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Luke decides to have a heart-to-heart with Elliot about their relationship in the middle of treaty negotiations. The conflict is between a village of were-hogs and a tribe of spider-people, and so far negotiations have been difficult. This is primarily because were-hogs are active at night, spider-people are active during the day, and Elliot is the only go-between they trust to communicate their demands back and forth. Elliot is very flattered by this. He is also approaching torture-method levels of sleep deprivation.
The were-hogs are literate, but the spider-people are not. This means that Elliot has had to develop a script for their language before even beginning the process of translation and negotiation. Luke, who was not supposed to be on this mission in the first place, has been helping, in his own ways. Calming everyone down by shinily being the Sunborn champion. Bringing Elliot coffee and food. Refining Elliot’s crude spidery alphabet to make it actually readable.
By now, they’ve laid the groundwork for a treaty. But Elliot could not in good conscience agree to make the width of the border between the territories the length of a human index finger. Creatures on both sides of the line would be constantly violating it, even by accident. And where are they planning on procuring human fingers to measure it by?
“Elliot,” someone says. Well, Luke says, with a particular type of irritation that means that it’s not the first time. But there can't possibly be another underground market in captured humans, can there?
“Elliot.” Knowing the Borderlands, there are at least a dozen, each lurking in wait for when Elliot manages to get rid of the last.
“What,” he says, looking up.
Across from Elliot, in his own nest of papers, Luke seems a little red-faced, though it might just be the light. “Back in training,” he starts, then stops, like a tape player running out of battery.
Elliot puts down his pen, bites down on a What? , and tries to make his face open and expectant.
“You said things to Serene.” Luke’s left wing twitches, possibly as an illustrative gesture. “It was embarrassing.”
Well. This is fun. “So is this a general observation about me, or…”
“When you were dating. You—with the nicknames, and the—flowers.”
Elliot suppresses a wince. Open and expectant . “Yes. I do remember ‘the nicknames and the flowers,’ because I was there.” Unfortunately. “What about them?”
But Luke seems to have run out of steam. He shrugs.
“No. What about them. You’ve very thoughtfully started us on this lovely trip down memory lane. I want to know our destination.”
“Nowhere! It was just—remember that time you were embarrassing. Haha,” Luke adds, convincingly. His left wing twitches again.
Oh.
“Luke,” Elliot says, enunciating clearly, because Luke is apparently having a slow day, “you don’t have to worry about this. I have no idea why you are worrying about this. If I had been planning on calling you my most beauteous blossom on the tree of the universe, or anything similar, I would have done so by now.” He attempts a reassuring smile, one that communicates, I see your concern and I promise not to embarrass you by loving you too much, or at least , since I can’t help that, I’ll do what you asked and not be humiliatingly obvious about it .
It’s a lot to ask from a smile.
Luke frowns in response, but it’s thoughtful, apparently digesting that.
Elliot nods at him, then looks back down at his work.
Luke still seems dissatisfied, though. Elliot gives him a few minutes to consider Elliot’s spoken and unspoken promises and relax about this. But when Elliot finishes the page, Luke’s back is still extra unnaturally straight in the way it only is when he’s uncomfortable, and he’s been glancing at Elliot and then away. And he hasn’t, Elliot realizes, even picked up his pen. Normally Elliot would attribute this to an unwillingness to engage with any activity that doesn’t involve sweat, sharp and dangerous objects, or both, but.
“What?” Elliot asks.
Luke shakes his head quickly and turns to the paper on his desk. He’s putting together a translation of the concessions the spider-people have agreed to, in theory. Except right now, he’s just staring at the page with a concerningly high degree of focus.
“What?” Elliot prods.
He is tempted to write off Luke’s weirdness as the result of overwork, but Luke has been overworked before. He’s never brought up the time that Serene did not love Elliot back. He knows that’s still a—an unpleasant subject for Elliot. They’ve even talked about it, a little. Luke is not actually terrible, and he shouldn’t want Elliot to feel bad. The whole conversation is bizarre, unless—
“Wait.” Luke’s head jerks up at Elliot’s tone. “You want me to do all that.”
“No,” Luke says immediately. “I don’t, what are you even talking about.”
“You want me to call you embarrassing nicknames. You want me to bring you flowers just because.” Elliot feels himself grin; unstoppable, he’s so delighted. “You probably want to celebrate monthly anniversaries. I could get you chocolates. Cards shaped like hearts. They can have sonnets inside. I’ll write you sonnets.”
“ No, ” Luke repeats, equivocally. His face is a resplendent tomato red. “ But if you wanted to do, you know. That.” He grimaces while somehow looking extremely bashful. Like a constipated tomato. “It would be fine. I guess.”
Since Elliot has spent the past year trying to learn to speak Luke (which, though while sounding like regular English (and halting Elf, and bad Harpy, and atrocious Troll), is in fact a language unto itself), he knows that this really means, I want that so much.
“Okay,” Elliot says. He’s not sure how that will translate into Luke. But he hopes it will be at least somewhere in the realm of “Okay.”
The next time they're both in bed—they’ve managed a nearly king-sized cot due to their importance to the mission—well, Elliot’s importance to the mission; Luke's just a Sunborn, and gets whatever he wants as a matter of course—Elliot decides to take the plunge. He puts his book down next to the cot and says, casually, “Petal, could you turn off the light?”
Luke tenses so hard that one of his wings hits the ceiling of the tent. The tip of it quivers. But he manages, after a moment, to say, “Sure.”
Elliot peers at him. In the moment before Luke blows out the lamp, Elliot glimpses enough of his face to see that he’s flushed. Elliot immediately reaches around Luke to get the lamp back on. “Thanks, angel,” he says, and Luke’s wings actually flap. That normally doesn’t happen until at least one of their cocks has been out for a few minutes.
“You like that,” Elliot accuses. It’s one thing to have guessed, abstractly, given more than sufficient evidence. This is different. This means something.
Luke studies his lap. Elliot waits for more denial, but he has somehow forgotten how brave Luke is.
“Yes,” he says, and meets Elliot’s eyes: a piercing, striking, heartrending blue. “I do.”
“Jeez,” Elliot says, and kisses him. There’s not a whole lot else he can do after that .
Luke’s mouth is soft and warm. He approaches kissing with the same athletic determination with which he approaches Trigon, or archery, or cutting people’s heads off with sharp objects. Except that instead of a winning throw, his goal is to make Elliot as stupid as possible, extracting brain cells by way of mouth. There are no championships for this sort of thing, at least as far as Elliot is aware, but if there were, Luke would win at those, too.
Elliot pulls away. “Just so you know, this is extremely funny. That you like this, I mean. Imagine if you had liked me when Serene and I were dating, and the whole time you had wanted me to be calling you those ridiculous flowery nicknames.”
“Oh,” Luke says. He bites his bottom lip, precisely where Elliot was biting it himself a minute ago. “Yes. Hilarious. Imagine.”
There is a brief pause.
“Oh my god,” Elliot says, and Luke says, “Fuck off.”
Elliot reaches up with a hand to manually close his dropped jaw, and Luke aggressively rolls his eyes.
“It’s whatever ,” he says. He keeps averting his gaze, though, which is much less fun. Elliot shifts the blanket off his legs and climbs on top of him, propped up on his elbows.
He makes direct eye contact with Luke and then coos, “ Aww .”
“Fuck off .”
“Adorable,” Elliot proclaims, dropping a condescending little kiss on his nose. “You’re really cute, do you know that? They should include that in the legends. Sunborn champion, huge harpy wings, wanted the boy he liked to call him stupid nothings when they were fifteen.” At this point, Luke attempts to pull the blanket up over his face. “I cannot believe that you actually pined,” Elliot continues, “for me. I’m very touched, and also, this is hilarious. Does Serene know?”
Luke heaves him off the cot.
Elliot’s laughing even before he lands, with a thump, on the floor.