Page 11 of Love, Laugh, Lich

“Lily, do you--” he starts to ask, but when I glance back, my expression stops him.

I can feel the mix of panic and discomfort showing plain on my face.

“Is it urgent?” I ask, giving him my best ‘I’m way too busy right now’ look. I feel like if I tried to explain the way all my feelings are swirling together in my stomach like an ill-concieved smoothie, I would just spill my guts, figuratively, literally, or both.

Soven shakes his head and returns his gaze to his desk. “Nevermind.”

What if I’ve read too much into this, thinking that because we’ve developed an ease with each other, that that’s the same as romantic feelings? What if I clearly think too much of myself, that a human could ever mean anything to an all-powerful Lich?

By the time I finally push my worries down enough with my work, it’s after hours. I don’t want to think about how much time I must have spent dithering over my feelings.

I quickly finish up the seating chart for the next office-wide meeting that I was working on, the last person in the office. The desks are all empty and quiet. It’s as good a time as any to move my things back to the waiting room.

The recently obliterated waiting room has been spackled, painted and refurnished, so I’m moving my things preemptively to my brand new desk, raiding the cabinet for all the paperclips and quills I can carry.

The office is so quiet and empty, I’m surprised to see Soven standing by the water cooler on my third trip back and forth. I’m a little startled, because he’s still out of his cloak, and I’ve never seen him in the office without it.

I give him a skeptical look, glancing around at the empty cubicles, the darkened windows, but I cross over to where he stands. I do bite down on a ‘How did you fit through the doorway?’

“What’s going on?”

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” he says, and I blink at him in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

Soven gives himself a little shake, shrugging. I can see how he’s only pretending to lean against the water cooler, that way none of his weight actually presses down on it. He plucks two of the little paper cups out from the dispenser, handing one to me. I fill mine with cold water.

Then Soven says, “Workin’ hard, or hardly workin’?”

He snaps and points a claw out over the empty cubicle, and pretends to wink at some imaginary coworker. It’s so overwhelmingly ridiculous to imagine him working in one of these tiny cubicles, I can’t help but laugh.

“You’re such a dork,” I say, putting a hand over my mouth. “No one actually says that.”

“Would it help productivity if I put out a memo to have it integrated into the common parlance? Alongside ‘synergy’ and ‘incentivize’?”

I laugh-cough into my paper cup.

“Stop, stop,” I say, holding up my hands in surrender. “You’re gonna get water up my nose!”

Laughter dies down between us, the ache of smiling imprinted in my cheeks as I sigh and stifle a leftover giggle. Then it’s quiet for a long moment, and suddenly I don’t want this little moment between us to end. It’s different from when we’re in the dark sanctum, bodies slick with sweat and cum and still rutting against each other for just one more release. Somehow I’d thought that we wouldn’t have these fun little moments anymore. It’s quiet and soft, and suddenly my whole chest is brimming with the feelings I want to tell him.

I cough, and clear my throat, taking a different tact. “So… whatever made you start the whole, evil empire thing?”

“It wasn’t exactly a plan of mine,” he shrugs. “Being a Lich is... characterized by unending greed. To live, to constantly take in day after day of life, all that comes with them, and never being willing to relinquish any of it. It becomes a lonely, hoarding existence.”

“So you just collect things forever? I mean, is there anything you’ve had to give up?” I ask, the question clunky even as I say it. I might as well ask, ‘is it even possible for you to love me back?’.

He shrugs a little, and while I can see the question almost turn over in his mind, he seems to get lost in his thoughts. I guess it was that hard of a question.

We lapse into a long silence again, and I have to wonder if he could feel the question hovering on my lips, even unasked.

“Well, um, I have something for you,” he says, clearing his throat, straightening as he faces me. I look at him in surprise, and feel a faint flutter of excitement over my organs, I think my liver. Briefly I remember the flowers he had left on my desk. I don’t think I realized how much I wanted some small romantic gesture from Soven, unfettered, unabashed, until this moment. Something that clearly demonstrated feelings or intent.

I can see him holding back a smile, or as close to a smile as he can have with the structure of his fangs. “You’ve been here with us for a while now, so I’d like to present to you, your five-year-gift,” he says, producing a somewhat generic looking necklace, a pendant with the Evil Reign’s insignia stamped on one side, and a red stone on the other side.

I blink, frozen.

Soven takes this as a good moment to fit the necklace over my head.

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