Loren was relieved to finally have enough of a reserve to be able to safely use magic again. He hadn't realized exactly how much magic he'd had as a reserve until he'd burned through it all and then some. After being fire-roasted for hours, he had a reserve, and his broken arm was itching like crazy. It was something he remembered from the last time he'd broken a bone, and was apparently a sign the bone was healing, ugh.

  Channeling Life Flame through his arm didn't help. That actually made the itch worse! Ugh, his meat suit had betrayed him!

  Still, the fire-roasting and converting part of that heat into Life Flame had taken care of the other aches and pains all over his body. Those had itched too, but had faded away quickly, leaving only the discomfort of his bare skin lying down on coals and sand.

  His arm had still ached and itched on Monday, which had been the deciding factor in choosing not to show up at work yet, even if he felt close. However, there were still things he needed to do, and at the moment he felt good enough to do them.

  "Are you sure you're good enough to do this?" Harmony said as she helped him pack up some clean clothes to take to his apartment. Now, he was perfectly able to do it with one arm, but if she was going to volunteer far be it for him to turn her down. "Stop scratching your arm, it might break again."

  He jerked back his fingers, even as he gave her an annoyed look. "It itches," he said, a little sullenly.

  "Well, that's the price you have to pay for being able to eat all the sugar you want: your broken bone that isn't going to take two months to heal itches a lot."

  Loren raised an eyebrow. "You okay, Hari?"

  "I'm fine," she said, her hands still handling his clothes gently even as she scowled. "Just kinda annoyed my magic healing powers has to make me choose between depression and near-fatal injury and depression. Not your fault."

  The Flame mage added 'alchemically-boosted depression medication' and 'alchemical depression treatments' next to 'alchemically-boosted diabetes medication' to the list of medications he had to develop once he was licensed. He wasn't sure if those two were possible, but that was why he became an alchemical pharmacist. Yes, there were a lot of laws about using Flame on people, but that was what self-experimentation were for!

  …

  Pharmacists were allowed to figure out these things, right? He didn't have to go back to college to get a medical degree, did he?

  ––––––––––––––––––

  Commuting with a broken arm sucked. The bumpy roads, thin-to-nonexistent cushioning on the benches and shit suspension made every bump in the road bounce him up and down, causing his arm twinge horribly. Where once public transportation had been an annoying but convenient thing he used to get around, Loren found a burning hatred start to kindle in his heart as he futilely tried to keep from being shaken. And as a Flame Mage, he knew a thing or two about burning!

  Harmony was thankfully accompanying, him, holding on to his backpack so that he didn't have to try to keep it on his lap. "So, what do you want to try cooking tonight?" she keeping her voice low to not disturb the other riders. Unfortunately, this meant she was nearly inaudible, and he had to practically put his ear to her mouth to hear her. "It's going to be Sara's first meal all week, so it should be something special."

  Loren shrugged, moving to speak near her ear. "I don't know… menudo? That's easy, and if I use chicken thighs I don't need to do as much cutting."

  "So you'll be trying to cook solid chunks of carrot and potato?" she said dryly.

  Ah… he hadn't thought of that…

  Harmony patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry. I'll be coming by your place until your arm is out of its cast, so I can take care of the cutting."

  "Why not the cooking too?" he said hopefully.

  "Get a real stove, and I'll consider it, you cheapskate."

  He opened his mouth to protest that he didn't need it, and they hit a bump on the road, sending another painful twinge through his arm as he briefly lifted off from the bench only to slam down again. When he recovered, he found his best friend giving him a very pointed look. "All right, I get it, I get it, I'll buy a stove," he muttered. Ugh, it's not like his arm was broken and he suffered from depleted fat reserves every day!

  "Thank you," she said, and he could hear the bright smile in her voice, which was completely wasted since she was talking right into his ear and he couldn't see it. "You realize this still means no lasagna, right? You need an oven for that."

  …

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  All right, he was a smart man. Surely he could figure out how to rig up a makeshift oven for his—

  No, no, that was just a bad idea. Using himself as a stove was one thing, but don't burn the building down!

  It was late morning by the time they got to his apartment building. They'd stopped to pick up some new cooking ingredients—Harmony said his ice box was still working, but he didn't have a lot in it—which just managed to fit in a bag Loren could carry in his left hand. "So, what's the situation like at work?" he asked as they got into the elevator and started going up.

  "The Halili house is almost done," Harmony said. "Just the painting left, and then we can put it up for sale. After that it's on to the next project."

  For a moment, Loren hesitated. "How haunted is the next project?" he asked eventually.

  "Confirmed haunted," she said. "So we're going in ready for ghosts. Steve said he wanted me and Malory—well, most Malory—to do a readiness refresher, make sure we remember to look up and down." There was a moment's pause, before she said, "Do you suppose you'll feel well enough to make us a few ghost candles?"

  Loren considered the question as the elevator rose. "I don't know where I'll get candle-making stuff, but I'll think of something. Maybe we can just put ghostlight outside all the windows and light up the house that way so none of you need to be holding anything?"

  "That might work," Harmony said, nodding. "But we'll still need something if it's hiding somewhere there's no windows."

  He frowned. "I'll see if I can put a Flamecraft on a flashlight." A lot of flashlight were using LEDs nowadays, but he still saw ones that used filament bulbs. He might be able to do something with that…

  The elevator doors slid open as they reached his floor, and they stepped off.

  "Thanks for coming along with me," he said.

  Harmony shrugged with easy dismissal. "Hey, you back me up when I need you, I back you up when you need me. That's the way things are."

  Loren managed not to comment that when he needed backup, it wasn't because he was going somewhere there might be violence. That would be an asshole thing to say. "Thank you anyway," he said. "I don't know what I would have done without you."

  "Probably suffered through this no matter how much it hurt," she said as they came up to his front door. "Tried to figure out how to put on a backpack with one hand and a cast."

  "… yeah, probably," he agreed, knocking on the door.

  The door immediately swung open, and would have slammed against the wall if Harmony hadn't leaned forward and grabbed the knob to stop it. "Hey, Sara," she said. "Don't pull on him, his arm is broken."

  The cold breeze that had started around his right hand fell away, which was good because Loren had immediately tensed up at the sensation. He forced himself to calm down. This was Sara. She was a….n acquaintance, as he couldn't really call her a friend despite the weeks they'd lived… undeaded… cohabited together. Not enough getting to know each other for that, in his opinion. They'd mostly spent their time holding hands, eating, and watching videos in a mostly companionable silence. The calls he'd made over the past week to check up on her had been the longest conversations they'd had.

  …

  Put that way, it sounded pathetic.

  Pushing all those thoughts out of his head, he gave the still unseen Sara what he hoped was a comforting smile. "Hey, Sara. I'm home. Give me a bit and I'll get some food started for you."

  "No, I'll get the food started," Harmony said. "Unless you learned to be sinisterous at some point, Mister-I-Am-Not-Left-Handed, you're not going to be cutting anything with that hand."

  Ah. Right. "Ah. Right," he said lamely.

  "Why don't you take care of putting in new perfume and holding hands with Sara while I work," Harmony said, her tone making 'holding hands' sound as lewd as the internet made it out to be. "Actually, can you put on a movie? It's been a while since we watched anything."

  "Sure, sure." Stepped inside, trying to pass through only half the door so as not to walk through Sara. He wasn't sure if that made her uncomfortable, but he always felt chilly when it happened. Seeing the plamo on the table, he found his smile becoming a little less forced. "Hey, squad!" he greeted. "How have you been? Are you liking living with Sara? Sorry I was gone for so long, but I broke my arm." Putting down the bag of food on the kitchen counter, he pulled out the little mouthwash bottle he'd repurposed to hold his strawberry-flavored cooking oil and drank it all down before finally making a ghostlight Flame.

  Sara appeared practically right in front of him, the angle of the Flame making only half of her face visible. He blinked in surprise, not realizing she'd been so close. Thankfully, she was wearing her long shirt. "Ah, there you are Sara," he said. "Sorry I couldn't hear you earlier. I'm having to be careful with my magic right now." Really, it was like when he'd first learned he was a Flame mage, needing to use oil to supplement his reserves because he didn't really know how to control how much magic he'd used back then.

  She looked to the side, seeing his ghostlight Flame and looking relieved. "Are you all right?" she said, her voice soft and gentle and not piercing his ears with how annoying they sounded. Really, how had he never appreciated how great her voice was?

  "I'm getting there," he said. He'd told her about what had happened to him, although he kept back exactly how violent he'd been to the ghost that had been manhandling him. Onihandling? Ghosthandling? He didn't think it would do Sara much good to be reminded of how much suffering she could be put through by a Flame mage. "Right now, it's just really itchy."

  She bent down, one finger poking gently at his cast, and he felt a cold breeze against his skin—and now that he was paying attention, he felt the slightest bit of heat and therefore magic being lost at the brief contact. He blinked, recalling all those tight, cold grips in that goddesses-damned house. While he'd used most of his magic himself, the ghost constantly grabbing him probably hadn't helped. "It doesn't hurt anymore?"

  "Only when we hit potholes during the commute," he said.

  Sara winced. "So, the whole commute?" she said.

  He sighed. "Yeah…"

  Sara had a strange look on her face, raising one hand to almost but not quite touch his bound forearm again, before shaking her head. Turning to meet his gaze, she hesitantly held up her hand towards him. "Can we…?"

  Loren smiled. "Let me set up the TV first so Harmony doesn't complain at us."

  "I want to watch something funny so I just need to listen to the dialog!" Harmony said. She was already washing the cutting board and knives and getting a plate to put the ingredients on.

  He glanced at Sara. "A comedy good with you?"

  She nodded. "Can we watch the racist cowboys movie again?"

  Not for the first time, Loren found himself wishing he'd met Sara back when she'd been alive. She had great taste in movies, even if all the ones she'd known were recent ones, like the Popsicle Trilogy. "Blazing Burt it is!"