It is Delicate {Lana & Zalgiman}

Apotheosis
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Good afternoon, my love. (It’s Apotheosis)

Her hands tremble just a little after she’s sent the text. She hopes she’s not overstepping, that she’s not bothering him. But he said it was okay, and after she woke up and saw it was 1:03pm on the clock next to her, her very first thought was to greet him good morning. Normally it would be to check her email, and then maybe order something to eat before diving back into Savior, but… Today is different.

Today is the first day of the rest of her life. With him. Lana Branfeax brings her phone up to her chest, takes a deep breath, and… she waits, hoping he’s awake, and that he’s not in-game or busy.


Laying in bed watching television - which is now paused - so that he can read his phone Zalgiman scrubs a hand through his hair and considers getting up to get himself something to drink. He’d actually expected a text from her earlier, but it seems that she’d delayed longer than he anticipated.

Lana’s heart races when she gets that text back. The fact he’d replied so quickly and with a heart–she never should have doubted him, never should have thought that he wouldn’t have been there for her. Of course he is. He is her promised one. She wonders what it’s like where he is right now. How dark it is outside when the light outside of her house is from a blue sky and warm, sunny days.

I’m doing wonderful today because you messaged me back. How are you? I hope you’ll be able to get some sleep soon.

Her brow furrows. She’s keeping him up. She’ll be considerate…

Don’t stay up just because I’m texting you, either.


Zalgiman rolls out of bed, putting his phone in the pocket of his pajama pants and starts to pad toward the kitchen downstairs. He’ll doubtless have to pull it out again, but he can make his way to the kitchen while he talks to her.

Shit, Lana thinks with a little bit of panic. Her brows creasing in worry as she looks at the last phrase. I’m making him worry about me. He’s…

Her heart blooms again in that way that it keeps doing when she realizes he’s really as sweet as he acts. It’s not fake. None of this is fake. It’s real, what they have. She’d still paid him for their most recent date–overpaid him, actually, she paid him for all the hours they’d spent together and then some–but that’s because she wants to make sure he’s comfortable; that he can get himself something nice. Because she wants him to be happy, too.

I sleep in a lot. 🥱I don’t really have a set schedule for things other than what happens on Savior. And who delivers breakfast during proper breakfast hours anyway?


Zalgiman smiles at his phone, tucking it back into his pocket and gaining the bottom floor as he waits for her next text. Impulsively however, he sends her another before she can manage a response.


Lana’s stomach growls as she looks at the first message. She’s always been someone who tends to wake up ready to eat, and it appears this is no exception. She’s already in the middle of pulling up her usual food delivery app when Wolf’s second text message pops back up. She blinks, and then she feels nervous. She’s never divulged… ‘what she does for a living’ to anyone. Because she doesn’t do anything.

Other than be a parasite, wriggling and writhing on her parents’ wealth.

I don’t work. I don’t need to. Please don’t worry about me, I’ll be totally okay.

She stares at her phone screen then, at the text messages instead of going back to the food delivery app to find something to eat. Lana feels locked in now, hoping he’ll accept that, or that at least he won’t call her… something horrible. Even if it’s the truth.

Her delay in texting him back allows Zalgiman a chance to reach the kitchen, but he doesn’t get a chance to open the fridge just yet. He blinks at her response. It wasn’t expected, but he’s not wholly surprised either.


The little icon that shows that he’s typing flashes back and forth between on and off as he goes through several iterations of what he wants to say.


Zalgiman spends a few moments leaned against the island in his kitchen scrolling for the proper word feeling foolish for forgetting such a common English word. He’s just so used to using the Russian one, and worse he realizes after seeing the word in English that he’d been right about what it was in the first place.


The second time that Wolf’s mentioned his father. Lana straightens up a little in bed, sitting up now instead of lazily lying down. Her FISH gear is still in bed next to her. She’d worn it for as long as possible until she felt so tired, holding Wolf’s hand, that she had to or she might fall asleep inside of it. She’d done it before by accident, and with the recent rumors of hackers–she really didn’t want to try it again and risk… something happening that she can’t come back from. There’d always been rumors about that, too–the interaction between a VR game and the risks it might have on the human body.

She licks her lips thoughtfully, because they’re dry all of a sudden, and she’s thinking. His father… Doesn’t like books, doesn’t know what he does. Sounds like he and his father aren’t on good terms at all. Suddenly she feels a desire to rescue him, like she’s the knight and he’s the prince worth saving.

Don’t be an idiot, she thinks to herself. He probably doesn’t live with his father if their relationship is that bad.

He doesn’t have to know. Your life is yours to live. Older people wouldn’t understand anyway. They didn’t have the Internet back then; they had to find love some other way, you know?

Zalgiman frowns at his fridge, finally pulling out a carton of milk and pouring himself a small glass and putting it back while he waits for a response from the woman on the other side of the phone. When it comes he finds himself sighing out loud wistfully.


He puts the phone in his pocket again and puts the glass on the counter as he scrubs his hand through his hair. Pushing it away from his face. It needs cutting again. Zalgiman closes his eyes and shakes his head. Of course she’s understanding of his work. That’s how they met after all, but he knew all too well how quickly that fact could sour.

Lana’s quick to answer. She’s forgotten pretty thoroughly about ordering food at this point. She’s doing something good for him. He called her kind.

There are people like me who have a hard time talking to people. But you’ve always made it easy. What you do is important to me.

It’s truthful. Even if she doesn’t much like the idea of him spending time with people in the sense that they could be paying him to act as a romantic partner like she… does, or did, she can’t conceive of asking him to stop. It’s what he wants to do, right? No one’s forcing him into it. And if he’s bringing comfort to lonely people like her… then he’s a good person for doing it. He’s so kind. So wonderful.

She loves him.


It’s sent without a thought, and then he stares at the words frantically, wishing he could delete them. They’re such the wrong thing to say, and he equally hurriedly types up a secondary response.


Zalgiman smacks himself in the forehead and growls, wishing that he hadn’t been so honest with her. She was easy to talk to, and he felt like he could trust her. Like he could be honest with her. It was so confusing.

Lana blinks when she receives the message in return. In truth–somehow, she hadn’t interpreted the first message as him wanting to quit seeing her. After all, he’d told her himself: he’d love her until she tired of him. He’s her promised one. Everyone else he sees are just clients.

She presses her lips together. She could…

This is going to seem really weird.
I could buy your time exclusively if you wanted–if the issue is money. Whatever you make from all of your clients, I can pay. Or I could just send you money every month. Either way, you can quit altogether.

Lana braces for him to ask questions. To freak out. She’s used to people doing that. One time she paid for someone’s ER visit. Another time, someone’s rent. Things here and there that really weren’t much for her, but were a lot of money for someone else. It’s not like she’s using it, and they need it more.


Zalgiman sighs in a bit of relief, shaking his head. There’s no way she could really pay that much money, but it was… surprising and generous of her to think she could and offer. He picks up his glass then puts it down and types one more thing before he heads back upstairs.


Lana stares at the text messages for a long moment. He doesn’t believe me, she thinks. She probably wouldn’t believe it herself if she was him.

She gets up from bed. It’s normally a thing that takes her far more effort to do, but talking to Wolf puts an energy in her that she didn’t have before. It takes her some time to walk downstairs to the kitchen, where she keeps her important mail in a box that hangs next to her refrigerator. She takes out an envelope from one of the banks that has one of her parents’ investment accounts, and she opens it. She’d just gotten it yesterday and had to find time to go deposit it into her own bank account–which involves going out into the world, a thing she tries to put off as long as possible.

Which means it’s almost fifteen minutes before ‘Wolf’ receives another text message. It’s a picture. A partial image of a check, all sensitive information covered up by a slim, petite hand with fingernails that have been allowed to grow a little long–certainly not a hand that sees manicures regularly, if ever–save for the five-figure sum in the monetary value box.

And then another text.

That’s a monthly check I get from one of the accounts. I can probably afford it. Anything for you, Wolf. My love.

Zalgiman is back in bed and contemplating turning on the television by the time he gets the picture and text. The amount of money on the check makes his stomach flop. That… was an impossible amount of money. The kind of money that he’d only seen while he lived with his father. He’d given up that life because living with his father was unbearable. Fallen into this one and… He made good money, but not this kind of money.


Again he finds himself typing, pausing, retyping and then ultimately giving up in frustration. How was he supposed to explain? It was so much more complicated than this. For just one moment he closes his eyes. He imagines a life where he doesn’t have to do this anymore. He doesn’t have to go around pretending to go on dates with different strangers. Where he can live his own life. What would he even do? What about Marsward?

Lana looks at his text back for a long moment, putting the check back into its envelope as she contemplates her response back to him. She could argue with him, could tell him to let her provide for him. But… just like if he really wanted to be an escort, she couldn’t stop him, and she doesn’t want to fight him on this, either.

It’s okay. The offer stands if you change your mind. I just want you to be happy.

Change the subject, it’s awkward now, Lana tells herself. So she adds another text.

What kind of food should I order? No Russian places around here But if I order something you like, it’ll be like we’re having it together.


He wonders what she normally eats when she’s not trying to placate him. He’s an idiot really, he’d done everything wrong on learning that she wanted him to accept her offer of exclusivity. Marsward would have been thrilled. Would have tried to talk him into lying to her and saying that he was only with her while continuing to go on dates with other people.

He couldn’t do it.


She feels bashful when he asks the first question. He’s so concerned for her! So kind!

No, I only woke up just a little bit ago. Texting you was the very first thing I wanted to do today.
I eat a lot of delivery food, or simple stuff, like ramen. And I don’t eat much, so I usually order two or three meals and have the rest later at a time.

Lana leaves out the fact that she doesn’t really snack much at all. Or that she really only eats twice a day–before she logs on and after she logs off. She’d actually eaten only once yesterday. No wonder why she feels hungry.

Crepes are a good idea. I’ll order some!

Zalgiman thinks about it for a moment. By her accent she was probably American. Though she could be using a voice modulator. Who would choose to have an American accent though? He shakes his head and looks at her text.


It takes a moment. Lana has to find a place serving crepes–not hard considering how trendy they are, and how she lives in a wealthy town–but once she’s placed the order, she eagerly returns to her text messages.

He’s never been here? She has a little fantasy that traipses through her mind then. It’s him and her at a restaurant that she passes by when she walks to the bank. He’s dressed in normal clothes, and he’s smiling at her, holding a glass of wine. He looks at her just like he does in Savior: like she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. Some part of her thinks it’s silly–surely he doesn’t look exactly the same. Her avatar certainly isn’t just like her. She’s not that odd paleness, she’s never put on makeup before, and her hair isn’t that flawlessly wavy nor does it have that violet gradient. And… well, she’s not an elf. That’s the biggest difference between herself and Apotheosis.

But while the idea of going to the bank makes her filled with dread, the idea of that restaurant date…

It’s too soon. He hasn’t even seen you yet.

Maybe one day you could come here and see if the portions are really any bigger than yours. It’d be nice to meet you for real.

That feels safe. She’s not really suggesting that they do it soon. It’s just a… ‘it would be nice’ thing.

Zalgiman looks at his phone for a very, very long time. A feeling of nervousness flickering over him.


Lana feels her own sort of nervousness now at the end of the line. She was right! Russian accent. It feels like a little victory for her; she’d never been to Russia herself, but she remembers when she was younger and would attend some of her parents’ business dinners. Some of them involved Russian cybersecurity firms, including other companies from all across the world–Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, South Africa, and more beyond–and she remembers, just a little, how some of the Russian accents sounded.

But the idea of traveling all by herself?

I haven’t traveled outside the US before. It wouldn’t be hard for me to get my passport at all. I just would need to get over my nerves first.

It was putting her fear of the outside world mildly. Her discomfort at the thought of going outside. Interacting with people. There were still sometimes people who were keeping tabs on her. Occasionally she Googles her own name and discovers that there’s people writing articles with headlines like, ‘where is Lana Branfeaux now’. People with a keen interest in what happened to her parents also typically have an interest in what happened to her–especially since she did just disappear mostly from the public eye after her mother finally passed away a year after the accident.

She just hopes he’ll understand.


Zalgiman finds that this is true. He could imagine them having coffee comfortably in a cafe. Or him showing her one of the gardens that he knows of. It would be… nice. He looks at his phone, holding it between his hands. He can’t remember the last time he did something casual with someone. Something that friends did. He didn’t have any.

I would like to see you. It makes Lana so happy to read those words. He’s thinking about her like that too! Maybe he’s daydreaming of all of the restaurants they’d go to. All of the sunset walks they could take together. And…

Her face feels so hot suddenly. She’s blushing. Don’t even go there! she rebukes herself.

Maybe I’ll arrange for my passport later today when I go to drop that check off. I bet Russia is lovely this time of year.


Zalgiman can feel his face burning. A mixture of shame and embarrassment rolling in his stomach. Cheater. It wasn’t cheating on Marsward to have a friend. To go to a cafe. To have… someone else in his life… But he knew that Marsward wouldn’t see it that way. Not if it were in real life.

For Lana, however, it feels so much the opposite. She feels excitement. A reason to conquer her fears and the dread that follows her whenever she thinks about leaving the house. He has places in mind. He wants to take her to them, to learn more about where he lives, to learn more about him than what she can learn beyond their avatars in Savior.

But she receives the notification from her food app then that her delivery is on the way. It won’t be terribly long. She fires off a quick message to him.

Food’s on its way, I’ll chat in a while if you’re still up? Unless you want food pics!

Her text reminds him that he should sleep. He looks at the clock and sighs. He’s not tired. Doesn’t want to sleep. More than anything, he wants to text…


Lana’s already making her way to the front door, phone still in hand, as she receives the messages. She waits in a little corner where she can see people approaching the house, but they can’t see her. It’s a spot that she knows quite well, because she hides there every single time something’s being delivered or a package is being dropped off.

But those two text messages make her so unspeakably happy. She forgets momentarily that she’s supposed to be watching out for the thing that gives her anxiety, the person coming up to her door with her food and then walking away. Quickly she responds.


Of course I will!!!
Do you want to keep texting or should I call you instead while I eat?


He likes the sound of her voice more than he’s willing to admit - even to himself. That little voice in his mind is chanting in rounds.

As he sends his messages, Lana realizes that the sound of a car pulling out of her driveway has already come and gone. She tentatively creeps over to the door, opens it, and…

There’s a bag on her doorstep, and no one around in sight. Quickly, she pulls it inside and shuts the door, walking away with her bounty and returning to the kitchen.

“Okay,” she murmurs out loud. “He wants to call, so…”

The problem is, she’s never actually used this phone to call anyone before. She gets a rare call from one of the investment advisors at the bank every now and then, but they call her; she never dials them. And as she brings up Wolf in her phone (her only saved contact), she stares at the dialing screen.

Why are there two dialing icons?

She doesn’t understand why. One of them has a slight difference from the other in that there’s a tiny ‘V’ in the bottom-right corner of the phone icon. She presses it.

VIDEO CALLING WOLF

“No!” She scrambles to try and fix it. Can she turn it into a regular call? She doesn’t want to hang up on Wolf, ever!

As the phone rings, Zalgiman clicks the little ‘accept’ button without thinking or reading it. The phone is loud enough that he doesn’t immediately put it to his ear, but rather is looking at his phone when the call connects and…

It takes him a moment to realize that not only is he seeing her, but she’s seeing him. That there’s a tiny window in the corner of him. He immediately brings the phone a little closer, so that he’s not showing so much of himself to the camera. Zalgiman looks exactly like Wolf. Or nearly so. There’s some very minor differences. His hair is slightly longer in reality - he needs it cut - and his eyes are slightly less perfectly silver as in the game, but somehow he’s also a bit more… handsome. As if the game steals a little something from the reality of him as he flushes at the camera.

“Oh! Did you mean to do that?”

The girl on the other side is similar to Apotheosis in facial structure, but where Wolf is actually only minutely different, she has a number of differences. Her waves of hair are fully dark and quite frizzy, proving she’s only just gotten out of bed less than an hour ago. She’s a bit pale, but not the moonkissed color that Apotheosis is in-game. There are little dark rings under her eyes, but it’s difficult to tell because she has glasses on–glasses that actually look quite cute on her. Amazingly, though, those violet eyes are not far off from what she has in real life. If it wasn’t for the fact that she’s wearing glasses, one might be able to accuse her of wearing cosmetic contacts. It’s also obvious that she’s quite thin, maybe even a little thinner than her slender avatar.

But the lights in the kitchen behind her–as well as the little glimpse of the lovely and upscale interior–do speak true to that check with the five-figure sum from earlier. Even if those violet eyes are wide in panic.

Naturally, she does the only thing she can think of doing, which is slapping her hand over the front of her phone camera. “I’m sorry! No, I got confused, I’m sorry! I never–I never call anyone on the phone, and there were two dial icons, and…”

She sounds almost exactly the same, except that she’s genuinely panicked. Worried. Almost in tears.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind. You are very beautiful. More lovely in person than in Savior.” Zalgiman smiles a little at his phone. Though it had been a brief glimpse of her, it was true what he said. To his eyes, this reality of her, was far prettier than her avatar was. Cheater, cheater, cheater. “If you like, I can turn the function off but… it is good for us to see one another. If we ever meet, now you will know what I look like.”

It takes her a moment for his words to sink in. It’s okay. I don’t mind. And then the words that strike her to her core. You are very beautiful. It’s like when he told her that her eyes were far more beautiful than the special event potion. It feels like she’s floating again. That she could do anything if he kept telling her that every day of her life.

Her hand pulls away from her phone and she reaches up to wipe her tears away, a thing that he can see clear as day. She must have a very high-quality camera on her phone. “I haven’t even done anything to my hair yet,” she says self-deprecatingly. “It looks like a rat’s nest. Do you mean it? That I’m beautiful?”

She finally looks more directly into the screen, looking at Zalgiman’s face. Her cheeks color. He’s gorgeous. And she knows that there’s apps that you can use to edit or replace someone’s appearance on camera with another’s, but his cheekbones or some other part of his face aren’t randomly morphing out of place like those apps tend to do. He’s really that handsome. And she’s… a girl who rolled out of bed.

“I would not lie. Your hair does not look like a nest for rats; you really are very beautiful.” He wonders if beauty standards in America were that much worse than the ones in Russia. He could hardly imagine that to be true, but anything was possible. “I did not know that someone could really have eyes like yours. And your hair… Women must ask you all the time how you get it to curl so nicely.”

How is it that a woman like her is not dating someone in reality? That someone has not claimed her for her niceness and her kindness, or for no other reason than her beauty? He’d never really noticed before how beautiful someone could be. How their generosity could emit from their features like a radiance of light. She was the kind of person who even at a distance would be remarkable.

He smiles suddenly and then chuckles. “Here all of the mothers would chide you and push their baked goods on you. As they tend to with pretty girls, I have seen them.”

She’s turning even redder from all of his compliments. There are some people who blush very easily, especially if the color of their skin makes it evident, and she appears to be one. “I was born with these eyes,” she explains. Duh, anyone might respond, people are generally born with eyes, but she knows perfectly well how rare hers are. “There was a famous American actress, many years ago, who had them, too. It ran in my father’s family tree.” There’s a sad little flicker in her eyes.

The comment about the baked goods, though–she looks over to the bag of crepes and she smiles a little bashfully. “Umm, I haven’t even opened my food yet. Do you… Want to see? Oh gosh, that’s weird to say, isn’t it. Like I’m a weird food YouTuber or something.”

Zalgiman relaxes on his bed, putting his phone on his pillow and laying down entirely. He dims the light beside his bed a bit, and smiles at his phone. “As you please. You should eat. It must be very late there and you must be very hungry.”

“It’s only 1:34 pm,” Lana replies, although there’s a thought in the back of her mind when she sees that he’s laying down in bed that she has to bat away before it makes her blush any worse. She actually takes the phone and briefly spins it about her kitchen–a very upscale kitchen with fine cabinets, appliances, and expensive cookware hanging from the walls–before she stops on the window in the kitchen, an open and wide thing that lets in plenty of light. It’s a beautiful day outside. Blue skies, the occasional fluffy white cloud.

She brings it back to herself, however, and furrows her brows. “Okay, let me see if I can switch the camera, I think this thing has a rear camera–oh!” She finds the icon and taps it. “Yes!” she cheers, although she feels embarrassed for how easy it was to switch it around since… Well, it was such a tiny thing. But now her camera is on her food. It’s a crepe, in a plastic takeout container. “This looks really nice! Thank you for suggesting crepes.”

“Mmmhmm!” Zalgiman yawns a bit as he responds to her notes about the crepes. They do look good, and he considers the option of getting some in Savior when he logs in, in the morning. He hasn’t the skill to make them for himself after all, and going out for something so… lavish was not something that he felt inclined to do. “I hope that you enjoy them.”

“Don’t stay up just to watch me eat crepes unless you want to,” Lana says with a little bit of worry. She flicks her camera back so it uses the front-facing one and sets her phone down on the table so she can look at him. He’s… achingly handsome, really. Even sleepy as he is. That adds to his charm in some way.

She cuts into her crepes and hums appreciatively with her first bite. “These are good! Maybe we’ll have to make our first date in real life somewhere with crepes.” She flushes a little again as she says that. It’s one thing to talk about it via text, but saying it out loud, it’s… It’s real on a level that she can’t articulate.

“Ogurets.” Zalgiman offers sleepily. Yawning again and snuggling into his pillow a little. “They have excellent food. Bit expensive, but everything here is.”

Seeing him snuggle into his pillow makes her smile all the more. It’s… cute. Really, really cute, in a way that she didn’t think Wolf could be–

Wolf. It’s obviously not his name. She looks down at her crepes for a moment.

“Hey, umm–if we’re chatting out of game like this… You can call me Lana, if you want. That’s my name.” And to drive off the nervousness of having divulged that, she takes another bite of her food. A little distraction.

His eyes slip open just a little, the light of his phone reflecting in his eyes so that they shimmer like silver coins. A little smile tugs at the edge of his lips and the eyes slip closed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last Lana. You can call me Zalgiman… or Zal if you like. That’s my name. My real name.”

The love of my life is named Zalgiman. Her cheeks flush a little again as she thinks it, and she’s grateful that he seems to be dozing off to sleep and isn’t noticing. “It’s nice to meet you too, Zal,” she says gently. And she tries to think of something else to say. Anything at all as she takes another bite.

Which is how she comes to start humming a little song instead. A slow sort of song, a piece of music that plays in the inn rooms in Savior. Sometimes she rents a room just to hear the song again, even though she has a perfectly good house–because it’s a calming melody.

Her sweet gentle humming lulls Zalgiman into sleep fully, and he drifts away. His phone stays on, capturing the sight of him with his eyes closed and his body curled toward the device. He’s a sound sleeper, and rarely moves in his sleep. Just little things, and the flicker of his eyes as he dreams.

It feels natural to do this, really, to eat in his presence, to hum to him, in an odd sort of way. And Lana realizes as she finishes her crepes and gently sets her fork down that… this is the first time she’s interacted meaningfully with someone outside of Savior in over a decade. Even her parents’ lawyer, who was her appointed legal guardian when her parents had the accident, only came by once every few weeks to check on her and make sure she was doing okay. No more than just a brief visit, no more than just a somewhat clinical list of questions, because he was a busy man and didn’t have time to raise a child–and she didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to acknowledge him as anything other than functioning in his appointed duty.

She watches him sleep for a moment longer. How lovely he looks. A side of him that no one ever gets to see. A secret that only she gets to have. Because he loves her for real.

“I love you so much,” she whispers. The first time she’s said it to his real self, those magic words. “Goodnight. Sweet dreams.”

“I love you.” His voice is that of a man asleep, the words a breath of sound, a little dreaming smile touching the corners of his lips.

Tears bloom in her eyes with the words. She nods a little, reaching up to brush them away. He really does. He really does love her for real. He does.

Finally, reluctantly, she presses the button to hang up the call. Lana looks at her phone for a long moment, staring at the messages they’ve sent each other. Then she looks up at the name assigned to him in her contacts. ‘Wolf’.

With a little smile, she changes it. He’s saved in her phone now as her only saved contact. ‘Zal ’

Lana goes and tidies up. First her trash and then off into the bathroom to groom herself. It takes forever most days. Today, it doesn’t take very long at all, even with the extra effort she has to make to make her hair look nice between showers. In truth, it always looks the best a day after. Mom had that problem, too. But she knows that if she’s going to go apply for her passport at the post office, they’re going to want to take her picture.

And she knows now that she wants to go. She has to deposit that check. She has to get her expedited passport started. Maybe she’ll even put in a call with her lawyer later to see if she can get it moved a little quicker in the system. She knows it can happen if you talk to the right people. Because there’s someone who’s half the world away who loves her.

And she can’t wait to see him for real.