Chapter 117: Invitation

Alex Sandclaw’s pov:

I stared at the mound of paperwork on the ground with awe, even as each individual sheet tore itself to ribbons, then fragments, and finally into dust that faded away into nothing. That was one Depths-damned good movement Skill.

Felix noticed me staring and shot me a knowing smirk. "He doesn't do it often, but you get used to it pretty quickly."

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and looked up. “I suppose so. I've just never seen someone teleport before. Well, not a single individual, anyway."

“The Skills for it get more common at higher levels,” Felix said while shrugging, then gestured for me to follow him as he walked out the room and towards the kitchen. "Come on, it's pretty late, and there's not much else left to talk about right now. Let's get dinner."

I didn't entirely agree—there was plenty to still talk about. The least of which was Felix's dad apparently deciding for us that we were going to follow some yet-unknown training schedule instead of our own classes. Though what I really wanted to talk about was the sheer insanity of the situation. Just this morning we were normal students, and now we were part of a group tasked with saving the Academy campus from a literal collapse. By the stars, did everything today really happen, or did I fall asleep in our room and dreamt everything up?

No, everything was real. Just checking the settlement aid system window proved that. And this all was way too coherent for this to be a dream.

I shook my head and sighed, standing up to follow Felix.

He looked back at me. "What's wrong?" he asked.

I hesitated for a moment. "It's nothing," I said, then changed my mind. "No, sorry, I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of this. That whole conversation with your dad went by in a flash and I'm still processing all of what he said. And on top of that, I was certain at first he noticed our relationship and wanted to talk about that. This whole situation has just been very stressful and I'm way too tired to deal with it right now."

Felix tilted his head. "We have been up for quite some time, haven't we?" he said, understating it quite a bit. We had been up for over eight hours before we even arrived on campus, where it was still before noon. Now it was almost pitch black outside. "And this whole mess has definitely been... a lot."

"Yet, you seem to deal with it just fine," I said sourly, unable to stop myself. "Sorry, that came out wrong. It's just... I can barely keep track of what's happening, and yet you seem to handle it quite well. How do you do it?"

"It's fine Alex, I can hardly blame you for being a little cranky given how tired we both are. And I think it'll hit me later. Right now I'm a little too exhausted to worry, and a little too focused on finding a solution to really judge the situation. Ask me again tomorrow when I've had some sleep and time to think."

I nodded and yawned. "Sleep sounds nice."

Felix chuckled. "Let's grab a snack, and I'll bring you back to the dorms."

I yawned again. "Would you mind if I crashed here for the night? We can do the few nights of separation later."

Felix smiled warmly. "Sure thing. I'm sure we have a spare guest room you can stay in, or one we can steal a bed from if you'd prefer staying in my room."

So that's what we did. We grabbed a quick evening snack from the kitchen, then dragged a bed into Felix's room. With how large it was, it was practically like we were in separate rooms anyway. I brushed my teeth, grabbed a spare pillow to cuddle with, and we went to bed.

---

I woke up sometime in the middle of the night, my sleep interrupted by a noise or something else I didn't recognize. I groggily rubbed at my eyes, a little miffed I'd woken up. My dream had been really nice, if my erection was anything to go by. A shame the dragonly details quickly slipped my mind as I came into full awareness.

I looked around to find the source of the noise, or whatever woke me up. But I didn't notice anything. Rain was gently pitter-pattering against the windows, Felix was still asleep, and the room was quiet.

It wasn't until a few minutes later, as I was trying to make the erection go away, turned on by the fantasy that Felix could wake up at any moment and jump down to help me out, that I had a thought, and I quickly checked the System. Any lingering arousal vanished as I finally realized what had woken me up earlier. The stability of the local node had dropped from 78.2 to 78.1. Fuck.

---

"So, that's about 9 hours between the decreases?" Felix asked the next morning after I explained what had happened. "Damn. You know, I had really hoped that it would be days or even weeks or years, before it decreased again. I suppose we’ll just have to be happy the scale is on hours instead of minutes. Given how small the decrease actually is, it’s still quite a lot of time—assuming this pattern continues—until it hits zero. Dad won't be happy with this. But at least we now have a better idea of the timeline we're actually working with. In some ways, that’s better than working in the dark, I think."

I nodded. "Silver linings. We'll need to keep an eye out in the afternoon, and note down when it happens again. At least it won't wake up during a nice dream, then."

Felix raised an eye-ridge, and a few questions, and some teasing, about said dream later, we were making out. It was a pleasant moment of normality in the mess that the last few days had been, and after last night's mood killer, it felt good letting that pent up energy out. Still, we didn't go quite as far as we had down underground; we just weren't in the mood for that. That didn't mean we didn't grind our groins together, though. In fact, it would be difficult returning to making out without grinding, now that we'd done it once. That scorpion was well out of the box. Not that I wanted to put it back in the first place. But we did stop this time before either of us became hard.

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Afterwards we quickly showered, and ate breakfast.

"About what you said yesterday," Felix said between bites. "Dad probably does know about us. We haven't really been that subtle, and he would have noticed with his senses. Does that bother you?"

I froze mid-chew and quickly swallowed. "I kind of figured as much, honestly. I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, I don't like it that someone has figured it out without me telling them, but on the other hand, I'm also just getting tired of trying to hide it. Like, why shouldn't someone be allowed to figure it out? It's not something I want to be ashamed of. Besides, we would have told him eventually, anyway."

"We can still tell him if you want? Properly introduce you as my boyfriend?"

I nodded. "I think I'd like that, but we can do that later, when things have settled down a bit."

Felix hummed his agreement, and we continued eating. Later, we went by the dorms to pick up some fresh clothing for me, and then we met up with our friends during their break. While we were on the way to meet them, we once again were able to confirm the nine-ish hours between stability decreases. This time, I was able to write down the exact time, and I'd make sure I was still awake in nine hours so I could do so again, then. That should give us a much more exact look at the timeline we were working with.

When we met up with our friends, they of course tried to figure out what had happened yesterday, but we weren't sure how much we could share, so we didn't tell them much detail beyond that some issues had come up with Alex's new Title.

Obviously, they weren't satisfied with that answer, but thankfully they didn't push. When we saw Felix's dad next, we'd have to figure out what we could and couldn't tell our friends.

After a little while, the tension from the unanswered questions faded and we continued chatting.

"So," Viggi began, "we thought it might be fun to celebrate you two safely coming back a bit."

"But, we also figured you'd appreciate something smaller and normal-ish," Sekara continued. "How would you two like to go out for dinner this evening? With just us five? We could go to the theater afterwards. They have this new show they're premiering."

"My treat, of course," Tiki said.

I glanced at Felix, who had also glanced my way. I could tell from his expression he liked the idea, so I nodded. It sounded fun.

"Sounds fun," Felix said, echoing my thoughts.

The three of them beamed, and soon Tiki was off to quickly make arrangements before the break ended. Or more likely, she'd make someone make arrangements for her, given the time constraint.

When the break was over and our friends had left, I decided I would try and attend my classes. Only, I couldn't really remember which class I had during these periods. That was embarrassing, though I supposed it didn't really matter. If I'd understood correctly, Felix's father was going to make us a new, different schedule that started the day after tomorrow. I wasn't sure if our old courses would fit into that.

So instead I went back to the dorms, while Felix decided he'd just fly around and laze in the open fields around campus. I needed to write a letter to mom. I'd ask Felix if it was possible that this one was delivered faster. Or if we went near the village on the way to the caves, maybe I could hand-deliver it?

First, I'd have to figure out what to put in the letter, though. For sure, I wanted to let mom know I was safe. But aside from that, I wanted to put into words what I'd been thinking about on our way back from the village. The time traveling had given me time to think, and some of that I wanted to share.

Back in our dorm room, my pen hovered over the paper, the soft light filtering in through the window lighting my table. I wasn’t sure how much to put in it. Was I supposed to tell them about my trip back? How I met Felix’s dad? Would mom care? I left on good terms, and mom wanted to be a part of my life, even if that meant accepting I was gay. But after months of not speaking, it felt really weird to just casually talk about my life like this, even if it was only in a letter.

We’d discussed my life, and things that had happened while I was there, of course. But the adrenaline had been high, and I’d missed them a ton. It was hard not to talk about my life. But now that a few days had passed and my emotions had settled a little, the underlying awkwardness had really shown its ugly head.

I sighed and shook my head. It was just a letter, there was no reason to make such a large deal about it. With a force of will, I began writing. But I didn’t manage to write down everything I had wanted to. Despite really wanting to talk about it, I couldn’t write down anything about meeting Felix’s dad. I was afraid I’d scare her off if I gushed a little too much, so I’d decided to tell her about it later.

I did do what Felix would’ve done, though, and wrote it down in a notebook. It had been both exciting and scary to meet my boyfriend’s father. I’d seen him before when he rescued us from the hunting grounds all those weeks ago, of course, but it wasn’t the same. It hadn’t really been a “meeting the parents” kind of meeting, but it was still the first proper interaction we’d had. Hopefully, I made a good impression. I hoped he liked me.

I wasn’t sure what to do if he didn’t.

Shaking my head, I wrote down the last word and checked the letter over one last time for spelling mistakes and places where I had maybe overshared just a touch too much, then put the letter in the envelope and sealed it.

I placed it on the shelf to deliver to the relevant place later. I’d need to ask Felix about that expedited delivery first, though.

I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the ceiling. It was odd how far up it was. I still hadn’t really gotten used to how large the room was. You expected the ceiling to be just a small distance above you, a meter or two at most—not almost ten.

It was rather lonely in here by myself, sitting in my little corner of the room. But I appreciated the quiet. No snoring or heavy breathing nearby, or the unmistakable presence of Felix’s large size. I could spread out without bumping into him and sleep without him breathing down my neck.

As much as I didn’t like it, I had to admit the idea of spending a few nights apart was a good one.

I took a deep breath, letting my emotions settle, and grabbed a book. It was Scales in the night. Now that we were back, I finally wanted to give that next chapter a try. And I wanted to do it now, before we’d be too busy training.

The last time I tried to read this part I was so embarrassed—and honestly, quite a bit repulsed—by the anal play in that chapter, that I’d never gotten past the first sex scene, despite it being only a few pages in. But after the way Felix and I had basically been dry humping each other, and the way my hang-ups had fallen away while we’d done so, I wanted to give it another try. Because it had shown me that those hang-ups were just exactly that—hang-ups. Something that was only in the way, and something I could move past.

I opened the book, but before I could even leaf to the correct page, I was interrupted by someone knocking on the door. I sighed and put the book back on the shelf, before moving to the door. Opening it, I found Felix there, his talon raised like he was about to knock again.

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t have to knock for your own room, you know,” I said. I glanced back at the book on the shelf as Felix walked inside. Ah well, I’d have time later. “Come in.”