Hushed Willows it hurts until it doesn't

somehow in the past year delight has forgotten how to coexist among others peaceably. his attempts at breaking out of his slow fall into hermitage have largely failed without meaning to: he simply, despite feeling, largely, okay, cannot summon the energy to mingle with the others. it is too anxiously overwhelming to sit with how they see him and know it is wrong -- and it isn't their fault, of course -- but a part of him misses when he was younger. he'd been able to hide in other people's stories, then, and it'd been easier. 

he wonders if that part of him is lost forever, and if so, what becomes of him?

seabreeze and increasingly, olive, though. they are safety for him, safe girls to love, and he is surprised by the intensity of his feelings. part of him has always known it would be seabreeze in the end; he just hadn't known what to make of those feelings because he isn't straight. realizing that -- well, gender is a fickle thing -- seabreeze and olive make sense to him now. he will never be their husband or a father to their children. he can be their wife. (the thought gives him chills!)

he is not far from them when they come looking for him. there is such purposefulness to their stride that delight can intuit immediately why they've arrived in tandem: olive's scent confirms it. nonetheless, "hi," he murmurs shyly, reaching out to embrace first seabreeze and then olive, his eyes finding hers in a searching look, leaving the question unasked.