"Right. This Saturday? Some other time? First of my new engines is arriving on Friday."

She asks her mate for opinions.

"Saturday's fine. And ooh, engines, looking forward to it."

Nils agrees, they set a time.

So, other than that... Terel's term ends soon but not immediately, right?

"Ends on Julep 36, and it's the 20th now. Rest of this week, most of one more week of classes, then one week of finals, then I'm free. I'll want to focus next week. Even if acing tests isn't all that important compared to how much I actually learned, it'd be a shame to have wasted all the effort I put into classes."

"Makes sense. Should I—wait until then to start making stuff for Empire Imports?"

"It'd be the best time for you to be busy in the near future, honestly. We'll both have something time consuming to do."

"But—" She pauses, and bites her lip. "You're right of course but I still want to whine."

"Yeah I hear you. All will be well in time. And - next Thursday is a study day, and I have no finals on Tuesday or Wednesday of finals week, so we can spend some time together then too. As long as I only get relaxingly distracted and not intellectually distracted."

"Yeah, that makes sense," she sighs, and hugs him.

Hug! Kiss.

"Let's pack up and go back to my apartment?"

Kisssssss~

"Yeah, let's!"

Thursday passes uneventfully. On Friday, the promised board game meetup is scheduled at six. Sadde is almost certainly coming with Terel, but it's proper form to ask and make sure.

Of course he is coming with Terel, and he is continually charmed by how Terel always asks.

"Well, I suppose you won't mind carrying some of my games." 

When they get there he introduces Sadde around, pointedly responds 'that's my business' to the question of whether he's his boyfriend, and the group starts tallying up who wants to play what.

Terel doesn't really have a preference for which game to play. Does Sadde?

It will become really, really obvious that Sadde is in fact Terel's boyfriend. Sadde is probably not incapable of pretending his world does not revolve around him in principle but in practice...

Anyway, he doesn't have a lot of preferences for which game to play, given that he doesn't actually know any games from this world.

They'll end up with a sort of competitive pretending-to-be-fates game revolving around placing tiles that sprawls out over a whole table, then. Points for contributing the most to the political and economic development of the new continent's inhabitants.

Terel and Sadde are accused of colluding. But that's okay because the other players are forming factions, too.

And really, that's totally predictable, isn't it? Sadde's loving it, though, this game is loads of fun.

He does scrupulously stay away from any sort of sabotage or blocking or so on - preventing other players from being good to the continent just feels off. He even plays in ways to help other players who aren't Sadde. "I just want to see the continent flourish, you see."

That deserves a kiss, he thinks.

"Of course. No point being a ruler if you're just going to be screwing everyone else over."

Hesitant kiss, because this isn't really a kissing-appropriate time and place.

"Ah but remember, in this game we're not rulers, we're Fates. That's why all the buildings are a little bit random. We can just encourage people."

As far as Sadde's concerned there's no such thing as a not-kissing-appropriate time and place.

"Hmm, I think I'm gonna want to be a ruler, too, when I'm a Fate."

This sparks a round of scoffs along the lines of 'only Penelope can do that' and one, "No politics at the game table! Lihla, your turn."

He just smirks and continues playing.

Sadde wins on points, Terel comes in fourth out of eight players total.

In between that and starting the next game, Terel whispers, "Fates also ruling places is about a fifth as - eugenicsy - as land warfare, by the way."