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Oroden scrambled off of Kaladin’s lap the moment he heard the front door open, as though he were some sort of axehound rushing to defend the Stormblessed household from the incoming assault from the Alethi postal service.
Kaladin sighed and stood, stretching his arms above him and smiling as the pressed the palm of his hand flush against the ceiling. Some days his height annoyed him, but there was something about spending a day at home with Oroden asking for “Gagadin make fly?” that made Kaladin not mind it so much.
Laughter erupted from the house’s entryway, and Kaladin had barely made it out of the living room before he found himself being crushed in a tackle-hug from Tien. Kaladin smiled and kissed the top of his younger brother’s head. He ruffled Tien’s long hair, causing him to squawk and pull away. Tien faux-glared at Kaladin—wait, was that mascara?—before letting his signature earnest smile spread back across his face.
“Look who the cat dragged in.” Kaladin turned, his eyes widening as Laral Wistiow walked in, scooping up Oroden and blowing a raspberry on the boy’s cheek and eliciting a flurry of excited giggles. “Since when did you get a mid-year break from med-school?” Laral asked as Oroden squirmed in her arms.
“I…uh, Laral?” Kaladin said dumbly. What in the Almighty’s name was she doing here?
“That is my name, yes,” Laral said as she attempted to set down Oroden, who immediately raised his arms up as though the act of being picked up and set down was the game of the day. Tien quickly darted over and scooped Oroden up into his arms, causing the toddler to giggle and squirm once again. “I didn’t realize that the University of Kharbranth gave its doctorate students leave to come home at will.”
“Uh, yeah. Well, my classes all finished early this term, so I figured I’d spend a few days home before the new one begins in a couple weeks,” Kaladin explained, his mouth dry. He and Laral hadn’t exactly been on the best of terms when he’d last seen her. He’d managed to avoid her the last few times he’d visited home. Her adoptive family had a very… negative opinion about Kaladin winning the Taravangian Diagram Young Doctor’s scholarship.
Before Laral could say anything further, Tien grabbed Kal’s arm and dragged him into the living room, Oroden still wiggling on his hip, and the three siblings flopped down onto the well-loved, extremely-compressed couch cushions.
“So, Kal, tell me everything about the term! Are you seeing anyone? Did you finally join a club? Ooo, what classes are you taking next term?” Tien’s grin was infectious, and Kaladin couldn’t help but smile, even as Oroden writhed between them and elbowed Kaladin in the throat. “Classes at Kholinar Community College are so boring a lot of the time, but I’ve made some friends! Renarin is really cool, he has hair that kinda looks like Laral’s! And my friend Shallan, she’s an art student that might have the hots for our Ethics and Philosophy professor? She won’t admit anything but there’s no way she’s gone to her open hours for that many questions. I’m fairly certain she doesn’t pay enough attention in class to actually have questions she’d need answers to.”
It was at that moment that Laral came in and flopped down on the sofa, leaning up against Tien from the side opposite Kaladin and Oroden.
“Wow… Seems like you’ve met quite the cast of characters.” Kaladin gave Oroden his hand to play with, and the boy delighted in trying to rip his older brother’s fingers apart. “Most of the classes I’m taking are just mid-level medical classes and some other field-adjacent social studies courses for better trauma-informed care. Surgical Ethics in Acute Crises, another term of Doctoral Training Essentials, Psych 402, and a gender studies course.” Tien visibly perked up at the mention of gender studies, and Kaladin tried to subtly glance over at Tien. It was hard, with them both sunken into extremely flat couch cushions and a toddler between them who was all-but convinced his siblings were a climbing course with detachable digits.
Tien was wearing mascara, hadn’t cut his(?) hair for years now, and now that Kaladin was looking for it, he saw that Tien’s short nails were painted a shade of pink that was just slightly darker than normal.
All of those things don’t inherently mean Tien is transitioning… I mean, it’s fine if he is, but some men prefer to express themselves more effeminately. It could be that. Kaladin’s mind spun into overdrive. Well, it’s Tien’s business as to whether or not I know. I’ll just avoid using pronouns for him for the time being… Shit. Them? This is going to be difficult.
“Kal, Tien, Laral! Dinner is ready!” Kaladin’s mother called from the kitchen, where his father undoubtedly was shooing her away as he plated everything as precisely as he could. “I need someone to help me set the table!”
Hesina was perfectly capable of cooking, and often did so when Lirin wasn’t home. But Lirin’s skills with knives extended beyond the surgery suite, and he took every opportunity he got to make, cut, and plate dinners to his very picture of perfection. Kaladin could practically see that fond look his mother gave his father that said “I love this absolute dork, I hope he stops his asinine little ritual that has on more than one occasion taken so long that the food become uncomfortably just-below lukewarm.”
Kaladin could admit that the last sentiment was his and his alone, but he was grateful that his parents were in a loving relationship. He’d taken a class on stress and human health in family settings and child-rearing last term that compared and contrasted some of the most common traumas that people from households of divorce and people with married parents faced. His parents absolutely had flaws, but Lirin would have been an absolute nightmare without Kaladin’s mother reminding him that children were in fact not tiny university students.
“Coming!” Tien said, foisting Oroden onto Kaladin and leaving Laral and Kal alone with the adorable toddler.
More importantly and far less adorable was the fact that Tien left them alone with each other.
“So…” Kaladin trailed off as he gently untangled Oroden’s hand from where it was attempting to tie his hair in knots to the tune of “Gagadin hair! Gagadin hair!”
Laral sighed, her green eyes closing as a corner of her mouth quirked down. “I’m sorry, Kal. The shit that my… well, the shit the Roshone family said about you was evil and unwarranted. I should have shut Rillir down as soon as he opened his mouth.”
“But you didn’t even try,” Kaladin said bitterly. “You went so far as to repost his online shit-talking.”
“I know.” Laral winced. “It was shitty of me. I was a dumb kid and I wanted to fit in with my foster family and they just… they hate you guys. I know now that the Roshones are full of it, I just…” Laral ran her hands through her hair, and she quickly swiped at her eyes as they grew watery. “I’m not going to make excuses. I’m just sorry. I wanted to apologize and clear the air, because I’m in love with your sister, but I can’t do this if every time I see you things are awkward and tense because of the nasty shit I did as a teenager.”
Kaladin went silent. His sister?
In the silence Laral seemed to have realized her slip up and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, groaning with exasperation. “Fuck. Fuck.”
Oroden, ever the empath, cocked his head to the side and toddled across the sofa—falling to his hands and knees with an “oomph” before standing up and waddling the rest of the way to Laral. The child put his hand on Laral’s back and hit her twice, more than a little harder than necessary, and said, “There, Larara, no cry.”
Larara looked up from her hands and spread her arms, which Oroden gladly snuggled into and gave her a big, squirmy hug.
“For, uh… what it’s worth, I kinda had my suspicions,” Kaladin said. Laral laughed softly.
“About Tien or about us?”
“Tien,” Kaladin replied, arching an eyebrow. “I didn’t know there was a you until approximately thirty seconds ago. How long has that been going on?”
“How long have we been girlfriends? Less than a month. How long have we been together?” Laral smiled. “Well, we’ve been living together and sleeping together since midway through our first term at KCC—”
“Stormfather! Laral I did not need to know that!” Kaladin scrunched up his face and tried to wipe any mention of his sister’s sex life from his mind as Oroden babbled an incomprehensible addition to the conversation.
It was at that moment that said sister bolted into the living room with a playfully exasperated look on her face.
“If I would have known Oroden would slow you two down so much I would have picked him up… aaand tickled-his-little-baby-belly!!!” Tien lunged forward and gracefully pulled her brother off of Laral, holding him with one arm and tickling his belly and drawing a string of of giggles from him.
“Tien, I’m sorry—” Laral was cut off by Tien darting out of the room laughing with her brother.
“The food’s gonna get co-o-old!” Tien sing-songed, ever unaware of the tension as she streamed into the next room.
Kaladin stood up and stretched, arching an eyebrow at Laral. “You coming?”
“I… yeah,” Laral said, standing up and letting out a short burst of air as she collected herself.
As Kaladin moseyed into the dining room—a small space conjoined with the kitchen, where a table and four chairs barely fit, feeling utterly and completely too busy with the addition of a folding chair and a babyseat crowded into it.
“Ah-he-hem!” Tien cleared her throat for silence as she sat Oroden down into the baby chair that he was quickly outgrowing. “For tonight’s dining pleasure we have fried something, with a vegetable medley from which I could only identify three out of what looks like five or six vegetables—”
“It’s four, but I diced the leaves of the—” Lirin quieted at a glare from Hesina as Tien continued.
“And not to mention, the superbly made… pasta in goop?” Tien said as though it were a question. “I want to portmanteau-ificate that, but I will spare you the pleasure!”
“Thank you for not calling my dish ‘goopasta,’” Lirin said flatly.
Tien sighed and shook her head. “I gave you an out, and yet you still chose to bring attention to goopasta. That’s on you,” Tien laughed as she took the seat to Oroden’s left, squeezing the boy’s chubby leg before digging into her goopasta.
Hesina laughed from her place between Kaladin and Lirin, and the table was filled with chatter and small talk about coursework and friends and Oroden’s antics.
Eventually, it was Lirin who brought up the chull in the room.
“So, the makeup and nails seem to be a new… addition.” Tien tensed, spoonful of goopasta halfway to her face before she gently lowered it back onto her plate and sighed.
“Haha, y-yep! They sure are.” Tien’s usually radiant smile took on a wobbly nervousness that felt wrong to Kaladin.
Lirin, ever the sensitive and emotionally intuitive father, grunted.
Laral looked to Tien with a soft look that Kaladin couldn’t remember ever seeing on her, and Tien took a deep breath in, held to what Kaladin recognized as a count of five, then slowly breathed out for another five seconds.
“I’ve been doing, um, well a lot of thinking,” Tien said, the wobbly, nervous wrongness from her smile seeping into the tone of her voice as her eyes watered. “And I… I’ve been living as a w-woman on campus for a while. Just to test it out! And…” Tien trailed off.
“You’re transitioning,” her father said, with no helpful indication of tone or thought in his voice. It was as if he were presenting a diagnosis, rather than listening to his daughter come out.
“I… um, yeah. I am,” Tien said as she finally made eye contact with her father.
“Okay.”
“O…kay?”
“Okay,” Lirin repeated. “Thank you for telling us.”
Hesina rolled her eyes and swatted Lirin’s arm. “What your father means to say, is that we’re in full support of you, no matter who you want to be or what you want to do. If you want us to use a new name, new pronouns—what have you, we will gladly do so.”
The tears that had been welling up in Tien’s eyes began to silently fall down her cheeks as she leaned across Kaladin to give their mother a hug. She whispered something that sounded like a ghost of a “Thank you.” before she sat back down between her brothers, the younger of whom was now banging on the arms of his chair and squirming.
After a few beats of silence, Kaladin realized that everyone was staring at him.
“…Kal?” Tien asked, wiping the tearstains from her cheeks.
“Oh, um. Yeah, that makes sense…” Kaladin trailed off, making eye contact with Laral and raising an eyebrow. “I kind of already knew.”
“What?!” Tien shouted, echoed by Oroden who then fell into a cavalcade of giggles. “I-I mean, how? How long?”
“He’s only known for the past hour… I may have let it slip that I was dating his sister,” Laral smiled sheepishly as Tien eep’ed.
“Wait, you two are dating?” Hesina asked, a glint in her eyes. “How long has that been going on?”
“Well we didn’t really realize we were dating until a month ago?” Tien said, a smile of chagrined amusement crossing her face as Laral gave her a flat stare. “Okay, it was more like I didn’t realize we were dating until a month ago. But to be fair it’s not like I’ve dated before!”
“It does explain why the two of you decided to rent a one-bedroom apartment after a single term of reconnecting,” Lirin said, tone almost bored. “I’d be lying if I said I was surprised.”
“It was economical!” Tien and Laral both said at the same time, before both blushing and devolving into a contagious fit of giggles, and soon everyone—even Lirin—was smiling and laughing to the beat of Oroden’s arm-chair drumming over empty plates of pasta a la goop.