It was officially summer, but the weather wasn’t too hot yet to sit outside in the late afternoon. Giving G.G. time to be in a lovely garden was the smallest thing Trevor could give him, but Trevor was happy to do it. Ellie had fallen asleep a while ago in the middle of her anti-squirrel guard duty. Trevor’s grandma was inside the house, talking on the phone to her sister, which was one of the reasons that G.G. was reading and not kneeling.
That, and Trevor wanted to get another new foam kneepad for him to kneel on instead of having him use one of the ones dirtied from gardening.
Trevor took a sip from his canned tea, which had gone warm a while ago, and looked at the blank screen again.
“They only really confront their feelings when something makes them,” Trevor mused aloud. “Not that all of the characters are the most emotionally stable or mature, but these two definitely are on a different level.”
“What?” G.G. asked muzzily, fully surfacing from his reading. “Is this about your dragon? I thought it was going to die for them?”
“That was yesterday. I decided against that,” Trevor said quickly, but he was too late.
“Brian Trevor!” Sky was outraged. “How could you even think it?”
Sky wasn’t ruthless all the time.
“It lives?” Trevor suggested quietly. “It lives just for Sky?”
“It lives and is happy,” Sky insisted. “Or there will be another quest so those two can track it down again, and pretend it’s about sex and not about the feelings theyalmostdiscussed when things were bleak and the end seemed near. And also, they’ll want to know he’s okay. Their dragon. They’ll need to know.”
That… wasn’t a bad idea, provided readers weren’t tired of the storyline by then. Two heroes who probably considered talking about their feelings to be only marginally better than torture agreeing that their dragon didn’t just have to be saved, it had to be loved.
“I don’t have words for what you do to me,” Trevor told Sky honestly.
Sky grumbled to himself before muttering, “The whole fantasy about dragons is having them claim you and not let go.”
Trevor glanced over to G.G., meeting his serious, worried gaze before G.G. looked away. “Claim you, hmm?”
“Anyway,” Sky said loudly.
“So that’s a yes?” Trevor pushed.
“You know it is!” Sky hissed, then whined. “G.G., I’m being bullied.”
“But you like it,” G.G. answered unhelpfully, looking from Trevor to the phone in confusion.
“Fuck, I love you,” Trevor said on a sigh, not sure who he was talking to in that moment but knowing G.G. would assume he meant Sky, and Sky would think whatever genius wizards thought about things like that. “Both of you,” he added, quieter, for just Sky to hear and process.
“Difficult,” Sky complained, equally quiet but also unsurprised, before adding in a near whisper, “He won’t accept that yet.”
“It can wait.” Trevor was more than content at the moment despite his outlining issues and his nerves about other matters.
“Yeah, sure. Wait until he is minding his own business, probably worrying over how to tell you what he feels about you, and then bam! Full-force hit him with an “I love you” out of nowhere.”
Sky was still grumbling. G.G. must have been able to hear enough to get curious, because he raised his eyebrows slightly at Trevor.
“Reminding Sky how much I love him,” Trevor informed G.G. loudly, leaving Sky to make all kinds of fun noises. Trevor looked at the time. “It’s getting late. We should head out for a walk and then get dinner started.” He closed his laptop and finished his can of tea while Sky continued to act outraged over being loved. “Is everything set for this weekend and then after that?”
“I don’t know what you think needs to be set. It’s plane tickets and arranging a ride.” Sky was still making a show of being unhappy, although Trevor imagined he was practically vibrating with energy. Sky would be flying down here again this weekend, and then Trevor was traveling back up with him to help him get his affairs in order for a move. Mostly, Trevor thought this meant carefully packaging up nerd memorabilia and approving of Sky’s red couch in person. It was very important to Sky that Trevor like the couch, even though Sky would probably sell it rather than take it with him.
G.G. would be around the house with Trevor’s grandmother for the week Trevor was gone, building a desk, going through her recipe cards with her, and heading out to the store if she demanded anything.
He’d love it, honestly. He’d also been practically vibrating when Trevor had brought up the idea.
Trevor’s grandma had pushed out her lips thoughtfully, then said, “I suppose that’s one more advantage to having your boys around.”
Trevor hadn’t asked what she thought the other advantages were. He had merely gone through her medical information with G.G. and shown him the lists and the pill caddy kept in the kitchen before dragging G.G. back into the bedrooms with him to keep him company while he went through boxes.
Trevor had already moved a lot of his stuff out to the garage so that Sky’s valuables, which tended to actually be valuable, could be in the house. Conditions would border on cramped, but Trevor imagined it had been worse when his mom and her siblings had been growing up.
