AnimeCon Harem 16: Epilogue pt KS (Patreon)

Kelly sat on the edge of the bed, watching Stephanie curled up to snuggle against Brian. For reasons unknown, Stephanie had possessed more metamagical juice than them—the girl’s first kiss pouring power into Brian didn’t knock her unconscious from the strain. So, after a few minutes to catch her breath, Stephanie had kissed their sleeping prince again, until all of her magic was spent and she dropped down on top of him. Close examination of her hairline as Kelly arranged Stephanie into a more comfortable position beside Brian had revealed a millimeter or so of pale blonde appearing at the roots of Stephanie’s pink tufts.

Looking over Brian as they always did, no glowing magic lines or runes or anything of the sort were evident to show the spell frames were almost done—she had no idea what that might even look like and the longer this farce went on, the more frustrated she became.

We could wake him up early, Kelly thought, not for the first time. We need him here with us. He maybe doesn’t have to be COMPLETELY healed. Right?

Life here with Emily was okay.

It wasn’t good; it wasn’t great. It was okay, it was an awkward game of make believe where the two pretended things were going to be alright, where alright was status pending. Their focus on just getting through each day without him grew more and more strained, and working towards being able to see him awake again felt increasingly hollow and fragile. Their patience and sanity stretched a bit further to encompass each day, with them going through the motions of life while trying to focus only on a resolution that was always just out of grasp.

So—so, yeah, I’m definitely in love with him, and that just makes this suck, Kelly blew her bangs out of her eyes with an annoyed puff of her lip. Steph was right about it. She’s always right. Things just aren’t the same without him.

Almost every day, Kelly went to work and played at being their family breadwinner, while Emily imagined herself the dutiful housewife, taking care of laundry and dishes and making sure meals were ready. Only—at minimum wage, the meager income Kelly brought in was laughable, a joke. The Dollarydoos job here in Seneca was a complete cakewalk compared to the inner city one she’d worked, and Kelly spent an excruciating amount of her time on the clock looking for work to do, because it just wasn’t busy enough there. Emily had latched onto the simple series of basic chores out of a desperation, more to feel like she was contributing rather than actual necessity—they both knew it, and were in some unspoken agreement to not bring up the fact that Kelly could have easily taken care of the basic everyday stuff herself after work.

That wasn’t to say Kelly didn’t appreciate the support; it was just that none of this life-in-waiting felt very real to her. The only meaningful thing they seemed to be accomplishing was kissing Brian full of magic on their little made-up schedule rotation. That was weird. Surreal. He didn’t need to drink or stay hydrated, he didn’t pee the bed or make messes, didn’t seem to sweat. He was just laying there on the bed as if asleep, the magical stasis bullshit just sort of handwaving away fucking reality in such a way that he didn’t need basic staples of life like a calorie intake.

Sure, supposedly he still needed air, but it wasn’t like they were going to smother him anyways. Emily reported shifting him about so that he wouldn’t get bed-sores, but neither of them were sure if that was a real problem for him. Kelly had carefully knocked his knee with the edge of an empty coffee mug once and discovered he didn’t have a kick reflex right now. They had undressed him and wiped him down with a washcloth the one night, but he didn’t seem to sweat or have body odor. The only thing they seemed to accomplish was preventing dust from building up on him.

Too fucking weird, Kelly frowned.

The weirdness weighed on her mind a lot, not at all helped by the fact that Emily apparently had semi-regular phone calls with her mother. Kelly hadn’t yet had an opportunity to meet the Mrs. Rivera persona of Actress, and Emily somehow hadn’t thought to question the woman about her involvement in a previous harem. The tunnel-vision Emily was locked into surely played a part there, because all of Emily’s current attention was laser-focused on their current situation with Brian—but, the whole thing made Kelly seriously uncomfortable.

Just becomes another thing hanging over our heads, Kelly thought. The Masters. Some previous harem, and us being tied to it. The anime bullshit powers with the charm. The different future timelines of us that the send crap has me freaking out about all the time. This new shitshow with the whole CHRISTINE nonsense. All of this stuff to deal with, and it’s like none of it can be really dealt with properly, not until we have Brian back. I’m really gonna flip out soon—this is all too much.

It went without saying she was extremely concerned about her own relationship with Brian. She’d hustled him off in a hurry to rescue Christine, and she still didn’t even know how he felt about that. Did he think that was the right thing to do? Would he resent her? Was all of this here some fantasy of wishful thinking, because any day now he would wake up and want to break things off with her? Kelly needed to know what he thought about everything, how he felt about her. Not knowing was driving her a little bit more insane each day.

“Kelly?” Stephanie asked in a sleepy murmur, not even opening her eyes.

“Steph?” Kelly whispered back.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Stephanie promised. “S’gonna be okay.”

“Yeah,” Kelly tried to sound convincing. “Sorry if my uh, my mood woke you up or whatever.”

“It’s okay,” Stephanie’s eyelashes fluttered as she stirred and tried to struggle up onto one elbow. “How long was I asleep?”

“Almost four hours,” Kelly said. “How was it?”

“Good!” Stephanie beamed. “Draining, but nice. It felt like it helped him a lot. Rebecca was right—he’s dreaming.”

“Can you go into it?” Kelly asked, gently tracing her fingertips along Brian’s arm. “Like, the dreamscape thing?”

“Hmm,” Stephanie pouted. “No, not like she does, I don’t think. But, I can tell he’s dreaming. He feels… funny. Not uhm, not ha ha funny, but more like… off kilter? Funny?”

“He’s okay?”

“He’s…” Stephanie paused, rubbing her eyes. “Maybe a little confused?”

Kelly felt her heart ache at simply looking at Stephanie, because the girl was too adorable. She could admire and appreciate each and every minute gesture and movement Steph made and be completely engrossed and simply never grow tired of it. The love she felt for Emily, and even her feelings for Brian weren’t quite as mature as the longing she had for Stephanie, just yet—although it also helped that both of them were here with her every day. The thought of Stephanie leaving again to go back to her university tomorrow morning made Kelly want to have a small breakdown.

“I feel like,” Stephanie sighed and rested her chin upon Brian’s chest. “The feeling I get is that he’s a little lost, like he’s lost his place in a book. He’s not sure what’s really happened, and what might be part of a dream, where his place was in the story of what’s going on. He does want to wake up and figure all of that out again, though. I can tell.”

“Stay with us,” Kelly asked in a quiet voice.

“I want to!” Stephanie beamed. “I’m working on it. I’ve had this, this fixation on just getting here. The bike was a big part of that. The library is, too. My credits can transfer to the college here in Seneca, but I still have to finish out the semester back there, first. I am moving here, as soon as I can. That’s also why I didn’t get an actual car, if I can put part of my savings towards an, an apartment or—”

“That’s dumb, you can just stay here,” Kelly insisted. “I’m being so serious. Brian—look, I know this is Brian’s place and not mine, but he isn’t going to fucking turn you away. We can just all be here, with him, who the fuck cares if it’s crowded. It’s never gonna feel crowded, so long as it’s—you know. Us.”

“I know,” Stephanie assured her in a soft voice. “I’ve—I’ve actually been messaging back and forth with Emily about that. She um, she snuck through his email stuff, since his computer here was still logged into most everything, I guess. Not to just snoop around! She was able to check on his bank account and everything that his bills here draw from.

“But uh, but anyways, he has four more months on this single bedroom, single bath lease here. Or… or, instead, we could maybe pay the penalty and move out earlier, find a bigger place. Emily wants us to move in over at aunt Mattie’s place where he used to stay, since they have a big ranch house, there. Their friends Michael and Tanya live there, but the other one, Will, moved out. So, now there’s two empty rooms over there. Have you met any of them?”

“Just Michael and Tanya,” Kelly said. “They’re okay. Helped us get Brian inside from the car. Was worried they’d be checking in on him, but I guess Brian and them kinda grew apart during the whole Chloe thing, and his local friends here not hearing from him much just got to be the new normal.”

“We’ll fix that,” Stephanie said. “Soon.”

“Not soon enough,” Kelly blew out another long breath. “Just—I’m just worried. About everything. How he’ll react. How he feels about me. About us, about everything. Like, for us it’s been all this time, but what if for him it’s like, minutes ago he was still at AnimeCon? What if he’s not ready for, for. Cohabitation. Not just me. You, Emily. All of us. Because—I’m so fuckin’ ready for you to be here, but what if he’s not? What if all of that happening is just uncomfortably fast, for him?”

“I knowww,” Stephanie let out an adorable huff. “I know. We’ll see when we get there. Give him time and space and lots of love. Because, I love him, I love you. So, all of this is going to work, and none of the little bumps or hiccups will even matter. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Kelly said.

“Give me a kiss,” Stephanie demanded, sitting up. “Gimme kiss, right now! Then I’m gonna kiss Brian again, and I think that will be the last one I can give him if I have to ride back in the morning. There’s no way I’d be able to kiss him and then be safe to ride afterwards, not for hours.”

“So just… stay,” Kelly suggested, leaning over Brian so that she could give Stephanie a kiss.

“Mmwuah,” Stephanie smacked her lips against Kelly’s but didn’t allow things to get any more intimate than that. “You know I want to. But—I can’t. Need to finish this semester, before I move.”

“Do you, though?” Kelly asked.

“I think so,” Stephanie replied. “I think about it a lot. Brian wouldn’t want me to be rash, or feel like I threw away everything I was working towards before, just to be here more immediately. That would make him uncomfortable.”

“It’s not throwing everything away,” Kelly complained, leaning back in to fish for another kiss. “You’d just be set back like, one year of school, tops.”

Stephanie grinned and awarded Kelly with another kiss, but didn’t say anything else.

“And…” Kelly tried to tempt her. “You’d be here to put more magic into Brian’s healing. So—he’d wake up even faster.”

“You know I want to,” Stephanie said in a quiet voice. “You know how much I want to. It’s better if when I do come, it can be as a library assistant, rather than starting somewhere at entry level.”

“It’s not paid that much more than what I’m making,” Kelly made a face. “Why don’t we just have Emily start working again? If she’s—”

“Hey,” Stephanie put a finger on Kelly’s lips to cut her off. “That’s for all of us to discuss after Brian’s back with us for real, okay? How we all want to live, how it all—how all of this with us together works. Until then, we do the best we can, and we try to be smart. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Kelly said. “I just don’t want you to go.”

“I know,” Stephanie said. “But, everything’s going to be okay! I promise.”

“Yeah?” Kelly asked, giving Stephanie a look. “What about Christine?”

“We’ll get all of that figured out somehow, too,” Stephanie said, settling back down atop Brian and giving his sleeping features a gaze full of love for a long moment. “You’ll see.”

Then, Stephanie moved in and kissed Brian. Being so close while it was happening, Kelly could almost feel the nearby conduit of power open up. Fiery pink magic poured unseen through Stephanie’s kiss and into Brian, the energy blossoming into life upon the catalyst of the fierce feelings Stephanie had for him. After five seconds of those incredibly delectable lips being locked with Brian’s, Kelly watched on as Stephanie relaxed and went still, her weight shifting to the side.

“Goodnight, sunshine,” Kelly murmured.

Kelly climbed up onto the bed beside the pair and followed suit, bringing her mouth to Brian’s in a tickling rush of starlight slivers. Magic moved in a steady current of red, time and space flew past her awareness at bewildering speeds, and before she was ready to give up, she found she could give no more. Darkness and vacuum left behind stole her vision in a dizzying wave of familiar exhaustion, and with a slump across the bedspread Kelly joined Brian and Stephanie in a deep sleep.

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/// There'll be timeskip to the next one, and that'll be where Brian is waking up! Look forward to it, I've had you suffering for long enough. We have maybe two or three more sections for AnimeCon Harem before it's all concluded, but then I'm gonna take some time to go backwards and finish up Eighteen and Up and work on Afterparty before we move on ahead into Renfaire Fantasy. That'll hopefully give us time to get some sort of basic Renfaire Fantasy cover art made from Deryl for me starting it up as a new fic on RR and SH and places.