Chapter Twelve
Reve watched him with an unblinking gaze that made him feel like she was worried he’d try and use an illusion to escape. After several long seconds, she finally relaxed enough to sit down on a large crate nearby.
Vester sat down across from her, resting Trickster’s Cane across his knees to give him something tangible to hold onto while he worked out how he planned on expressing himself. He didn’t consider himself a genius when it came to emotional intelligence, but Reve deserved a thought-out reply.
“Before we get into how one becomes my lover,” he began, “I think we need to discuss the why of it.”
Vester loathed the idea of someone trying to get into a relationship with him due to artificial influences, so it was a constant source of irritation that Non had issued Quests with the intention of pushing his partners into his lap.
“For me, a relationship is something to be entered due to a combination of physical, mental, and emotional attraction,” he continued.
“Physical beauty helps, of course, but it’s the least-important facet to me. I must enjoy spending time with a person before I want to be with them, and that is determined by how well we mesh as people—”
“Stop talking so formally!” Reve interrupted with a look of frustration on her face.
She held up her metal hand, requesting he let her speak further.
“I remember Li Ra saying that you talk differently around outsiders because you have a reputation, and I respect that… but when you address me the same way you do those outside the Party… it makes me feel… other.”
Other? Vester mentally repeated. It took him a moment to realize she was saying she felt alienated. “Sorry,” he murmured. “You’re right. You’re in the Party, you know my secrets, I should relax and let you in. You’ve earned that.”
She offered him a nod, so he took another few seconds to shift out of the persona he so often portrayed for the Adventurers and the Church of Light. He found relaxing his mannerisms surprisingly hard, and briefly wondered how much he was changing as a person.
Gods above I hope I’m not turning into some kind of stuck-up douchebag, he thought, then he turned his full attention back to Reve.
“Okay, look, some people are fine with a relationship being just about sex and fun,” he began.
“I’ve got four girlfriends and a hot goddess hitting on me, so I can see why I might come off as one of those types… but I genuinely want to feel a connection with the people I take to bed. You’re hot—like, really hot, even if you’re way taller than me. But we haven’t known each other for very long…
and the circumstances we met under might influence how you feel about me.”
She furrowed her brow, tilting her head while staring at him with her pale eye. “Explain. I do not see how you might have altered my feelings through the way we met.”
“I didn’t mean influence like change, just… Alright.”
Vester took a deep breath, wishing he were better with this stuff.
“When we met, you were almost dead, right?”
She nodded, obviously remembering her condition when she’d appeared in the dungeon.
“You were in a vulnerable place. When you woke, I was there, taking care of you. Then my Party helped build new limbs for you. The Hero—your enemy—showed up and we fought him off. Even though he didn’t come looking for you, I am sure it was scary.”
Again she nodded, not denying it. Vester continued, seeing that she seemed to be on the same page as him.
“We helped you without asking for anything in return, though we did have Quests, so it wasn’t purely out of the goodness of our hearts. You thought you were going to be crippled and helpless forever, then we gave you back your arm and leg. It’s natural to feel gratitude for that…
and it’s natural for someone to turn gratitude into attraction. But I don’t want you to feel attracted to me because you feel like you owe—”
She interrupted him again, this time by bursting into a light, silvery giggle. Reve covered her mouth with the laugh, the mithril of her arm gleaming brightly while shielding her lips from view.
“I am s-sorry,” she said, snorting a little. “I do not wish to be one of your mates because I feel like it is how I should repay you for helping me,” she added. “Nor is it because I am dazzled by your appearance, though you are not an unattractive male. No, it is because you are dangerous.”
“Pardon?” Vester asked with a blink. That definitely wasn’t the direction he’d expected this conversation to go, and compared to the rest of the Party, his ability to do true damage was… meager. “I’m dangerous?”
Reve nodded, the tips of her horns bobbing to either side of her head; Vester vividly remembered seeing her use them to tear out a Paladin’s throat.
“You have limits, severe ones, and yet you consistently defeat those who oppose you. Your skills are powerful, but it is your mind that makes you a true threat. You do not think like prey, you think like a predator. You find weaknesses, you exploit them, and you turn disadvantage into power.
It is a mentality I find enticing. I… how did Krysta phrase it… I find your aura sexy,” she concluded.
Okay, first off, I am going to have to talk to Krysta about putting ideas into other people’s heads, he mused.
Also, I need to unpack how Reve’s description of me makes me sound like a dark-romance protagonist, because I am not sure I’m ready for that.
I might have to start growling whenever I talk to women and try to pin them against walls while making heavy eye contact…
But I don’t think I’m tall enough for that lifestyle.
A smile tugged at the corner of his lips, and Vester realized he was letting his mind wander to avoid really digging in to what she’d said.
“So… you think I’m attractive because I won’t let the Church of Light or anyone else kick my ass?”
he asked, and when she gestured her agreement, he let out a laugh.
“Well, I can’t fault you for that. Seeing you tearing through those knights that jumped us was pretty damned hot. But if we’re going to be anything romantic toward each other, I want us to have a genuine connection. There’s more to that than just seeing things in each other that makes us go mrrow.”
“ ‘Mrrow’?” she repeated, clearly baffled, then she waved it away as unimportant. “I can respect these terms,” she said. “How would you propose we establish if we have a bond that transcends mere desire to mate? Is there a ritual your people perform?”
“Sort of…?” he said, hesitating for a second.
“I mean, I call it dating, but it could be described as a courtship ritual. Dating is when people spend time together for the purpose of getting to know each other. They share secrets, share who they are beyond appearances, and let themselves be seen.
A relationship should be based on seeing the good and the bad about a person. It’s only when you know someone’s flaws and realize you love them anyway that you can really build something that will last. Otherwise, you’re just loving the idea of someone, not the person themselves.”
“Aaaaaah,” Reve breathed, leaning back on her crate.
“It is like understanding when your comrade in arms has a blindside, so you know to cover them. If their disability is too extreme, you must ask them to retreat from the battle—for their own good.”
She glanced down at her arm, wiggling her metal fingers.
Vester heard a faint clink and realized she’d wiggled her toes as well.
Definitely not how I’d have phrased that… but not entirely wrong, yeah, he thought. Vester leaned forward, putting his hand on her knee. He took in the smooth metal under his fingertips and marveled at how warm the artificial limb was.
“Very close to that,” he agreed. “Sometimes people don’t work out. It could be because they’re not good for each other, encouraging traits that make each of them a worse person. Or it could just be that they have an irreconcilable difference,
like one of them wanting children while the other hates kids. I’ve always thought it was tragic when something like that separates people, but the truth is that sometimes attraction isn’t enough. So getting to know a person for who they are inside is important to me.”
“That is wise,” Reve said after several long moments.
Her hand fell and covered his, her metal thumb running across the back of his knuckles.
Vester chose to leave his hand there, because if nothing else he thought the conversation was helping him grow closer to Reve…
Even if they didn’t mesh, he hoped it would leave them with a stronger friendship.
After about a minute of sitting, Reve straightened up once more on the crate. “Then how would you propose we go about this… dating… ritual?” she asked. Her bright eye stared into his face, and a hopeful smile rested on her lips. It wasn’t an expression he’d seen on her face before.
“Ordinarily I would say that dating was taking someone on outings, like when I brought Krysta to a play up in Porter’s Walk, or when I took Kora to a bookstore because she loves to read. A date is a shared activity meant to help people have fun together. Are there any activities you enjoy?
Because options are kind of limited down here in the dungeon.”
“I enjoy combat,” Reve offered. She pursed her lips, and for a second Vester thought that was all she had to say.
“I also enjoy those illusions you create from your homeland. I have never been interested in the plays or music I encountered in the Empire of Beasts, but those strange shows from your Earth are so… different. That show with the metal people hunting the folks trapped on the voidships…
what was it called?”
“Battlestar Galactica?” Vester asked, making sure he knew which one she meant. She nodded immediately, looking almost like a child at Christmas.
“Yes! I found that saga very enthralling! The gravitas and the power of the people. Their situation was dire, hunted and on the run, their supplies limited, and yet they persevered. Their warriors sheltered them, yes, yet each one seeking refuge was forced to find their own reason to hold onto hope.
I would enjoy seeing more of that.”
Vester really wouldn’t have figured Reve to be a sci-fi girl, but hearing the way she described the show made him reconsider. He’d always thought the setting a bit too grimdark, though he could understand why she might like it.
“Well, that’s definitely something we can do together,” he said. “On Earth we’d call that chilling. It’s when two people get together to watch a show or movie and spend time together. Usually with snacks, sometimes cuddling, sometimes just sharing space.”
“Is occupying the same space important?”
Reve asked. Her wings slowly unfolded from around her torso, and Vester had to work hard to keep his eyes from drifting down.
With the way they were sitting on crates across from each other, and how much taller she was than him, he was eye level with a very distracting view.
“Spending time in the same area lets people see if they irritate each other,” he explained. “Some people aren’t comfortable with silence, others need quiet. The more time you spend with someone, the more you learn things about them that might bother you… like if someone chews loudly.”
“Oh, like Krysta?” Reve asked, and Vester nearly choked as he tried to stifle a laugh. While Reve wasn’t wrong—Krysta wasn’t exactly a dainty eater—he was fairly certain his pandali lover would make him pay if he outright agreed with the Avatar of Life.
“I mean… I don’t find Krysta’s eating excessively loud,” he hedged, “She keeps her mouth shut when she chews. That’s more than some people manage. My dad was a big open-mouth chewer. The sounds were awful. Drove me nuts. Mom used to say it was one of his worst habits.”
Reve nodded, taking his comments seriously. He wasn’t sure what he was saying deserved that much attention, but he put that down to Reve wanting to do things the right way.
“But that was just an example,” he continued.
“There are a ton of things that might make you want to avoid a person. Everyone has different likes and dislikes. We call them pet peeves on Earth. When you hang out with a person, you have a chance to learn if they do things that might drive you nuts long-term. That’s important,
because you have to decide if it’s something you can compromise on, or what we’d call a deal breaker.”
“An irreconcilable difference,” Reve said, showing she understood.
“It is fortunate then that we are spending so much time together now,” she pointed out.
“We are around each other at almost all times on a delve, and it sounds like the things that would break up a relationship are similar to what might cause a Party to fracture.”
Vester opened his mouth to reply… then paused.
She’s not wrong, he admitted, we’re basically living in each other’s pockets down here in the dungeon.
We guard each other while we wash up. We eat together.
Can’t say that fighting monsters isn’t any less stressful than dealing with bills and taxes and shit like that.
Kora said once that it wasn’t uncommon for members of a Party to be romantically connected, and noted how often it broke things apart.
“Yes,” Vester finally agreed. “The same kinds of dynamics that go into a Party go into a relationship. They’re very similar. You just layer the elements of romance on top of those dynamics, and that includes balancing people’s love languages.”
“Love… language?” Reve echoed, looking confused again. “What is a love language?”
Vester, realizing the woman before him had no clue what he was talking about, frowned.
“Someone’s love language is… how they express affection, and how they receive it. Krysta, for instance, loves touch. She’s a cuddler, so getting touched is how she enjoys receiving affection. And cooking for people, taking care of them, is how she expresses it. Everyone has their own.”
“What is mine?” Reve asked, and that innocent question left Vester flummoxed. He wasn’t even sure where to begin in answering it.
“I… guess we may get to find out together?”