Interspirit

Kyrylo splashed more cold water onto his face. He rubbed his hands across his cheeks, feeling the beginning of stubble. He checked himself in the mirror of the bathroom. His eyes were a little red around the edges but he kind of expected that given everything that had happened. He just couldn’t quite wash away the shock of what he had heard.

Boyfriend.

She had said it clearly. He hadn’t asked again, to not arouse suspicion. Just excused himself to the washroom and now here he was.

This had always been possible. He sat down next to a cute girl in his random classes and they hit it off. They were chatting, they were friendly, this was all normal. It wasn’t like she was all over him, wasn’t grabbing at him, going for hugs. She respectfully talked to him and he did the same. As he had already mentioned to her, they didn’t really know each other, not truly. He knew she played volleyball, knew about the varsity team, knew she was a political science major. But that was kind of everything he knew about a lot of the people he had met at university. That was basically the opener at every mixer event.

It just felt like there was more to it than that. They told stories, they shared laughs, things happened between them. He didn’t know if she had siblings. He almost slapped himself. Knew she was originally from outside the city but everyone was, though he couldn’t remember the name of the town. That was stupid of him. She couldn’t hear in her right ear and she watched anime and that was most of what he had.

Why couldn’t she have had a boyfriend? She always could have, that was the only answer circling in Kyrylo’s mind.

He sighed, gripping the sides of the sink and pushing off. This wasn’t the end. He didn’t know anything about this boyfriend, had never seen him around so he had to guess this wasn’t a recent boyfriend she had just met at university; this was more likely a highschool guy she was already with.

She had never been available.

He shook away the doubts. He liked Isabelle. There was no getting around that. She had changed him, changed who he even thought was attractive. She was tall and loud and herself and he liked it. He wanted to go on dates with her, to even do something as small as hold her hand. He was bonded to a spirit, a literal death penalty, over her. Sure, he protected lots of people but would he have rushed in to tackle them for just anyone? No.

Kyrylo popped back out and felt his chest swell the second he saw Isabelle again, still sitting at the table, still peering at her laptop and taking down notes. He knew this was right. He would hear her out. Maybe it wouldn’t work out with her current partner. Maybe she was already going to break up with him; she never talked about him after all. Or maybe he could just be a great guy, so great in fact that she would see the light and date him.

It felt somewhat strange to think all that, kind of wrong, almost. He moved past it and sat across from her once again. Time to know her better.

“So are you not going to answer your boyfriend?” Kyrylo asked as he slid his hand around his cup. It was still scalding hot, somehow.

“I’ll see him later, I know what he’s after so it can be later.” She glanced up over the top of her laptop and her eyes connected with Kyrylo. He did his best to stay level and match her gaze. The studying resumed.

“Is he like an actual boyfriend or just…hookup friend?”

“Sure, he’s my boyfriend, been dating him for like two years now.”

“Oh wow.” Kyrylo tried to sip at his tea to keep his expression hidden. It singed his tongue. He needed an explanation from the store why this was a viable business model for serving hot drinks. “You just never mention him, that’s a long time.”

“I guess?” Isabelle paused to take down some additional notes, her tongue sliding out at the corner of her mouth as he focus increased. She popped back up, like she was breaching for air from studies. “It’s high school so like how much does it count, right? We didn’t really do dates or stuff, it was just now we are boyfriend and girlfriend, you know how it is.”

“Yup.” Kyrylo punted on explaining no, he had not gone on dates, nor had he had any prior girlfriend. “But you could go on dates now, right? I don’t want to stop you if this is rare or something.”

Isabelle raised an eyebrow but didn’t look up from her screen. “We’re not like that…it’s more of, I mean we said we would like sort of try long-distance now that we’re at university but it’s more…we’re not really talking much anymore, we kind of knew this was how it was going to go, you know? Like it’s inevitable.”

Kyrylo nodded and pondered the information, trying to figure out what was the appropriate angle for attack. He had been able to calculate a strategy for killing a giant rat with a robot arm on minimal training. This seemed like it would be easier.

He couldn’t.

He would just risk it then.

“But why don’t you break up?”

Isabelle shrugged. Kyrylo had braced himself to sit in an uncomfortable silence and she dispelled it instantly.

“It’s not that simple,” she answered. She paused the studies to look up at him and Kyrylo was taken aback by the attention. “I know I said it didn’t count but also…it was two years. It’s not like nothing, it’s just sort of how it has to happen. We will break up, probably, I mean it feels that way. And he’s not helping with this.” She held up her phone for a moment though Kyrylo couldn’t see the message on it.

“Right, so you’re not going to see him.”

“No I will.” Isabelle dipped down into her work. “Just later, he can wait for it.”

“I…um…” Kyrylo was spinning, trying to scoop up all these different threads and tie them together in the context of his understanding of relationships. Of women. “I want to make sure I have this right.”

“Go for it.”

“He’s your boyfriend and he’s messaging to see you?”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s just…for sex?”

“Pretty much.”

“And that’s part of why you’re drifting apart and going to break up?”

“Also yes.”

“...but you’re going to have the sex with him?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I?” Isabelle stared straight at him to punctuate her answer, resting her chin on palm.

“No I don’t…you can…I just thought if you didn’t…uh why would you want to have sex with him if that’s a bad thing?” Kyrylo was in too deep. Internal sirens were going off, screaming for him to bail out, warnings he hadn’t received when he was fighting Pel, while he was scrambling for a weapon against Shychur. Because he understood the risk here, he understood that this was all a bad idea to discuss and he was crossing so many lines, or maybe she was the one crossing the lines, frankly he was having a hard time even conceiving that she was being this forward.

“For the sex?”

Kyrylo placed his cup back on the table, pressing it down into the wood as hard as he could to keep his body steady. He almost balked at the response, the confidence, the simplicity of it. Sex was about love and connection and it was supposed to be this special moment when you were ready as a couple.

“So you’re just…like horny?”

Isabelle nodded again, her mouth flat, almost like she was wondering why she was even explaining this. “He’s familiar, he’s clean, it’s easy.” She raised each point with her fingers to represent. “It’s kind of a no-brainer.”

“And then one day you’ll just…not be together?” A final shrug from Isabelle. “That feels kind of…sad. For it to just end?”

“If you consider sitting in his mom’s basement and watching him and his brother play racing games a tremendous loss, sure.” Isabelle returned to her computer. She tried clicking on something and got visibly frustrated as it didn’t load, smacking the side of her computer a couple of times before sighing and slumping back in her chair.

“Crash on you?” Kyrylo asked, desperate to escape from this topic so he could unpack it later.

“It’s such a piece of shit.” Isabelle kicked her legs out under the table, clipping Kyrylo’s shin thanks to her height. He winced. “Sorry. It’s just been like this forever, it craps out on me all the time cause it’s a billion years old.”

“I guess you can’t get a new one?”

Isabelle folded her arms across her chest and continued to slide down in her chair, her head now nearly level with the table. “I can’t afford it. Can barely afford this coffee.”

“Yeah college life do be poor,” Kyrylo added.

“No, Isabelle life do be poor.” She sighed and sat back up in the seat, running her fingers through her hair before straightening up and giving Kyrylo a half-hearted smile. “Sorry, you don’t have to deal with this. It’s just frustrating.”

“That’s ok, I’m happy to be here. I can always listen, you’re the one who can’t.”

Kyrylo flinched again as Isabelle kicked his shin, this time intentionally, with a wicked grin on her face. “I get to make the disability jokes around here. You sit over there with your perfectly functional ears and shut it.” Kyrylo did a little zipper gesture across his mouth and got a snicker out of Isabelle. He felt his shoulders soften, chest unwind a little as he drifted back into the gentle flow of his usual conversations with Isabelle.

“One day I will have earned that honour. That day will be my greatest achievement.”

“You wish.” Isabelle stretched her arms up into the air and stood up, scooping her things off the table and shoving them into her bag. “I guess if this thing isn’t working anyways, I’ll just try again at home. Can’t do anything about it. So now we’ll just hang out at your place?”

Isabelle cocked her head to the side and Kyrylo felt the panic snap back into his body, words tumbling around in his mouth but never making it close to the exit.

“Kidding!” Isabelle said, giant smile on her face. “Worth it to keep seeing that reaction. As you already know, I have to go meet with some guy and he’s going to pick me up at some stupid station at the edge of the city so he can dodge traffic like a true gentleman, so I’m heading out anyways.”

“He really sounds lovely,” Kyrylo said, not sure what line to walk in, matching Isabelle’s tone or staying respectful. He could play his answer off as either.

“It is what it is.” Isabelle shrugged her bag over her shoulder. “And then one day it won’t be. Probably. I’ll figure it out.”

“Hope you do.”

Isabelle paused and glanced back over her shoulder. “Do you?”

Red lights flashed in Kyryrlo’s vision. His brain was shutting off, overloaded by the culmination of conversations, of lines he didn’t expect to be crossed. He knew so little about her yet she was so intimate and raw with him. She was so close to him yet so far, an impossible chasm of the RIF on one side and a boyfriend on the other.

“It’s…like it’s an expression, I’m not…that’s just a…I mean you’re very…”

“I’m very what?” Isabelle’s eyebrow went up. She hadn’t taken another step. Her smile was still there, still playful and scheming, but gentler this time, softer. Curious.

Kyryrlo’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it but appreciated the reminder of the rest of his life. “It was fun to hang out,” he countered, choosing to skip right past it and rise up to meet Isabelle, abandoning his tea, barely touched. “I can walk you to the subway.”

“How kind!” Isabelle feigned excitement and rolled her eyes, sauntering out of the cafe into the crisp fall wind.

Kyrylo followed, enjoying the cold smack of reality to reset his fraying sanity. He scanned the familiar streets and took in another breath of cool air.

And choked at the sight of a woman across the street, dressed in a form-fitting long-sleeve shirt. Grey. Nondescript. Standard for the RIF.

They could be watching him, tailing him. He could have a patrol on him, monitoring his every move. They could report back. He hadn’t cut off ties, he was still fraternizing with his former life, he was nothing but rulebreaks.

The woman kept moving, no silver disc at her side, instead a lengthy skirt with frills and flowers. The RIF would never approve of that. It wasn’t them. Just a coincidence.

He couldn’t stop watching for them though as they went back to the subway. Every person was a suspect, each trying to keep to themselves, to be inconspicuous, just like an agent would.

Yet also just like a normal person. They could be any of them, anywhere. And the RIF barely had its act together enough to know that he had fused with a spirit, to already detect what he was doing. They weren’t observing him, just weren’t. He knew it was crazy. They knew he couldn’t go anywhere, they already tracked his location. There was simply no need to expend resources following him.

“I do still want to see your place,” Isabelle said, turning on her heel and hovering over the stairs into the station. Kyrylo snapped back to his immediate reality, to his crush standing in front of him who he should actually be focusing on, appreciating these moments while he had them. “If you’re comfortable.”

“Yeah.” Kyryrlo rubbed the back of his head, letting his sentence trail off as he pondered. “I guess that’s…I mean, if you’re fine with it, it’s cool. It’s cheaper than always buying drinks, right?”

Isabelle brightened a bit and gave him a reassuring smack on the arm, as if they were teammates. “Exactly! Because remember, I am poor. So anything to save some money but still see a friend, right?”

“This sounds like you’re describing a mooch.”

“Now you get it.” And with that, Isabelle was gone, waving as she descended into the Brightberg subway. He sighed a final breath of relief, turning around to gather up his scattered thoughts he had left behind along the walk.

Absently, he pulled out his phone, expecting some sort of standard email from the RIF, maybe a message from Felix reminding him to lay low and do nothing. He rubbed at his eye, feeling a pounding sensation behind it deep in his brain as all sorts of anxiety worked its way through his body.

It was a standard RIF email, a calendar update. He had a meeting tomorrow morning he would have to opt out of since he was locked out. He opened the notification to figure out what this one even was. A new meeting he had never seen before. A one-on-one meeting.

With Officer Webb.