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The note came to Bolaire halfway through the day, delivered by a half-familiar young actor who obviously didn't mind earning a little extra coin by running an errand—or earning some good will from Halandil Fang. Trustworthy, in a certain dimension of trust. Always before, Hal had sent notes with the sort of youths who hung about here and there, waiting for these small errands to earn their coin. Now he was being more careful—but they would need something properly secure, and soon. Murray would no doubt be able to put something together, if she hadn't already done so.
For now, Bolaire accepted Hal's note and tucked it into his pocket, making the rounds of a few exhibits before he retreated to his own office to read in privacy.
Hal had been cautious, naturally. Meet me tonight at our place, just one more time before the others join us.
Bolaire couldn't deny the lure of that. Glad though he was to have a place to meet with Hal and Azune and Murray to coordinate their efforts to keep their city from going entirely to shit while they were still trying to live and work in it, he would miss it being his and Hal's private place. It would be good to visit one more time in that mode, before they had to share it with the others.
He put the note away in the folder where he kept this year's correspondence with Hal—a slim folder, as they rarely had reason to send messages, but still. Correctly organized and archived, available to be consulted at any need. There was no need to send a reply message; Hal had not asked him a question, and Bolaire had no wish to demur. He would be there, at the usual time, in the usual place. Just once more, just him and Hal.
Bolaire was there first, as he usually was. He moved around the little back room lighting candles, considering how the room would feel with Murray and Azune in it. They did, technically, have enough chairs, and Bolaire would probably be able to maintain his claim to the wingback chair in the corner. And he could always stand, if the seating situation became troubling; he wasn't a wilting little daisy like Murray, complaining because he hadn't slept.
He continued moving around the room, tidying up the shelves of books and stacks of papers, dusting here and there, until he heard Hal's footsteps approaching. They sounded slow and heavy, and Bolaire stepped up to the door to open it just as Hal reached it. Hal's hands were fully occupied carrying a box, a cube about the width of his body. Something in it smelled very food-like, in a way that made the body rouse rather unpleasantly, setting off that prickling ache in the jaw and an uncomfortable twisting in the midsection.
On the other hand, Hal was here, smiling at him, and Bolaire could not do anything then but smile back.
"Hello, welcome," Bolaire said, letting the body's irrelevant sensations melt away. "Do you need a hand with that?"
"No," Hal said, slipping past him to put it on the table where they usually set their wine and cups and books and things. Under his breath, probably not meant for Bolaire to hear, he added, "But I expect you will."
Bolaire politely ignored that oddity. Hal would explain himself; he always did. Bolaire had brought wine—the nice stuff, not as nice as the good stuff he had shared the other night in his office, but very palatable for a night that hopefully would include fewer earthshattering revelations. He busied himself pouring and let Hal sort through the contents of the box, though he didn't bring anything out immediately.
After a moment Hal left the things in the box and focused on Bolaire, accepting the glass of wine with a proper smile, though he looked tired. Bolaire oughtn't to keep him too late; he couldn't have rested well the last two nights.
But then, this could be the last private evening they would have for some time, and Hal was a big boy. He would make his own choices, and Bolaire would not gainsay him.
They clinked their glasses together, a habitual movement, and Hal waved Bolaire to the chair he liked. Bolaire took it, and Hal, instead of sprawling as he usually did on the sofa opposite, perched on the chair beside Bolaire's. He couldn't reach the table from there, but it did put him closer to Bolaire—nearly hemming him in in the corner, though that was surely a thought he would have about being alone in a room like this with Thjazi. Not Hal.
"I am going to presume greatly on our friendship tonight," Hal said, in that gentle way of his, an undercurrent of humor in his voice but perfect seriousness in his eyes. "Because there's a lot about you that I still don't understand, and I would really like to, if you'll let me. I'm not above saying that I think you owe me some truth. I don't think these are necessarily the truths that you'll think are the most important, but these are the things I'm concerned about right now."
Bolaire couldn't resist a glance at the box, and the contents that Hal had sorted through but not brought out for him to see. When he returned his gaze to Hal, his friend was watching him, smiling a little. Waiting. Hal was probably the most patient person Bolaire knew. He was, not infrequently, able to outwait Bolaire himself.
Tonight, Bolaire didn't really mean to make him wait; he was too curious about what Hal intended, and he trusted Hal not to be planning anything really awful.
And Hal was right; Bolaire owed him more truth than he'd dispensed so far.
"All right," Bolaire said. He took another sip of wine and added, "though I can tell you up front, thumbscrews and hot needles are much less use on me than the average person."
Hal nodded, as though that had not been a joke, or a diversion from his plans. "That is good to know, and that is indeed what I mean to ask you about, in a sense. I want to understand how it works—your body. I want to know how you manage things, because... I wonder if anyone ever really taught you how. I don't think they could have. I don't think there was anyone you could ever ask, and perhaps you don't even know what you don't know. It isn't a thing people discuss, unless they are very close, and I don't think you have any closer friends than me."
Bolaire blinked, and took another sip of his very nice wine. He wanted, rather badly, to be amused at Hal's calm intensity, his ridiculously misplaced concern, but he was not amused at all. He could feel a chord chiming within him; Hal was not wrong, and yet...
"I manage it just fine, thank you," Bolaire rejoined. Playing a role, saying his lines, glossing his way through an awkward scene. "You've never noticed an untoward smell, have you?"
"I have not," Hal agreed. "Never a hair out of place, never a stitch of clothing amiss. You take good care of your costume and you wear it well, Bolaire. But I am asking about what is underneath, and how that fares."
Bolaire studied Hal, searching for evidence for or against the conclusion he was drawing. He could see nothing in Hal's face or body to inform him, could hear nothing in what Hal had spoken that made him entirely certain one way or another. He would have to ask—but now, at least, he need not worry that he was giving himself away by asking. Hal would understand.
"Is this a sex thing?"
Hal laughed, sounding genuinely startled into mirth, and that was an accomplishment regardless of what the answer proved to be. Hal leaned forward, propping an elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand so that he was looking up at Bolaire, the way he often did from over on the sofa when he sprawled nearly horizontal.
"Bolaire," Hal said. "Do you remember that I once tried to hug you?"
Bolaire did, in fact, mainly for the way he had flinched, and the way Hal had immediately treated it as if they had collided accidentally, apologizing for nonexistent clumsiness, and then never tried to touch him again. He nodded.
"And—I think you may not remember that I have made at least two passes at you. I hope not more than two, but I admit there have been a few fuzzy nights when the wine was very good and I was very tired. But I did resolve not to make a nuisance of myself after the first two tries were met with such a resounding absence of response. Not even rejection, just as if you were politely not noticing that I had burped or farted in the middle of a sentence."
"Ah," Bolaire said, shuffling through his mental folder of Strange Remarks Hal Has Made. "Perhaps as many as four, but you were never a nuisance in the least."
"No," Hal agreed. "Because I knew, long before I knew what you are, that you did not view me, or yourself, or anyone that way. Am I right? My observation has been that you can enjoy a romance or some raunch in a play, in its place, but for you its place is," Hal gestured away from both of them. "On the stage, while you are firmly in your seat, or perhaps in the wings. Never the role you choose to play yourself."
Bolaire nodded. He had not given it much thought—as Hal had observed, it was not something he ever cared to give much thought unless he really had to—but he had always been comfortable with Hal in part because Hal seemed to understand his deep disinterest in that topic. He knew that Hal himself took an equally deep interest in it, with other people, and of course that was perfectly fine. If it had crossed Bolaire's mind once or twice that he'd very much like to see that play from a front-row seat—or, as Hal said, from the wings—well. That had never been the offer Hal was making, and they were very far from that possibility now.
"So," Hal said, in the tone of coming back to the central point, "No, Bolaire, this is not a sex thing, unless you are particularly curious about sex things, in which case I would be more than glad to help you find out what you're missing in a manner you're comfortable with."
All right, well, perhaps that could have been the offer Hal was making, or could be in the future. Still not relevant to this, here, now, alas.
"But no," Hal went on, "I think we can leave sex aside for tonight. I don't even know—are you like our young friend? Are you—is this body that you wear—dead and still moving?"
"No," Bolaire said immediately, glad for an easy question, except... "Not... by the end, it..."
"You'd gone a bit gray," Hal said, touching his own jaw, just below his ear, the side of his throat just under it. "Now—you're quite pink."
Bolaire nodded. He considered, braced himself, considered more carefully, and then said into the patient silence Hal had allowed him, "You can... touch. If you want. You can feel a pulse. The heart beats."
He tilted his head to one side, sweeping his wig out of the way.
Hal looked for a moment—looked closely, memorizing perhaps, but with no expression beyond that, making no move. Then he met Bolaire's eyes again and said, "What about your wrist? Could I touch there instead? That might feel a bit... less. You could just fold back your glove a bit."
Bolaire immediately got his wig back in order, trying to be unobtrusive while fluffing a curl into place to hide the vulnerable spot Hal had noticed before. When that was sorted, he undid a button on his glove and folded it down, offering the underside of the wrist, where the veins ran close to the surface.
Hal moved his hand slowly, though not so slowly as to create a prolonged agony of anticipation. Simply long enough for Bolaire to see it coming and steel himself against flinching.
He did flinch, when Hal's warm fingers pressed against the skin. It made the body's heart race faster, made sweat break out here and there. He forced himself not to pull away despite that, waiting until Hal had perceived whatever he cared to perceive and drew away.
The body's hands shook a little, and fumbled with the button for much longer than they should have, but soon enough Bolaire was gloved again, safely and entirely covered up. "Is that what you wanted, then? To touch? To know?"
Hal sighed. "We can stop there if that is as much truth as I may have tonight, or as much as you are prepared to indulge my concern, but no. That is not all I wanted."
Bolaire felt the presence of the crate on the table, tugging at him like some fairy lure though he knew it was no such thing. He was merely too curious to forget it, and Hal knew that. Hal's gaze stayed steady on him, awaiting permission, and Bolaire nodded.
"So the body is alive now," Hal said. "Out of curiosity—if I pulled you away from it...?"
"Well," Bolaire said, feeling the body's internal squirming at that idea, echoing his own discomfort. "Please don't. And... it would be a bit of a mess, the eyes and the face. And the person who was in here isn't anymore, so you can't get them back that way. They're gone as soon as the mask goes on. It is an exchange, me for them. It always was. The first nine who wore us, they sacrificed themselves to their purpose, trading their lives to kill a god, and they knew that. I assume the others did after that as well, but... I usually had less time with them. I was not always so clear on the circumstances."
Hal nodded slowly. "So the body is not dead, even if the mind, the soul, has flown to make room for you. But it will die? How long does that take? Do you know how they die, or why? What is it in them that fails?"
Bolaire did not want to answer that. He felt a stirring of shame—another squirming thing in the body but even more in himself. This, he knew, Hal would not like. This was hard to make sound good at all.
And it was embarrassing, too, as a curator. He had not studied himself properly, not the way he would study any other artifact; even if he wanted to give precise answers as to all the hows and whys he simply could not, because he did not know them. That was entirely his own failing.
"Sometimes... it varies. I don't... I don't know why exactly, what it is that goes wrong. They seem to wear out, get weaker. I think I... I think I tax them. But then... I can make them last, at the end, too."
"Not weeks, I don't think," Hal said, calm and meditative, not bothering to point out that Bolaire had not answered one rather significant question. "I think I would have noticed more if you were cycling that fast. Months? A year?"
"Sometimes," Bolaire agreed, speaking very quietly now. "Sometimes as much as a year."
"But usually months," Hal filled in. "And then you have to take another. You chop up the old one, toss it in the fire."
"That... that was the way it went this time, yes," Bolaire agreed. "It's not specifically necessary."
"But something is necessary," Hal pressed gently. "When the body wears out, you need a new one. And in your experience, the bodies wear out in less than a year."
"That is the essence of the situation, yes."
Hal nodded. "So the trouble I have with this—one of the troubles, the one I want to begin with tonight—is that you are being wasteful in a way that is not like you. It's not elegant. It's not your style, to be so careless."
"Trust me," Bolaire said, summoning up a smile though he knew that Hal was not wrong, not really. Nothing Bolaire could say about the parts where he has taken very great care indeed would make Hal any happier with this. "The world will not miss the people I've taken."
"No?" Hal raised his eyebrows, his mouth just barely curving up. "You're sure? You checked the whole world for people who will miss them?"
Bolaire looked away. He could not answer that; Hal knew that perfectly well. He had no idea if Aubrus Drime had a sweetheart, an elderly mother, children back at home wondering why he never returned. A loyal dog, even. One could paint all sorts of pictures, even if Bolaire remained fairly certain that he had pegged Drime correctly. He did not know; he had not cared to find out.
"More than that, though," Hal said softly, and he rose from his chair and came to crouch in front of Bolaire. He brought his hand up, slowly again, giving Bolaire the time to flinch as it approached. Bolaire held himself as still as he could, jerking only a little as Hal's fingers tapped firmly against the center of the body's chest, three layers of clothing away from the skin. "It's about the value of this, and the way you don't seem to see it."
Bolaire said nothing. He could hear Hal setting up a scene.
"Let's imagine that I'm dying," Hal said, looking up into Bolaire's eyes steadily. "My heart is failing. Thaisha can't heal me, but Murray's come up with something that can keep it beating. It just needs one of those artifacts in your private stash to power it—a book, maybe. You have thousands, you won't miss one, will you? You'd give me one."
"I'd give you all of them," Bolaire said, knowing that it wasn't quite true, not the way he'd want it to be, to make the story beautiful. Saying it anyway, because it might be true enough.
"Just one at a time," Hal said. "Each one buys me a few months, though there's nothing but ash left when I'm done with it. Do you miss each one?"
Bolaire knew he was being led, but he couldn't help answering truthfully. "Of course. I keep each one because it's worth the space to keep it. Each of those books is precious, unique. There's so much knowledge, so much expertise in each one."
Hal nodded. "And this, this crude vehicle you need to carry you around? Is it not precious? Is it not unique? Does it not deserve as much scrupulous care as anything in your private collection?"
Bolaire blew out a breath through his nose, and said nothing.
"This form is the culmination of thousands of generations shaped by divinity into a vessel for consciousness, magical potential, an entire system that sustains itself for decades and can learn to be almost anything. This," Hal tapped the center of his chest again, lighter this time, "this individual body—never mind the person you took it from. Someone bore it in their body at no little cost to their own health. Someone gave birth to it in blood and pain. Someone carried it everywhere, fed it six times a day, changed its diapers and cleaned up its shit, for years. Talked to it, taught it to speak, taught it to be a person. Fed and cared for and supported it for many years before it grew up into the shape of a body that would fit your clothes. Clothed it. Nursed it in illness, healed its injuries. Decades of labor, decades of effort and craft."
Hal held his gaze in silence for a moment, waiting for that to sink in. Bolaire nodded a little, though he didn't think he was quite grasping the enormity of it; he knew that Hal's children had begun much smaller than when he had met them, but he had never thought through the sheer span of time, the daily effort of it.
Hal nodded back and went on. "That is the only way bodies like this one are produced, Bolaire. One at a time, with painstaking individual efforts. Even making you never took so much time and trouble. But you go through one in less than a year, reduce it to ash and never look back, because you have never focused your brilliant mind on learning to do better—and because you never had anyone to teach you that you should, let alone how."
"I'm not a child," Bolaire muttered, although he didn't even know why he was arguing. It seemed that Hal had properly processed what he was and how he survived, and liked it as little as Bolaire had always feared he would, and simply meant to... help him fix it, instead of casting him off as Bolaire had always expected.
"You are not a child, no. You never were. But I am a father," Hal said. "So I cannot help seeing things that way. Not that I have any interest in being your father, but your body was someone's child—and the next body you'll wear is someone's child right now. And that is too precious a thing to waste. Everyone else's children no less than mine—but you never had anyone to teach you that, either."
Bolaire had nothing at all to say to that; he was thinking of Shadia, of Hero, of Alogar, of the unimaginable horror it would be to wake up wearing one of them, to see the look on Hal's face when Hal knew that Bolaire had taken one of them away from him forever, and the exchange could never be worth the cost.
And would Bolaire not, then, do everything he could to care for that precious body as well as he could, to keep it for as long as he could, so that that hideous sacrifice could never be thought to be wasted through carelessness? He could see in Hal's eyes that he meant it, even if it could not be really entirely true; he believed, and he wanted Bolaire to believe, that this body was every bit as precious as theirs.
"What," Bolaire said, barely a whisper. He swallowed, straightened up, spoke clearly. "What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to eat your supper," Hal replied promptly, so calm and prosaic—so much a thing Bolaire had in fact heard him say to his children in just the same briskly fond tone—that Bolaire felt jerked sideways into an altogether different story, one stripped of the quiet horror he had just been immersed in.
Hal stood up and turned to the table, bringing out from the box a covered pot wrapped up in towels, then a bowl and spoon and a ladle. "It's just broth and bread tonight—it should be gentle on you. Do you ever eat? Have you before? I know you drink, but never a morsel of food. I have to assume if you won't eat at my table, you don't eat anywhere else either."
"I have, at times," Bolaire said, and hoped Hal would not press for details. His stomach was twisting, that prickling ache in his jaw intensifying, liquid pooling around his tongue, as Hal ladled the broth into the bowl. "And I... I buy beads of nourishment, when I can get them, and eat those. They're supposed to supply the equivalent of a full day's food."
"Mm," Hal said. "That is what the seller will tell you, yes. You should ask Thaisha sometime, her opinion of that. The long and short of it is—and I have seen both soldiers and young actors try to live on them—they will keep a body from suffering from lack of food for a few days, maybe a week or two. But they cannot replace real food entirely, forever."
Hal looked from Bolaire to the bowl, considering, then set the ladle down and put the cover back on the pot. "So that will be one reason your bodies have been weakening so quickly. You must feed them properly. You might need to eat more than an average person your size, to keep your body nourished with the strain you put on it."
Bolaire made a small grumpy noise about that, and was ready to expound on all the awful things that came of feeding them properly—because he had tried, to begin with, he had tried many times—but then Hal set the bowl and spoon in front of him, and for a moment the body got away from him.
He had not, he was dimly aware, remembered to eat a bead in a few days. Not since all the excitement began.
Far more vividly, he was aware that he was not entirely in control of either his hands, which were shoveling broth with the spoon as quickly as they could, trembling rather badly along the way, or his mouth, which was full of spit whenever it wasn't full of broth, slurping and gulping it down as quickly as it could. When Hal pulled the bowl away from him, Bolaire heard a snarl erupt from deep in the body's chest, the hand tightening on the spoon as if it might be wielded as a weapon.
His eyes—always his own—were fixed on Hal, who had backed up to the other side of the table, bowl in hand. His other hand was held out beseechingly.
It took another moment for Bolaire to hear the words that Hal was saying through the effort of forcing the body back under his own control. "All right, all right, I think perhaps your body is hungrier than either of us realized. Are you all right, Bolaire?"
Hal had seen it; Hal knew that the body had gotten the better of him, and still Hal spoke gently to him, called him by his name. Bolaire glanced around. "I need—" He gestured to his mouth, where his face was splashed with broth from that frantic rush.
Hal pulled a linen napkin from the crate and handed it to him. "I'm sorry. I should have set that out with the bowl."
"You didn't expect me to react like a starved animal," Bolaire said simply, mopping himself clean with a profound sense of relief. He fluffed the curls around his face, reassuring himself that he was exactly as he should be. "Neither did I. But you see—this is why. I have to keep the body under control, or it... takes over."
Hal nodded with a surprisingly understanding expression. "They do that—even to us. I knew a woman once, a dancer, determined to slim herself down to some ideal size for a performance—for weeks she ate almost nothing, and then one day as I was walking with her past a baker's stall she grabbed a loaf from the basket and started biting into it right there, just ripping through it with her teeth. Her eyes were blank, like she wasn't even aware of what she was doing—but her body refused to starve anymore."
Bolaire sighed. "So I suppose the moral of the story is not to let the body get that hungry, so it doesn't take over? Like keeping the populace supplied with bread to fend off a revolt."
"Also like keeping the populace supplied with bread because it's much nicer to live in a city where no one is starving," Hal said. "Do you want to try a bit more? Maybe... maybe just tip the bowl up and drink from it, if you're that hungry, I think you should be able to manage the rest of this in one go without making yourself sick."
"You... think," Bolaire said, looking at the bowl in Hal's hand with some trepidation as well as general loathing. Still, a part of him was thinking, it wasn't a very large bowl. He'd drunk more than that at once without making himself sick.
But he hadn't tried this body very far, just yet.
"Well, what's life without a little risk?" Hal smiled easily. "If there's a mess, we clean it up—this is why we learn prestidigitation. Changing diapers is incredibly motivating that way. Would you like some bread with your broth? Sometimes if I have nothing but liquid in my stomach that feels worse than nothing at all."
Bolaire considered. He did, at least, know what a stomachful of liquid felt like—he drank wine, and sometimes tea or water or coffee. Depriving the body of water got uncomfortable in ways that were impossible to ignore much more quickly than refraining from food. This body was new, and he couldn't be sure of it; it still felt rather unsettled down inside, if not quite so empty.
"Just... don't hand me an entire loaf," Bolaire said.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Hal agreed, drawing a single small roll out of the box. It was obviously very soft; Hal tore it in half and offered Bolaire one piece, absently popping the other half into his own mouth.
That made it more appealing somehow. Bolaire had occasionally felt rather wistful, declining to share a meal, or sitting at Hal's table while he and his family ate, failing to partake himself. And this particular thing—this was the most literal kind of breaking bread, which featured in many stories as a way of establishing ties between people. He had always wished to establish as many ties as he could with Hal.
Bolaire took the half Hal offered him and ate it carefully, in small bites, chewing each thoroughly. It tasted... slightly sweet, but otherwise not like anything much, really.
It felt good in his stomach, as Hal had suggested it would, and he felt simultaneously pleased and annoyed by that. "All right, then. The rest of the broth, if you insist."
"Thank you," Hal said, in that warm and earnest way, as if he hadn't noticed Bolaire's bad grace—or, worse, as if he had noticed it and simply didn't mind. He gave the bowl back.
Bolaire realized the spoon was still clutched in his hand and set it down. He raised the bowl to his lips—a little awkward, but not unmanageable—and drank down the rest of the broth, managing at least to gulp silently and to avoid splashing or spilling any of it.
It also felt good in his stomach, perhaps even better than the bread, a warmth that felt as if it should glow out from the body's midsection like a fire in a stove.
Hal smiled as he took the bowl back, setting it aside. "Tell me if you think you want more. Let's sit and enjoy this wine, now, and I'll stop harassing you for a little while." He retrieved his wineglass from where he had left it—on the floor, apparently, by the other chair—and took his more usual place, on the end of the sofa opposite Bolaire, convenient to the table.
Bolaire considered him, though also settled more comfortably into his own seat, taking a pleasant sip of his own wine. Did it taste different? Better? He had worn a few bodies that tried to persuade him that even excellent wine tasted awful, and it had been a long and frustrating process to retrain them. This one hadn't sprung any surprises like that on him, and the wine tasted just the same, he thought, as before his foray into bread and broth.
"How did the tour go?" Hal asked, and Bolaire groaned and launched into the story. Hal laughed where Bolaire meant him to, and made sympathetic and concerned noises here and there, and soon they were dissecting every bit of it, guessing what it meant for their continuing concerns, considering what they could turn to their own purposes as Azune had suggested.
Bolaire poured more wine when they'd run out of useful things to discuss and said, "But tell me how the preparations are going at the theater, have you settled on what you'll do as the opening performance?"
It was Hal's turn to groan and launch into a story, Bolaire's turn to laugh and to sympathize and puzzle over options, though before too long the considerations wound down into Hal saying glumly, "And that's if we're not given orders to perform some dogshit praising the Sundered Houses, or shut down altogether."
"No matter what, you'll find ways to put on a show worth seeing," Bolaire assured him. "You always do, under whatever circumstances."
Hal smiled, seeming genuinely pleased by the reassurance. "The show must go on, and so it does. Somehow or other."
"Somehow or other," Bolaire agreed, and then, quite unaccountably, he yawned. Ugh. New body; he'd have to train it out of doing that.
Hal, however, looked pleased. "How did that feel? I don't know if I've ever seen you do that before."
"It feels—like that," Bolaire waved at the bowl and spoon, "but over quicker, and not so messy. The body takes over, like something heavy in the chest pulling down until I have to equalize the pressure. Usually I can train it not to do that, but this one is new, and... determined on some things, it seems."
Hal nodded, and then yawned himself, and laughed a little on the tail end of it. "It's contagious, did you know? Notoriously. It was one of those things that made me wonder about you, how you never did it."
He had many times had to fight the urge—more when he saw Hal yawn than anyone else, but then he spent far more time with Hal in the sort of quiet, cozy circumstances that evidently invited yawning than he did with anyone else. His body was feeling very heavy, wanting to rest, and he was not looking forward to his walk back to the museum, or the much less comfortable chair that awaited him down in his private archive.
Hal said softly, "Come home with me," and Bolaire nearly touched his lips to see if his body had somehow made him say something out loud. Hal's expression had shifted back into that expression of determined concern, though, so this seemed to be him returning to his campaign to attend to Bolaire's body.
"Do you ever sleep?" Hal asked, so Bolaire was right about what that offer had meant. "You said you lose consciousness when you're away from a body, then wake up when you're on one again, but in the meantime... do you ever sleep?"
Bolaire shook his head. "Not built for it. What need would there ever be for that?" He remembered the few slack hours in those two days before the first time he ever performed his role. They had all been together then, he and his family, and some of it had involved waiting for their cues. They hadn't spoken—they had stuck to their script—but he had enjoyed the quiet with them, the stillness. He hoped they had too, but of course there was no knowing.
Hal's forehead crumpled and he looked as if he were about to begin gently explaining the need to rest, so Bolaire cut in.
"I do rest, though, I know the body needs that. And I think I—I think sometimes I dream. In a way."
He had never been able to say it to anyone, to try to describe it, since it obviously was not the way any real living creature worked. It was a wonder to be able to say it now, to Hal. "Sometimes when I'm resting—keeping still, at night, sitting down—my mind goes mostly quiet, and then sometimes I start to... hallucinate, I suppose? Images and sensations just... occur to me. Much more vivid than at any other time. Sometimes it's memories, sometimes just... thoughts, ideas. Sometimes it's like a whole play just... inventing itself in my head, and I can see it and hear it and sometimes it's even as if I'm in it, and I can feel myself moving and speaking and I'm still just sitting in my chair."
Hal looked fascinated, and Bolaire felt it much more physically than he usually did, the wonderful satisfaction of having Hal's undivided attention the way Hal so often had his. It tingled all up and down the body, making Bolaire want to squirm. He sipped more wine, and adjusted his posture from one perfect pose to another.
"That does sound like dreaming," Hal agreed. "Is it... distressing, to have that happen while you're awake?"
Bolaire shook his head. "Sometimes... sometimes it's like having a nightmare, I think? The images and feelings are unpleasant, and then I try to avoid letting it happen for a while—it won't, if I'm busy with something, reading or even thinking in a focused way. But it's so interesting! Nonsense, almost always, but... unpredictable in a rather wonderful way. Like sitting down for a performance where simply anything could happen. It reminds me of being around your children, a little. And you."
He certainly shouldn't have said that last part, but it made Hal smile wider, his eyes crinkling up and his upper lip drawing all the way taut above his tusks. "That is a compliment indeed, Bolaire. And I am glad to know you're having that kind of rest—but I think you might be more comfortable still if you had it lying down, so your body could relax fully, and if you had it more than every second or third night, when there isn't anything else too interesting to distract you. We mortals have to sleep, and dream, every night."
"But I can get so much done at night," Bolaire said, and it came out much more of a whine than he'd ever have allowed with anyone but Hal.
Hal smiled. "I know. The first of perhaps many sacrifices I will ask you to make for the sake of your body. Please, will you come home with me tonight, and lie down with me and rest? I know I won't persuade you to do it every night—and we may have many nights coming when I won't be getting any rest either. But tonight we can get away with it, so... please?"
"You want me to... to lie in your bed while you sleep? Even knowing that I'm going to be awake? That I'm..." Me. This.
"You are my friend, and I trust you," Hal said softly. "All this that's been happening—it makes me want to look after my own, to gather them in close. Thaisha has gone after Alogar, and I won't take Hero from her mother, but... I could have you and Shadia under my roof, if you will allow, and I would like that."
It occurred to Bolaire, picturing it, that Hal's house—such a hive of activity for the last few days—would now be empty and quiet. Just him and Shadia, and Thjazi still lying on the dining room table. If Bolaire had not lost track of the nights, tomorrow would be the traditional day for the burial, which was usually a private matter. Just the family—and Hal was inviting Bolaire into that family, at least for tonight. If Bolaire said no now, it would be only Hal and the girls at the grave tomorrow.
Bolaire would be unspeakably glad to have the right to be at Hal's side for that—and not a little glad, as well, to see Thjazi put safely under six feet of dirt and stone. Hal was unfortunately now well aware that Bolaire would feel that way, but he was here anyway. Inviting Bolaire home with him, knowing every last thing that he knew.
"Well," Bolaire sighed. "I suppose, if it will help you sleep better."
Hal grinned. "I think it will, yes. And if you don't sleep, then I don't need to be awake all night listening to hear if anyone's trying to get in at the windows, or what time Shadia finally makes it home."
"Ahh, now I see how it is," Bolaire smiled back, feeling a rush of relief and joy all over again to hear Hal joking so easily about his nature. "Well, if I am to be anyone's watchdog of course I'll be yours. But..." He hesitated as the idea crystallized, letting himself think of it for a few seconds, like one of those wisps of dream imagery, before he had to put it out into the air to be shattered. "If I'm in your bed when Shadia comes home, she'll think... and other people will think..."
"That I've finally succeeded in winning that mysterious man I've been courting so desperately for years? A feather in my cap, I admit. Shadia's certainly asked me once or twice what's taking me so long to seal the deal."
Bolaire wrinkled his nose, though he had to admit it sounded like something Shadia would say. It had never occurred to him that she was... well, that she was watching the story of her father and himself in that way, wondering where it was going. Seeing them as part of the same story, rather than Bolaire as a devoted spectator of Hal's.
"And it could even be true, if you like," Hal added softly. "We don't have to be having sex for me to love you, or you to love me, or for our lives to be intertwined in a way that matters. I think all that has already been true for a while now; if you spending the night in my bed is what makes it clear to other people, I don't see anything wrong with that. Unless it would trouble you?"
Bolaire laughed helplessly, trying to picture a scenario in which it troubled him to be seen as being beloved by Halandil Fang, for their lives to be known to be intertwined. It would only make Hal safer from the sort of people Bolaire knew down at Speak No Evil, and if they got to the point where their noble enemies were inclined to attack either of them to get at the other...
"The only trouble I can think of is," Bolaire gestured to indicate the city around them, "and if it comes to someone attacking me to get at you or you to get at me... maybe that distracts them from going after your girls to get at either of us. And if we're in bed together when the trouble arrives, we can guard each other's backs."
Hal gestured as though laying out a winning hand of cards. "You see? A brilliant strategy. Shall we go now? We can talk all the way, and even after we get into bed, so we might as well go and get comfortable."
Also an advantage, surely. The ends of these nights with Hal had always been the worst parts—and Bolaire would not mind so much about no longer having this refuge to share only with each other if they were sharing Hal's bed instead. It might get crowded when Thaisha came home, but... well, they could burn that bridge when they got to it, as Thimble liked to say.
"Yes, let's." Bolaire got to his feet and offered his hand to Hal to pull him up from the sofa.
Hal hesitated for a moment, looking at Bolaire's gloved hand, as though he might somehow have made the gesture without meaning to. It was Bolaire's turn to wait patiently, his hand still held out, until Hal smiled softly and took it.
Bolaire pulled Hal to his feet and for a moment they were nearly touching, all down the length of their bodies. Bolaire felt so warm, so close, they might almost have been in bed together already; this might almost have been a dream. But it was better than that—it was real, and it was the beginning of something he could not have imagined, a story he would never have written for himself.
It only lasted a moment before it was too much, and he had to let go of Hal's hand and step back; Hal said nothing, only moved to gather up the dishes and tuck everything back into the crate to carry away. Still, the warmth of Hal's hand lingered, and when they stepped out onto the street they were walking side by side—all the way home.