What Fools These Mortals Be

Chapter 10 - The Cliché

"How can they be that smart and that stupid at the same time!?"

"Preach!" Nia holds the spoon over her head as she sits on the couch and stares into a container of Bing Cherry ice cream. She listens to him rant, his pacing practically wearing a groove in his plush, living room carpeting.

"I swear, Kara could walk into Lena's bedroom naked, and Lena would say, 'Darling, what happened to your clothes? Were you assaulted? Should I call the police? Should I call a therapist?' which is very just, but... pathetic."

Nia chuckles, but it's a humorless sound that ends in a groan. "Kara is even worse. If Lena walked in naked, she'd just look at Lena and say, 'Golly, aren't you cold? You sure look cold.' Then she'd take off her own clothes... So she could put them on Lena."

"I wish you were exaggerating, but those two are... are... Do you know what asymptotes are?"

"No, but I feel like I'm about to."

"An asymptote is a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance. That's what they are."

Spoon in her mouth, Nia looks up from her ice cream and stares, long and meaningfully, at Querl. Finally, she pops the spoon from her mouth. "Yeah, you lost me. I speak dozens of languages, but Super Nerd isn't one of them. Care to translate that?"

"The word has Greek and Latin origins, and I know for a fact that you speak both. What I mean is that I feel tonight Kara and Lena grew closer to recognizing themselves, their truth, in us. I could see them inching closer. But no matter how close they grow, even if they continually approach it, they'll never meet their destination."

"So we're doomed to be stuck in these roles, wearing these shoes, playing human for the rest of their lives because they can't get their shit together? Oh, hell no. This little Cupid is not spending the next fifty years as Nia Nal, cub reporter."

"I don't know. It's not all bad. I'm rather enjoying having you around."

Placing the ice cream on the table, Nia turns so one leg is fully resting on the couch and smiles up at Querl. "Really?"

"Of course. You cook, vacuum, dust, do laundry, and even wash windows around here. Maybe Nia Nal should quit her job and start a new career in house cleaning. You can call it Maid in Heaven." Querl grins at her, as devilish a glint in his eyes as one of his kind can manage. "Oh, but keep the heels. They're a selling point."

She gasps. "I'll give you a selling point in the back of your head." She takes just a moment to scoop up one of her teetering high heels from the ground before launching herself over the back of the couch at him, and then the chase is on.

Nia wields the shoe like an angry Viking would an ax, just slightly above her head and back as she pursues her prey. Querl proves to be quicker than he looks and a master of his terrain. He winds around the dining room table, rolls across the billiard table making balls spray across the floor, hurtles the coffee table on his way back through the living room, and slides under the breakfast bar. However, Nia remains in close pursuit. His smiling glances over his shoulder find her smiling back.

"Stop running so I can kill you!" Even as she threatens him, she can't hold in her laughter.

"I decline! That seems ill advised!" He laughs and slides a chair in her way as he slides on his stocking feet across the hardwood floor and grabs a door frame, pulling himself into his bedroom.

"That's a dead end, and you're dead too, Querl," Nia says as she nearly slides past the door but manages to stop herself and hurry after him.

She's right. There's nowhere to go and little room to function here with the California king-size bed taking up half the room. Not to be so easily defeated, Querl leaps onto the waterbed and bounds across it in long strides. Nia hikes up her dress with one hand and jumps after him, the shoe still held high as a threat. However, when Querl hops off the other side, the mattress undulates with enough force to knock Nia off her feet. She thrusts her hands forward to break her fall as she hits the mattress. Luckily for her, it's very soft.

"Ugh." The landing still knocks the wind out of her, and she's momentarily stunned. Then she pushes up and stares down, and her eyes go wide. "Great Divine Being."

"What's wrong?" All of the mirth is gone from Querl's voice to be replaced by concern as he comes around to her side, careful to stop just short of touching her. "Did you injure your mortal form? Do you require medical intervention?"

"I'm not what's hurt." Nia leans on her elbows and pulls back the hand holding the high heel, plucking the heel itself from where it punctured the silk sheets and the mattress below. Water fountains up.

"Great Divine Being, my bed." Querl slaps a hand over his gaping mouth, his face going from shocked to angry when Nia giggles. "Don't laugh. You skewered my bed."

"Sorry, sorry, but I was just thinking... You should call a maid." That just makes her laugh harder.

"It's not funny."

"It's a little bit funny." The expression on his face tells a different story. "Okay, fine Mr Grumpypants. Help me up." She holds up a hand which he takes, eventually, and pulls her from the leaking bed. "I'll help you... whatever someone does when this happens. Ask Siri what to do."

"Siri cannot fix my bed. You put a hole in it."

"Right, it's all fun and games until someone's waterbed springs a leak. Hold tight." Nia leaves the room, coming back moments later looking at her cell phone. "I guess we have to drain it, dry the area, patch it, and refill it."

"How long will that take?"

Nia glances at him out of the side of her eye. "I hope you have a hose and lots of towels."

After a lot of arguing, they manage to get the bed on its way to draining. The process is expected to take two hours, and moving that along is a miracle beyond either of their scopes. Ready for bed, they leave it to finish up and stare at the couch.

"I'll take it," Nia says.

"No, you're right. I did egg you on. What is it that humans say? You made your bed, now lie in it. I'm going to do that except it's a couch." He tosses a pillow from his bed onto the couch in discussion."

"Look, Querl—"

"You're my guest here. These are the rules of hospitality. Take the bed."

She nods once, unable to argue, and turns to leave, but she only makes it as far as the doorway before she turns back around. "There is another option you know."

"Do you know a bed miracle?"

"I know a guy who could turn it into a wine bed, but otherwise, no. What I mean is we can share."

"Don't be ridiculous. This couch is hardly big enough for both of us."

"Divine Being," she mutters. "I mean share the guest bed. It's a queen size. We're both two adult Cupids working together. Is there any reason we can't sleep in the same bed?"

"Well," Querl pauses, "we are professionals."

"Exactly, and this is just a job, right?"

"Right."

"Then come on." Nia holds out a hand and smiles.

They end up facing apart on either side of the bed, each of them practically falling off the mattress with their professional distance. They pile the extra pillows from Querl's bed between them as an extra barrier. It's the most entirely platonic and work appropriate bed-sharing situation in the history of the world with no sexual tension whatsoever... riiiight.