Chapter 8: It’s Got What it Takes
Why Can’t This Be Love, Van Halen
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For once, it was absolutely silent. Ezio had come down for breakfast, Morgyn not far behind, over there making coffee, and neither had said a word to the other. Ezio wasn’t sure how to feel about it. There were so many questions in his head, things he wanted to say to Morgyn, things he wanted to talk about. The problem was, as often it was, was that he didn’t know how to word it all in the right way. Words were necessary parts of human culture, but were often oh so inefficient for the job they were designed for.
When they were young, sometimes, it felt like Morgyn had simply read his mind, or that he’d simply read Morgyn’s mind. He always figured that wasn’t what had actually happened, that they simply knew one another well enough to make logical jumps and extrapolate what was most likely going on in the other’s mind. Either way, he found that he missed being able to tell what Morgyn was thinking just by looking at the blond in this moment. No, maybe he still could. It hadn’t been that long since last he’d done so.
Ezio raised one arm, resting it on the table, his chin in his palm, watching Morgyn wait for the coffee maker. One manicured finger tapped rapidly against Morgyn’s arm, and the blond kept shifting weight. That seemed mostly like impatience. He supposed he could just ask… what had they come to, that they needed to ask each other what they felt? Maybe that was a strange thing to base things on, but it heightened the feeling they were growing apart, and it was probably Jackson’s fault.
Ezio knew that. It wasn’t like he had some kind of idea in his head that Jackson was this perfect little angel, rather the opposite. Everyone made mistakes, of course, though. Holding those mistakes against Jackson seemed like a pretty terrible thing to do, so Ezio tried not to. He did wonder, sometimes. There were days when it felt like Jackson was hiding something, or at least it felt like there was something Jackson wasn’t telling him, maybe that wasn’t necessarily hiding it. And every time he thought these things out loud, it felt like Drake and Morgyn judged him and told him he was making excuses for him. Maybe he was.
Maybe Ezio just desperately wanted someone to stay, maybe he just wanted to feel like someone besides Morgyn and Drake cared about him, that he was important, for once in his life. Why didn’t Morgyn understand that?
“Hey,” he said quietly.
Morgyn’s green eyes flicked back to look at him. “Hi.”
This was so awkward, and Ezio didn’t know what to do right now. “How’re you?”
“Fine,” Morgyn said. “L’s got me thinking about some things, sorry I’m a little quiet. You’re doing okay too?”
Ezio smiled a little. “Yeah,” he answered. “Jackson and I were talking the other night, and he mentioned you two spoke the other day. Wanna tell me what that was about?”
Morgyn glanced at Ezio again, and then turned back to the coffee pot. “You don’t like talking about those sorts of things.”
Ezio released a sigh, his hand falling onto the table. Morgyn looked back at the sound for a moment. “You tried to chase him off.”
“So what if I did?” Morgyn asked.
Ezio didn’t know. What was that supposed to mean? What was the purpose of this, exactly? How did Ezio ask and get an actual response? He didn’t know the answer to any of those questions. They were miscommunicating, probably. They’d never miscommunicated before, not this badly at least. Ezio didn’t know what to do, what move to make here. It was kind of delicate, because he didn’t want to set either of them off, but they couldn’t just ignore all of this, either.
“I just want to understand why, Morgyn,” Ezio said quietly.
Morgyn turned to the floor. Wasn’t that the problem of the century? Caleb had suggested being honest about why Morgyn felt the way the blond felt, but truth be told, it wasn’t like Morgyn had an answer. The blond had said as much at the time, and the answer hadn’t changed at all. But Morgyn was right. Ezio wouldn’t accept feelings and hunches, and those weren’t solid things to make arguments with, either, especially not something like this.
Ezio wanted to be happy. And Morgyn wanted Ezio to be happy, but whatever happy was… it wasn’t this. Ezio wasn’t going to find it with Jackson, Morgyn believed that.
“It’d be nice to explain it to you,” Morgyn said, fidgeting slightly, glancing at the wall, like it had some answers for the blond. “I want to. But I can’t even explain it to myself. He’s hurting you. I don’t know what makes me think that, why I’m so sure of it, but there it is. I don’t think he’s in this for you, Ezio. I think he wants something else, and you’re just a stepping stone to get to whatever that something else is I and I can’t tell you why I feel that way, either, I just do.” And that wasn’t good enough.
Ezio’s lips flattened for a moment, and then levelled back out. That was more of an explanation than he’d gotten every other time he asked. Still, he could see Morgyn’s point. Convictions that had no evidence were hard to back up. Then, Ezio didn’t exactly let Morgyn see everything. There were times and interactions he felt the need to hide from Morgyn and Drake, and something in his head whispered that the reason why was because he knew it was wrong. No. Now wasn’t the time to think about that sort of thing.
“It’s probably because he’s never really here,” Morgyn said, one finger tapping against an arm again. “Even when he is here, he’s not here. He hardly seems to listen to you, he’s got no interest in anything you’re doing, and he’s physically absent any time he gets the chance to be. It’s really just ridiculous.”
Ezio frowned. “No, you’re wrong about that.”
“Am I?” Morgyn asked.
“Yes,” Ezio answered. “He shows interest in stuff I’m doing all the time.” Ezio couldn’t think of anything right now, but he did… right?
“Oh really?” Morgyn asked, head tilting back in disbelief. “Well if he does, go talk about a book or ramble about the stars or something at Drake. Watch his reaction. How he lights up when you do, and how he hangs on every word you say even when he doesn’t really understand it. And then do the same thing to Jackson.” Morgyn turned around, pouring a cup of coffee, and setting the decanter back into the machine.
“And if you don’t understand the damned difference, the point I’m trying to make, I don’t know what to say.” Morgyn turned on a heel, heading up the stairs that lead to the balcony.
No one had said anything, that morning, when Morgyn came down wearing no makeup to speak of. The sage’s hair was loose and let mostly alone. Morgyn had combed it, but not bothered trying to get it to lay a little smoother than usual. Even Ezio hadn’t said anything, but Morgyn wasn’t surprised by that. Actually, Morgyn was fairly sure that Ezio hadn’t even noticed. They weren’t speaking again, but Morgyn figured they wouldn’t be. Ezio had to work through whatever was in his heart, and Morgyn was convinced that the blond only had Jean to blame for all of this. For Ezio not understanding what was right in front of him. Because, see, it didn’t hurt him. Relationships that didn’t cause direct pain were, in his opinion, good. That seemed to be the only standard Ezio had, and it drove Morgyn about nuts.
Morgyn shook that off. Now wasn’t the time for that. The sage instead focused on not falling off the island switching from one to another. The blond stepped through the portal, and stepped out of another into Caster’s Alley. Morgyn loved Caster’s Alley. Everyone always came here eventually, and the hustle and bustle of activity was interesting and fun to the blond. Ezio wasn’t what one would call a people person. Actually, when he’d first come to magic realm, Morgyn remembered, he was jumpy and flighty. Back then, Drake had a much higher rate of hissing at people seemingly randomly, though it usually had something to do with Ezio squealing at someone. Ezio had gotten better, over time, about not losing it every time someone startled him, and Drake hissing at people had dropped in frequency. Morgyn understood it; the blond also hated it when Ezio got like that, often had an overwhelming urge to punch someone every time he squealed like that, but Drake was something else.
It meant that when Ezio and Drake had gotten to the realm, Morgyn had stopped spending quite as much time out in Caster’s Alley. It was also a nice place to hide from Aine, as Morgyn figured out, but for some reason it always seemed like Aine reworded things around Ezio, in ways that she wouldn’t normally say them. Morgyn always wondered about that, but supposed there was no sense in pondering it too long. There were answers to secrets that Aine took with her when she went. It was for the best, likely.
“Hey Caleb,” Morgyn greeted, catching Caleb to one side. For once, he wasn’t working the stands, and Morgyn had to stop from staring at him. The blond had forgotten what he looked like in actual clothes. His eyes were lined in eyeliner today. He really did steal Lilith’s eyeliner from time to time, his nails painted black, a shard of… glass, perhaps, hanging from one ear. Morgyn had never asked what that was, but he insisted on hanging onto it. It looked good on him, though. Well, actually Morgyn was relatively sure that a potato sack would look good on him. He wore a pair of slacks and a dark coloured shirt with a grey jacket over it, though, and he looked really good in turtlenecks.
“Hey Morgyn,” Caleb answered. “You look nice today.”
Morgyn could feel the heat rush, and tried to ignore it. “You think so?” Morgyn asked. “Thanks.”
Caleb loosed a snort. “You always look nice,” he said.
Morgyn probably turned the colour of a chili pepper, and turned away. Caleb loosed an amused sounding snort, but didn’t draw attention to it. Morgyn wasn’t very good at taking compliments. They seemed to throw the blond off, Caleb had noticed, and he tried not to give them too easily. Sometimes, it was hard not to.
“I think some people wear too much makeup, you know?” he said. “It’s kind of nice when someone’s not wearing any.”
It took Morgyn a few moments to answer, looking up at him and biting one lip, trying to fight the blush back down. Eventually, the blond’s weight shifted, head tilting to one side. “Do you think I wear too much?”
Caleb thought about it. “Eh, that’s really subjective,” he said. “Honestly, you probably shouldn’t care much what I think anyway. I just think you’re pretty enough without it.”
Oh, Morgyn wasn’t ready for that answer, either, okay. “I see,” Morgyn said.
“Hey, try not to worry about it so much,” Caleb said. “How do you feel about it? Do you think you wear too much?”
Wasn’t that the question of the century? Morgyn didn’t know how the blond felt about literally anything right now. Whether Morgyn wore too much makeup or not was honestly the least of the blond’s problems. Mostly, Morgyn was worried about Ezio, and it made it difficult to focus on anything else, difficult to hear that little voice on the inside that L had taught the blond how to hear. Ezio was right, of course he was, about Aine and her influence. If it wasn’t for Aine, maybe Morgyn would’ve figured this all out a long time ago. It was hard to say for certain, but that was certainly how it felt like.
Morgyn’s arms crossed, and the blond shrugged a little, pulling the sweater tighter around the sage’s shoulders unconsciously. “I don’t know.” After a moment, Morgyn added, “Sometimes I don’t know why I wear it at all, other times it feels like I need it. Like it’s a mask that keeps all the confusing and upsetting things in my head from coming out and I can be whatever I need to be.” Like as long as it was there, no one would ever see the real Morgyn, whoever that was.
Caleb smiled sadly, glancing down at the stone under them. It was a shield, wasn’t it? Like a security blanket, and Caleb couldn’t say that Morgyn didn’t need it. It was weird, though, that Morgyn didn’t have that shield, and Caleb was the person Morgyn had come to. Caleb often was the one Morgyn went to, now that he thought about it. He didn’t want to overthink it, however, so he left it there.
“If you don’t see a reason to wear it,” he said, “then don’t.”
Morgyn released a snorting laugh. “That sounds so simple when you say it like that. It doesn’t feel that simple.” Morgyn went quiet, watching the light reflect on the stone. “What do you do if, some days, it feels like ‘why do I do this?’ and then other days it feels right?”
Caleb shrugged a shoulder. “So do it some days, and not others. What feels right, right now?” he asked.
“This does,” Morgyn said. “I don’t want people to see me differently.”
Caleb smiled, reaching over and prying Morgyn’s hands off the blond’s arms and taking them in his own. “No one’s going to see you differently,” Caleb said. “Well, no one important, anyway. Look, you didn’t just suddenly morph into someone else, you know? You’re still you. And the people that matter, they won’t think of you differently because you just don’t wear makeup sometimes. Because they see you, and not who they want you to be.”
Morgyn’s gaze dropped back to the stone. Man, the blond was really struggling with this one. It was so weird to see Morgyn struggling with something, that Caleb honestly didn’t know what to do with it. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that Morgyn had fears and insecurities too.
“Hey,” he said, tugging gently on Morgyn’s hands. Green eyes looked up at grey. “I know this is rough, but I’m not going anywhere, and I can’t imagine Ezio is either. It’s okay if this takes some time to figure out.”
“Is it?” Morgyn asked. “I’m two hundred and… uhh come to think I don’t know. I’m two hundred and something, I feel like I should have figured this out already by now.”
Caleb snorted softly. “As if you had the space to.”
No, Morgyn didn’t figure the blond did.
Caleb realised he hadn’t let go of Morgyn’s hands, and abruptly dropped them. Morgyn couldn’t help but notice how cold they felt after he let go, and pulled them back against the blond’s body. It was warmer.
“Sorry, I don’t know why I came to bother you,” Morgyn said.
“No, it’s fine,” Caleb answered immediately. “It’s nice to see you again, I kind of missed you after the All uh, you know.”
Yeah, Morgyn did know. “Thanks, for listening,” Morgyn said.
“Any time,” Caleb answered.
“I should uh, I should go probably, Elise is getting better at Inferniate, we might have something on fire this century,” the blond said, turning towards the portal. “So I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah,” Caleb said. “Good luck.” Morgyn headed for the portal, and Caleb turned away. And then turned right back around. “Wait, Morgyn,” he called.
Immediately, Morgyn turned around. “Yes?”
What on earth was Caleb thinking? “I… uh, could you tell Ezio that I hope he’s doing okay?”
Oh. Morgyn tried not to look disappointed, and just nodded. “Yeah, sure.” Yeah… Morgyn nodded again, and then turned back to the portal. Elise probably wasn’t going to be setting anything on fire alone.
It was official. He was Ezio the book returner. It was either that, or he had a serious lack of interest in socialising anymore. That sounded about right, if he had to take a guess. He sighed slightly, somewhere between sliding one book back onto the shelf and another. He tilted his head to the side slightly, his neck cracked in odd places, and Ezio might’ve glanced at the wall like it’d insulted his mother. And then there was a pale hand reaching around him to slide a book onto the shelf.
He turned to look up and see who it was, and Drake smiled at him. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”
Oh. “Oh.” Ezio snorted. “Of course you’re the only one that can put the stupid books back when you’re done with them. You’d think I was asking them to build a rocket with a couple of wooden crates, eesh.”
“That bad still?” Drake asked.
Ezio wordlessly gestured at the small pile of books beside him. It was around ten or eleven books deep, so it could have, and certainly had, been worse. Ezio might be being dramatic about this one for the sake of it, but damn it, sometimes, he just wanted to complain.
“That’s a number,” Drake said, kneeling down beside him. “Want some help?”
“I got it, it’s okay,” Ezio answered. “You’ve probably got more important things to do than help me with some stupid books, anyway.”
“Not today,” Drake answered.
“Really?” Ezio asked, tilting his head. “You don’t have to go see the Essairs or something?”
“Nope,” Drake said. “Kassander’s busy with something, and I’m not sure what Sandalio’s doing. Probably work, he does that a lot.” It did tend to pay the bills, of course. “They have another one, Hasan, but I’ve never seen him before.” Actually, Drake wasn’t sure how he was an Essair in the first place. He’d never asked.
“Oh.” Ezio was a little pleased about that. Then, he remembered what Morgyn said. And if you don’t understand the damned difference, the point I’m trying to make, I don’t know what to say. Ezio looked thoughtful for a moment, and then asked, “Soo… feel like keeping me company at least?”
Drake smiled. “Sure.” It was a silly question, in his opinion, but Ezio always asked things like that. Drake was never upset to spend time with Ezio, rather the opposite. It was disappointing when Jackson was by. Ezio was usually busy doing other things, and they didn’t speak much. It was for the best, though. Ezio had a boyfriend.
“Morgyn’s always too busy to sit and shelve books with me,” Ezio said. “I’m glad Morgyn got promoted, I really am, but sometimes I miss the dolt.”
“I think that’s normal, Ezio,” Drake said.
Ezio went quiet, thinking, and then slid another book onto the shelf. “I think we’re drifting apart.”
Drake tilted his head. “What makes you think that?”
Ezio released a sigh. “Morgyn came downstairs for breakfast the other day, and we didn’t say anything to one another.”
Ahh. Drake snorted. “Ezio, you know being upset with each other isn’t quite the same thing as drifting apart, right?”
“Isn’t it?” Ezio asked.
“No, it isn’t. You two get angry with each other all the time, I’ve never seen it keep you apart for long. Actually, it seems to bring you closer together. You’ll get through this one, just like you get through everything.”
Maybe he was right. Ezio did think something about how Drake was awfully privy to their affairs, huh? Apparently he was quite right.
“What’ve you been doing, anyway?” Drake asked.
Ezio snorted. “Oh you know, nerdy stuff,” he said. Grey eyes glanced at Drake, saw the interest in that look on his face, like he hoped Ezio would talk more about it. It wasn’t anything interesting, he didn’t think. Still, he remembered what Morgyn had said. There was so much of him that wanted to deny it, reject it right out of hand. Of course Jackson had interest in things he did. But there was that tiny little voice… “I was trying to figure out if the comets here are real ones,” he said.
“I don’t think they are, actually,” Drake said. “I don’t think anything here is notably real. The sun doesn’t bother me the way it should, at least.”
That much was true. Ezio snorted. “Yeah, I remember that. I got caught up in remembering what I know about comets, and I think they’re technically the same thing actually. All comets are is some kind of large object, usually made of ice, some rock and dust. I think these things that fall from our sky are probably some kind of rock particles, maybe pieces of the islands that have come apart due to damage from the vortex, and I guess they fall from somewhere.”
“Is that possible?” Drake asked.
“Well theoretically it is,” Ezio answered. “I don’t quite understand how the vortex works, but if it was suspending these pieces of the islands in the sky somewhere, which is theoretically not a sky anyway and thus logically it might have an end somewhere, then it might lose command of those particles and -” Ezio paused, looking at Drake. Morgyn was right. He could see it, in Drake’s eyes, he wasn’t quite following what Ezio meant, but still, he hung on every word Ezio said.
“… And…?” Drake prompted.
“Sorry, right, might lose command of the particles and drop them, and then they’d fall. Comets of course get too close to a star, and start warming up, and this causes the release of gases, it’s called outgassing. It produces a miniature visible atmosphere called a coma, and sometimes a bow shock. I’m not sure what exactly would cause it to start warming and outgassing here, but I suppose just the act of falling might theoretically cause a warm-up thanks to air resistance. I mean whatever’s up there can’t actually be a vacuum like in space, because there’s not enough mass down here to trap an atmosphere.” That was really something he’d have to experiment with to find answers for.
“What’s the bright stuff that streaks after a comet, anyway?” Drake asked.
“Oh, that’s a comet tail,” Ezio answered. “When a comet gets close to the sun, solar radiation causes it to start vaporising and stream out of it. There’s two different tails a comet can have, the dust tail, and the gas tail, and I think you can see both of them if you’re lucky.”
“Wait, comets have two tails?” Drake asked. “And what’s a bow shock?”
“Yeah, you remember what I said about outgassing, right? I mean it’s gotta go somewhere. The dust tail is caused by the materials in the comet nuclei vaporising, and these materials carry dust with them. And the bow shock is the term for the little barrier looking thing in front of comets sometimes. The closer to the sun the comet gets, the higher the outgassing rate goes, which makes the coma expand, the sunlight ionises gases in the coma, and solar wind passes through and forms the bow shock. The dust tail usually goes away from it in kind of a curve, but the gas tail, also called the ion tail, points away from the sun, because it’s more strongly affected by solar wind.” Ezio paused, sliding a book onto the shelf, and looked up at Drake. “… I’m sorry, that was a lot of rambling.”
Strangely, Drake was smiling. “I didn’t mind,” Drake said. “You know a lot of stuff about what’s up there. I’ve never thought about it too much, but I like hearing about it from you.”
Ezio did have to wonder why that was. He was afraid to ask, so, he didn’t.
“What’s solar wind?” Drake asked suddenly.
Ezio smiled. Apparently, today Drake was thinking about what was up there.
He’d read this book probably six times by now, but it was always something of an adventure to re-read it. Often, Ezio found that the first time he read a book, he paid attention to certain things, and then on subsequent re-reads, he discovered things that he missed the first time around, really paid attention to the content. It was like discovering an old friend again, learning new things about someone you’d known for years. Ezio didn’t need people. He had books.
He’d propped his head up on one hand, the other flipping the pages as needed. Eventually, his wrist would start to hurt, but it wasn’t like it mattered to him right now. He could deal with that when it happened, and right now, he was too busy being caught up with the main character of the story he was reading. This character wasn’t necessarily a good one. Most would tell him that reading things with main characters that weren’t necessarily good was going to turn his head all kinds of screwy and mess up his sense of morality. He’d been reading books like this one since books like this had existed, however, and he was still quite sane and knew which way was right, thank you.
Well, mostly he knew which way was right. Morals weren’t necessarily clear cut and straight-forward. That was what made them difficult, and fascinating.
He tilted his head to the other side, and it popped softly, just as the door opened. Jackson wandered in, leaned over the bed to press a kiss to Ezio’s temple, and he headed for the closet.
“Welcome back,” Ezio said. Silently, he reached over and pulled the bookmark off the side table, and tucked it between the pages.
“Hey, yeah, thanks,” Jackson said in response.
“How was your day?” Ezio asked. Usually, Jackson got to it first, but today, Ezio was half waiting for him to come back. He’d spent five hours talking to Drake about comet anatomy, and solar wind, and how stars worked, and random other things like black holes and the stray knowledge of exoplanets Ezio had here and there. Drake never stopped smiling.
He wanted to know what Jackson was going to do, even as he was afraid to find out.
“Fine enough,” Jackson answered, shuffling into the closet to change. “I spent most of it out in Glimmerbrook, actually. It’s pretty in the winter. Not my thing, I hate the cold, eugh, but it’s nice once in a while.”
“Yeah,” Ezio answered. “I think I’d get sick of it eventually.” Magic realm was already too much of the same thing to him as it was. He’d managed to tolerate it for a couple hundred years, at least, he supposed that deserved something of a congratulations.
“How’s your day been?” Jackson asked.
“Alright,” Ezio said. He hesitated a moment, listening to the sound of the hangers rattling in the closet. “I had help putting the books away today, and we spent some time talking about comets.”
“That sounds nice,” Jackson said.
“He had a lot of questions though,” Ezio went on. “I think I ended up telling him at least most of the stuff I know about astronomy in general. I swear I’ve told him that stuff before though. Maybe he forgot or something. Anyway, I forgot how much I love astronomy. If I had the ability to, I think I’d become an astronaut. I hear some time ago we finally managed to do an untethered space walk, and that sounds like a lot of fun to me. You have to go through some training and stuff to be able to function without gravity and all that, but I’ve had some interest in doing that since I was really young and had no idea what a star was.”
“That’s cool,” Jackson said from the closet.
Ezio’s heart sank, but he took a breath in. “I was telling Drake about comets earlier because there were some theories as to when a certain comet was going to come back, or at least what we think is the same comet. There are a bunch of historical records and stories about this comet, and based on what we know about the comet itself and comparisons to the mentions in historical record, we think it’s the same one. That’d mean that comets probably have some kind of a highly elliptical orbit around the sun, if they can be seen from our planet multiple times over the course of a long period of time. I actually wonder if comets start to outgas closer to the sun and then as they fly back into deep space become inactive again and regain some of the gases and debris they’re comprised -“
“Hey Ezio,” Jackson said, “have you seen the black tie I had right here? I need it tomorrow.”
Ezio fell silent. He could feel the sting of disappointment, and almost started to cry, but he pulled it back. “It’s in the top drawer of the dresser,” he said softly.
“Thanks,” Jackson replied, moving to look through the dresser.
And if you don’t understand the damned difference, the point I’m trying to make, I don’t know what to say.
Why was Morgyn always right? And why was it always a lie, when Ezio thought he’d found some shred of happiness? Ezio stood up, smoothing the bed-sheets out, and moved to the door. He needed to be anywhere else right now.
“Hey, baby, weren’t you saying something?” Jackson asked. “Something about astronauts.”
Ezio paused by the door, his hand on the doorknob. “Don’t worry about it, Jackson,” he said. “It wasn’t important.” The last thing Ezio needed right now was Jackson getting on his case about being upset, so he quickly opened the door, stepped out into the hall, and closed the door behind him. Jackson was just busy, that was all. He didn’t necessarily have the time to bother with Ezio and his stupid ideas of being an astronaut. Like hell that’d ever happen, anyway. Ezio never got anything he wanted, thanks to whatever was wrong with his heart, and what he did get, he had to fight tooth and nail for.
Maybe he was tired of fighting. Now wasn’t the time to be being so damned dramatic over nothing. Ezio released a sigh, and then headed down the stairs. He could use some tea.
A distinct fwump sounded as Morgyn dropped the handful of clothing onto the blond’s bed. It was mostly comprised of grey, white, and black, and might be mostly Ezio’s clothes, but Morgyn had decided that today, none of the blond’s varying clothes felt right. The last time that had happened, something in Ezio’s closet had felt more correct, so maybe that would hold true today, too.
Morgyn reached into the pile, and pulled out one of the shirts the blond had nicked. Not that one. Morgyn tossed that one at the pillows, pulling another one out. That one might work. Morgyn turned around to face the mirror, held it up. It looked like it would fit at least. Morgyn wasn’t sure if that was what felt like it’d be right today, or not. That in mind, though, the blond shuffled into the closet, changing really quickly, and then came back to look at it. It wasn’t a very tight fit, but it had a way of dampening the blond’s curves, and that felt right. Morgyn would have to find something else to do with the chest issue. The blond could keep using scarves, but eventually, that’d get annoying, or become too impractical.
Morgyn turned back around, shuffling through the pile of Ezio’s shirts again, just in case a different one jumped out and seemed like it’d suit better.
Amid Morgyn rummaging through Ezio’s clothes, someone knocked on the door. Morgyn looked up. “Come in,” the blond answered. The door opened, and L stepped in, closing the door behind her gently.
“You’re a bit late,” L said. Her violet eyes fell onto the clothing pile, noted the particular colour schemes, and smiled knowingly. “… I see. You can’t figure out what to wear.”
“I want something that’s not quite masculine, but not really girly, either,” Morgyn answered. L seemed to have a better grasp of this crap than the blond did, maybe something would make sense to her. “I don’t like my curves today.”
“Well, what you’re wearing looks okay,” L said. “Grey isn’t really your colour, though, but I suppose that’s what happens when you borrow your brother’s clothes. I’d say you could ask Drake, but he wears a lot of black and grey too. Hmm. We have boring men around here.”
Despite the annoyance, Morgyn snorted. L always did know how to make Morgyn laugh. Much like it did for Caleb, it seemed to work even when the blond was in a bad mood. Morgyn wondered if there was a trick to that, or if it was a simple matter of Morgyn liking them, as people, having a bond to speak of with them. Caleb was the only person Morgyn really talked to most of the time, besides Aine.
Aine never had that ability, though.
“What’s wrong?” L asked.
Green eyes looked up at L, and then Morgyn loosed a groan, and dropped face-first into the pile of clothing on the bed. “I feel so weird today,” Morgyn answered, the words muffled.
L understood them anyway, gently settling down beside the blond on the bed. “I imagine you do,” she said.
Morgyn’s head raised and the blond loosed a huff. “When does it… you know, start making sense?”
“You can’t rush these things, Morgyn,” L said, her tone slightly chiding. “You’ll probably have to try a few things before anything starts to feel remotely right. It’s a process, not something you can do overnight.”
“I hate it already,” Morgyn grumbled.
“I know you do,” L replied. “This was bound to happen. There aren’t a lot of words in use for these kinds of things. Expressing how you feel is something that’s important to everyone, but also very hard. Sometimes it feels like words just aren’t enough. I figure that’s why humans love music so much. You know, I’ve yet to find someone that doesn’t at least have a few songs they like.” As she spoke, L picked a shirt out of the pile, holding it up in front of Morgyn. “They may not love music in general, but they don’t hate it. You hate your curves today?”
“Yes,” Morgyn grumbled in response.
“Oh come on now, how old are you?” L asked, reaching out and lightly smacking Morgyn’s arm. The blond had slouched against the foot of the bed. “Come on, sit up, look at least kind of awake, we’ll figure this out.”
Morgyn sighed, but sat up. “I don’t really want to be girly, but I kind of want to wear a skirt. That’s really stupid.”
“Why?” L asked.
“Because,” Morgyn argued, “I can’t do both, you know? I either be really girly or I don’t.”
“Remember what I said?” L asked. “Clothes don’t have a gender. You can mix and match them any way you want to. People might look at you a little funny, but at least they’ve got something to look at, right? Clothing, like a lot of things, are a form of expression, and whatever that expression means to you, that’s what’s important. Someday, other people will get with the programme, or they won’t. That’s no business of yours. I think you’re looking at this a little too black and white, too, for lack of better phrasing. Why can’t it be some kind of shade of grey? It doesn’t always have to be a this-way or a that-way. Maybe sometimes it’s a sliding scale. A spectrum, like colours perhaps, and where you land on the scale varies. Sometimes you may be really blue, and other times you’re more of a cyan-green.”
Morgyn arched an eyebrow. “I don’t think gender’s a spectrum.”
“Why not?” L asked. “It’s an expression. It can be anything you want it to be. Besides, you’re not the first person to decide your gender expression on a certain day isn’t quite male or female. Somewhere in-between, maybe both, who knows. The point is, obviously it isn’t a binary. Stop thinking of it as a binary.”
Morgyn’s lips scrunched to one side. “I guess.”
“You guess,” L said, snorting. “Here, this looks like it’ll hide your curves, and you can wear a skirt under it. I think you’d be pretty cute, and hopefully, feel a little better.” L stood up, shuffling back out the door and closing it behind her. Morgyn listened to her heels tapping down the hallway. It wasn’t a binary, huh? Morgyn was still having a hard time making sense of gender not being a binary. Maybe the blond would never get it. Morgyn looked at the shirt in the blond’s hand, released a sigh, and then stood up to find a skirt that would match.
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