“Stop it!”

“But they’re so fuzzy!”

“They’re sensitive.”

“So what if I…”

Gomiko squealed as Sofiane popped one of her fuzzy raccoon ears in his mouth and nibbled. Her back squirmed against him where they were seated up on the bed, but his arms were wrapped around her, pinning her in a seated bearhug. This looked a little silly since they were both equally small, but it meant her little round ears were always right around nibbling height.

“Om nom nom.”

“Eek! Stop! They’re ticklish!”

That declaration only made Sofiane nom them even harder. If she really wanted it to stop she had to stop being so gods-damned cute. He squeezed her tighter, savoring the warmth of her bare back against his chest and the film of sweat between them. He was on day two of the three days a week he was allowed to see her, so he hoarded every sensation like a squirrel preparing for winter.

“Nohoho!” Gomiko wriggled enough to get her pinned hands next to his inner thighs. She scribbled her sharp nails against it and the ear-nibbling stopped at once as Sofiane nearly leapt out of his skin.

“Agh! Evil!”

Two years of exploration had given both a mental map of the other’s body and a knowledge of exactly what kind of reaction they would get. That was how both of them knew from the moment Sofiane started playing with her ears that the pillow talk would turn into a round two. Sure enough it did, and Sofiane once again had to thank the Yishang for including things in their world that they didn’t necessarily have to.

When round two was finished, Sofiane rolled over and panted for a second before wiping his mouth. The sun was setting into Imperia bay and casting the schooners and steamships in golden outline. Since it was a waterfront condominium and no one could look in, Gomiko and Sofiane left the balcony doors wide open, letting the cool autumn wind coax them even more into the other’s warmth. Sofiane ordinarily preferred straight-up comfort, so he had taken some convincing before he put up with Gomiko’s preference for outside-weather playtime. By this point he preferred it. However, the cold was a lot more noticeable once playtime was over. Sofiane snatched up as much of the silk covers as he could, which was not much after Gomiko took the better part of a 70-30 split.

“Gimme some of the blanket, Frizzy,” he said. His nickname for her came from the tendency of her ears and tail to puff up when she washed and dried them. Or when they were too close to his static electricity, which was not an infrequent occurrence around him.

She bit her lip with a little snaggletooth fang and snatched more of the blanket away. “If you want heat you’ve gotta snuggle for it.”

Sofiane wormed his way under the blanket and after a moment of lying against her blew a raspberry on her stomach.

She laughed. “No babe, I’m too tired to go again!”

“Then gimme some blanket!”

Gomiko tossed more of the blanket over his side of the bed, but he remained curled around her side, one arm tucked under her. She grabbed his hand and placed it over her chest. It rose and fell, rose and fell as they lay there, words spent and unnecessary. They were enjoying the glow of having nothing to do and nothing to think about but the warmth at their side. After a sufficiently romantic interval, Gomiko nudged him with her foot.

“Lemme up, I gotta piss.”

Sofiane un-entwined himself and got up from the bed to cook dinner. He grabbed an apron from the kitchen cupboards and decided that ought to be enough to cover himself since Margaret, Harald, and Faisal would be out doing… something or other. There was an unspoken agreement between them all that the rest of the team would politely excuse themselves whenever Sofiane and Gomiko wanted some alone time.

Tying his apron on—complete with the words “kiss my” and a little picture of an asparagus—Sofiane opened up the pantry and rooted through it for ingredients. There was stuff for making maple salmon croquettes, but that was the special thing he always made for the first night he and Gomiko were allowed to see each other again, and he didn’t want to ruin the ritualistic importance. Maybe some Imperian food? Pizza! That was what he'd make. Fortunately, the ingredients were all ones his team had enormous amounts of. In the pantry there were 98 tomatoes, 99 blocks of cheese, 105 pots of flour, and 45 tubes of sausage. Dumping enough for three pizzas out on the counter, he fired up the stove.

Cooking was a little ridiculous. Having been made aware of the logical inconsistencies in the world, Sofiane could never again think that throwing raw flour, tomatoes, cheese, and sausage into a boiling pot of water should logically produce a crisp, perfectly circular pizza pie. And if he got on that line of thinking, it would take him down the path of worrying about the Use-Numbers that had been dropping over the past year and how everything might get wiped out soon, Gomiko included. Shaking head head, he instead chose to focus on the way her eyes lit up when she took a bite of his cooking, and the little mewls she made when she was thinking hard about remembering the flavor during those long, four days when they couldn’t be together. That was Sofiane’s world right now. The rest of the world could burn to the ground for all he cared.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Uh… hey, man,” Harald said.

Sofiane jumped. He turned around to face Harald, Faisal, and Margaret with shopping bags in their hands.

“Oh. Hey guys, what’s up?” Sofiane said, bare ass now securely behind him.

Faisal lifted one of his shopping bags. “Back from shopping.”

Sofiane nodded. “Uh-huh. I see that.”

“Want me to look after the pizza while you change?” Margaret offered.

“Merci.”

Side-splitting laughter met him in the bedroom. As soon as he shut the door Gomiko started singing.

“Whe~en the~ moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie—”

He flashed into Ball Lightning for a split second. He wasn’t close enough to deal Lightning damage, but the static electricity zapped her and sent the fur on her tail straight up.

“Ack!” Gomiko said.

“That’s what you get, Frizzy!”

Sofiane threw on a purple smoking jacket and slippers and hurried back to the pizza he had boiling on the stove. When they were finished, the five of them ate in the living room while listening to the radio set, which was currently broadcasting a drama about the hardboiled Imperian detective, Jack Diamonds. He was one of the newer-released Heroes. The radio plays were pulpy but amusing, and since none of them had ever met Jack, they could pretend he wasn’t an asshole.

“Oh, Jack’s up to #11 now,” Margaret said. Of the five members of Team Harald, Margaret was the only one who cared about where everyone was on the Use-Rankings.

The tinny band music coming from the radio changed from blasting trumpet bebop during the perp-chasing scene to a somber melody as the scene shifted to metropolitan police HQ. Sofiane could guess the next story beat before it happened.

“Bad news, Jack,” said Deputy Commissioner Vanderwaltz. “Looks like Avareti’s guys nabbed your girl Viola.”

“Again?” Harald grumbled at the radio.

Viola—an older, much lower-ranked Hero—had a habit of getting kidnapped every other episode. Sofiane accepted it as the nature of pulp stories, but Harald had the amusing habit of getting bothered by the formula every single time, as if he still expected something new to happen. Sofiane sometimes had more fun listening to Harald complain about the radio play than the play itself.

Gomiko looked up at Sofiane from where her head lay in his lap. “Would you come rescue me if I was kidnapped?”

“No, I’d be the one tying you up,” Sofiane replied.

Faisal groaned. “Really guys? You didn’t get it out of your system earlier?”

Both of them cackled at that. Yes, they were annoying. Sofiane would happily admit that. But there wasn’t enough time left in this world for him to hold back. That was why he’d thrown the Use-Ranking competition out the window to be with Gomiko as much as he could. Faisal and the others put up with the two of them for the simple reason that Sofiane was why they were living in a seafront condo in Deco Imparia and not an anomalous dungeon. Harald refused to be be given money for free—over Margaret’s dissenting opinion—so the arrangement they arrived at was that Sofiane would help them level up to be on par with Deco Imperian levels and then they would all regularly clear dungeons to keep up the income stream. As his own weekly income dropped with his Use-Ranking, Sofiane had also come to depend on these dungeon outings for the same reason.

“Hey, Sofa!”

“Hmm?”

At some point Sofiane had zoned out. The radio play had signed off for the night and Margaret, Harald, and Faisal had all retired to their rooms for the night. The sky outside was a pale gray, the darkest it got in the light pollution of the electric city.

“Go for a walk?” Gomiko asked.

Sofiane changed into a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a baggie purple hoodie and tied his back-length purple hair up in a bun with a ribbon. Gomiko threw a leather jacket over her dress and boots and joined him at the door.

Their condo building exited out to onto a path that followed the curve of Imperia Bay. To their left rose the city of Deco Imperia and its skyscrapers, crisscrossed with a labyrinth of glass skybridges glittering in purple electric light. At night, the harbor was the only place in the city that provided a reprieve and privacy from the lights. The only thing that accompanied them on their walk was the sound of waves lapping against the cement pier.

Sofiane felt her hand squeeze his. “Are you alright?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? What do you mean?”

“You’ve been spacing out more recently. I just wanna know you’re okay.”

Her words prompted a pang of guilt. He knew what was wrong: They were smack dab in the middle of Hemiola’s prediction for when the world would end, but he'd never spoken a word about it to Gomiko. What could he possibly tell her that would be any comfort? It wasn’t as though either of them could do anything about it, so all it would accomplish would be to rob her of her peace of mind and fill her last days with anxiety. He couldn’t do that to her. If they were erased by the Yishang, it was better for it to happen in an instant.

“Just tired,” he said.

“You’re not just tired,” she said. “You get loopy and silly when you’re tired, not reserved and distant. Whatever it is, I wish you’d talk to me about it.”

He shivered. The hoodie he was wearing wasn’t thick enough to keep the icy winds coming off the harbor from finding their way inside. The only part of his body that retained any warmth was the palm of his hand where it touched Gomiko’s.

“Really, it’s… nothing. I don’t—”

“Sofa,” she said, using her nickname for him. “You don’t have to tell me, but don’t lie to me either, okay? I can smell a lie.”

She twitched her nose and he wondered briefly if she actually could.

“I’m sorry, Frizzy, you’re right. But this is something that… It's complicated. You trust me that it’s not a secret that would hurt you, right? I promise it’s not.”

Her hand let go so her arm could curl around his and she pulled them both closer.

“I know,” she said softly.