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In Sumeru, it’s common knowledge that their archon lives in the Sanctuary of Surasthana. In the Akademiya, it’s common knowledge that Hat Guy visits her there once every two weeks. And in Vahumana’s gossip circles, it’s common knowledge that these visits take place every other Sunday during prime teatime.
So when the second Sunday of the month rolls around, Sethos walks up to the sanctuary with a spring in his step. It’s almost sunset, and the clouds off to the west are turning a lovely pinkish color. Sethos grins at them and finds himself a nice wall to lean against while he waits for Hat Guy to come out of the sanctuary.
He stands there in pleasantly patient silence for about fifteen minutes before he’s interrupted by the approach of a vaguely familiar woman wearing Vahumana robes. One of his seniors, maybe?
She clears her throat and shoots him an odd look. “Hey, Sethos…”
Despite his confusion, Sethos flashes a smile her way. “What’s up?”
Looking vaguely apologetic, she says, “I thought I’d let you know, the archon doesn’t really take walk-in visitors.”
“I know,” says Sethos. “That’s why I’m standing out here, instead of walking in.”
“I mean that if you want an audience with her, you’ll have to fill out the forms to join the waiting list. I think all her guests are vetted by Scribe Alhaitham, and then the General Mahamatra, and then also all the Sages, but Alhaitham is the hardest to get through because he’s always—”
Sethos interrupts her with a cackling laugh.
She grinds to a halt. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “Um, anyway, you should probably go. She isn’t going to see you. I just wanted to tell you, since you’re a new student and all.”
“Very thoughtful of you,” Sethos agrees. “But I’m not here for the archon.”
She frowns. “Then what…”
“Think about it. It’s Sunday. Almost dinner time.”
Her frown deepens. She thinks on it for a moment, her eyebrows furled in an almost comical caricature of deep thought, before—
“OH,” she says. “Oh, you’re here for him. I should have known! Of course you’d be waiting for him.”
Sethos feels a little proud about that response. “You think so?”
“Of course,” she sniffs, sounding offended. “Everyone with half a functioning eye in Vahumana can see what’s going on with you two. You’re not exactly subtle.”
Sethos feels even more buoyed by that. Not very subtle, huh! Well, he’s never been subtle in his life, but he thought Hat Guy’s obtuseness would counteract that. Apparently not! He grins, wondering how far he can stretch this out. “Aw, really? You think everyone knows?”
“I don’t see why you’re so happy about everyone knowing you’re a stalker.”
Sethos blinks. “…A what?”
“You’re stalking Hat Guy!” She wrinkles her nose. “We all know it. You chase after him every day, and he obviously doesn’t reciprocate.”
“I’m not a stalker!” he protests. Then, after thinking on it for about two seconds, he revises, “Okay, well, not really. …A little bit. A fun amount. It’s consensual stalking.”
“How can stalking be consensual?” she asks, bewildered. “Have you even talked to him?”
“Yes??” Sethos’s eyebrows are so all over the place that he isn’t even sure where they’ve ended up. “He’s my boyfriend. Of course I’ve talked to him. I do it every day.”
“He’s your what?”
“My boyfriend…?”
She looks at him in stoic silence for about ten seconds. Then, after a lengthy pause, “No way are you dating him.”
“Of course I’m dating him, he’s my boyfriend.”
She levels him a judgmental stare.
Suddenly Sethos feels like he’s sweating a little. “Hat Guy and I have been dating for a while now. I’m picking him up from here so we can go out to dinner.” When she remains unresponsive, Sethos quickly adds, “On a date. Because we’re dating.”
Instead of responding, his senior just sighs heavily. “Good luck with that,” she mutters. Then, without any further parting words, she walks off.
Sethos stares after her in confusion. Why did she act like it was so obvious that they were together, then do a complete one-eighty when he actually said it?
Luckily, he’s spared from his wondering by the swing of the sanctuary door.
“You’re here?” Hat Guy asks, looking vaguely annoyed. He always looks like that. Sethos knows, by now, that he doesn’t mean it; he just looks like that. If he’s actually annoyed, his annoyance will not be vague in the slightest.
Sethos beams at him. Instead of answering his question, he says, “Hello my dearest darlingest boyfriend! How was your teatime with Nahida? Was she mean about your latest essays?”
“I don’t even like you,” Hat Guy tells him, his eyes deadpan. “I have academic review with a literal god and you call it teatime.”
Sethos just laughs. “Well, you do have tea.” Hat Guy concedes this point with an eyeroll. Sethos loops his arm through Hat Guy’s and says, “I’m taking you out to dinner. You want mushroom broth noodles or lamb with garlic?”
Hat Guy scoffs, but goes along with him without any fight. “Garlic lamb, obviously.”
“I knew it!” Sethos does a little spin in place to celebrate his victory. “That’s my favorite, you know! With rice and steamed asparagus.”
“That’s why I picked it, dipshit. Hurry up already.”
Hat Guy pulls on his wrist and makes him stumble all the way to the hole-in-the-wall restaurant down Treasures Street to buy their dinner. Sethos goes along with him easily, laughing all the while. This, he thinks, this is where it’s at: his boyfriend dragging him through the city to get garlic lamb with all his favorite sides, the orange sunset dyeing their faces different shades of gold.
As they sit down and eat their lamb and rice and asparagus, Sethos finally thinks back on his earlier conversation.
It’s not like they’ve been trying to hide their relationship. They’ve been pretty brazen about it, in fact. Yet his senior seemed so surprised to find out! Maybe, Sethos thinks, this is the sort of thing that needs publicity. Maybe it will require a declaration.
No matter. He can do that easily enough!
***
“Hello my dearest darlingest boyfriend! How are you on this fine day?”
Hat Guy hits him with a nasty eyebrow raise and says, “Lecture was garbage.”
Sethos nods. Hat Guy usually thinks lectures are garbage, because he chooses classes that he already knows too much about. Like, he was there for Inazuma’s destructive history. He doesn’t need to be told what happened. But he still chooses to attend those lectures, so he can’t think they’re truly awful. He would just leave if he did.
Leaning in to bump their shoulders together, Sethos says, “Let me take you out to make up for it!”
Hat Guy, as always, smothers his smile under a scoff and puts up his token show of looking annoyed. He grumbles something under his breath and rolls his eyes and drags his feet when Sethos takes him away from the lecture hall. Sethos just beams, watching his face and waiting for that hint of a smile to flicker through. He holds on to Hat Guy’s arm a little tighter and—
“Stop!”
Sethos blinks. He turns around and finds the entirety of the lecture’s other students staring at him. A sea of Vahumana students are watching him drag Hat Guy off for a date.
Perfect!! This is exactly the opportunity he was looking for!
“Hi,” says Sethos brightly. “I’m taking Hat Guy out on—”
Suddenly a young guy wearing thin glasses bursts into tears.
Sethos cuts himself off, bewildered. He reaches out, but thinks better of it when the student flinches away from him. Instead, he asks, “What’s wrong?”
“D—don’t…” The guy wilts under his attention, looking more than a little scared. “Um…”
The scholar next to him bursts out with, “Don’t you dare hurt Hat Guy!”
Sethos stares at them. “Um… what?”
That first outburst seems to have reignited the crowd’s confidence, because they all begin shouting similar things in unison. Sethos tries to make some of them out: Don’t take him away! You can’t! We won’t let you! He’s too weak to stand up to you!
At this last one, Hat Guy scoffs and finally speaks up. Although it isn’t particularly loud, his voice stands out easily among the cacophony. “You think I couldn't stop this if I wanted?”
Their Vahumana classmates fall silent.
“I’m not fucking fragile,” he continues, sounding almost amused by the idea. “If anyone tried to kidnap me, I could kill them before they got more than two meters from where they started.”
Another moment of silence ensues. Then, in a fragile voice, the student who burst into tears speaks up: “So… why does he always…?”
“I have a name,” Sethos cries, a little desperate. “And half of you are my classmates too! We’re all in the same Darshan! Why do you assume the worst of me?”
No one speaks. The silence grows even guiltier. Sethos stares into the faces of some of his very own classmates and feels a little forlorn about it. Finally Hat Guy takes mercy on him and says, “They’re just stupid. They want to protect me.”
“But you don’t need to be protected from me,” Sethos says. “Right?”
“Obviously,” Hat Guy scoffs. “I don’t need to be protected from anyone.”
“But especially not me.”
“Not anyone…?” says Hat Guy, looking a little lost. “I’m pretty fucking competent?”
“But especially not me because I like you very much and would never ever in a million years do anything to hurt you and especially not on purpose,” Sethos says all in one breath. “Right.”
“What,” says Hat Guy.
Sethos buries his face in his hands. “There goes my conversational segue,” he mumbles. “ANYWAY,” he says loudly to the group of Vahumana scholars still watching them both with wide eyes. “You do not need to worry about Hat Guy. And please stop looking at me like that. He doesn’t mind the kidnapping thing. He has actively consented to it. Because we are dating. I am his boyfriend. He is my boyfriend. We are boyfriends.”
Silence.
What the hell, Sethos thinks! Why is no one reacting!! They were supposed to all go, Thank you for clarifying, everything makes perfect sense now and we will stop villainizing you, Sethos, also you’re a great student and quite handsome really, and then Sethos would grin at them and they’d all go back to normal. But no! More blank stares.
“Let’s just go,” Hat Guy mutters, pulling on his arm. “This isn’t worth our time.”
Sethos, feeling a little glum, lets Hat Guy drag him all the way home. Even the goat curry that Hat Guy orders for them doesn’t shake off the gloom.
***
“This is fucking stupid,” Hat Guy tells him, slamming down a mug of black tea with soy milk on the table and sliding it to him. “Tell me what’s wrong already.”
Sethos thinks this is very sweet of him, actually. He takes the tea and says, “Our entire Darshan thinks I’m evil.”
Hat Guy, being Hat Guy, says, “So?”
“They’re my classmates! I see them every day and no one ever smiles at me anymore! And you know what happened yesterday?! I forgot my textbook, right? And not a single person in the entire lecture was willing to share with me. I had to go the whole class without one!”
“You’re smart,” Hat Guy says, raising an eyebrow. “You probably remember everything from the chapters. You don’t need the book anyway.”
“Well,” says Sethos, because this is true. He answered every question correctly even without the textbook. In retrospect, this probably only made his classmates even more pissed at him. “It’s the principle of the thing, you know?”
“The principle is that you’re better than them. It doesn’t matter.”
“You think so?” asks Sethos brightly, already smiling a little. Then he remembers his downcast mood and promptly returns to it. “But never mind that part. What about you? They think I’m—I’m kidnapping you or something! They think I’m a weird stalker who won’t take a hint and leave you alone!”
“You kind of are,” Hat Guy tells him. “I just gave up on trying to get you to leave.”
“But you like me. They think you don’t like me.”
Hat Guy rolls his eyes. “Who fucking cares what they think?” He motions toward the mug of tea still sitting on their table. “Drink it. You like this stuff.”
Sethos takes a sip, because he does like this stuff. They have a compromise: Hat Guy brews a pot of the bitterest tea he can find, then he drinks his cup straight and gives Sethos a cup that’s half tea and half soy milk. This way Hat Guy gets his weird bitter tea, and Sethos gets a beverage that doesn’t taste like straight up cactus spines. With the soy milk added, the tea is warm and comforting. He drinks some more and lets the familiar taste bring a smile to his mouth.
“How about this,” Hat Guy says as Sethos drinks the last of his tea. “We just tell everyone we’re dating.”
“I did,” Sethos says, a little petulant. “They didn’t believe me.”
“Whatever. I’ll tell them, then.”
Finally, Sethos brightens slightly. That might actually work! After all, if Hat Guy himself makes the announcement, the other Vahumana students wouldn’t be worried for him anymore. Then they’ll go back to thinking Sethos is just fine! And all will be right in the world!
“Took you long enough,” Hat Guy grumbles, snatching the now-empty mug from the table. “Stop fucking worrying. It’ll be fine. What could go wrong?”
***
Because Hat Guy is Hat Guy, and therefore can float above any rule he wants, he takes the professor’s podium at their next lecture and tells the entire crowd of students, “I’m dating Sethos.”
Sethos is in the front row, where he always sits. It’s a mandatory first-year Vahumana class, Development of Modern Rainforest Civilization, which neither of them cares about very much but both of them have to take. He grins and turns to give a little wave to the people behind him.
Only for his grin to slip when he notices that no one in the entire hall is smiling.
“Blink if you need help,” someone says.
“Um, what?” says Hat Guy.
“HE BLINKED,” the student directly behind Sethos announces. “He’s being coerced into saying this! Everyone get him out!”
“Wait,” Sethos says hastily. “Wait, I really didn’t—”
“Out!”
“I didn’t even blink,” Hat Guy says.
“Out!!!”
Sethos, bewildered and more than a little flustered, finds himself swept out of the room by an entire tide of Vahumana students.
To Hat Guy’s credit, he storms out of the classroom following this display, and finds Sethos just down the hall. He has Sethos’s bag, too, which is really nice of him. Saves him from getting his books sabotaged, or his wallet stolen, or something worse.
Just thinking about the possibilities makes him a little dismayed. “Do you believe me yet?” Sethos asks dejectedly. “About me being doomed?”
Hat Guy scoffs. “You’re not doomed. That was one class. Everyone taking the intro class is a loser anyway.” He hands Sethos his bag—exactly as he left it, thankfully—and sets off down the hallway with him. “Let’s find a better place to announce it. There’s gotta be a group of more reasonable people somewhere in this goddamn school. We’re gonna find them.”
***
“Okay,” says the library volunteer at the House of Daena. “Do you want your receipt papers in the books, or should I recycle them?”
“I’m dating Sethos,” says Hat Guy.
“Great,” says the library volunteer. “So do you want the paper or—”
“Tell everyone that I’m dating Sethos.”
“Um…”
“But make it casual,” he adds. “Maybe mention it really offhand. Like, ‘Do you want your receipt papers in the books? Also have you heard that Hat Guy is dating Sethos totally of his own free will?’ That sounds good. Do that.”
“Sir,” she says weakly. “The papers…”
“No papers,” Sethos tells her. “Thanks so much.”
She does a double take looking at him. “Hey, aren’t you the stalker guy from Vahumana?”
“Uh,” says Sethos quickly. He glances at her hat—Rtawahist. How does a Rtawahist scholar know about him? Isn’t Rtawahist supposed to be a super down-to-earth Darshan that doesn’t even listen to gossip?? “No! Definitely not me. No idea who that would be.”
“I think his name started with an S,” she says, half to herself. “Siraj…? Wait, no, he got arrested.”
“Whatever,” Hat Guy says. “Make sure you remember the bit about me and Sethos dating.”
“Sethos, that’s it!” She snaps her fingers. Then, slowly, horror dawns on her face as she looks between them. “Wait, wait… you two are—”
“BYE,” Sethos says, and drags Hat Guy out of the House of Daena as fast as humanly possible.
***
“So maybe not the Akademiya,” Hat Guy concedes. “But the rest of Sumeru City is fair game, right? There’s no way everyone in the city of wisdom is this stupid.”
***
“I’m dating him,” Hat Guy declares, flinging his index finger at Sethos’s face. “He’s my boyfriend. I’m his boyfriend. We’re dating.”
“Uh huh,” says Lambad. Then, turning to Sethos, he says, “Think this one had a few too many. S’he bothering you?”
“No! No, he really is my boyfriend,” Sethos reassures him, feeling immensely buoyed. Finally! Someone thinks that maybe he’s the victim here! Well, he isn’t, but the fact remains that Hat Guy is objectively much stronger than him and could probably pull off a stalking stunt much more effectively than Sethos could. “It’s okay. I can take him home.”
“Nooo,” Hat Guy protests, his eyes a little out of focus. “M’ a fucking god. I can’t get drunk.” Then, with great effort, he says, “I have to tell everyone. That we’re together.”
“That can wait.” Sethos hooks an arm under Hat Guy’s shoulders and helps him up from his chair. “Come on, I’ve already paid the bill. Let’s get going.”
Hat Guy, seeing the reason in his words, or perhaps just giving up, walks alongside him toward the door of the tavern. Sethos reaches out to open it, but just as he’s setting his hand on the handle, the door bursts open.
“You can’t let him take Hat Guy!!”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Sethos says flatly. “There is no way.”
But still, six of Hat Guy’s youngest Vahumana classmates are standing in front of him, determined expressions on their faces. Most of them are even shorter than Hat Guy and Sethos are, which is a feat. They couldn't put up much of a fight—only one of them has a Vision, and it’s geo—but they don’t falter at all. Sethos is, begrudgingly, kind of impressed.
“You can’t steal him,” one of them cries, her eyes watery. “Please!! What has he ever done to you?”
“Um,” says Sethos. “Well, he agreed to be my boyfriend, so I guess that’s what he did. Also, how am I stealing him?”
The shortest of them all, a boy with wild black hair, turns up his nose at them. “You’re obviously taking him home with you! And he’s not in his right mind! This is against Akademiya conduct, you know.”
Sethos raises an eyebrow at him. “No it isn’t. I’ve read the handbook.”
“Okay, got me there,” he says, shrugging. “It was worth a try though. Anyway, we’re stopping you. We can take him back to his own house, and you can go home.” He makes a shooing motion with his hands.
“I hate to break it to you, but we kinda live together.”
“Then go somewhere else for the night,” says the one with thick horn-rimmed glasses, already starting to take Hat Guy off his shoulders. “We’re taking him to the student apartments and you aren’t coming with.”
“But I live there!” Sethos protests. “Hey! I live there—!”
***
“Jesus Christ,” says Kaveh, when Sethos shows up at his doorstep. Well. Alhaitham’s doorstep. Whatever. Same thing.
“Who’s that?”
“Never mind,” says Kaveh quickly. “Get in. What happened? Did you and Hat Guy have a fight? Being roommates can be really hard. Especially if your roommate is a genius with negative social skills and a weirdly high amount of prestige.”
“I heard that,” Alhaitham calls from somewhere further in the house.
“No you didn’t, you little rat bastard,” Kaveh yells back at him fondly. “Anyway,” he says to Sethos, like this is completely normal. “What happened? Do you need me to beat him up? I think I’ll lose, but it’s worth a try. Do you think he can make a shield with his anemo powers?”
“No no no,” Sethos hastens to say. “Do not fight him. He did nothing wrong.”
Kaveh hits him with a devastating eyebrow raise. “Then why are you crashing on my couch?”
Alhaitham’s disembodied voice crashes in: “Our couch.”
Kaveh rolls his eyes. “He must have his earpieces turned up all the way. Ignore him.”
“Anyway,” says Sethos, because there really is nothing else to say when confronted with Alhaitham and Kaveh. “So the entire Vahumana Darshan thinks I’m a stalker who’s kidnapping Hat Guy and they don’t think we’re actually dating because there was the stalking thing first but Hat Guy was kind of into the stalking thing and he’s also a tsundere and still pretends he doesn’t like me and now everyone is out to get me.”
“Well,” says Kaveh. He considers for a moment. “Can’t really say I relate. I’m kind of Alhaitham’s trophy roommate, so.”
“You can say husband,” Sethos tells him. “Everyone knows you’re married.”
“We aren’t married!”
“You have your ring on.”
“Fuck,” says Kaveh with feeling. When he glances down at his left hand, it’s empty. He turns back to Sethos. “Hey! You—you liar. I don’t have my ring on at all.”
“But you have a ring,” says Sethos triumphantly. “Checkmate.”
Kaveh frowns at him. “How did you even know?!”
“Um,” says Sethos, because everyone in the entire nation knows. When Alhaitham was their Acting Grand Sage, everyone started calling Kaveh the Consort of Sumeru behind his back. It was pretty funny actually. “…My brother told me?” he tries.
“Your brother didn’t tell you shit,” Alhaitham says. This time, he’s actually standing in the doorway. His presence is kind of scary; Sethos was getting used to the idea of him as just a voice. “Cyno is the only person clueless enough to think we still hate each other. No, actually, I sent out a missive a while ago telling the nation I was married.”
Kaveh looks at him, appalled. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“I was getting marriage proposals,” Alhaitham says dryly. “Diplomatic ones. I had to turn down the head of the Kujou clan. And also two Fatui harbingers. It was getting annoying.”
Sethos gapes at him. “Harbingers? Multiple harbingers?”
Kaveh ignores him. “You didn’t have to tell them you were married to me!”
“I didn’t. Everyone just assumed.”
“Shitty assumptions,” Kaveh mutters.
“Well, they were right.”
“Um, guys,” Sethos interrupts. “Can we get back to the part where my entire Darshan hates me for something I didn’t even do?”
“Oh,” says Alhaitham. “Easy. I’ll send out another missive. Problem solved.” Then he turns back to Kaveh. “You can wear your ring in public if you want. I wear mine every day.”
Kaveh’s eyes suddenly snap to him. “Really? The one I made you?”
“Yep. It reminds me of your insufferable stubbornness.”
For this remark, Kaveh actually stands up from the couch and paces over to a smirking Alhaitham in the doorway. “I hate you,” Kaveh tells him. “I actually hate you so much,” and then they’re kissing passionately. With tongue.
“—And suddenly it’s time for me to take a bath!” Sethos yells, already on his way out of the living room. “Goodnight!”
***
Alhaitham sends out the missive the next day. It says, in its entirety: Hat Guy and Sethos of Vahumana are together. Stop bothering them. -Alhaitham.
“This will definitely work, right?” Sethos asks Hat Guy when he gets back home after his night at Alhaitham and Kaveh’s house. “This is a reputable source and everything. This is going to do it.”
“I feel like shit,” says Hat Guy instead of responding. “What the fuck did you feed me last night?”
Oh. Right. The drinks. “That was all you,” Sethos reminds him. “You ordered everything yourself, and then drank it of your own volition. Speaking of which, I’m glad those Vahumana students were able to get you home!”
“They weren’t. I threw them all into the pond on the east side of town and got home on my own.”
“That works too, I guess.”
Hat Guy finally processes the words on the missive in his hands and says, “It’ll be fine. Alhaitham is respected. People believe him.”
Well thank fuck, Sethos thinks. He could use some normalcy. It’s been too long.
***
“You! You’ve even corrupted the former Acting Grand Sage!!”
“Yeah!! We saw you talking with his husband last night! What did you say, huh? Did you threaten him?”
“Threatening Kaveh? The Light of Kshahrewar? How much lower can you sink?!”
Sethos gives up on attending his lecture before he can get more than five steps into the classroom.
***
In the end Sethos walks all the way to Gandharva Ville instead of staying in the city. He gets there around lunchtime and walks into the dining hall, asking for his brother. There are four rangers in there, who all wave at him with friendly little smiles. Sethos feels so relieved by their lack of hostility that he nearly cries.
“Cyno isn’t here,” Amir tells him. “He’s in the desert. But Tighnari will be back in about an hour. Do you want some lunch while you wait?”
Sethos, in his hurry to leave his morning lecture, didn’t actually eat any breakfast. He realizes as he stares at their food that he’s ravenous. “I’d love some,” he says, and sits down to eat with them. The rangers give him a share of their grilled chicken and pickled vegetables with rice, and though it’s not the fanciest stuff ever, it tastes fantastic.
Tighnari gets back to Gandharva Ville within forty minutes. When he sees Sethos, he doesn’t even look surprised. He just smiles and sits down across from him. “If it isn’t my favorite stalker!”
“Not you too,” Sethos groans, plunking his head into the table.
“That’s why you’re here, I assume?” he asks, still smiling. “Don’t tell me: everyone thinks you’re stalking Hat Guy, so they’re ‘defending’ him by kicking you out?”
Sethos raises his eyebrows. “How did you know that? I thought you left the Akademiya?”
Tighnari only laughs. “You haven’t heard, then?”
Sethos, baffled, only sits up straighter. “Heard what?”
“The same thing happened to me when I was in school.”
Sethos does a double take. “There’s no way anyone thought you were a stalker. You’re too sweet to be a stalker.”
“Exactly,” Tighnari says. “Everyone in Amurta loved me, but I was pretty standoffish, especially with my fox features. Then Cyno and I started dating, and I let him touch them whenever he wanted. Everyone thought he was up to something.” He smiles, like it’s a fond memory. “One time they found us kissing in a tree and they threw Cyno three floors onto the ground. I think he fractured his wrist.”
“So,” Sethos says slowly, trying in vain not to think about getting his own wrist fractured. “How did you disprove them?”
“Oh, we didn’t,” Tighnari says brightly. “I just started beating the shit out of anyone who tried to hurt him. Cyno thought that was really sweet. Eventually they all realized they were just jealous.”
“But if Hat Guy beats the shit out of someone, he’ll actually just kill them.”
Tighnari considers. “It doesn’t have to be him, then,” he decides eventually. Slowly, a diabolical grin begins to spread across his face. “I have the perfect idea, actually. No one will die. Do you want me to help out? It wouldn’t be any trouble at all, really. I already have the mushrooms I confiscated from some tourists. They don’t leave traces in the bloodstream, either, so there’s no risk of me getting caught.”
“Um,” says Sethos. He is kind of terrified of Tighnari. How can someone so pleasant have such a terrifying undercurrent to their personality? “I think I’m good, thanks.”
***
The next week, when Sethos gets out of his lecture on the historical interpretation of ancient Mondstadtian folktales, he is so surprised to see Hat Guy waiting for him outside the door that he actually physically runs into him.
“What are you doing here?” Sethos asks him, as he gathers his books back up from the floor. “I didn’t think you had a class around here.”
“I don’t,” Hat Guy says stiffly. “I thought… if I came to get you. It might be nice. And show people that I like you.”
Sethos nearly drops his books again. “You like me?”
“Yeah. Obviously.”
“Say it again,” Sethos demands.
“I like you,” Hat Guy says slowly, one word at a time.
Sethos beams. “That’s so sweet!” Then, remembering that his entire class behind him is two seconds away from kicking his ass, he says, “You know what we should do? Go away from here. Far away. Let’s go to Treasures Street and get soft serve.”
“Okay,” says Hat Guy. Then, after a brief pause: “Wait a minute. You’re lactose intolerant.”
“I got over it. Anyway, let’s go already, I’m hungry.” Sethos pulls on his arm.
“Wait.”
Sethos turns back, tilting his head. “Yeah? What’s—”
Hat Guy tiptoes just a tiny bit and presses his dry lips against Sethos’s cheek.
Sethos’s eyes fly wide open. He grins so wide that his mouth almost hurts. “Did you just!!”
Hat Guy shifts on his feet. “I thought we should. Like. Prove it. That we’re dating. So.”
“We need to do better than that,” Sethos lies. “You should hold my hand. And walk everywhere with me. Ooh, if you’re flying somewhere you should carry me so I can fly too. And we should go on dates all the time and you should call me sweet names and tell me you have a big fat crush on me every day.”
Hat Guy rolls his eyes. His face is a little red. “Soft serve first.”
“And then you’ll carry me around?”
“I’ll think about it.”
But Sethos thinks it’s pretty telling that halfway to Treasures Street, Hat Guy reaches out to link their hands together, and doesn’t let go until they get all the way to the water.
***
One Saturday, when Sethos and Hat Guy are sitting at their favorite table in the House of Daena, a group of six juniors throw themselves on the floor before Sethos’s chair.
“Um,” says Sethos. “What?”
“Forgive us!” one of them cries. Sethos recognizes him as the black-haired boy from the tavern. “We didn’t know you were so sweet and genuine with each other! We interrupted your day and sabotaged the course of true love!”
Sethos suddenly feels a little bad for them. “I don’t think I’d go that far…”
“If there is anything we can do to earn your forgiveness, please let us know!”
“Can you just tell the other Vahumana students that I’m alright?”
“Oh, everyone knows that!” one of them says, rolling her eyes. “Ever since we realized you were telling the truth, we’ve all been on your side! Is there anything else we can do to make it up to you?”
“Ten thousand mora in cash,” says Hat Guy immediately.
“What? No.”
Too late. The six juniors all have their wallets out already.
“Each,” adds Hat Guy. “We’re getting steak tonight.”
“We aren’t getting sixty thousand mora steak,” Sethos protests. “Put those back.”
“No, but we’re getting two twenty thousand mora steaks, and a ten thousand mora bottle of wine, and then a five thousand mora cake for dessert, and then another five thousand mora for more of that imported tea I like.”
The student in horn-rimmed glasses shoves their wallet closer to him. “Please take it!”
Hat Guy takes the mora from their wallets without a trace of guilt on his face. “Let’s go,” he says, offering his hand. “We have a steak dinner to get to.”
Well. Sethos has never said no to a twenty thousand mora steak before, and he doesn’t plan to start now. He smiles a little and takes Hat Guy’s hand, and then they go out together. Just like boyfriends are supposed to.