Sometimes I wondered if life was even worth dealing with. Every day felt like a slog, like I had to go through the motions for nothing more than the chance to do it all again the next day. Each time I woke up it was more difficult to find the energy to move, and I found myself more and more consumed by the desire to question why I was still alive.

The only reason I had any desire to move around at all was Austin. He’d already left for work, and since I didn’t have a job I did my best to make sure the house he came home to was clean at the very least. On good days, rare as those were, I often managed to get started on dinner, or get groceries.

Today wasn’t one of those.

It was well into the afternoon when I finally made my way out of bed. The light from the sun was already beginning to discolor, which meant I laid in bed through an entire day. Again.

Why did Austin put up with me? I was so useless it was almost funny. All I had to do was clean, cook, and all around take care of the house while he worked to pay for everything, but I couldn’t. Even making myself presentable felt impossible most days, and that was as simple as showering and shaving my face. 

But I managed. Showering without a light on was supposed to be dangerous, but it was the only way I could ever manage to get through it without going insane. I couldn’t avoid shaving without looking in the mirror — I’d tried several times, but it only ever ended with me cutting up my face more often than necessary — so I took an eternity just to psych myself up enough to get through it. I wasn’t sure why anyone, Austin included, could stand to stare at my face for more than a few seconds. 

I had only just set down my razor when I heard the telltale sound of the front door being unlocked. Guilt threatened to overtake me as I looked at our bedroom and knew that Austin would again come home to a mess. How many more times could I screw up before Austin gave up and told me to pack my bags?

“Jay, I’m home!” I heard Austin’s calming voice call out from the front door, and for a moment felt all of my worries fall away. 

With a quick check to make sure my hoodie didn’t smell disgusting, I made my way to my boyfriend. The way his face lit up as our eyes met was almost enough to make me forget about all of my problems. I loved that he saw something beautiful in me no matter how awful I managed to look. Even on my worst day he would greet me like I was somehow something to look forward to.

Even on my most self-loving day (rare as they were) I could not for the life of me understand how I was lucky enough to catch the eye of Austin Rueppell. It was purely dumb luck that we both attended the only Halloween party I’d ever gone to, and even more dumb luck that it was him I tripped into. That he liked men at all was the last of a series of minor miracles, as far as I was concerned, especially since I was far from something worth looking at.  

Physically, there was almost no way we could have looked more different. We might’ve been the same height, but even that was marked by distinction. Austin looked like someone built to be as tall as we were, while I looked like a gangly mess of clumsy limbs. Austin was proud of his beard, and it only made him look more handsome, but I couldn’t bear to have a single stray hair anywhere on me (He even once offered to buy me a potion to permanently stop my facial hair from growing, but it just didn’t feel like enough). 

Even the way we each responded to being guys was completely different. He woke up every day thrilled for the chance to be seen as a guy, while for me it felt like an unbearable anchor weighing me down. As a result people looked at him and admired how he took care of himself, and I was lucky to get people to feel a sense of pity if they bothered to give me a passing glance.

Not that I wanted anyone to so much as think about me.

“Jay?” Austin asked, worry evident on his face. Wait, what had he been saying?

“I’m so sorry, love, I zoned out,” I meekly admitted. I hated doing that to him, even if he knew I had a tendency to lose myself in my own head. 

“No need to apologize,” Austin solidified his words with a kiss on my cheek, causing a flurry of butterflies to swarm through my stomach. “I was asking if this was a good or a bad day.” 

The urge to avoid the truth was overwhelming, but I knew not to lie to him. Austin had gotten excellent at noticing when I was hiding something. And he was even better at teasing me until I told him everything. “Bad. I’m sorry, I know you said I shouldn’t be but I am. All I did today was lie in bed. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, hey,” Austin said, as he took my hand in his, “You haven’t done anything wrong, Jay. We all have good and bad days, remember? Besides, I didn’t fall in love with you just because you could cook and clean.” 

I wanted to believe him, but all of the evidence I had told me that was anything but the case. Nobody I’d ever met seemed to have days as awful as mine were, and I couldn’t imagine a reason why he was so invested in me. They especially never had an overwhelming number of useless days compared to productive days. “I remember you saying that,” I admitted, with as much honesty as I could manage. 

“Good boy.”

My skin crawled as he said those words. I never told him, and it seemed he'd never guessed, that I hated being called a ‘good boy’. I wasn’t anything close to good, and I wished he would recognize that fact. 

The silence between us lingered for longer than was normal, but thankfully Austin was quick to clear the air. “Pizza, then?”

Delivery was our go-to on my bad days. Austin, great as he was, had a tendency to ruin anything he tried to cook. It was impressive, and would have even been fun if it didn’t mean that our ability to eat home cooked food was dependent on my depression not overwhelming me. “Pizza’s great. My usual, please?” 

“Hon, I say this with all of the love in the world, but as soon as they hear my voice they’ll know to make your cursed concoction.”

I did my best to pout at him for that. There was nothing wrong with ranch, pineapple, popcorn, and avocado pizza with extra cheese. 

As soon as he scrolled through his phone to call the pizza place I took a seat on the couch and set up one of the many spooky movies we wanted to go through for October. It was a little tradition we had started last year, in the days leading up to our first anniversary. I wasn’t exactly comfortable — I wanted to sleep the rest of the day away and hope that tomorrow I would be better — but with Austin there and the promise of food to sate my appetite I could ignore my slight discomfort.

We were twenty minutes into cuddling (and Hocus Pocus) when the pizza arrived, and I cackled at the disgusted look my boyfriend gave my delicious delicious monstrosity. My smile faded as quickly as it appeared, but the look of joy on Austin’s face was almost enough to bring it back. Almost. 

Wait, that reminded me. As Austin grabbed the plates I rushed to the freezer, where the present I’d bought him the day before sat. I took out the container of daiquiri ice flavored ice cream and set it on the table in front of him. 

“Is that..?” Austin asked, as he caught sight of my little present. I wished I had a camera to take a picture of his reaction the moment he saw it. It wasn’t enough, not compared to everything he did for me, but it was something. And, at least, his reaction was more than enough to bring my smile back.

Once we finished whatever we could I went ahead and refrigerated the remaining pizza food, before I resumed my position of leaning against my boyfriend’s shoulder and half-smiling at the movie. Even if my whole life felt like I was living a lie made for somebody else, at least I had the moments like this to keep me going. 

“Hey, Jay?” Austin whispered, as the witches started doing more of their whole… thing. Would life be more interesting with witches like those in our world, instead of alchemists? 

Or would things just be a billion times more chaotic?

“Jay?” Austin whispered again, more firmly. Right. I needed to respond.

“Hm?” I hm’d eloquently.

“I was wondering, and no pressure at all, if you wanted to go to a Halloween party this Sunday.”

“Huh? What brought this on?” I got off of Austin’s shoulder, and took a better spot on the couch to shoot a confused look at him. Parties and I didn’t mix, he knew that. Things were too noisy and full and people-y. I’d be looked at, either as a gangly man-thing or a gross gangly man-thing, and that was terrifying. Going to the grocery store was hard enough, and I could barely ever find the energy to do that.

Austin scratched the back of his neck nervously for a moment, which only made me more worried. How important was this conversation? “I just… I want to do something with you. It’ll mark our second year together, and I kind of wanted to do the same kind of thing we did when we first met. It’s absolutely fine if not, of course!”

God, how I loved this man. Austin’s desire to do something like that was so enthusiastic that it was almost enough to make me say yes without question, despite everything. I wanted to make him happy, just like he made me happy when we spent our last Hallowversary at home, in each other’s arms. 

“I… maybe,” I answered, after a probably-not-healthy amount of deliberation. “What kind of party is it?” If he said it was going to be as busy as the last one I went to, that was going to be met with an immediate ‘no’.

The look of shock on his face was enough to tell me that he absolutely expected me to decline outright. I couldn’t help but giggle as he seemed to go through the motions of rebooting. “It’s going to be kind of small. Only people from our old graduate group and their dates. It’ll probably be twenty people, maybe thirty. No more than that.” 

Okay, that was absolutely doable. I knew most of the people in Austin’s group of friends. Sure, there would be a good number of unknown people, but it was something I could handle. As long as it was a good day. “Costumes?” 

“Yes, and it’ll probably be a couples’ theme. That’s the idea Sal and Liz were throwing around, at least.” 

Wait, really? Did that mean I could finally… No, nope, no way. That was a long long long long long dead fantasy that I was not about to dredge up. There was no way I was going to remind Austin of that. 

Oh. He was looking at me. “You have something, Jay?” Oh no. No no no. Not this time. 

“Nope!” I squeaked, way too quickly at way too high a pitch. It was fine, I would be fine. I could just keep telling him no until he gave up. That was so much better than the alternative.

Why was he still looking at me? I had done a fantastic job of lying to him. The best, really. “Jay. Sweetheart. Dear. Love. Are you blushing?” He asked as he leaned towards me, looking at me like a wolf eyeing its prey. 

“Not blushing!” I lied, as my cheeks only grew more red. 

“What has my dear, delightful morsel blushing up a storm?” Where did this come from? Austin was almost never this… this… in control.  

More importantly, why was it working?

“It’s nothing,” I lied, like a liar. “Just a… a tiny thought,” I lied again, since I had nothing to lose. “Not a big deal at all.” 

Oh no. The look on his face was not changing. This wasn’t working and my face was heating up and I didn’t know what to do. “Jay, my sweet. What is it that has you blushing like this? Are you hiding something?” 

“Aa,” I aa’d.

And then, just as suddenly as it started, Austin backed away with a worried look on his face. “Is this too much?” he asked, damn him. 

“You were fine,” I whispered, as I felt my senses slowly begin to return to normalcy. Those moments of his were rare but always enough to make more stop thinking about everything. 

“So what was the secret?” He asked, after each of us took another few seconds to breathe. “You know I won’t judge you, no matter what it was.”

“I…” I hesitated. I had only mentioned my story a few times, and not at all over the past year or so of our relationship. I trusted him, and I knew he wouldn’t judge me or anything like that, but I didn’t want to risk making him uncomfortable over a silly fantasy.  

“Hey, hey,” Austin whispered, as my expression began to shift to one of fear. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, I promise. I just want you to know that, no matter what it is, I would never judge you or tell anyone else. Okay?” 

I nodded. 

And made a choice.

“Do you, um, remember that story I used to write?” I asked, as I felt my face heat up once again. 

Austin only needed a second before recognition reached his face. “Wait, do you mean that old story about the fox woman thief?” 

I nodded, after recovering from my surprise. I’d expected him to have forgotten about it completely.

“I thought you’d stopped writing it! Did something about it give you an idea?” 

“I… I did stop writing it. And, um, maybe.” I admitted, my voice barely above a whisper. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue. Reminding him of my silly self insert story was bad enough, but if I went any further there was a chance that he might actually figure out that it was meant to be a self-insert story. Or worse, that I liked to imagine myself as the thief. 

 “What’s up?” He asked, just before his face lit up. “Oh my god! Babe, this is the story with the PI, right?” 

“Yeah? Wait, you actually read it?” I asked, trying not to let my excitement show in my voice. 

“Of course! Sal recommended it to me.” He said with a smile, “I never mentioned it because by then you’d already taken a break from writing, but I loved it. Inspector Lupin was fantastic.”

Wow. I’d never realized. The story, especially as I dived deeper into Sable’s dynamic with her enemy/boyfriend, felt way too self indulgent. I would never, ever tell Austin, but as we started dating Lupin very quickly morphed into a likeness of Austin himself. By the time the two characters started expressing romantic interest, I couldn’t help but imagine myself-as-Sable in various situations with Austin-as-Lupin. 

“Well I’m glad you liked it, because that was, kind of, a little bit, my idea.” Nerves kept me from looking in his eyes. I didn’t want to risk seeing the answer on his face before he said it aloud. I especially didn’t want to see his reaction when he realized that I wanted to be Sable.

“Oh? You mean us being those two specifically?” Austin asked, with no hint of emotion one way or the other to help me pinpoint how he felt. “Well,” he continued, as if there was nothing wrong with what I wanted, “getting two custom potions for us might be kind of hard since Halloween is only six days away, but I’ll absolutely try.”

“Really?” I asked, finally meeting his eyes. For a split second there was a look I couldn’t place on his face, but it was gone in an instant. 

“Really.”