Oh good. Then he will snuggle her so much. She is safe in his lap, it is the safest place, so so so safe, anything that tries to harm her in it is getting extremely murdered.

Good.

I love you.

Is Kat okay?

I love you too. She's fine— he sends where he last saw her, being supervised by a very patient Iri. I killed the snake and then figured out how to follow where it sent you. Sorry I didn't get here sooner.

...how long was I -

It's been almost a week. Following the snake turned out harder than expected. He has not actually slept since he noticed she was gone.

Snuggle. I love you.

Snuggle. She is his precious orf and he loves her so much and no one is allowed to hurt her.

Can you fix my hair?

Oh—yeah, of course—

He grabs a bit of power and fiddles with it and now her hair is back at a reasonable length. Snuggle snuggle. He was so worried and now he has his orf again and he is not letting go of her anytime soon.

Now she can be less carefully snuggled and that is good and important.

So important! She will be the most snuggled.

(Somebody's coming.)

Eep

Her all-powerful boyfriend hugs her and glares at the door.

Somebody opens it.

Now somebody is on fire!

Somebody wasn't expecting that!

Good. She loves her all-powerful boyfriend.

He snuggles her some more.

Being on fire is definitely a major inconvenience and ruining his whole day, but it doesn't seem to be actually killing him.

...and there's something oddly... Serik-like in the flavour of his thoughts, now that they're both present to be compared.

It takes her a while to notice. Then she bounces the echo to Serik. ?

...uh what the fuck? Yeah, he definitely recognizes the feel of that emotional state, and he is confused and vaguely concerned and would really like to find out what the fuck. (But if Beka would rather he just kill the guy already he can do that instead.)

I know you won't let him hurt me, it's okay.

Okay. I love you.

So he snuggles his orf and permits that guy to stop being on fire.

He spends half a minute healing from a pile of charred bones, which is not a super pleasant activity, and he's all set to do something vengeful immediately afterward—

—but then he sees Serik, and the look on his face and the way he's holding Beka, and the sheer casual confidence on display makes him instinctively certain that he would lose that fight if he started it. So he marshals his temper and asks, "Is she yours?"

(Even the way he thinks about Beka being Serik's is Serik-like. It's like they're the inverse of twins, two of the same mind in different bodies.)