My Head Sounds Like That

It was a weird problem to have. Titan's foot, what a weird problem to have. And it was an even weirder conversation to start with the person who was, debatably, the source of the problem. Only they weren't. Obviously they weren't.

He'd forgotten how the beginning of it went, anyway. But they'd probably remember for him. She was generally pretty awesome like that.

No, more than just awesome. So much so that he couldn't think of a word for it. None of the usual ones seemed to fit. He'd probably started in while blindly flailing for one, talking without thinking, and ended up...here.

"Y'know? Like, I feel like a lot o' people see me with you, or Pyra, when she's fronting, and they think I'm supposed to be this big, muscley action hero who gets all the girls. Without even asking, or waiting to see what I'm like. No matter how old I am, they figure that's all a kid's ever gonna want with the Aegis. A boy kid, anyway."

Rex paused there, leaving room for something rueful that almost edged him towards a scarily bold maturity. If he'd been a girl, or any less generically heave-ho and idealistically boot-strapping, maybe the pressure wouldn't be so on.

The pressure. Gosh, it was almost a little bit funny, because pressure was what had made him look so short for his age, and it still didn't mean a thing. For Pyra and Mythra, it had been the opposite. Like coal, as diamonds.

And that wasn't his fault, but because the world was crueler than he would ever have the capacity to be, he doubted, for a moment, if he was entirely blameless. The Aegis certainly couldn't change themselves so readily.

Could they?

And what could he even do, himself? Really, he was already busting it to the best of his ability just to get them to Elysium. To do it unscathed was another question entirely, and probably not possible. Zeke'd say as much, he figured.

Anyway.

"But I don't...I don't really care about that. We're family, for sure," here Rex grinned, heartened by his own proclamation of sentiment even though it suffered the same exact fate of overhacked cliché as his self-profession, when you got down to it, "but...I don't think about things quite that way. I can't. Feels like the way I do think is the wrong way, sometimes, though."

"Not if you ask me." The low, confident fry rippling Mythra's ever-steady voice indicated without equivocation that they did, very much so, intend to interpret Rex's confession as if he was asking her, and always would be. What would be the point of pretending otherwise?

"And...I know exactly what you mean. It feels stupid at first, like even if you get past thinking there's something wrong with you, you're still pretending if you say you're not about it."

"I think I'd be pretending if I said I was." He said it almost absentmindedly, eyes glued to the wayward, pillowy sculpt of the clouds in the sea.

Mythra smirked, open and wide as the orbital ring, photons leaping from the very orbit of their chin, which jumped forward in righteous assent. "See? You know how you feel. It's not a cop-out."

"No? You don't think I'll come around to it eventually?" Rex's voice slowed cautiously on the phrase more often than not leveled witheringly condescendingly by people who thought anyone who was old enough to bring home a living for his entire village was also old enough to bed a wife, apparently, without a lick of quarter on whether or not he was even of any sort of age to consent.

That was to say, didn't they say it for a reason? Wasn't it like excusing yourself out the back door of what it meant to be a person, one of people, to just say oh, I don't care, I'm above all that stuff?

Mythra, however, had no such misgivings. "I didn't. It's been five hundred years."

"But Mythra, you were asleep," prodded Rex as gently but still earnestly as he could.

"True." More literally than it was most days, since someone had to keep them walking. "But still. I tried it. The whole 'soul-searching' thing. I had a whole family-except-not-really of people just a little bit older and wiser than me to crush on, but everything I thought I felt, everything I made myself feel, fizzled out after a few days, a week."

Addam was affable, open (to everyone but her, but everyone forgets their fear sometimes). Lora was the same, but with a different brand of worn, ruddy, beautiful age in her cheeks and her eyes. Hugo was chivalrous, genuine velvet in his tones. Haze was ridiculously excitable, yet also gentle and kind. Brighid was martial, proud, gorgeous. Minoth was a mystery as plain as caked earth. Aegaeon was...well, Aegaeon. Never mind it. And Jin was probably the hardest one to love. But they'd ended up doing it, hadn't they?

The reflection of memory in Mythra's eyes, just a little bit lighter and paler than Rex's but still the same true golden depth, told him all he needed to know: while the idea was novel and the goal - to achieve the kind of blessed normalcy that came with having a teenage crush! gosh, wouldn't you? - sometimes almost salivatingly close at hand, the act of trying to force themselves into feeling something, because apparently it was just right, just didn't compute into anything wholesome.

It was lightly bemusing at best, and miserable at worst.

The eyes closed. The bristle of the memory faded. Then they snapped open again, returned to the comfort of settled, felt-out skin.

"Sometimes I thought it'd be fun, having someone to hang onto the way Haze did with Lora. Sometimes the idea grossed me out, having to worry about keeping that up day after day. Honestly, the way Addam did it, being more carefree best friends with his wife than...lovers, I guess, seemed like a pretty good way to go. But it'd still be going a way that wasn't my own."

Rex frowned. "I don't understand. Are you saying Addam tried to...you know. With you?"

She could have shouted aloud her massive, shoulders-unweighting incredulity at that. Addam? Mythra? On HIS account?

(Whatever "you know" meant, because the whole point of their commiseration was that they didn't know, and they didn't want to know, and Architect alive or dead or otherwise, how glad they were not to have to. They didn't have to! Titan's foot.)

"Are you kidding? To this day, he remains the most monogamous poly guy I've ever met."

Rex frowned deeper. The conversation was taking a turn entirely unexpected and, to him, almost entirely irrelevant, and while he was always game to talk about anything and everything Mythra or Pyra (or both!) trusted him enough for, this was...well, he didn't know what it was.

Luckily, Mythra took the hint; memory of Cole's current apparent detachment from all things openly, pathetically pining refreshed, they dropped it.

Then, they chuckled. "We're really taking our sweet time getting to the point, huh?" It was the most patience anybody had seen out of her in weeks, even if you counted the post-awakening Aegis as sufficiently mellowed-out.

"Doesn't matter to me. I like talking to you, about whatever."

"But it's not 'whatever', Rex. It's bothering you. That means it's bothering me too."

Huh. That wasn't the "me too" of "I feel your pain." That, this, was a (burdensome) responsibility of a different color. Rex flushed, a little, at the heavy thought of it; the temporary thrust of narcissism lodged itself quite firmly on his back once again, even if only for a moment. He very nearly faltered as if shoved.

To wit: "What about Pyra?"

Mythra inclined her head. Point. Not exactly irrelevant. This was the kind of thing they had mostly avoided discussing with her, when they could avoid it.

But. Still. "You can ask her later. You've got me now, for better or for worse."

"You got that right," Rex murmured, mirroring the initial mutualness of their agreement. A salvager always knew how to count, to roundly estimate, a potentially dead weight.

"Look. People think you're interested in relationships with us - romantic, or...otherwise." Sleeping together, et cetera. They both got the gist, and that didn't need elaboration. "You're telling me you're not. Not with anybody, really. But riddle me this, Rex. How come you didn't once make it sound like you were worried I'd be offended that you weren't interested in me?"

"Well...I guess...because I didn't expect it of you." Thank the Architect, he didn't say aloud.

"That's right. And that's because it's real. I don't expect it of you either. Feels great to be right, for once."

"For once? You're always right."

"Sure I am. Just wanted to hear you say it."

Oh, but hell, it was moments like this that sometimes confused Rex the most. How could you feel affection burning white like a star in the pit of your belly, gratitude and trust and awe and insecurity all boiling the heartiest stew any one person ever did eat, and not love someone? Not...love, really love. What was the difference?

Because he knew there was a difference, somehow. There was definitely something about it that ate away at him, more bile than boil, a scraping rut of insufficiency in his chest where deep-sea water had gotten one too many (far too many) times.

He wanted to remember. It was the happiest feeling he'd ever had, being able to be close to Pyra and Mythra. Being able to shoulder- help shoulder the burden of their fears, and their powers, and their angers, and their joys. And if he couldn't name it, then how could he remember it?

Could it really be just friendship? Just feeling like siblings, but stronger than he'd ever felt about any of the kids in Fonsett?

Could he really do it the justice it deserved, that way?

"Mythra...how are you so confident about it?"

Their hair snapped up, a curtain of sunshine curling at the ends. "Huh?"

"I thought you'd be just as scared as me, if you felt the same way. I'm not mad, believe me, just..."

Mythra shrugged. "The knowing's in the doing, I guess you'd say. Or no, one of your little rules..."

"Hey!"

Distracted by their attempt to recall the seven rules of the Salvager's Code they knew, Mythra didn't respond. Bone-deep, they knew Rex didn't mind, not really. That was all part of it.

How hard could it possibly be to explain? She knew, by now. Trying to put a word on it kind of defeated the purpose, if they were being honest.

Unfair that one conception stole all the good definitions. Unfair as hell.

"Look, Rex. I've never met someone who loved people as much as you do. I never met anyone who loved people even remotely like the way you do until I met you. If I asked you to name five people you love, I bet it wouldn't take you more than ten seconds."

"Oh, sure, well," his head tilted back and his index moved to meet his pinky, "there's Auntie Corinne, and Gramps, and Mòrag, and Poppi, and Zeke-"

Good old... "Rex. I didn't ask."

"Oh. Right." Industrious gloved hands dropped, suddenly fidgety in a totally different way.

"Didn't say I'm not glad you told me, though."

"How come?"

"Well, I know you're a goofy goober kid and all that - you being so goofy is half of why I think of you that way even if I'm not that much older, mentally - so it doesn't surprise me that you named your parents first. Then Mòrag, who's like an older sister, and Poppi, who's like a younger sister. And Zeke, who's..."

"Zeke," Rex grinned. In other words: impossible not to love. Mythra would have to disagree, and they knew Mòrag would too, but with time to adjust, it wasn't worth the quibbling.

"Right. Zeke. My point is, you didn't name me or Pyra or Nia. I know you hate playing favorites, but the way your life's been going for the past couple months, anybody'd think you'd say us first. Everybody shoving the idea that you don't love us at all if you don't have us hanging off your arms down your throat has got you afraid to just say you love us."

Rex's mouth did a little fish-like open-shut at that.

"And Rex-" Mythra paused to sandwich his face between her hands, conveniently also clamping shut his jaw "-I'm not offended. I'm mad for you. You know you're ace. You're happy being ace - and if you're not yet, my educated prediction is that you will be. But all these people who get the same kind of love from you can't be labeled with the same kind of love for you - for your own sake, I mean. Labeling. It's a personal thing."

Rex looked like he'd almost gotten it. But only almost.

"'I love this world because you're in it.' Familiar, right? And I said it because it was true. Why shouldn't you get to do the same?"