Ris
"Can we talk about thefact that I'm the only sap in this entire friendship who apparently didn't know anything about fucking anything for the last eight months?"
Lurielle cackled at her words, and Ris glared, pulling out a chair from a brick table with a bit more force than necessary. "I don't think it's funny at all! I at least had a reason to keep my situation a little hush-hush, and we're not even serious! You go and meet some perfect orc dreamboat, Silva meets a set of teeth with a heartbeat, and I'm the shnook that comes home and goes on approximately seven hundred bad dates with Dynah before I get suckered into going back to the resort. I literally could have gone there with one of you like, oh I don't know, the next fucking weekend."
Lurielle was nearly choking on her pad Thai by then, dragging her fingers down the condensation on her water bottle before flicking it in Ris's direction. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were planning on finding your perfect friend with benefits dream man, okay? I didn't say anything about Silva because I honestly don't know what she's doing. I just want her to be careful and stay safe, but she's gotta make her own mistakes and figure it out. I just don’t want her to get her heart broken."
"That's exactly what Ainsley says about Tate," Ris scoffed. "He thinks Silva is the heartbreaker. I guess they really are perfect for each other . . . He's a total weirdo though, right?"
"Oh, absolutely, completely. Disturbingly so. But . . . it's kind of funny, the more I spend time with her, I think she is too? Like, she's nothing at all like what we thought a year ago. Either she's changed or we were super wrong. We've done doubles with them a couple of times and Khash absolutelyhateshim, just doesn't have a single nice thing to say." She scowled into her noodles at the thought. "It actually really pisses me off, because I can't tell if he doesn't like him because he's a weirdo who never blinks, or because he's not the ‘right kind’ of orc. I have to remind him his kids are also going to be half elf, unless he's planning on trading up. But then I can even get mad at him, because Tate practically levitates in his seat with how much he hates Khash, and it’s like,incrediblyobvious he’s only there because Silva pulled some adorable little bunny rabbit knife on him or something." Ris had doubled over, laughing so hard that sound had ceased issuing from her mouth. "It's not funny!" Lurielle laughed. "They're like these two giant man-babies just a heartbeat away from throwing food at each other, and then here’s me and Silva in the middle just trying to chit chat."
"I think if Ainsley and I were to join you all he and Khash would just talk over each other all night. About absolutely everything and nothing, at increasing volume. If Khash thinks he is a schmoozer, he will have met his match. Tate would probably get up to go to the bathroom and just never come back. At least three of us could have a few cocktails, right? We could probably move to another table and they wouldn't even notice."
Lurielle was wheezing at that point. Someone came in from another department, looking askance at them, hovering with their lunch before thinking better of it and exiting the break room altogether, only making her laugh harder.
"She hasn't even told her family yet? She's been seeing this guy for more than half a year! How has she kept that a secret?! I'll be honest, I didn't give her that much credit, that’s an impressive level of subterfuge." Lurielle wiped at her eyes, recovering. "She needs to decide what she's doing now, this is all going to blow up in her face eventually, right? Ainsley doesn't really like her, did I tell you that? He thinks she's self-centered and selfish. Do you think you should talk to her?"
"There's nothing I can say, Ris. And no offense to your boyfriend, but he really doesn't get to have an opinion. No one is telling him he should go no contact with his family. Would you be able to do that? I know you're close with your mom and dad, right? If you had to pick between them and your fuck buddy plus plan, would you be able to? It's real easy to tell someone else that they should cut off their parents. As the only one here who’s done it, I can speak with authority: it’s really fucking hard. She's gotta decide what to do on her own, and I don't blame her for not knowing how to handle it. It's a fucked up situation where none of us should be put, but here we all are. Look at Dynah. Look at me. Silva's twenty-five. She's figuring this shit out a lot sooner than I ever did, that's for sure. I have my own fucked up family to worry about."
Ris cocked an eyebrow as Lurielle sighed, fishing through her clutch. "This came the other day. I haven't even told him yet. So now the question is: do I suck it up and have him meet my mom beforehand, or let a giant catered party be the first time she meets her potential future son-in-law. Who happens to be a seven-foot-tall orc."
She whistled, reading over the foiled pink invitation Lurielle had produced. "Well, happy birthday to your great-grandma, I guess. That's at least nice. What are you going to do?"
Lurielle shrugged. "Fuck if I know. I can'tnotgo to my great grandma's birthday, it’s my mom who sucks, she doesn't. Call ahead and find out if there's going to be security? Work on preparing Khash for the reality of someone not thinking he's amazing? It's going to be a serious blow to his ego, he might need to go into seclusion afterward."
"Ugh, that sounds fantastic. I'm so broken up that I have a normal family that doesn't expect me to follow an ancient Elvish fortune cookie's edict on how to live my life. It's such a bummer. I guess I'll go home and contemplate how rough it is that my folks are totally okay with me not having a baby, and then maybe get my back blown out by my poly adventurous playmate. Good luck breaking the bad news to his royal highness."
Ris left the break room laughing as Lurielle shouted at her back.
"You really suck and you're real lucky I love you!"
She found herself curled up in Ainsley's lap that evening, recounting the conversation with Lurielle as she patiently waited for him to remember the name of the documentary he had been so excited over just a few days earlier.
"So she has to decide whether or not she wants to set up a dinner for her mom to meet him before the big party or just hold her breath and hope that the crowd deters her mom for making a scene."
"You elves are fucking wild. If you're this crazy now, I can't imagine what you were like a few centuries ago when you were still kind of scary and feral. Do you think you had claws at one point? Or maybe one of those retractable thumbnails, you know, like the big turkey dinosaurs?"
"I don't know, but isn't it kind of crazy the way we de-evolved like that? Elves were chosen consorts of the high fae! We committed genocides! We were apex predators! Now we're one step up from humans, and all it took was fucking them for a few hundred years. My ancestors were able to disembowel ogres with their bare hands, now I get period cramps and have to take three days off work to lay on a heat pack and cry. What a fucking letdown."
"I'm going to pretend you didn't just say it's aletdownthat you're not able to commit genocide with your giant turkey dinosaur thumbnails anymore." He tipped his head back consideringly, the documentary forgotten for a moment. "Elves were consorts to the high fae? I didn’t know that."
