Oh, that was nice. Very nice. Very hilarious. Elliot had really thought they were learning to treat each other better.
Elliot regarded Luke with loathing. “Ha. Very funny. I don’t have time for this, and this book is not properly citing its sources.”
He got up and hit Luke over the head with the book by the troll’s ex, perhaps hitting him harder than a truly committed pacifist would have. He went and found some different and with any luck more helpful books on trollish, and came back to find Luke waiting for him, book pushed aside, leaning back in his chair. He looked down at Luke, feeling lost.
“Seriously,” said Luke, face tilted up to Elliot’s, and he did seem serious. He seemed almost vulnerable.
Elliot understood then. Something had happened with Dale, and it had not gone well.
He remembered Dale saying there wasn’t a lot of choice at the Border camp if you liked guys, and his discussion with Luke, so Luke knew for the first time that Elliot was a possible option. He could understand Luke, even: understand feeling bruised, and looking to someone you trusted not to hurt you. He could even understand it if Luke wanted to spite Dale, show him that he could take what Dale had wanted. Elliot himself had used Dale to get revenge on Luke.
When you cared too much about one person, other people seemed to matter less, and sometimes you treated them as if they did not matter at all.
Elliot thought of his father, who had wanted his mother or no one, Serene, who had wanted Golden, Adara and Myra, who had wanted Luke, and Jase, who had wanted a compliant figment of his own imagination. He thought of Serene last year, almost-offering to be with him again because she thought she could not be with the one she really wanted. He had not taken her offer then, and he would not take Luke’s now. Everyone Elliot had ever wanted to love him had loved someone else better: had wanted someone else more.
“Seriously,” Elliot responded. “That’s not a good idea.”
“What happened between Luke and Dale?” Elliot asked Adara Cornripe the next day at lunch.
“Please don’t sit down,” said Adara. “I can’t be seen associating with you sober, in daylight, in lunch-table intimacy. My social standing would not recover.”
Elliot hovered his lunch tray over the table, as if he were going to put it down. “Talk fast.”
“The word is that they were in a clinch and Luke’s wings came out and Dale freaked,” Adara told him, eyeing the tray as if it were a grenade. “But it was Luke who called the whole thing off.”
“What else could he do?” Elliot asked.
“I don’t know, Dale might have come around,” Adara said. “I mean, would Dale be the first person in the world to react to a sexy situation with ‘What is that and oh no, what is it doing?’ Clearly not.”
“If you’re the one who introduces body negativity into the sexy equation, you’re the one who should do the groveling, and the weeping, and the ‘baby, please take me back’ talking,” said Elliot. “That’s mathematics. Sexy mathematics.”
Adara’s gorgeous face turned thoughtful. “Does Luke want Dale to come crawling back, then?”
“I assume.”
“Then I won’t make a plan to ruin Dale’s life,” said Adara. She saw Elliot’s startled look, and shrugged. “I owe Luke. Besides, if he was into it, I’d fly him all around the Border camp like a bad bad flying pony.”
“Aw, I’m so touched, I feel like putting down my tray.”
“Do not do that,” said Adara.
“What would you think about selling Dale to pirates?”
“I think you’re ridiculous and not amusing, Schafer,” said Adara. “Don’t you dare put down that tray.”
“What are you doing, Elliot?” Luke asked. “Come on.”
He put a hand between Elliot’s shoulderblades and pushed Elliot, gently, in the direction of their usual lunch table. Elliot stepped away from him hastily, and went.
Elliot knew then what had happened, that it had been just as he suspected, and he was sorry for Luke and angry with Dale in equal measure.
He tried to forget what Luke had suggested, and when he could not forget he tried to remember it wasn’t serious. Not that Luke would make a joke of such a thing, but that Luke had been hurt and searching for a solution. Luke was new to romance.
As the days passed and Luke carefully avoided Dale and took to following Elliot to the library, he tried to remember that Luke had not meant it.
“Luke asked me out,” he told Serene one evening when he dragged her protesting out to Luke’s Trigon practise. Oh, the tables, how they had turned.
“He told me he was going to,” said Serene.
“I said no.”
“That’s probably for the best,” Serene remarked.
That confirmed everything Elliot had suspected. Serene was Luke’s swordsister. She knew Luke better than anyone, and she would not want Elliot to be hurt again.
This knowledge helped during Elliot’s occasional moments of weakness.
Luke’s cadet uniform got redesigned to incorporate the wings, a sword belt added. During archery practise he couldn’t carry a traditional quiver, but had a whole new shirt that was basically a row of arrow pockets and straps to hold it together.
Everything seemed back to normal when girls started showing up in groups again to watch Luke at archery practise.
Elliot, of course, did not care about archery practise and was waiting for Luke to be done already so they could get some dinner. He was leaning against the fence and reading. He hardly looked up from his book at all.
Maybe he did once or twice. Serene and Luke were having a contest, and Serene was trash-talking Luke in a very polite elvish way, which made Luke throw back his head and laugh. There was a stir and a sigh from the assembled viewers.
That was Luke, the Sunborn champion, the prince from illustrations in a book of fairy tales come to life. That much did not change. Elliot found himself having a number of non-fairy tale-approved thoughts, moving from the rare sweetness of Luke’s laugh to the lean muscles that slid under his skin as he drew his bow, the glitter of sunlight outlining his upper lip. But Elliot remembered watching Luke pull off his shirt on the Trigon pitch. That hadn’t changed either.
The only thing that was slightly different was that Elliot could transform his thoughts into reality. He had turned Luke down, but he was fairly certain that he could take it back. All he would have to do was walk over and lean close, touch Luke, curl his fingers around the swell of his bicep or run a nail down the brown arch of Luke’s neck.
Except that this change was not permanent. Luke was stung by rejection and looking for a safe bet. How Luke looked for him in a room now, how his whole face changed when he caught sight of him, that would all go away soon.
“Are you two done?” Elliot asked, strolling over. “Whichever one of you wins has to bring me dinner, so I guess whatever happens . . . I win! I just made up that rule.”
“It was a draw,” Serene admitted grudgingly, and stomped off to retrieve her arrows.