Cutscene 22: Dinner with a side of depressing

January 16, 2015

(Note: Replacement modem should be in soon. Yay for public wifi hotspots in the meantime!)

As far as Risa was concerned, the one thing that William’s dad was absolutely awesome at was mimicking a puffer fish with his face. His cheeks just rounded out so much on either side of his frown when he was attempting to choke back a rant about Fey and, more specifically, demons. She couldn’t tell if holding it in was for his son’s benefit or to keep himself from getting killed. Evidence highly suggested it was the latter. When she’d encountered him alone in Everfier, he hadn’t held back. She was pretty sure that he lectured William when she wasn’t around. Without fail, though, every time he had to be in the same room as Zane, the puffer fish face came out.

The first time she’d seen puffer!Eric, it had been towards the end of their adventures while she was regaining her memories. He’d been vocal about her being dangerous until someone had very obviously tried to change the subject while looking at Zane (who was actually not at all showing any signs of aggression at the time). Puffer face had come out after that. And continued to come out during subsequent encounters.

Zane, for his part, seemed to find the whole thing amusing. At the moment, they were sitting in the living room of William’s parents’ house, on a couch across from Will’s parents. Belle was reading, Eric was puffering, and Zane was holding eye contact with him while showing his best impression of a friendly smile with no ulterior motives under it. The only thing keeping Risa from enjoying the atmosphere of the room was Ami’s awkward attempt to break the silence by running through any topic of conversation she thought might get both sides of the room to talk to each other.

So far Ami’s self-imposed mission was a huge failure. It stressed Risa out since she felt like she should be saying something to help, but that feeling was having trouble taking over control of her speech processes from the feeling of not giving a fuck.

“Dude, obviously the only thing he wants to talk about is the demon in his living room.”

Ami cut herself off mid-sentence and stared at her. Risa tilted her head as she stared back. Oh, had her mouth done the thing again where a sentence came out when she didn’t mean for it to? Well, damn. At least her mouth could’ve said something positive, but nooo…

Zane failed to choke back a laugh. He pulled her closer to plant a kiss on her head. “I’ve missed your way with words.”

She did a half-puffer fish face and turned away from him with crossed arms. Which, of course, meant that she was looking at Ami. Thankfully, Ami didn’t look upset or surprised. Just uncertain of what to say next. It had been both Ami and William’s idea for them to all have dinner at William’s parents’ house, despite the fact that Eric didn’t want Zane to know where they lived. William was currently making food, which left Ami to feel responsible for the awkwardness alone.

Risa looked over at Belle. “You could help out, you know. You married the guy.”

Belle glanced up at her, then went back to reading. After a few moments, she sighed and closed the book in her lap. “I’m sure the demon already knew where we live, dear.”

“There’s a chance that he didn’t,” Eric started.

“A small chance,” Risa cut in. “An exceedingly ridiculously tiny chance. The tiniest chance that ever chanced.”

“Yes, thank you,” Eric said. He looked again at Belle. “There was a chance. I don’t appreciate having that small–” He paused to glare when Risa opened her mouth. “–comfort taken from me.”

“The demon and his demon friends stayed in our other house,” Belle pointed out. “You’ve heard the story of how I met him. Our son and his fiancee spend quite a bit of time with him. If he was going to hurt one of us, he would have shown signs by now.”

“Zane’s pretty patient when he wants to be.”

Ami groaned. “Risa, that’s not helping.”

“It’s true, though.”

Zane chuckled. “It’s also true that I knew you lived here before. I also know which bedroom is yours and where you work. Also…”

“Zane,” Ami said.

At the same time, Eric turned to Belle. “Why else would he collect information like that about us if he wasn’t a threat?”

“Has it occurred to you that he might be taking precautions in case we become a threat to him?” Belle looked at Risa. “Or, more specifically, to her.”

Zane used the hand that he had around her shoulders to pet her head. “A reasonable conclusion.”

“Yeah,” Risa commented. “Dude likes to treat most things like potential threats and keeps most of that to himself.”

Zane raised an eyebrow and looked at her. She stared back. She still hadn’t mentioned to him about the threat files included with the rest of the stuff from Crow. Specifically the one where he knew they were being followed and said nothing. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say about it, but she probably should say something in the interest of honest communication between them. She had the binder with her. Now that they were together, she might wind up just plopping it in front of him and pointing.

William walked in and stopped near Ami’s seat. He studied the two Fey for a moment before looking at his parents. “Dinner is ready.”

“Fuckin’ sweet!” Risa was the first to respond. As usual when food was involved.

There was an extended period of time after that where the only talking was about seating arrangements and what food to pass where. Which was totally the best kind of talking. Also awesome was once again having William to cook for them. She focused all of her energies into enjoying the delicious foods. Which is why it took her so long to realize that Ami was saying something to her.

She swallowed and looked up. “What?”

Ami sighed. “William and I need to talk about something with all of you. That’s why we invited you and Zane to dinner here.”

“William hasn’t chased you off, I hope. You’re not announcing that you’re breaking the engagement?” Belle asked.

“Oh God no,” Ami responded right away.

William frowned. “Why is that always your first question when I have something to tell you?”

“It’s a valid concern,” Belle said.

“That’d be depressing,” Risa said, poking at the food on her plate. “You’d have to find another chef to date.”

“Risa.” Despite her scolding tone of voice, Ami was laughing.

“Seriously, though, I like you two together.”

Ami wrapped a hand around Risa’s closest arm to pull her closer. “I can tell. You’re not exactly the queen of subtlety. Especially not when you don’t like someone.”

“Dude, I’m not even in the extended royal family of subtlety.”

“Or anywhere close to being in the noble class,” Zane pointed out.

William cleared his throat. When the attention was back on him and Ami, he looked at her for confirmation. She nodded. He waited a moment longer before speaking. “Ami and I have decided to move away from the Mid-grounds.”

“Oh,” Risa said after a long moment of silence.

“We’ve put a lot of thought into it,” Ami continued. “With the way that agent acted before we left the Mid-grounds and with William’s contract up for renewal… It just seems like it’ll be better for everyone that way.”

“You’ll move to the Overcurrent?” Eric asked. He sounded pleased with the idea.

“No,” William answered. “We’ll likely stay close to Reinvale for a bit, but we won’t move here permanently.”

“You could have the old house in the woods if you don’t want to be so close to your parents.”

“That isn’t the reason,” William responded.

Ami put a hand over his. “If we stay in the Overcurrent, we’ll still have one of the worries that we’re trying to leave behind.”

“You don’t want the Overcurrent Council to use you to try and influence Risa’s decisions,” Zane guessed. “Which is what that organization in the Mid-grounds has already tried to do.”

“Right. We’re planning to find somewhere nice in the Borderlands. We had a lot of fun when we were traveling before Risa got her magic back. And we won’t have to worry about any politics.”

“Theoretically.” Zane sighed. “Some powerful Fey do send mercenaries out to do dirty work there.”

“We’ll be counting on Risa to take care of that.” Ami turned an anxious smile to her. “You’re being awfully quiet. I thought you’d be whining and begging us not to go.”

Risa pushed the vegetables around on her plate. “I mean, part of me wants to, but there’s a bigger part of me that already knew this would happen. Zephyr mentioned that it would be a good idea for you guys to leave the Mid-grounds.”

“We were considering talking to the Dragon Lord about places to move to,” William said. He pushed up his glasses. “Do you think he would help us negotiate the move?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, he is very fond of Risa,” Zane pointed out. “I’m sure she can talk him into it.”

She chose to ignore the jealous tone of his voice. “Yeah, probably.”

“The Council can also help with that,” Eric said.

“They’re better off not getting the Council involved,” Belle responded. “The Council will want to profit off of their involvement.”

“And the Dragon Lord won’t?” Eric retorted. “It’s better to deal with other humans.”

“William’s technically a resident of the Fey Lands,” Belle said. “The Council doesn’t have the same authority over him as the Dragon Lord does.”

“Risa trusts him,” Ami added. “And Zane, despite his jealous grumbles, trusts him enough to let her be alone with him.”

“I never had a choice in the matter,” Zane said. “Still, he hasn’t done anything to warrant my seeing him as a threat. Yet.”

“We’ll be in good hands,” William summed up.

Belle waved a hand in the air. “Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about wedding plans.”

“Mother, just because the situation is changing doesn’t mean we’re going to get married sooner. There will be enough to do and worry about with planning a wedding.”

“Then, let me plan it.”

“No.”

Belle huffed and launched into a lecture about why he was being ridiculous and stubborn. William insisted that she was the one being stubborn. Risa tuned the conversation out and toyed with her food more. Suddenly she wasn’t really hungry. She forced herself to eat a bite anyway, in case that triggered her appetite to come back. She barely even registered the taste.

Ami scooted her chair closer and leaned against her friend’s side. This was the first time they’d be living so far apart since they first met in college. The sense of loss made her limbs feel too heavy to even continue poking at her food. She set her fork down and dropped her hand to her lap. Zane reached for her hand and rubbed the back of it with his thumb.

It was going to be weird when it was just the two of them in the city.

She hated the part of her mind that pointed out that it would be like practice for when Ami and William were permanently gone where she would never be able to visit them.

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Written by Skyebun Studio Posted in Cutscene Tagged with ami, belle, cutscene, eric, risa, risa pov, william, zane