"Do you want to do something tonight?"

Syhrith, who had barely stepped through the Border, merely blinked at her. He wasn't surprised, and he wasn't confused. If she had to hazard a guess, she would say that he was simply waiting for her to elaborate.

Tressin wasn't nervous, per se (it was Syhrith, for god's sake), but she could admit that there was a degree of bashfulness surrounding this proposition. Most likely he wouldn't react at all, but what if he did? What if she scared him, somehow, and he completely retreated into himself like he had after she had hurt him? Tressin didn't want either of them to ever experience that again.

"It's exactly like it sounds," she said. "Let's skip the reading ritual tonight and do something—go out for drinks, grab something to eat, take a walk, anything besides the usual. So what do you say?"

Syhrith considered this. His eyes traveled to his books for a long moment before they went back to her. He nodded.

She found herself smiling widely before she knew anything else. Who cared if he was dressed strangely, by this world's standards? Nobody else's opinions mattered. "Cool, then let's go," she said.

And just like that, they were headed out the door and onto the sidewalk, passing her car by without a second glance. Tressin wanted to walk with him side by side, as equals.

"I've always been curious about how you pulled this off," Tressin said conversationally as they strolled along in the orange light of the street lamps. "Do you go to bed early these days or something, and incorporate this into your day that way? I always thought you were an insomniac, but you never look like you feel the lack of sleep."

"I sleep early."

"I knew it," she said with a flicker of triumph.

Syhrith looked at the plants and apartment building around them, at the slow pace of the passing cars, and she wanted so to know what was on his mind.

"This is probably a lot different from what you're used to. It is interesting or overwhelming?" When Syhrith didn't reply she had to wonder, "Something else entirely?"

"The intrigue is not consuming."

Oh yeah. She had sort of implied that it was, hadn't she? "You're right. Why would it be?" she realized. "It's not like this is your first time here."

It was just their first time going out and about for the hell of it. That was all.

She felt his 'exactly' through his silence, but Syhrith did not offer anything more. Before she could second guess herself, Tressin reached over and held his hand. She didn't intertwine their fingers or make it obvious in any way, she just held it. His palm was rough with callous', but it was warm and real and, after a minute or so, he held hers back.

Tressin didn't have anything more to say, and frankly she had no desire to find something. Just being with him right now, just holding his hand and walking with him—that was more than enough for her. With Syhrith, she was finding, the smallest things were.

It made her feel warm and happy. Contented, for once.

No more did they read on opposite ends of the couch. Tressin didn't see the point, and Syhrith never gave any indication that he minded so she figured it was okay if their legs pressed against each other and her shoulder was usually firm on his bicep. A part of her was unspeakably comfortable just because he was there with her, but another was buzzing with thrills and nervous as fuck about doing something humiliating like farting or burping or smelling bad.

Tressin wasn't stupid. She knew what all that meant. She also knew exactly what prompted her to say his name and pat his arm to get his attention.

After a moment Syhrith marked his place in his latest book (she had been right to think he would start blowing through them) and turned his eyes upon her like a spotlight.

She almost didn't do it, then. Almost didn't ask. Her cheeks were warm, and her heart had begun thudding in her ears, and—shit, he was already looking away!

"Erm, I—I know you haven't had the time for… well, most of the time, but nowadays I'm pretty sure you might. Have you—have you ever been in a—well, a relationship before?"

At first, all he did was observe her expressionlessly, and she couldn't tell why, couldn't decipher what he was thinking. When he spoke, Syhrith voice was just as enigmatic, "No."

He didn't go back to his book, though. He seemed to realize that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Tressin was a little bit grateful for that.

She shouldn't have been surprised, she told herself. She doubted many people had gotten the opportunity to get to know him as she had, and it wasn't vanity that had her doubting that he had known anyone the way he knew her.

Shouldn't have been surprised didn't equate to reality, though, and for some reason she still was.

"You've never had a girlfriend, ever?"

"No."

"Ever been on a date, at least?"

"No."

Now that she had trouble believing. Tressin had noticed the appraisals he earned when they were out in public. Syhrith was tall, dark and handsome, with an interesting history to boot. He was the epitome of the media's favorite stereotype—she could imagine that overpowering someone enough to ask for and go through with at least one date, over here. She didn't know what sort of an impression he made in his own world, of course (she had never asked), but even if it was particularly feminist over there—which it was—Tressin had a hard time imagining him having a poor reception, at least at first.

"Well, you've at least had sex, right?" He was thirty-four years old, for god's sake. She didn't think it was much of a stretch.

"No."

Had Tressin maintained just a little less control over herself, her jaw would have hit the floor. He was kidding, right? He didn't even seem embarrassed!

"You're serious about this?"

Syhrith's expression became vaguely annoyed at this. She expected him to joke, to lie?

It was, admittedly, a dumb question on her part.

"Well excuse me for being incredulous. What are you, asexual or something?"

Tressin had meant it as a joke of sorts, but Syhrith replied like he hadn't noticed as he turned his attention back to his book. "Essentially."

She didn't know how she had given him the impression that that would be the end of the conversation, because in her mind it most certainly was not. She had heard that people could be genuinely asexual before, but she had never actually met someone with such inclinations. She wasn't sure where she could begin.

"Wait, you're serious?" Then she caught herself. "Oh, don't answer that, it was rhetorical. But we—I mean, I've been…" Trailing off in disconcertion, she just looked at him for a while. Syhrith, who had abandoned his reading again, gazed back impassively, waiting for her to finish her thought.

Tressin swallowed. "I've been doing all this stuff recently, like holding your hand and hugging you and…" She gestured at their still-touching legs, her knee pressed against his thigh as she curled up on the couch. "This—is… I mean, does that make you uncomfortable at all? It's just, I had no idea, and I just sort of assumed that you weren't… asexual, because I'm not."

She observed their proximity again. Did he want her to move? Had he been uncomfortable this whole time, and she hadn't picked up on it?

For some time, Syhrith only watched her enigmatically. Then he said in his quiet way, "Such actions have no correlation with sexual relations." Which wasn't precisely true, but she supposed it could be true enough for these purposes. He implied that the innocent and cuddly things she had been initiating lately didn't bother him, because it wasn't like she was holding his hand and expecting him to have sex with her or anything.

Had it always been this way for him, or had the emotion-smothering caused this?

If Tressin became this sensitive, just from doing these cutesy things with him, it was probably just as well that he didn't do sex. Her nerves would have probably short-circuited, otherwise. Not that she couldn't see herself wanting it anyway, in the future (if there even was a future), but she would find a way to accommodate that, if Syhrith was willing to keep her around. Right now, it felt like she would do anything for him.

"What about things like kisses, what do you feel about that?" she couldn't help asking. When he didn't answer, she tried to elaborate, "I mean, they aren't all the same, you know? You've got those cute little pecks, then, like, making out, with tongues, and the kind that's sort of in between…"

Was she weird for asking someone about this? Was it weird if the same person she was asking was asexual? Would it be considered especially weird if she was explaining, roughly, the different types of kisses there were?

Was it bad that she didn't care if it was weird?

Syhrith was neither embarrassed nor thoughtful in his reply. He simply stated, "I would not be interested in the most extreme example."

"So…" Her voice faded, she reveled in how freaking flustered he made her, and then she forced herself to stand on her knees next to him, so their faces were level. "If I told you that I'm starting to really, really like you, that wouldn't bother you?"

If Syhrith suspected where this was going at all, then he gave no indication of it. He stared back into her steadily, so steadily. "No," he said.

Tressin had thought she had been seeing something extra in his eyes when he looked at her for a while now, but she had never appreciated it like she did today.

"And if I…" She paused, took a steadying breath, gathered her courage (why did this suddenly require courage?) and slowly leaned forward and touched her lips to his. It was just the slightest grazing of skin, and she had definitely done more in the past, but somehow it was the most intimate thing Tressin had ever done with a man in her life and her body was flaming with hypersensitivity.

Inexplicably, she was short of breath, and her voice was faint, "And if I did something like that, it would be okay. Right?"

"Yes."

God, why had it taken her so long to learn how to get lost in those eyes? It felt like the most natural thing in the world; it felt like she should have known how to do this from the start.

Syhrith's pale cheeks boasted a faint dusting of pink, she noticed, but he didn't give any hint that he knew or cared about this.

"I don't know where this is going to go," she whispered. "But I'd like to be with you. I'd like to be more than a friend."

Syhrith did not speak, but she could see that it was because he didn't feel there was anything to say. It went without saying that he accepted her, and it didn't matter how because it communicated and that was what counted.

For her whole history as the Chosen One, this right here somehow felt like the greatest accomplishment of Tressin's life. That probably sounded stupid, but the notion ran true in her whole being all the same.

"I think," said Tressin carefully, three weeks after her relationship with Syhrith had officially changed. "I'm falling in love."

Heihdlyn, who was in the kitchen with her, pouring herself a cup of steaming green tea and honey, quirked an eyebrow. "That was a rather ominous declaration."

"Shouldn't it be? This is serious." More serious than she had ever expected it to be, in fact. Nobody could have prepared her for this.

"Not as serious as you're making it out to be," said Heihdlyn lightly. "To be honest, I'm surprised it took you this long."

Tressin's head whipped towards her. "What are you talking about, you knew this would happen?"

"Don't sound so offended, Tressin. I thought you had already figured it out."

"Figured what out, exactly?" What else had she been dense about? This game was becoming very old very fast, she had to say.

At first Heihdlyn looked as if she didn't want to say, as if she wanted to make her figure it out on her own. Tressin was preparing to argue about it when the debate left her friend's face. "Every time he came over here, all these years, he came for you," she said with a slight shrug.

"Wait, then what about you? He came and saw you, too."

"To get advice about you, Tressin." Then Heihdlyn seemed to catch herself. "He never said it explicitly, but it wasn't hard to figure out."

Tressin wasn't surprised that Syhrith had allegedly came to this world to see her all these years. He had, after all, been visiting this world nearly every day for months with the expressed purpose of seeing her. No, it was more the fact he had come to someone for advice about it that got to her. She hadn't thought he was the type to come to anybody for help about anything.

"You're the one who encouraged him to start coming around more often?" she asked. Did that mean she owed Heihdlyn a big fat thank you? While she certainly hadn't expected this change of facts, she still wanted to give credit where it was due. If that meant her debt to Heihdlyn had just increased exponentially—well, she was already in debt, so what was the difference?

"Not in so many words," Heihdlyn admitted. "I said that if he wanted to spend time with you, then he should do it. I also said you weren't going to get to know him any other way." Then she sipped her tea thoughtfully, and added, "I didn't think he'd take it so seriously, though. That was a bit of a shocker."

Somehow, Tressin couldn't bring herself to be terribly astounded or frustrated by this. It was too much like Heihdlyn to take the time to meddle in her life, and it wasn't as if Tressin was miserable right now. Far from it, actually.

"I guess I should thank you, then, for prodding Syhrith into action." However subconsciously. She still believed what Syhrith had told her about that. In fact, he probably didn't even know why he had subconsciously decided to start seeking her out.

It would answer a lot of the residual questions she had, actually.

"You're welcome, but as a side note I think he would have started it himself eventually. Except by then you probably would have been married, and the whole thing would have gotten needlessly complicated and dramatic."

She thought about how Heihdlyn had found out about her now ex-husband's affair and gone through a divorce while Tressin was going through all of her own guy troubles. It gave her a whole new perspective on what Heihdlyn had done, and it melted her heart.

"You thought we'd be compatible from the start?"

Heihdlyn offered a one-shouldered shrug as she drank more tea. "I was working off of a theory I have about your old link," she replied.

There were a lot of possibilities, but for some reason Tressin had no desire to ask. The link she had once had with Syhrith was in the past, and the past was behind her. She was beginning to learn to let it go.

It made every step she took a little lighter, every breath she took a little easier than the last. It was an amazing feeling.

"Thank you for what you did, though," Tressin said earnestly. "You're always looking out for me, Heihdlyn. I don't know how I can ever repay you."

"It's second nature at this point. I wouldn't read too much into it."

Her friend's gruffness wasn't working to dissuade Tressin at all. "Doesn't change the fact that I'm grateful. I don't think I've ever started falling in love this intensely before."

Heihdlyn almost started teasing her, she could tell, but then she smiled almost nostalgically. Tressin couldn't tell if she was remembering her own love or something else entirely. Maybe a little bit of both.

"Syhrith would like to hear that," she said.

"Erm, no offense, but I think it's a little early for that—"

"Oh, no, you don't get it," her friend said with the smirk of one who knows so much she's practically omnipotent. "Whether Syhrith realizes it or not, he's loved you from the start. It's about damn time something happened on your end."

Tressin, though she had been a prophecy child, never wholly believed in fate, or predetermined futures. She simply couldn't believe all the stupid shit she had done in her lifetime could have been planned. She had also long lost her faith in the Power of Love. And she never made her feelings about perfection a secret.

Despite all of that, though—no, in spite of it—in moments of peace, of quiet, of laughter, of exhilaration, with such extraordinary people as Syhrith and Heihdlyn, Tressin found herself thinking those things might just be possible after all. She found herself thinking that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't wasting the life that little girl had preserved for her, all those years ago. In those spectacular, amazing, as-perfect-as-imperfection-gets moments, she even started to feel a flicker of affection for herself. It was a novel concept, and it led to even more earth-shattering thoughts, concepts she can feel herself on the brink of accepting.

Tressin Johnson may never be a beauty, but that doesn't mean she has to be a beast. What an idea, indeed.

A/N: So... that's it. Is the last scene being a little too obvious, do you think? I tend to slap the reader in the face with things like this when I try to be clear. Sometimes I don't know how to leave well enough alone. Feel free to let me know if I'm beating a dead horse with this one-with any part, really. Feel free to talk to me, period. I really do like it.:)

Besides that, did this story do anything for you whatsoever? Are you glad it's done? Sad, possibly? Are you still trying to wrap your mind around slogging through 17 chapters of this? It this one of those cotton candy stories that are kind of fun to read and/or make fun of, but not really good for you when it's all said and done? what do you think of the characters now? Did your opinion of them change throughout the story? Is this writing style something I should try again, or did it frustrate you? I'd love it if you let me know! :D

Comments/questions/criticisms all very welcome. :)