…or, The Hundredth Numbered Installment

Iason came over that night armed for bear.

Figuratively speaking, of course. He didn’t hunt bears.

He brought a wicker hamper with a portable range in it, a set of copper pans and implements, and fresh food and produce. On top of the bounty of fungus he’d found in the forest, he had eggs, goat cheese, spinach, tomatoes, butter, and almonds.

It was all good quality stuff. I could smell the cheese and the vegetables as soon as he opened the basket. It made me think of my mother’s cooking. We’d lived in a market town because she couldn’t stand to buy anything but the barest staples and packaged foods from a grocery store. When she was going to cook, she bought all her ingredients fresh. She tore my dad a new one if he dared come home with so much as a jug of milk from a walled market.

It was nice to think I’d be getting something like a home-cooked meal. Also surprising. Iason had shown contempt for elves who didn’t kill their food.

“I guess the hunting must have been good,” I said as he cleared off my desk to make room for his gear. “The spinach put up much of a fight?”

“The morels were a genuine find,” he said, ducking down and looking at the double cooker to make sure it was sitting level. “I wished to create something to celebrate them.”

“When you said you were coming over to cook, I thought you meant in the lounge.”

“I have no desire to displace the hall’s residents at their own stove,” he said.

“I don’t think it gets much use,” I said.

“I desired intimacy, then.”

“That’s a shock.”

He didn’t take the bait.

He put a sautéing pan on one of the burners and waved his hand over it, then began slicing mushrooms. As the stovetop heated up, he dropped some squares of butter into it and started to cook the mushrooms. He started breaking the big, brown eggs into a copper bowl and whisked them around.

“Where did you find time to go get all that?” I asked. “I know elves can get around, but I hope you didn’t blow off the rest of your day running around after ingredients.”

“Money accomplishes much.”

“You paid someone to go out and get you omelet fixings?”

“The Treehome collective retains a concierge service in Enwich.”

“I didn’t realize concierges were personal shoppers,” I said.

“I do not know if they are,” Iason said. “But they’re more than capable of engaging such persons on our behalf, fortunately. I can navigate the markets without difficulty when time is pressing, but many middlings have never bothered to learn the limits of public behavior in human society. There has been trouble caused when they descend upon the town en masse, such that large groups of young elves are often denied entry.”

“Imagine that,” I said.

He turned to face me.

“You have such a harsh opinion of us, Iamie,“ Iason said. “Surely your own cousins must have included some wicked, wild things, even if they were a bunch of eastern carpenters.”

“They weren’t all carpenters,” I said. “And I don’t believe for a minute that all your people are hunters. Someone’s got to make the furniture.”

“Yes, though perhaps less often than you’d think. Our population grows slowly and we have a lot of heirlooms,” Iason said. “Your ancestors, settled in empty forests and intertwining more closely with humans, must necessarily have more call for the trade.”

“And I suppose you think that’s a bad thing,” I said.

“Good, bad? I am only speaking of the differences between your mother’s people and mine,” he said. He gave his full attention back to his cooking.

It didn’t take long for him to make a pair of golden omelets. We sat on the floor eating them off wooden plates with silver forks he’d brought. It might have made for a light dinner, but the mushrooms, the nutty cheese, and the actual nuts helped fill it out.

“You cook better than I would have expected,” I told him.

“Why? Because humans and gnomes have consigned it to the realm of women? There is much to the art of the hunt beyond the stalk and the kill,” Iason said. “One’s mastery is incomplete if one does not know what to do with a prize when it’s caught.”

“Do you really believe that?” I asked.

“You have tasted the results.”

“Yeah, I have,” I said. I put my plate down, my omelet only half finished. “But you might apply that philosophy to some of your other arts. You don’t seem to have the slightest clue what to do with a conquest after you’ve conquered.”

“I think I have demonstrated that I have a few ideas,” he said.

“Yeah, you do,” I said. “And they aren’t all the interesting or original. It’s hot. You’re hot. But after a while, I might as well be a sock you’re jerking off with. Like last time.”

“You’re not a sock, Iamie,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m way more fun for you,” I said. “But what about me?”

“Don’t you like to feel wanted?”

“I like to feel liked,” I said. “Appreciated.”

“You are the one who wanted something purely physical,” Iason said. “Something sexual.”

“Sex isn’t sexy if it leaves me feeling used,” I said.

“So, you want me to court you for a purely physical, purely sexual relationship?” he asked.

“No, I want you to treat me like a damned human being—a person—if you want to keep getting into my pants,” I said. “If you want anything more than a sexual relationship, or even just a sexual relationship, you need to take as much pride in how you treat me as you do in everything else you do. Or at the very least, stop acting like it’s a point of pride to be able to treat me like shit and get away with it.”

“So you do want me to court you,” Iason said.

“I want you to stop taking me for granted,” I said. “You can do that any way you like. Including leaving me alone if you decide you can’t manage it any other way.”

“And you would really watch me walk away without a single regret?”

“I’d regret you were too much of an asshole to make it work,” I said. “Listen, Iason, I do like you, and I can see you preening yourself over that, but keep listening. I like you, but not that much. You’re hot enough and sometimes interesting enough and occasionally witty or charming or nice enough to be almost just barely worth putting up with most of the time. You act like it’s a challenge or a game to keep that balancing act up, to keep my interest piqued just enough to keep putting up with it, but the upshot of that is that I just barely like you. I tolerate you. Is that what you want? Is that what you’re going for from your intended mount? Someone who barely puts up with you?”

Iason didn’t say anything. Maybe I’d said too much. Marlot had called it, though. He’d shape up or he’d ship out. Or I would. He wasn’t worth it. If I was really that desperate for an elven-style dinner, there had to be places in Enwich that served them.

“You barely like me?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I said. I could have clarified that I liked him better some times than others, but I didn’t want him clinging to that. It averaged out that way. “That’s the shape of it.”

“I see,” he said. He set his plate down next to mine and got to his feet. “I believe I shall go. There was something I wished to ask of you, but I believe now is not the time. You have a refrigerator, so you may keep the rest of my omelet and enjoy it at your leisure. I’ll take the plates and the silver back when next I am here.”

I almost said his name. I almost tried to stop him. To tell him that I didn’t mean it to sound that bad. I’m not a big fan of hurting people. I could tell that Iason was hurt.

But I could also tell that he was thinking. “Now is not the time.” “When next I am here.” He hadn’t made up his mind yet. If it took a little shock and pain to get him to think before he acted, I’d tough it out.

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