openmisc | Daniel/Emery

That seems to settle Daniel, and he flips on what he had been watching prior. It's all about the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, a place Daniel has never been, with a design he's never fathomed. He loses a bit of the tension in his shoulders, pointing out things to Envy that Daniel is sure he doesn't care about, but Daniel does. And not only does he care, but he wants to share it. Eventually, he pushes himself up to sit on the back of the couch beside him so he can point out his favorite parts and everything he's learned.

Does Envy care about a structure some human built in some location? He actually starts to, and then remembers that the alchemical ordering of the universe is not his job, and he actually doesn't give a shit if it is a place of power in a location of significance or if it's just a silly looking pile of metal. Freeing.

Not caring is actually sort of fun, on that level. Not giving a shit sparks joy.

But not as much as when Daniel clambers up beside him. He may not have consciously pieced together all his strange little human selves, but people didn't generally rise to meet them. Except this one.

Half an hour into the documentary, Emery's closed the distance between them entirely, arm to arm, mostly ignoring what's on the TV with everything he has.

Daniel can tell that he isn't paying attention, but that isn't the point. He pulls his feet up beside him, balancing with his back against the wall (perching isn't his normal state), and turns to Envy with a grin.

"Are you terribly bored?" he asks.

"You're boring," Envy says without missing a beat. It's the same tone he used to say he didn't have anywhere else to be. It's true. Envy doesn't know how to combine true with other things like nice or tactful. "I knew that. I still came."

"Shut up." He laughs, not taking offense to that. He was with Tim and he was with Connor because they liked the same things he did. He talked to them about boring shit. But Envy - it's different.

"Did you develop a personality and hobbies for a graduation?"

"I tried. I didn't like any of them that much, so I don't know if it mattered." He shrugs, very aware of the way his shoulder and Daniel's slide against each other when he does. "I learned a couple things, but they were boring, too. I don't like sitting still that much." For Emery, I like and I don't like are still daring, radical statements, but he's learning.

They are radical enough that Daniel turns to look at him, really look at him. The casual touch is less surprising, less startling, than the notion that Envy has wants and desires.

"What do you like to do?" he asks, almost afraid of the answer.

"Cause problems." Emery speaks with an odd confidence. Emereal knew. So did the others, but everything was still too loud, too... too painful to understand. "Make noise. Run. Find things nobody's ever looked at before. Break stuff and see how it works." Cooking eggs wasn't torture or anything, same as Daniel's dumb TV show, but it was a pause on a long, busy road. A thing to get done for a reason.

Daniel blinks at him, startled in the best way. "Well, there are places we can go so you can have that. Places with plenty of room to run. To make noise. To - oh, you should come to my workshop." Daniel sits up higher, turning to him, legs pressing against Envy's.

"When I was on the Barge, I always had my projects, remember? Taking apart everything and putting it back together. Parts all over the floor. Creating from gears and wood and metal. Well, I hardly have room for that here, so I rented a space for it. I have a lot of projects still and you - you could share that space with me. Break all the stuff you want."

"I don't want to break something when you're trying to get it to work," Emery says. Forestalled random destruction is her love language. "It'd be more interesting to see what it does, anyway. Unless you want me to try to see how it holds up." He's still a creature of alchemy, and alchemy is a science first.

"No, not my things!" he assures him. "I'll get your own things to break. Or - well, I suppose finding out the durability of some of them would be useful. And I can always put it back together later."

His grin warms. "What fun!"

The strange thing is that he agrees. Poking an egg until it's too hot to harbor bacteria is not fun, because you know the answer before you start. After a few trials, you know the solution and the problem is over. "Just give me whatever you need broken." He smiles, and it's crooked, but it's earnest, too.

Daniel laughs. "Good. We can go tomorrow." It's already getting too late to make a trek out to the workshop today and he, frankly, wants to keep Envy all to himself, away from the world, for a while longer.

"Any other changes I should know about?"

He does sort of wonder where Daniel was going when Emery ambushed him, but if it was urgent, they'd know already, right? "Emptied the stone, no more noisy echoes of human souls, put weird dream wood in instead. Those are the important parts."

Ice cream is sometimes urgent, but not this time. That can wait.

He runs his fingers through his hair. "That's all important, yes. You'll tell me if something else comes up?"

"I changed what I needed to change," Emery says firmly, and, a little at a time, leans a bit more of his weight into Daniel. "I'm something else and it got me off the stupid fucking boat. And yeah, I guess you were right, because I'm mostly the same after I switched out all the important pieces. Nothing else has to come up."

Daniel hesitantly, very hesitantly, puts an arm around his shoulders.

"Of course I was right," he says with just a hint of smugness. "I always knew you would be."

No leaning in. No leaning away. In choosing neither he makes a third choice, of course, but he hasn't quite figured that out yet. "well, it wasn't based on anything but wishful thinking. So you're boring and kind of weird." Belatedly, his head tips back, leaning gently against Daniel's arm.

He doesn't pull back, either, but just lets Envy do whatever it is that he wants to do with this new movement. He's had a lot of time to listen to his new modern friends who go around saying things like "homoromantic" and "asexual" and "life partners" and he suddenly has a word for what he had with other people, and what his other self and Emery had in the breach. It puts a lot of things in perspective.

"I'm not boring or weird!" he huffs, knowing full well that he is both of those things.

"You're - hateful." It's not his best insult, but it's probably lessened even more by the laugh that follows.

"I knew what I was talking about."

"Sure, but you're the one who wanted me around," Emery says, sticking to the point for the sheer joy of being obnoxious. "Everything else that happens is your fault." They stick out their tongue. Also just for fun.

Daniel meets immaturity with immaturity.

He reaches over to flick Envy's nose. "You could have gone anywhere. But you're here. You're better off being a talking cat."

No hesitation. Emery bites his finger. Very gently, but there are teeth. "I can be a talking cat anytime," they say, letting go after a second has passed and the point is made.

"Ow!" he complains, narrowing his eyes at him. He's not actually hurt and he doesn't actually care about the bite, but he does his best to look ferocious.

"Then be a cat. At least cats are soft and furry before they bite!"

And so now Envy is a cat. It's a slightly different process than it was, but aside from a few lapses in barge rules, Daniel hardly had a chance to see him shift anyway. He pads with delicate pomposity into Daniel's lap. "Meow." It's not even an attempt at imitating a cat, just Emery's voice (a little higher pitched) speaking dryly.

Daniel wraps his arms around the little cat and holds it close. "Meow," he repeats with a smile. "Are you going to bite me?"

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