Please stay safe yourself
Kat is recovering and will come home tomorrow
It was the first time Mercer had ever texted him back. Rahil almost wanted to laugh, and notjustbecause of what he’d impulsively set Merc’s name as in his phone earlier. Merc didn’t seem very worried, either, though he supposed that even when the man had been shaking, his voice had remained stony and his words direct. He could have been falling apart behind the stern bravado.
Rahil
Good for Kat!
I’m still in the shed, if that counts. Locked it and the house up the best I could.
Also, I’ve been poking around out of a sense of precaution (or maybe I’m just fidgety. We’ll call it precaution, though. Like how I call my stupidity bravery instead.) and I must know: What are these?
He sent a picture of the small mess of electrical and mechanical chaos sitting on a top shelf.
Metal Daddy
Caution is certainly a thing you need when you approach my storage cupboards
Those were Leah’s
If one of them murders you slowly, don’t say that I didn’t warn you
That was basically permission to touch them, which was good, because Rahil had technically already started. It was too enticing, wiring sticking out and boards set up in ways he wasn’t familiar with. He hadn’t gotten to work on anything this fun since his ex-wife had been there to help him get contract work.
Rahil wasn’t sure how he felt about poking inside Mercer’s late wife’s creations, but his fingers were antsy, and his mind needed something—anything—to focus on. He wouldn’t make any changes, and he’d put everything back before Merc returned. And if one of them did kill him, at least he wouldn’t have to face the way he was feeling about Mercer.
With an assembled collection of tools from around the shed, Rahil got to work. He quickly settled in on one specific device, for no other reason than the sticky note on it that labeled it asfor Lydia. What it was meant todofor Lydia, Rahil wasn’t sure yet. At the moment, it looked a bit like a tissue-box-sized metal compartment had spilled all its wire and circuit-board guts out, along with a few compressed metal structures that resembled the trap cords when stretched out. Other than those, there was no clue as to what it was actually meant todo. Which made it all the more intriguing.
It felt like only a few minutes later when Mercer appeared at the shed’s entrance. Rahil jumped from his cross-legged position on the floor, nearly knocking apart the series of boards and wires he’d been reassembling. “Fuck—sorry.”
Mercer drew in a breath, held it for far too long, and finally strolled into the shed like he was entering a warzone. “It’s all right,” he said, softly. “I didn’t exactly tell you not to.” But then he gave a longer look at the pieces scattered around Rahil, and his stony expression widened into shock.
“I’m so sorry.” Rahil grimaced. “I was just going to peek at them, but I started to get the hang of this one and it seemed nearly complete, so I… It was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“You’re finishing it?” Mercer’s gaze moved from the device spread between Rahil’s hands and lap to Rahil himself, and his jaw dropped for a moment before he said, almost fondly, “You’re smart.”
“Ah, well, not really. It probably won’t even work.”
“Don’t do that,” Merc snapped.
Rahil’s heart skipped a beat. “What?”
“Don’t pretend like this is nothing.This,”—he pointed to the half-assembled project—“is genius.”
“They’re certainly more complex than anything I’ve seen.” That was an understatement, with components ten years outdated made for some mysterious function that, based on Leah’s other work, Rahil doubted would be accomplished by anyone else for decades. He was pretty sure pieces of it were Merc’s handiwork too—seamless things he couldn’t quite identify the material or make of, much like the trap he’d now been caught in deliberately a dozen times or more.
“And you understood it just by looking?” Mercer asked.
“Well, I mean…” Rahil felt his breath catch in this throat. It was the way Mercer was staring at him, wide-eyed and wondering. Andproud. Just like Shefali had the first fifteen years they were together. He might not have deserved it, but god did he love it, all the more because it was coming from Merc. “I guess so, yeah.” He didn’t know what else to say that wouldn’t sound like he was complimenting himself. “I’m sorry if I overstepped with Lydia, by the way.”
“You saw an ordinary girl trying to find her place in the world and you made her happy. That’s not your fault.” Merc paused, then moved closer, slowly crouching down across from Rahil. “Do you remember when I was telling you about last generation fae?”
The sudden nearness of Mercer’s neck was doing things to Rahil, things completely irrelevant to their conversation, or their future, and he tried to ignore it. “Their children can have issues with their spark, yeah. And Lydia, she’s one of them?”
“Yes.” Mercer looked so defeated as he said it, not like a man going into battle, but one coming home after a lifetime of war. “We have meds for her, custom ones that took a great deal of time and research to make. They stop the worst of her symptoms, but she still struggles with sleep and pain—a lot more than I think she lets on. That’s why I didn’t want her babysitting, or working at all. If she has a bad day, or forgets her meds, or she’s in an accident and gets rushed to the hospital…” He clearly wasn’t capable of finishing that thought, so Rahil did it for him.
“You don’t want to see her hurt because of her differences,” he concluded. “I understand that.” Though he wasn’t sure whether he agreed. There were two 52-hz whales, after all. What if there were even more?
