When this one turns out to be fake it's really going to fuck him up.

But it doesn't have to right now.

Well, there isn't much she can do to convince him she's real, but she can keep holding his hand.

He starts thinking about the needs of humans. Since now there is a human who loves him and he needs to make sure she is all right. Humans need more sleep than Elves. They need more food, they can't tolerate long periods of singing...

She giggles again. "I love you."

Fourteen is significantly younger than Kib was when they met. Fourteen is really young, he should have asked if she was fourteen - he would have handled this differently if he thought it was real, he would have been more thorough about asking questions. 

He's just so tired. Maybe he should sleep or something; maybe he can pause his world and sleep for years. He doesn't sleep well, he has nightmares, but there's probably something for that somewhere here.

"Thank you," he says. "That was very nice. I should let you -" go be fourteen and forget that things like this can exist -

"I can stay. It might help you sleep." She's not nearly dwindled enough to forget him.

And not going to get that way, what the fuck, why doesn't she have a necklace. He tells Midnight to get her a necklace. 

He shakes his head. "Thank you," he tells Ruviri. "The room number is 61."

"Thanks," she tells Findekáno. And she holds Sunset's hand all the way to room 61.

"Do you need anything -"

"If it won't wake you up to have somebody in and out could you tell Ava" (she knows Ava too, thinking about her sets off a cascade of equivalently detailed adoration tempered by the fact that Ava is not literally there) "where we are, and she can bring me stuff?"

it will almost certainly wake him up, but he tells Ava the room number and to please bring her things as needed - "did your brother say why a girl -"

"So it wouldn't get complicated by sex stuff." Ruviri is prrrrrobably heterosexual all by herself but that's not going to come up given how obviously gay Sunset is, her mind just doesn't go there.

He is pretty certain it wouldn't anyway, that's not really a place he gets to mentally anymore and if he did he is very attached to the boyfriends he has but - "yes, that's what I wanted to make sure you knew - that I wouldn't -"

"I know," she assures him. She has not exactly been brought up to consider herself shockingly young the way people from other worlds seem to - if Ava weren't asexual they would probably have been an item for a year now and nobody at home would think that was weird, plus she was slated for clients soon - but she knows and that is fine.

Probably not Thauron, then, he always finds a way to work that in. He lies down and closes his eyes and feels the not-empty not-horrible sensation and eventually falls asleep.

She holds his hand. Eventually Ava brings her dinner.

He has nightmares. All of them are horrifying. Lots of them are about Kib actually being captured instead of the present situation which is just a hallucination. 

She can't tell exactly what they're about but she can hold his hand. And when she gets tired she can find a way to curl up that doesn't pin him down or close him in or resemble any of the things that frighten him and maintain skin-to-skin all the while, and fall asleep.

He wakes up first. He lets go. It is terrible, letting go, but he can't let himself get dependent on it. It is okay to enjoy an occasional reprieve, it's not okay to rebuild parts of his brain around having this.

He goes outside and finds Findekáno singing and takes his hand and pretends it's him and they worry for Kib together.

Ruviri wakes up by herself and goes and finds Ava and has breakfast and finds Cir and hugs him and then goes looking for Sunset.

Outside! Singing! The sleep helped him; he's feeling more able to engage with this scenario on its nonsensical premises. He is more relaxed. He is still just as distant. 

Oh pretty. She goes and sits next to him and listens. She should not touch him unexpectedly so she doesn't.

He should decide how often he wants to give himself the reprieve while it's available and how often would mess him up. He decides an hour would be fine. He takes her hand.

Handholding and pretty singing. No wonder Cir likes it so much, it's more interesting if you know the singer.