smilestopscars | Voicemail

"Okay, the muscles and the drugs were a little out of left field," Ezra admitted, after a beat. "Other than that, though, I was spot on."

He'd met a lot of unseemly types over the years. Including saving little kids from witches in an actual gingerbread house.

His next pause was a little more contemplative. "Good job escaping them, darling."

"The drugs are because they drink lyrium so they're immune to our magic," Anders explained. "The muscles seem to be recreational. They have to look intimidating to properly subdue us wily mages, after all."

He paused too, shifting to a more serious tone. "And thank you. It's a dreadful system. I'm just sorry I wasn't able to take everyone else with me."

"Well, you can't save everyone," Ezra replied, his tone slightly lighter than it ought to have been. Masking something else.

His perspective was one of a mostly-former assassin, so the hint of darkness was regrettable, but also unavoidable.

"Sometimes just getting yourself out of the fire has to be good enough." A beat. "Or so I've heard."

“That’s what I’ve heard too,” Anders agreed. “But someday, if I can ever figure out a way to do it, I’d like to make my world a better place.”

He felt a pang of guilt as he said that. What was really keeping him, after all? Fereldan was hard to get to, but that could be overcome if one was determined,

Ezra was also wondering about that. But he also figured doing so out loud would've been a little outside what was safe to get into in this conversation. And anyway, it wasn't as if he didn't know Limbo City could use all the help it could get, too.

"Well, as far as goals go, it's not one anyone should have a problem with."

Anders wouldn't have had a great answer, anyhow. He'd shoved the whole possibility out of his head for a long time until the trip to LA and even this conversation had it bobbing back up.

"Nobody we know, anyhow," he acknowledged, happy to keep the discussion at that. "What about you? Any grand plans to save the world?"

"None whatsoever," Ezra relied merrily.

His focus was more on just not actively making the world worse.

"I feel like I can do my part for the world in other ways," he quipped, as an addition. "Such as being attractive and fun."

"Well, better than trying to be ugly and mean, I suppose," Anders returned. "And much more considerate."

"Thank you, that's exactly what I think." Or at the very least the image he liked to project. But, same diff. "It's like a public service."

Anders couldn't help but smile into the phone.

"And now I see why Kathy and Dante like you so much," he said. "It's the modesty, obviously. And the public service."

"Mostly the public service." A beat. "But it's a very good public service, at least."

Honestly, right this moment, the only clue that Ezra wasn't treating this as a completely normal conversation was that if Anders had been practically anyone else, he would've been hardcore flirting at him by now.

Meanwhile, cheerfully boasting about his face and body and how fun he was was just his way of existing in the world.

"They caught on to that pretty early on, like the very smart people that they are."

And if Ezra had been almost anyone else, Anders would have flirted back. It was hard not to, when someone incredibly handsome was being charming at you.

He (mostly) resisted the urge.

"Meanwhile, I was sadly unenlightened to your skills," he sighed. "... I'm not sure how that happened, by the way. It's not that big a school."

Ezra would've liked to think that it helped that this was over the phone, too. It was much harder to be handsome over the phone.

Never mind how he thought it helped in other ways. He wouldn't have admitted it, but being in his own kitchen was a comfort. Anders was just a voice.

"Oh, I don't know," he said, his shrug inaudible with how soft and smooth the fabric of his shirt was. "It was surprisingly easy not to really meet everyone. Especially for someone as lazy as me."

Even though he'd also been aggressively social in his own way.

"Maybe that's it," Anders said. "I wasn't exactly going out of my way to make new friends after the first few months, either. You get into a routine, and meeting everyone doesn't always fit into it."

Besides, a lot of his early friends had vanished soon enough. He hadn't had the energy or desire to seek out new people to replace them.

"Also I wasn't around that much during my senior year, anyway," Ezra replied, a little airily.

As if that wasn't a major reason behind so much of this estrangement he was trying to dismantle now.

"So I suppose the stars just weren't in the right alignment for us to have met."

"But then Kathy and Dante gave the stars a nudge a little bit," Anders nodded. "... oh, that reminds me. When do you think you'll be on the island next?"

He had heard that Limbo City was a nonstarter, and it didn't seem like the right time to step into that particular hornet's nest.

Limbo City was a world of no, thank you.

So Ezra appreciated it not being brought up.

"When either I'm invited next, or the mood happens to take me," he said. "I don't really plan too far ahead."

"Fair enough,"Anders said. "I'm not sure I'd have a much better answer. I haven't even made up my mind about homecoming yet."

He hesitated, realized he didn't have a whole lot more to say that wouldn't run the risk of stepping onto shaky ground. No need to ruin a perfectly nice conversation with that.

"So .... see you when the mood strikes, I suppose? Unless you wanted to talk to me about anything else."

Ezra hadn't even considered Homecoming. He probably needed to pay a little more attention to his email.

But that was not what he said.

There was a pause. And then, his tone perhaps a little un-Ezra-like in its mater-of-factness, he said, "I miss them. You know that, right?"

He didn't want to get onto all the shaky ground, either. So this was just... something he wanted to have out there. Another token. This time to combat old accusations from Dante about how never said anything real.

Well, this was real.

"I do now," Anders said, surprised into his own bluntness by Ezra's tone. "And it scares me, because I can't stand the thought of you hurting them again."

There was other stuff there, and simple jealousy was high on the list. But watching Kathy get psychically smashed by Ezra again would be fifty times worse for Anders than if she just slept with him.

"I know," Ezra replied, keeping it simple and even. "Neither can I."

He had a lot of guilt inside him that he didn't think he'd ever fully shake.

"Saying 'don't do it' is probably too easy," Anders observed. "But ...."

He didn't have a better idea.

"I can't make promises," Ezra said, with some faint soft quality. "It's not as if I set out to do it the first time."

But life had intervened in ways he was not willing to dosclose. It had taken him long enough to talk about it even to Dante and Kathy, and they'd been directly affected.

"All I can say is that I'm trying."

"Can I ask what happened?" Anders wondered. "All I know was that one day you were their best friend, and then you were just nowhere for a long time. And now you're trying again."

For a moment, the only sound down the line was Ezra's sigh. If only because the way he rubbed one eye and then the bridge of his nose probably made no noise.

"It's a long story that was exhausting to live through," he said, finally, "and that's exhausting to tell."

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