A Tale of Two Hugs

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John woke up in heaven. Which was another way of saying that he was still cuddling with Qhila. While he had warned his mom that he might be staying out late, it hadn’t been the plan to stay the night here. When the cute kobold nodded off in his lap, however, he plainly hadn’t been coldhearted enough to wake her up so he could leave. Instead, he had carefully shifted from a seated to a lying position on the large beanbag and pulled up his sleep menu.

He had set the waking time early, hoping to make it home while Brenda was still sleeping. Not that he was expecting to be in trouble from this change of plans, far from it. If anything, she would be over the moon about him staying the night at a girl’s place. Which was rather the issue, really.

His mom had already expressed interest in meeting Qhila, which was likely to skyrocket if he didn’t get home in time. On top of which she seemed to be operating under the assumption that John and Qhila were going to become a couple. Not exactly an unreasonable assumption from her perspective, and one which was also likely to be further fueled by him staying the night.

But aside from the prospect of facing unendurable amounts of teasing, he couldn’t really explain to his mom why Qhila couldn’t become his girlfriend without revealing the Abyss. And the matter was still too raw for him to try for a cover story unless he had to, as he didn’t trust himself to pull that off.

As for Qhila and Brenda meeting… Well, Abyssal means to disguise the kobold as a human well enough, and for long enough, to make it happen probably existed. But given that Qhila had barrier hopped to the Grave Concoctions instead of using one, and hadn’t mentioned any such means when he told her that his mom wanted to meet her, she probably either didn’t have them or had to use them very sparingly for some reason or other.

All of that was downstream from actually opening his eyes, getting up and heading home though. None of which were prospects he currently found enticing. He would much rather lie here and cuddle with his cute kobold friend. During the night, they had shifted enough that she now lay next to him, snuggled close and with her head on his arm, rather than on top of him.

Regardless of configuration, the warmth and light pressure of her body against him felt divine, and filled him with an emotional warmth that their night of cuddling sleep had allowed to settle deep in his bones. It made him loath to open his eyes and get started on his day, but on the other hand he also felt like even if he got up, the cuddles would follow him in spirit. And at least he probably had a Quest to look at first, justifying a few more moments lying down.

That wasn’t wholly unexpected. Not that he had thought it would necessarily happen today, but it felt like the kind of thing that the Developer was likely to turn into a Quest sooner or later. It also gave him a hint regarding a possible solution, and if the Alchemy Jug matched his initial assumption of what it was, it’d be very nice to have.

The surprise here was the dangling of more rare candies if they didn’t buy a finished disguise option somewhere. At this rate he would definitely have too many to give to Christie in one go, even if the Leveling Up itself was imperceptible. Alternately, he had enough to give some to both Christie and his mom, which was also an option he rather liked.

Compared to that, EXP and Skill Levels were pretty much just gravy. Nice to have, sure, but a side benefit, more or less. He’d have to ask Qhila about the viability of making a disguise of some sort once she woke up, and also if she knew anything about alchemy jugs or humanis elixir. On a less interesting, but still nice, note, Craft had hit Level 6 from making alchemist’s fire during the night.

Since he wasn’t sure she could access the party chat if he was outside of party range, he decided to text her the Quest and associated questions instead. Which brought a momentary frustration when he tried to take a photo of the Quest window and found that nothing showed up on the phone camera. In hindsight, that was the obvious outcome.

After he transcribed the Quest instead, he went looking through the Abyss Auction and Librarians of Alexandria/Abysspedia websites. The Auction had humanis elixir at prices ranging from 500$ to 1000$ per 2 hour dose, which hopefully meant that Qhila brewing one was feasible. He was less optimistic about the likelihood of his Low Alchemy Level being high enough to do it himself.

The Librarians’ website explained that it was, as he had thought, an alchemical concoction that temporarily turned the drinker superficially into a human. Larger dosages lengthened the effect, and it was noted as being a transformation that did not hold up to medical examination and certain types of mundane biometric sensors.

The alchemy jug, however, gave him nothing useful on either website, just an assortment of pages of varying degrees of tangential relatedness to one or both terms, mostly various equipment for an alchemy lab. That probably meant that it was similar to the thing from fiction of the same name, in other words a consistent supply of free humanis elixir.

With that, he had unfortunately reached the end of his excuses to stay snuggling. He set to pondering how best to extract himself without waking her up. Before he actually got anywhere with that, however, looking at her relaxed sleeping expression and small smile with a single fang peeking past her upper lip had him overcome with the desire to kiss her.

A stinging feeling in his chest over the limitations of her kind and the impact it had on their relationship stopped him from kissing her lips. Instead, he placed a gentle kiss on her forehead, and felt a slight fluttering in his stomach as her sleeping smile widened a bit.

Then he reached around and, careful not to touch the pin-thingies in her hair, lifted her head ever so gently so he could slide his other arm free. He succeeded without disturbing her much, but when he pulled away and removed her hand from his side, she started moving it around like she was searching for him in her sleep.

He quickly grabbed the plushie that looked like her dad and put it next to her, causing her to grab it and hug it close. That, in turn, made it utterly impossible for him not to give her another kiss on the forehead before leaving.

“Good morning, sweetie.” The smug, teasing aura coming off his mom was intense enough that anything she cooked within the next week in the pan that was currently in use for pancakes was likely to carry the taste. Despite setting the wake up clock for early, he had found her in the kitchen upon coming home, as though she had somehow known when he would step through the door. “Did you have a good time, sleeping over with your definitely not girlfr-”

His feelings about the impossibility of what she was teasing him with must have been written plainly on his face, because she dropped both tone and demeanor mid sentence and stepped away from the stove to pull him into a tight hug. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I didn’t think that would hit a sore spot.”

John’s efforts to keep the sadness and hurt at bay collapsed, and he crumbled into the hug. Bent down by the weight of his emotions, he was once again the shorter of the two. Like she had done so often when he was younger, she nestled his head between her cheek and the top of her bosom and gently stroked his back. “It’s okay. Anything you need to, just let it out.”

He did not cry, for he had spent his tears over this yesterday, when he and Qhila wept together. But words spilled forth, before he had thought about them. How could they not, when he was in a place of unconditional support and emotional safety. “We- I conf- We talked about it yesterday, about… us. I asked her to be my girlfriend. She… she believes that she can’t love in that way, and that because she can’t, she can’t be my girlfriend… That I deserve better…”

Qhila hadn’t said that last part out loud, but he was nonetheless certain that it was at the heart of why her inability to pair bond made her refuse. For a long moment, Brenda just offered the physical comfort of her embrace.

“And you still stayed the night?” Her question was spoken with a tone of wishing to understand, and to know how she might best help. There was not so much as a speck of disbelief or reproach in her voice.

He nodded, his chin setting off a jiggling that he was currently too sad to have conflicted feelings about. “She… saying ‘no’ hurt her. At least as much as it hurt me. And I’m still her friend… and the only one she has. So I couldn’t just leave her… We spent the evening farming EXP and more or less nodded off on the couch…”

“I’m proud of you, John.” His mom’s tone was firm and warm. “Most people wouldn’t have been able to think of any other feelings than their own in a situation like that. She’s lucky to have you, whether as a friend or something more.”

“She said pretty much the same thing…”

“Good, then I won’t have to go kick her ass.” Brenda allowed herself a bit of levity, and John couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at the mental image of his mom chasing Qhila while armed with a frying pan. She quickly returned to seriousness though. “But I do understand a bit of what it’s like. When I met your dad, he thought he was too damaged to love. Luckily, I was stubborn enough to convince him that I was willing to take that risk.”

That was… probably about his grandparents. On his father’s side. Unlike Sam and Liz, he had never met them. While his parents had answered when he asked about them, the answers had been short and with few details. He had sensed that even talking that much about it made his parents sad, and his father angry, though not at John, so he hadn’t asked much.

All he knew was that his dad’s family life had been bad enough that when the otherwise mild mannered Benjamin found out that he was going to be a father, he had cut off the last contact with John’s paternal grandparents, sworn off any inheritance, and changed his surname to Newman. All so he could spare his son the burden of having them be part of his life.

“Being pushy about it won’t help in this case though…”

Brenda sounded a bit sheepish as she responded, “Depending on the situation, it might be a better idea than it would seem…”

“What? How wou- oh. Right. Grandpa already gave me the ‘girls sometimes say one thing and want another thing’ advice about something else. But this time, being persistent is definitely a terrible idea.”

“Okay, as long as you’ve thought it thro-” his mom stopped mid sentence, then proceeded with a mix of realization and more sheepishness, “Ah, it’s about the bad, personal things you said happened to her, isn’t it?”

It took John a moment to place that remark, recalling that during the talk about where he had disappeared to on Monday, he had explained that having Qhila visit could be a problem. The reason he had given was that she didn’t do well with strangers due to past trauma that he couldn’t specify without breaking her confidence.

It wasn’t the main reason why he thought getting pushy about this was a bad idea, but there certainly was trauma to make it an even worse idea. Before he could figure out how exactly to respond, however, they were interrupted by the fire alarm going nuts.

Brenda let go of him and rushed back to the stove to take off the pan. It contained the blackened, smoking husk of the pancake she had been making when he entered. Now that it was brought to his attention, there was a very distinct burnt scent in the air too, so John went and opened a window.

Once the risk of a kitchen fire was averted and another pan had been found so she could finish making breakfast, she took a look at the slice of charcoal and said,