rely on each other to push through the bad days and make the most of the good ones. "It's all because I didn't want to stick around and she called me hopeless over picking others instead of family traditions," he managed to spit out, his words partially garbled due to his crying. "I mean, yeah I lied to her about why I was leaving, but she didn't need to say it like that!"
Still holding onto him tightly, Kjelle let her head rest against his as she sighed. "When you don't bother with her anymore and she wonders why, you're going to have to point to this exact moment as one of the many, many reasons for it," she said in a whisper, speaking right next to Yarne's ear. "This is supposed to be one of the best nights of your life, from what I understand this whole candle thing to represent, and this is how you're spending it. Crying like a baby into my shoulder."
"Don't make it sound like I'm the problem here," he sniffled, picking his head up to look her straight in the face, her eyes staring daggers into his and making him flinch at their sharpness. "Please, if you knew why I didn't want to be there any longer, you would've wanted to get out of there too."
"No one said I disagreed with what you did, I'm disagreeing with how it's making you feel right now." Relaxing her face just a little, Kjelle tried to look not as intense as she continued speaking. "You've never once given me a bad reason for getting out of there, so I doubt tonight's is any different. Do you want to tell me about it, or do you want to keep it to yourself for now?"
Yarne was thankful for the choice that had been presented to him, rather than being badgered into telling what had prompted him leaving in the first place. "I'll keep it to myself for now," he decided, making it clear that he was ready to get out of their embrace by standing back up to full height, and she let go of him after a final, strong squeeze. "Can we do something that I skipped out on by coming home, though? I bet Mom didn't tell you the other thing we do on the first night of the year of the rabbit."
"All she told me was the date and that I needed to light the rabbit candles in size order, so go for it." Kjelle even took a step back to be able to look up at Yarne's face without needing to crane her neck too much. "If it's going to make you feel better, I want to know it."
"Last time, we made cookies and sat looking at the candles while we were eating them fresh out of the oven," he recalled, the memory of the smell of the cookies baking while they'd been lighting the candles both this time and the previous one intertwining in his mind. "I bet they're doing it right now, since they're probably baked and all now."
Scrunching her nose as she thought about how likely it was they would be able to do the same, Kjelle headed right for their kitchen to do some digging, Yarne following behind her still talking about the cookies he was missing out on, that he'd had to act like he hadn't been thinking about while he could smell them. They were unable to find even half the ingredients needed to make cookies from scratch, and there wasn't any dough in sight; however, they did have a single box of cake mix that they had the proper ingredients to make instead. It wasn't quite the same, but baking that cake together and then eating it while it was still piping hot in front of the waxy, melting candles had the same peaceful feeling as the cookies had twelve years before.
Sometimes, changing up traditions to fit what they had on hand was necessary, but much like it not being Yarne to light the candles, the fact they'd eaten store-mix cake instead of homemade cookies was something that Panne wouldn't be getting told about.
Yarne didn't speak to his mother again for almost a week, and when he did talk to her it wasn't exactly his choice to do so. On Fridays he was responsible for getting Ribbon home from school, because his workplace was right near her school and he was able to get her and take her home before heading back to his own house. This was an arrangement that had existed since he'd first started working, even predating him moving out of the family home and into his own place, and he rather enjoyed getting to spend a little time with his sister every week, given how awkward it was for them to be doing the same thing otherwise.
Their discussion on the car ride hadn't been anything out of the ordinary, but Ribbon had cupped her head in her hands and looked at her older brother longingly at one point. "All my classmates have siblings that are super close in age to them," she explained in a small voice, "and I've got you but you're so much older than me. Do you think they think you're my dad or something?"
"I'm not that much older than you," he replied, chuckling as he did, "but I get the feeling there. Most of my friends growing up were only children, but if they did have siblings they were usually pretty close in age to them. Then there was you, twelve and a half years younger than me." Even though he was driving, Yarne did glance at his sister and saw a miniature version of their mother, complete with long braids in her hair, staring back at him, which slightly unnerved him. "Why do you bring this up?"
Tilting her head back and forth for a few seconds, Ribbon seemed to be thinking about her answer before she gave it. "Because someone was picking on me today and I told them that my older brother could stomp them into the ground and they laughed at me because I don't have an older brother, even though I do." With an indignant hmph, Ribbon turned away from facing Yarne, now looking out her own window. "Because you're so much older than me, people just don't think you're really my brother."
"D-don't tell people I'll beat them up! I'm an adult and they're a kid, I could get in serious trouble if I actually had to do something to them…" Swallowing down fears at the thought of facing legal problems on his sister's behalf, Yarne knew that something had to be said to their parents about this bullying issue, and he knew that there was only one parent that was likely to be home when he dropped Ribbon off. "I'll let Dad know this happened and he'll go to the school and talk to them about it to make sure it doesn't happen again."
"Thanks, Yarne. You're definitely my favorite brother for that." Ribbon giggled, knowing that she didn't have anyone else who could've been in the running for favorite brother, but the fact that she'd confided this issue in him didn't sit right with Yarne in the slightest. Either it was a lucky break that the first time this had happened was the very day he came to pick her up from school, or his sister had been enduring bullying for a while and she'd just now gotten the courage to speak up about it. Either way, he wasn't going to allow it to continue, and he was going to do the brave thing and tell their father about it.
A great plan, except for the fact that when he pulled up to the house, it wasn't Ricken waiting outside for them to arrive. Panne was standing there instead, looking down the road for something that she apparently didn't see coming, and at the mere sight of his mother there in the driveway Yarne's hands began to feel clammy against the steering wheel. How was he supposed to make the first conversation with his mom since she'd insulted him be in defense of his little sister? She wasn't going to hear a word of it.
"Are you gonna tell Mom instead?" Ribbon asked, realizing why her brother had frozen and quietly addressing it. "I think you should, I don't want to have to wait until next week for you to get this taken care of."
He nodded slowly, turning the car off and getting out at the same time his sister was, her running over to where Panne was and grabbing her in a huge, flying hug while he plodded over as well, making sure he'd locked the car three times on his way. "This is unusual," Panne remarked, not even looking in her son's direction, her focus still out on the road. "I wasn't expecting you to come try to talk to me."
"I wasn't expecting to do it either," he admitted, reaching up and scratching at the back of his head with his car key. "But we need to talk about something, for Ribbon's sake. Can we go inside and do that, or…?" He was met with silence, but his sister did let go of their mother to give him a hug before she ran inside on her own. Now that she was gone, and Panne's attention was still elsewhere, he knew it wasn't necessary to go in after all, but he didn't want to talk to a brick wall. "Mom, seriously, this isn't about me right now. Will you listen to me or should I just go?"
"I'm not listening to anything until you apologize for your behavior on the most sacred of nights. You and I both know that you didn't go anywhere but home, and the fact that you couldn't be honest about that cuts deep." Her tone was dismissive, to the point that Yarne could feel the hostile energy radiating off of his mother as she continued to pretend he wasn't standing right there nearby. "If Ribbon has something she needs to talk to me about, she can do it on her own, unless you prove yourself to be a real man and apologize."
His free hand curling into a fist, Yarne felt equal parts angry at how he was being treated and upset that he'd caused this to happen in the first place. "I didn't know what else to say, I just needed to get out and find my own headspace, I didn't mean to hurt you with what I did. Mom, please, I'm sorry for how I acted, but you have to understand that—"
"A real apology doesn't have any place for a 'but' after it," Panne interrupted, her head snapping to face her son's with absolute disgust painted all across her expression. "You know all taguel traditions mean the world to me, and the fact that you'd choose to leave during the biggest one we have to offer, with a flimsy lie that we know you didn't put any thought into…. It's almost like you don't care about the culture you're born from."
"—okay, okay, I get it! I'm the world's biggest screw-up because I'd rather have been at home than having to think about what you and Dad were getting up to that night!" The words spilled out of Yarne's mouth faster than he'd been able to catch, and when he realized what he'd said he was already beginning to back away, seeing the disgust in his mother's eyes turn to a murderous sense. "I'm so sorry, that wasn't what I meant to say, I don't know where that came from!"
"What business do you have even thinking about the activities your father and I experience together?" Her voice the coldest Yarne had ever heard it, Panne was clearly meaning business with what she was asking. "You may be an adult, but you are still my child, and you will still treat me with respect. Do you understand?"
"Y-yes, Mom, I understand." It felt like he was being treated much like his sister would be if she'd done something wrong, and at that moment Yarne wanted nothing more than to run back to his car and drive far, far away. He'd awoken a beast inside of his mother's soul, and he was feeling its wrath.
"Since you feel so entitled to this information, after you left we shared our traditional cookies, blew out the candles, then turned in for the night after telling your sister about the bigger traditions that the taguel culture once had surrounding the day. Why in the world you'd think there's anything more to it than that, I can't even fathom." The last four words were spat, Panne speaking them like they were venom she wanted to rid herself of. "The first night of the year of the rabbit is solemn, it's for family, it marks a year of blessings and growth but none of them start that night."
He realized that she was being more reactive than anything else, and Yarne really didn't want to have to be part of the conversation any longer, so he scrambled to come up with an apology that would possibly work. "I know all that, you taught me that as we marked the different years for the similar cultures. I'm sorry that I jumped to conclusions, it really wasn't right of me to do that and I know I hurt you by doing that just now, as well as by doing all of the other dumb things you're upset about. I don't expect your forgiveness right away, but I would like to feel like you don't want me dead anymore."
"Consider it done, then. You're still hopeless as ever, but you've got a reasonable head on your shoulders when you want to listen to it." Her face relaxing, it was clear that Panne was still on edge but she wasn't nearly as trigger-happy as she had been just moments before, even if she'd just made her son visibly upset over her choice of words. "Now, what was it that you wanted to talk to me about?"
"Ribbon's being bullied and she's getting bullied worse by trying to use me as a defense." Yarne paused, before correcting himself with, "Or something like that, I'm not really sure what the whole story is. Point is though, she's being bullied and tried to use me to stop it."
"If I had to pick between the two of you as one likely to be bullied and one likely to not, I never would have guessed that you'd be the one to get through school without ever being put in that position." Panne shook her head for a solid half-minute, staring back out in the direction she'd been almost exclusively facing, before she turned and headed for the door. "Thank you for telling me about it, even if I find it hard to believe it's true. Surely she's just making it up for attention or something."
As much as Yarne wanted to say that he was sure that wasn't the case at all, he knew that contradicting his mother would only cause more issues between them, so he let it go. "Yeah, check with her about how true it is, I'm only telling you what she told me. See you later, Mom, and thanks for hearing me out."
All he got in response was a curt wave as she made her way up the driveway, but Yarne considered that a victory in itself. When he was back in his car, he pulled down the sun visor, sliding open its mirror and looking at what he could see of his reflection, making sure that he didn't have any lasting reminders of how much that conversation had terrified him. There weren't any tear marks near his eyes, and his cheeks weren't any darker than usual, so he felt that the remaining anxieties he was experiencing would calm themselves on his drive home, because everything had ended up okay. His mother didn't hate him, even if she wasn't impressed with him like usual, and he hadn't accidentally screwed something up in what he'd said about his sister. Everything was okay, and to keep it that way he drove as carefully as he could the whole way back to his house, making sure to take extra caution at every intersection whether he had the right of way or not.
Upon returning home, he was met with an empty house, exactly as it should have been at that time of afternoon, and after performing the rituals of locking the car several times before going inside, he was able to breathe a sigh of relief in his definitely-locked home. Yarne both hated and loved being home alone, the hatred coming from the fear of something going wrong while the love was found in the enjoyment of having peace and quiet where no one was disturbing him in any way. While he was there by himself, he kept all doors minus the external ones open, just to make sure that nothing was waiting for him on the other side, and he tried to limit his time spent anywhere that wasn't in the main room.
"All's well that ends well today," he said to himself as he entered the bedroom, grabbed his pajama pants and an old t-shirt, and ducked under the doorway to the bathroom. This was all routine on Friday afternoons, when he'd be home alone for a couple hours and had the place to himself, and as he changed out of his dress clothes and tie and into the much more comfortable options, he found himself trying to decide what he wanted to do while he had the free time. There were plenty of options, things he did on the regular and things that were exclusive to times he was alone, and making the decision was easily one of the hardest parts of his day.
Yarne settled on sitting out in the oversized chair in the main room to play a game on the TV, making the chair look like it was perfectly normal with how big he was when he sat in it. As he started up his game, he got a chuckle at his reflection in the TV screen before it turned on, seeing how he was fitting in that chair (that had been specially bought for its size) looked like how a person of a more normal height would be in a typical chair. In reaction, he kicked out one of his long legs, easily getting most of the way to the TV stand with his toes when he straightened out his leg and foot completely, and he full-body laughed at how distorted the reflection had become before it disappeared into the colors now on the screen.
Once his game was running, he turned the volume up and listened to the soothing soundtrack as he started playing it, finding the game itself to be peaceful and a way to get his mind off of everything going on in the real world. In the game, there were no bullies, there were no rude parents who called their kids hopeless, there weren't even problems that required real money to solve. If the world it depicted was a real place, then Yarne would have wanted a ticket straight there with zero intentions of ever coming back, because even the "worst" things that could happen in the game weren't bad compared to some of the things that happened to him on a daily basis.
Like usual, he was able to lose himself in the mundane tasks that the game put him through, watering flowers, collecting fruit and fish, giving gifts to all of his neighbors, the same things every day but never getting old. He stopped by his in-game house several times to drop things off inside, always having a specific place he wanted the items, before dashing back out to live more of his fantasy life. When he started to run out of things to do and needed a quick break, he found someone's house and went in for a visit, listening to their choice in music and occasionally chatting with them, then once he felt recharged he was back at the collecting and the exploring.
There were two parts to his virtual island he was staying away from, because those were part of another routine that he liked doing when he played on his Fridays home alone. The first part was the lower beach, where the in-game map showed that a house he hadn't visited was standing, and the second was toward the middle of the map, where there were signs of a camper coming to visit; the house was being skipped because it was the house belonging to Kjelle's character and he didn't like going to it unless she said he could, while the campsite was being ignored because he wanted her there to see who the visitor was with him.
He was just finishing up the last thing he felt like doing when he heard the real front door to his real house unlock, then re-lock, then unlock again, the signal that it wasn't someone trying to break in but rather Kjelle coming home. She pushed the door open and immediately heard the sounds of the game on the TV, and would have easily just gone to see what he was up to in his game had he not looked at her with wide eyes. "Right, sorry," she apologized, closing the door and locking it enough times to get him to visibly calm down. "Let me guess, you want to see what I've done to my house this time, huh?"
"If you'll let me! I brought you all sorts of gifts to thank you for it!" Sure enough, Yarne had dumped several wrapped packages on the beach outside the house, as his character stood facing the camera with a look of shock on his face.
"I don't know why you think I care about you seeing what I'm doing in there, it's really fine if you go in without my permission." She watched long enough to see his character run through the packages and straight to her house's door, and that was when she turned to hang her jacket on the hook against the wall and get her shoes off so that she could curl up in the chair with him.
By the time she was settling down, the game had loaded and he was standing inside the house, which was decorated to look like a high-class gym area. There were arguably more plants and decorations than anything resembling gym equipment, but that was thanks to Yarne's gift-giving that he wasn't planning on stopping. "It's as lovely as always," he remarked, having his character run around the space, "but when are you going to expand it? There's so many other rooms you could add, all you have to do is—"
"If you want me to expand the house, you can do it for me. I'm not as into playing this game as you are, you know that," she said, cutting him off before he could dive into some rambling explanation of game mechanics. "I just like seeing how excited you get about things in the game, it's really cute."
He set his controller down on her lap, which was covering his own. "You think I'm cute?" he asked, sounding unsure of what answer he was going to get, and her response was to pick the controller back up and offer it straight to him. There was no rush on taking it right away, as he looked at her with his cheeks slightly reddened from the comment, but soon enough he did grab it back and begin playing once more, leaving her house and heading for the campsite. He coughed to clear his throat, then said, "We have a visitor today, and I was waiting for you to get here so we could see who they are."
"Hopefully it's not anyone you can't live without," she teased, bonking her head against his broad shoulder. "Don't think I've forgotten how hard you cried when you had to say goodbye to that cat guy."
"I got so much in return for him, but losing Raymond was…" Yarne trailed off, trying not to start crying again. "It wasn't easy, that's for sure! But I don't think there's really anyone that I could want right now that would make me lose someone we've already got."
"Famous last words."
"P-please, I'm serious! The villagers we've got here are probably the best collection anyone could ask for!" Wanting to prove his point, Yarne marched his character right into the tent sitting at the campsite, waited for the game to load, and then promptly let out a long, distressed wail while Kjelle shook her head and laughed quietly. Standing inside the little tent was a rabbit, blue as blue could be, that turned around and revealed a little air spout on the back of his head. "Hopkins! I don't…I can't…there's no way I can get you!"
"How fitting that it's a rabbit that's causing you all this trouble." Still laughing, Kjelle reached over and tried to get the controller back from Yarne but he moved his arms so that the only way she would have been able to do so would have been to literally climb over him, something that she wasn't interested in doing at that moment. "Isn't it always rabbits that you struggle to say no to?"
He hesitated on answering, his mouth moving as he thought about different ways that he could tell her that she was right without actually saying she was right. "I can't say that it's always the case, I didn't want a new villager when I got Raymond, but I had to part with someone to get him anyway. And now I'm going to have to part with someone else to get Hopkins, because there's no way I can turn him down."
"Then you better hope that he doesn't want to replace someone you're super attached to," she pointed out, knowing very well that he was attached to every villager he had on his island. "I don't think you need to stay up all night agonizing over what to do."
"I won't stay up all night over it! Either I'm replacing someone or I'm letting him go, he's just an inflatable rabbit after all." Yarne tried his best to hold himself to that statement, but when the game decided that he needed to get rid of one of his other rabbits, he stared at the screen for quite some time, trying to make his decision but struggling to do so. It got to the point that Kjelle actually did try crawling over him to get the controller and make the decision for him, but he was adamant on not letting go at any cost, to the point that he nearly sent them both tumbling out of the chair.
She got up after that, finding that she wasn't going to make things any easier for him by trying to do them on his behalf. "You keep stressing out over this and you're never going to choose either way. I'm going to start making us something to eat, you just…do exactly what you're doing." As she walked away, Yarne watched long enough to notice that she had a somewhat noticeable limp to her step, and he immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was responsible for it in their little scuffle. Without looking at the screen, he pressed the button on the controller, mashed through some dialogue, then the moment he looked and saw that the box was closed he saved the game and shut it off, setting the controller down on the arm of the chair before jumping up to follow Kjelle.
"Hey! What's up with how you're walking?" he called out, letting her know that his focus was no longer on his game but back on her. "I've never seen you walk like that before, is everything okay?"
The non-committal noise that came from the kitchen answered the question in the way that Yarne didn't want to hear, and he bounded over to see her standing against the countertop, one leg of her pants rolled up and exposing a wrapped bandage around her calf. "It wasn't anything serious, if it was you know I would've called you right away," she explained, lifting her leg so that Yarne could get a better look at it. "Someone was a bit careless with one of their boxcutters today while I was working and…well, this is what happened."
"You didn't call me after you got cut by a boxcutter?" His jaw dropping with how betrayed he felt in that moment, Yarne touched the bandage and watched as Kjelle winced slightly, her head turned away so that he couldn't fully see what her facial expression looked like. "Did they take you to go get stitches or something?"
It was obvious that Kjelle was gritting her teeth hard to keep herself from answering, but she eventually caved in and told him what had happened. "I didn't call you because by the time I had my phone back, it was already taken care of. They called my mom and she came and took care of it, which…I wish they hadn't done that, but that's what I get for not changing her from being my emergency contact."
"So that's why you didn't call me, okay, but what did they do? Where did your mom take you? This looks too good for her to have done it herself." He touched the bandage again, not out of spite but out of curiosity, and she responded by pulling her leg back and letting her baggy pants leg fall down over it once more. "Come on, if I had stitches or something you know I'd let you see them."
"Maybe when it doesn't hurt so much, because I think ripping off that bandage is going to sting and it's already aggravated because of how I was sitting on you. Didn't really think that through when I did it." For Kjelle to mention that something was hurting her meant that it had to be pretty painful, and Yarne knew that he needed to give her the space she was looking for with the injury. "Look, I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about this until it was bothering me again, but I wanted to pretend it didn't exist."
"I mean I would've found out about it soon enough," he commented, scuffing the floor with one of his toes. "It's not like you can keep secrets like that from someone who lives with you for a very long time."
She puckered her face, sucking in her cheeks as she thought about how right he was, before exhaling in one sharp motion. "You're right, and I didn't think about that either. The whole situation was kind of traumatic, you know? Someone doesn't walk into their job at a fitness center expecting to be sliced by a used boxcutter from underneath their pants."
"Well, maybe that someone should wear tighter pants so that something can't sneak up under them like that." Yarne was made to immediately regret saying that due to the glare that Kjelle shot him, her shocked and offended that he'd made that sort of comment. "I-I mean, it's probably a safety hazard to wear pants that loose when you're working with the equipment, right? I don't know why you wore them in the first place."
"Because it was cold when I went in to work and I didn't feel like changing out of them, they keep that air freezing in some of the rooms. Besides, I was wearing leggings under them in case I did start getting warm, but the damn knife tore them and I had to toss them before getting stitched up." Clearly sparing the details for why they couldn't be salvaged or still worn with a little cut in them, Kjelle rolled her eyes. "And besides, you know that I can't help that my non-leggings are so loose. It's either they're too big on the bottom, or…" She reached down and forcefully slapped one of her thighs. "Or they're not fitting over these bad boys, and no one wants to see that."
Yarne looked down at his own long legs, which weren't nearly as muscular as his girlfriend's but still had a fair amount of tone to them. "I can't say that I'm super familiar with that problem myself," he said, reaching down to poke his own thigh. "My problem is that finding pants that are long enough is really hard, unless I want to wear a belt with them, and then it's pretty easy."
"We can't all be giants like you," she replied, a chill to her voice. "In fact, if I seriously had like, three, four more inches I wouldn't really have the problem I have either, but that's what happens when you lose the genetic lottery." She stopped talking after that for a moment, the air between them tense as they looked at each other, not sure what else there was to say, but when she did speak again it was to tell him that she was actually going to be making dinner then, and could either make himself useful or go back to his game.
"I already turned it off," he explained, making his choice clear, "so I guess I can help you out. Want me to grab things for you?"
"And we're back to teasing me about my height, nice." This time it was a more playful tone, showing that on some occasions Kjelle was perfectly content with her small stature being pointed out. "Yes, though, I'd rather not try getting on a stepstool with my leg like it is and you're already here so…it kind of works out, really."
When they had moved in together, neither of them had known much about cooking and were more inclined to order food than to make it themselves, but over the course of the past couple of years they had taken to learning how to make basic foods, which had then turned into getting experimental from time to time. Yarne wasn't as adventurous as Kjelle was when it came to what should be made for dinner, memories of childhood meals where he hadn't liked what was served and had been forced to eat it coming to mind, but he was always eager to pitch in and help her with the cooking when she needed it. That night, she didn't seem fully invested in making something new or exciting, so when the boxes of packaged food came out and the choice on which one was the biggest decision to make, it was clear that it was going to be an easy cooking night.
While they were standing around waiting for water to boil and ingredients to be mixed in, Yarne realized that he hadn't said anything about what had happened during his day, but when he looked at Kjelle and saw her standing with weight mostly off her injured leg, he decided it would be best to save it for whenever she asked about it. If she ever asked about it, at any rate, because as far as she knew his Friday had been exactly the same as it was every week, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened, unlike for her. "What are we going to do after dinner?" he asked, feeling compelled to break the silence that had grown with something light-hearted. "It's still pretty early, but I doubt there's much you'd want to do, with your leg like that and all."
"I was thinking we'd just stay in and have a nice, chill night for a change," she replied without a hint of hesitation, like she'd been thinking about that for herself. "Maybe watch a movie, maybe just do our own thing, the possibilities are endless."
"If it's a movie, I hope it's not a scary one." Yarne hung his head, shaking it a little. "Last time you made me watch a movie with you, I couldn't finish it, remember?"
She turned her head just enough to give him a side-eyed look, before going back to watching the water. "One scene in a movie gets a little too intense for you and you decide you can't watch movies with me anymore. If we were to watch something, I promise it won't be anything even close to scary. We could…I don't know, watch something made for kids? I've heard there's a bunch of good animated movies on streaming."
His head popped back up, a smile on his face. "That sounds great, actually! I've never had a movie made for kids scare me too badly. Well, except for that time that I was at a birthday party and…" He trailed off, realizing that he could already hear Kjelle starting to laugh at what he was saying, even though she didn't mean any harm by it. It was still enough to deflate him a bit, so he stopped that sentence and went on with a new one. "Point is, I don't think you're going to actively antagonize me like those guys did."
"I don't know if you remember, but I was at that birthday party, and I know that movie wasn't made for kids in any way, shape, or form. Trust me, my parents had a field day with chewing out his parents over it." The laughter had stopped, but it was clear now that Kjelle had been laughing not at what Yarne was telling her, but at her side of the story. "I'm not going to throw something on that's dark like that, promise."
"Then a movie after dinner sounds great," he decided, pounding a fist into his other open hand. "Maybe we can even make some popcorn or something to go with, make it a real movie date together."
She nodded, taking in his suggestion without responding to it, and so the rest of the night was planned right there. Dinner went off without a hitch, as did finding a movie aimed at kids that wouldn't be too thrilling for Yarne's panicky self, and partway through the musically-focused film they did pause to make some popcorn on their stove. Or, at least, so that Kjelle could make the popcorn, while Yarne stayed as far away from the sound as possible to keep himself from thinking something horrible was happening in his very own house. He loved the smell of the butter as it began to fill the room, and loved it even more when he saw the bowl filled to the brim with the popped kernels coming his way; his favorite part of all, though, was when he was in the chair with Kjelle sitting half next to, half on top of him, with the bowl in her lap so that they could share it easily.
Neither of them might have had the best day possible, for different reasons, but they were able to share some good moments as it drew to its end, and there was nothing more that either of them could ask for.
As much as Yarne liked his days where everything went according to plan, he did enjoy when they sometimes went off the rails a little and he was able to do something out of his normal routine. Fridays were copy-pasted every week, as long as Ribbon had school, so those threw him off if they weren't quite right, and weekends were never the same week after week because of different plans that were always getting made, but the rest of the week had specific routines that were great when they could be broken. In a typical week, he was home alone on Tuesday and Thursday nights, right up until he needed to get ready for bed for the next day's work, while on Mondays and Wednesdays Kjelle was already home by the time he got back. But sometimes, he'd get home on those days where she was working later into the night and she'd be there, and that meant everything he planned to do was thrown into a pleasant kind of disarray.
It was never quite as enjoyable, however, when he'd come home on one of those two nights to find that not only was she there, but another car was pulled up outside their house as well. Usually that meant one of her friends—or if he was lucky, one of their mutual friends—was over for some reason, but on the current occasion Yarne didn't recognize this car in any way, and the tags were long past expired and for somewhere not local. "Did she invite over a stranger? Into my house?" he asked, gripping the steering wheel and beginning to jump to all sorts of conclusions that spelled certain doom for himself. "What do I do, what do I do?"
His phone buzzing in his pocket answered that question for him, and as it began ringing through the car speakers he checked the radio screen to see that it was Kjelle herself calling him, probably having noticed he'd pulled up to the scene. When he answered, she immediately spoke to calm his fears. "I invited a coworker over who's new to the area, come in so you can meet her for yourself. I'm positive she's not going to cause you any harm."
"You always know exactly what to say to make me feel comfortable about something," he replied, hanging up the call as soon as he'd spoken and heard her laugh on the other side. One car-locking ritual later and he was heading to the front door, still bracing himself for meeting a person with the intention to hurt him on the inside. What he was met with wasn't anyone who looked like they meant danger, but rather someone who looked like she could have been a taller, older sister of Kjelle's, down to the muscles and the light-colored hair (although theirs definitely wasn't the same, he could tell just looking at the new person). "You must be Yarne," the stranger said, instantly reaching out to him with a hand for shaking when he came into the house. "Nice place you've got here."
"Uh, yeah, I would be Yarne, and thanks, I think." After staring at her hand for a few seconds he heard Kjelle cough to move him along and he grabbed it, giving a firm shake before retracting his arm. "Who are you and why are you in my house?"
"This is Effie, the coworker I literally just told you about," Kjelle cut in, stepping between the two to build a barrier of sorts, even if it did nothing to obscure Effie from his view. "She mentioned that she didn't have anywhere to go until her roommate got off work and I told her that she could come hang out here with me."
"A little warning on strangers coming over would've been nice," Yarne muttered, still looking past his girlfriend at the unfamiliar woman. "You know that I don't like it when people come in here that I don't know, it makes me uncomfortable."
Effie, listening to what was being said intently, raised her eyebrows at the statement she'd overheard. "Look, I'm not here to steal Kjelle from you, if that's what you're thinking. I've only known her for like a week, and I'm not exactly looking for someone to date right now."
"He's not worried about you trying to date me, he's just a scaredy-cat when it comes to literally anything outside of his comfort zone. I was trying to tell you that earlier before we came over here, but I guess it didn't come out right." Scrunching her face, Kjelle came closer to Yarne, standing up on her tiptoes to get as close to his face as she could, but her still-bandaged leg began to tremor underneath her and she had to get back down onto flat feet before he'd even had time to react to what she was doing. "Look, Yarne, can you please be nice to her until she leaves? It's all I'm asking you, just be nice."
"I can try," he replied, almost sulking because he didn't want to be nice to someone he didn't know, he wanted them to go away and leave him alone. "But if she does anything to my stuff I'm not going to be nice any longer."
She reached up and pressed a pointer finger to each side of her nose, right in between her eyes, and let her eyelids close. "That's…fine, I'll accept that as an answer." With that, she turned around and went back to standing closer to Effie, breaking into some conversation about the fitness center that Yarne didn't have any interest in listening to.
Instead of being a courteous host to someone he wasn't familiar with, Yarne instead headed to the bedroom to change his clothes, but stopped himself from grabbing his pajama pants, fingers twitching as he resisted making that choice. He flashed back to a memory as a child, where he'd changed into pajamas after coming home from school and was chewed out by his mother for looking unkempt in front of dinner guests, and while he knew that Kjelle wouldn't treat him the same way, he was still worried that he wouldn't make a good impression of himself for the guest. That meant that he just changed out of his work shirt and tie, switching into something much more casual on his top half, and kept the dress pants on to present himself as someone who kept classy even at home.
When he returned to the main room, the ladies had switched who was where, so that Kjelle was sitting on the arm of the big chair and Effie was standing with her back toward the front door. He looked at them, deep in the throes of a conversation he couldn't be bothered to make sense of, and decided that he would just sit down and act like there wasn't anyone there, there wasn't anything going on that he needed to be focused on. He hadn't accounted for the fact that when he sat down, he would shift the whole chair just enough to cause Kjelle to get unbalanced on the arm, her nearly falling backward onto him before he caught her. "Thanks for that, Yarne," she said under her breath, looking back at him with her unamused expression that she saved for when he presumed he'd really screwed up.
"Sorry, I didn't…" he started to apologize, before shutting himself up and choosing to just look at her with a pitiful expression, only to give a few short words on what happened. "Wasn't on purpose. Didn't mean to."
"It's whatever, you don't need to act like it's the end of the world or something." Kjelle went right back to talking with Effie for a few minutes longer, until a blaring, annoying sound rang through the room, which seemed to be the signal for Effie leaving, as she was heading for the door.
"Thanks for letting me come by and get to know you better," Effie told Kjelle as she was getting her shoes on, before calling out to Yarne, "and thanks for not kicking me out when you first met me! If I lived in a place half as nice as this, I'd invite you guys over to return the favor, but my place isn't the best, and my roommate…well, let's just say he's a bit much."
Having followed her over to the door, Kjelle shook her head and said, "I doubt he can be worse than some of the people we know. Except for the part where he insists on having the key to your place to himself, but I'm sure you two are working that out. You…are working that out, aren't you?"
"Sure are, the admin building is aware we only got one key and need two, but they're taking their sweet time getting the second one to us. We've been there almost two weeks, and I don't think they've moved a muscle about it." Her shoes on, Effie stood up and grabbed her jacket, the jingle of her car keys in her pocket almost as loud as her ringtone had been. "I'll see you tomorrow at work, Kjelle, and I'll see you whenever we meet next, Yarne! Thanks again for letting me hang here!"
She was escorted outside by Kjelle, who came back in moments later and closed the door, making sure to lock it audibly several times before she stepped any closer to the chair where Yarne was still sitting, in the same pose he'd been in since the goodbyes had started. "I'll have you know coming here wasn't our first choice, but her roommate was taking a lot longer at getting back to her about going home and she didn't want to sit at the gym all day waiting for him."
"You still could've warned me sooner that you were inviting someone over. I wasn't expecting you to be here, anyway, so seeing you and a stranger was a doubly bad problem I had to deal with." He began picking at skin on the back of one of his hands, an anxious tic that he only expressed when he was dealing with unexpected fears, and the moment Kjelle saw it happening she walked over to him and grabbed both of his hands into her own, squeezing them as tightly as she could and nearly making him yelp in pain. "Hey, careful! You know you're strong enough to hurt me when you do that!"
"I know I am, but sometimes you need the reminder that I wouldn't hurt you with my hands, just like I wouldn't hurt you with anything I do. I'm here to protect you, I'd never choose to do something that would intentionally hurt you." She put a smile on her face, and while it wasn't the most assuring of expressions, it did bring Yarne a little bit of peace to know that despite everything, she still supported him and his quirks. "We've got to work on your reliance on your schedule though, because things change sometimes and you're not always going to be able to plan for them."
He nodded eagerly, before his head motion started to slow to the point that it was just hanging down, his eyes glued to their hands and how his so easily dwarfed hers in size. "Some habits are hard to break, and knowing that things are always predictable is one of those habits I'm working on," he said solemnly, trying not to make it sound like he was bothered by what was being said. "Mom always would make us follow the same routine every day, except on weekends when things were allowed to be different, and I kind of really liked that about growing up with her."
"I get that, I really do," Kjelle told him, tugging on his arms to try and get him to stand up, but he remained seated in the chair, slumped over and seemingly too upset to move. "But every time something goes off schedule, usually because my schedule isn't fixed and changes wildly sometimes, you get really weird about things. Could you imagine if I got upset about you changing what time you left in the morning?"
"That wouldn't make any sense!" A pause, as he sat up to properly look at her, watching as she was slowly motioning for him to keep going, an epiphany on the horizon that she was grateful he was about to receive. That hope came crashing down when he followed with, "The office always needs me there at the same time every day, they're never going to ask me to go in earlier or later, so I'd never need to leave at a different time."
The motioning stopped, as Kjelle's mouth sort of started to hang open, her eyes shifting from side to side as she processed what she had just heard. "O…kay, but imagine if you got a different job that wasn't as rigid about times. What about then?"
"I wouldn't get a different job, I like the one I've got! If I left them, it would only be because we were moving out of town or something like that, which we'll probably never do, I think." It was clear that he was missing the point of what had been said entirely, and she still stared at him, stunned at how much he was overthinking what she had been asking him.
"Look, let's forget what I said," she ended up stammering, so confused at how her thought exercise had turned into something completely different. "Point is, I wouldn't lose my mind over something changing in my daily schedule, so you should learn to accept changes in yours too."
He looked at her, at how she just looked like she was defeated in her attempt at getting him to see something from her perspective, and he smiled, this time pulling her into him (and her allowing herself to fall on top of him in the chair). "I'll give it my best shot, but I'm warning you, there's no promises that it's going to work."
"All I can ask for is that you try, or else we might need to start rethinking how things go around here." With her newfound position, Kjelle let go of Yarne's hands and placed her own on his shoulders, giving her the ability to move even more on top of him. "Now, we have the whole night to ourselves, what would you like to do?"
Other men in that situation, with their small yet muscular girlfriend on top of them in the comfort of their own house, might have tried to take advantage of location and position, but Yarne scrunched his face in thought, trying to decide what sounded best to him. "We could watch another movie together, it went well last week," he said, much to her surprise; when she let out a single, still confused laugh, he blinked in equal confusion. "What? Do you think it didn't go well?"
"No, it's just that…" She paused, deciding if she wanted to go through with saying what she'd thought or not. "It caught me off-guard, hearing that as your idea. Let's see if there's anything we need to do tonight before we watch a movie, I'd hate to throw you off by having movie night in the middle of the week."
His face relaxed and he chuckled. "I'm already trying to be more flexible about things, if there's anything else I'm supposed to do tonight, I can just save it for tomorrow. But before we watch a movie, we've got to make dinner, or maybe we can order something? It's up to you, I suppose."
She pushed her face into his chest, laughing as she did. "You're still missing the point entirely, Yarne, but it's cute when you try to do what's asked of you. I guess we'll figure out dinner, then a movie, and then we'll decide our night from there."
It wasn't until they were most of the way through some cute kids' movie that he'd never heard of but saw listed on streaming, hours after the conversation had ended, that Yarne realized that she'd been implying that they spend their night doing something a bit more intimate, but seeing how engrossed in the movie she was, he decided that she might not have been that torn up about him misreading what she meant after all.
A/N: look at me, writing awakening longfic in the year 2023. this will update every month on the 22nd, regardless of day of the week :)