"He's phasing again," Georgie said calmly from his side. "Do the thing, Leelah!"
"Oh! Right! The thing!"
Before David had processed that the beauty surrounding him was real, Lily cupped his face and kissed him deeply on the lips.
Georgie gave a delicious smirk as she saw David's shocked face. "He's back! How are you, Hero-Lover?"
"I'm good, I think," David heard himself say to the beauties. "I'm just not...entirely sober."
"You don't appear to be entirely here though, either," Georgie said as she walked over to him from where she had voiced the Christmas tree should go, sitting next to him on the couch, her thighs leaning into his. "So I will help you."
As Lily had just done, Georgie cupped David's face and kissed him on the lips. But Georgie's kiss was more passionate- seductive.
When the kiss was finished, David looked around his basement in wonder at a radiant Christmas tree where Georgie and Lily were just discussing that it should be.
"This is..." David heard himself mutter.
"The best thing you've seen in your entire life?" Lily replied from his right now, her smile beaming.
"Well, that would be...both of you," David's spent throat uttered in response. His vision now registered his Xbox was on, with the only thing visible being his "Stellar Shift" moving background he had, bathing the three of them in gorgeous shifting galaxy purple and blue. David felt a smile curve the edges of his mouth, and the gentle, loving touches of the two girls.
"2023 is almost over!" Georgie voiced excitedly from his left. "Onward to 2024! What a year, huh?"
David breathed in another hit of his left hand's held device before registering what Georgie- he still couldn't believe it was Georgie frickin' Henley- had said to them.
What a year, huh?
Everything went back to her. To she. The loss in March, the music that followed, the sudden parties and road trips and summer in another state to stop him doing something drastic, only for him to decay and try it anyway at the end of August. The shifting of schedules, of futures, of family allegiances and states of mind. The first taste of true chill, how it felt to float- how he felt even now.
His current living ethos of redemption.
"Can I ever-" David started to voice before coughing, "be Incredible again? It was-"
He swallowed. "It was her Title for me. It'll always be from her. What if it's not me?"
Lily's face registered some emotion David couldn't decipher, and she held his hand, tracing a loving finger over his Blue ring.
Georgie's eyes almost shone with emotion. She gently put a hand to his face, and began to tell him what he always should remember.
"Being Incredible is not a Leah thing, it is a you thing. It is not a creation of Leah, it is an observation of you. When Aslan Titled the Pevensies, do you think any of the Pevensies thought that their Titles were just how Aslan saw them? No! In actuality, it is what they were, and who they became."
Lily's loving hand then held his. David only felt able to stare forward, into the spiraling purple swirls of the only galaxy he knew he could control in real life- although what he was currently living didn't seem real, either, but he attributed that to his current cloud-riding. He missed Lily's gazing at his hand's Blue ring, bought, in essence, because of her.
"Leave her behind as a person, David," Lily voiced softly, sweetly. "Don't leave her positive growth on you behind."
David felt his tongue moisten his cottonmouth as he nodded.
Retrospect
Start from the beginning
