Author's Notes:

I was stripping wallpaper and daydreaming and then wrote it down.

It happened. Whatever. No turning back now.

The door shut behind James and he dropped his bag. The bag went thump.

Closing his eyes and just letting his head thud back against the lintel - which was still, unfortunately, roundabout head-height for him - he quietly enjoyed being inside, back home, picturing in his head what the week before him might hold.

There came the sound of galloping and then seconds later a mint-coloured blur clattering down the stairs, barreling straight towards him.

“I wouldn’t hug me I haven’t had a shower yet and -”

These words fell on deaf ears and James had to catch her as Lyra launched herself from the bottom of the steps and latched onto him, forehooves wrapping around his neck, hindlegs around his waist as far as they could go.

James rocked back a little, more from the momentum than from her weight, and he couldn’t help but smile, arms moving in help hold her in place.

“Ah, ah well, there you go. Hi. I’m happy to see you, too,” he said softly.

Lyra said nothing, content to silently burrow her face into his chest, shifting her weight around so she slipped further into his arms.

“Nice to see the place is still standing,” James said, trying to gauge the mood. Lyra remained quiet with her face buried in his shirt.

James heard a sniffle and frowned, breaking the hug enough so he could look her in the face. She kept pressed tight against him until he gently coaxed her back. Her eyes were shining, tears tracking down her cheeks. His gut lurched.

"What's this? You weren't worried, were you?" He asked.

“I’m always worried when you go away,” she said, quietly. James swallowed and put his smile back on again.

“Oh don’t say that, you’ll start me off. Come on, I’m alright, I’m back now, it’s fine.”

He said this, but he understood. He was back this time, yes, but the possibility did exist - and continued to exist - that every time he left might be the last time. There had been enough close calls for him to know it wasn’t just baseless anxiety, so he could understand. It was why he was holding her so tightly.

Eventually and by mutual, silent agreement it was decided that the hug had gone on long enough. Lyra relaxed her grip and James lowered her to the ground. She wiped her eyes and beamed up at him, he smiled right back.

Then she gave a longer, more pointed sniff. James got the message.

He pointed up the stairs.

“I’ll just shower. I stink,” he said.

“You do,” Lyra said with overwhelming seriousness. James narrowed his eyes at her.

“Hey, you’re the one who hugged me, I did warn you. Sure you don’t want another?” He asked, moving at her, arms spreading. Lyra recoiled, hoof covering her nose.

“Just go already!”

“Rude,” James mumbled, grinning back at her as he picked up his bag again and climbed the stairs with all the energy and enthusiasm of someone who’d had a very long day which had capped off a very long week.

Some twenty minutes or so later he came back down again, refreshed but no-less exhausted, to find Lyra on the sofa waiting for him. He joined her.

Hopping onto his lap the instant he’d sat down Lyra squirmed around to get comfortable, settling against him and sighing contentedly as one of his arms went around her, the other lying limp on the sofa beside him. He lent down to kiss the top of her head and then flopped back again.

“Good to be home…” he said, eyes closed.

A bottle that James hadn’t even noticed sitting on the table levitated over bumped insistently against his fingers until he cracked one eye, saw it and took grateful hold. He practically groaned in delight.

“Oh, I knew there was a reason I liked you,” he said, kissing her head again and then sitting up to take a sip, which prompted another groan. Perhaps a little oversold but still. Lyra got the point, smiling dumbly and holding her head out for a third kiss, which she got.

“So how was it?” She asked.

“Quiet, quiet, very quiet,” James said.

“Honest?”

According to James the last time had been quiet, too, and that time he’d come back limping. He’d insisted their definitions of quiet were just different. She’d countered that he had been lying so she wouldn’t worry. He hadn’t really been able to come back from that.

“Yep, not even lying this time. Quiet as anything, not a peep. Just sat around a bunch, basically. Except for when I had to go out and escort people, obviously,” he said, waving his bottle-holding hand.

“And how far did you go? Or deep? Or whatever it is?”

Even though she had had it explained to her several times now Lyra still did not fully grasp what it was James’ employers actually did. Then again, to be fair, he wasn’t wholly sure either beyond a certain point. He imagined that there were probably complexities involved that he wasn’t paid to consider.

“They like to think of it like digging. Don’t ask me why. Probably the same reason they called it the Dimensional Borer. Dumb fucking name…” James muttered this last part to himself, shaking his head.

Despite the name of the machine not really mattering in any real practical sense - and despite James himself having admitted this many times - he had still held forth on the subject in varying states of inebriation more than once to anyone unlucky enough to be near him and too polite to tell him to stop. He really didn’t like the name.

Lyra, knowing this, decided to gloss over the subject, being as how she’d already heard him vent it several times before and as a result feeling she’d done her part.

“So how deep?” She asked, pressing on and bringing James, blinking, back to the moment.

"They took the Borer down - oh, I don't know - twelve levels? Thirteen? Past here, I mean, not counting hom- Earth. Definitely think it was around thirteen. Kind of lost count. Think they must have bumped into something really interesting in a bad way or a good way because they fired off a probe and then turned around to go back home so they could chew on the details."

He took another swig from the bottle. Given that he had to go back to Earth to get more he probably could have paced himself a little more, but he was tried and all out of fucks to give at that moment. Raising the bottle he pressed it to his forehead and groaned again.

Good beer was a full-body experience.

“And it was quiet?” Lyra asked.

“Yep, yep, very quiet. Didn’t run into anything dangerous and no, uh, Beyonders showed up this time. Which I’m not complaining about,” James said and Lyria wrinkled her muzzle.

"Beyonders? I thought they were called Outsiders? Or are these something else?"

James finished his drink off before answering, giving the bottle a shake to double-check and then looking a little despondent about how fleeting the experience had been. Lyra gently but firmly plucked it from his and floated it back onto the table, setting it onto a coaster before giving him a nudge.

"No, same thing, just got a new name, probably at a cost of thousands. No idea why. Maybe someone thought Outsiders was insensitive? Probably someone thought we weren't paying consultants enough," he said.

Lyra just blinked at him.

"I don't know what that means,” she said.

"Count yourself lucky,” he said, ruffling her mane and giving her ears a scratch. Rather than being annoyed at not having whatever a consultant was explained she just enjoyed it a moment or two, eyes closed, beatific smile on her face as she practically melted across his lap.

The two of them were quiet for a bit, and very happy.

“Well I’m glad you had a dull time,” Lyra said, eventually, sitting up straighter. James yawned and stretched, succeeding in taking up even more space.

“Heh, me too. Being paid for nothing is always refreshing.”

This was not the way Lyra had meant it and James knew it, but the mental image of her left behind worrying about him while he was off doing his job was not one that made him feel comfortable, so it was one he preferred to skirt around where possible.

“I still don’t know why you’re doing it. Humans, I mean,” she said.

“The whole tunneling through alternate dimensions and realities thing?” James asked and Lyra nodded.

“Uh huh. Seems like a lot of work. Dangerous, too. I don’t get why you’d do it.”

“Because we can?”

This gloriously blunt non-answer got the exact reaction from Lyra that James had been hoping for, which is to say a glare. He grinned and gave her mane another ruffle until she pushed his hand away, faux-grumpy.

“I’m serious,” she said.

“I know, I know, uh…”

He scratched his head. He did know the point of the whole enterprise, he just dealt with it so often that most of the details that anyone might not know were now so deeply ingrained in him it was hard to know where to start.

"Just about finding things, really. Finding things that don't exist back home that might be useful, or finding places where the rules are different in a way that might be useful. Useful things, mostly. And meeting new friends, of course,” he said, smiling down at her and winking.

“Of course,” she said, winking back and causing his grin to widen.

“It's not really my job to know the details. I’m just there to keep people safe. All things considered I’d say I got it pretty good."

“Yeah?”

“Well, I met you, didn’t I?”

That made Lyra blush. She hadn’t even been fishing but it had happened anyway. Twisting in his lap so she was more upright and letting her hindlegs slide down either side of his so she was straddled across his lap she looked him in the eye and found looking back at her a face of total and complete sinciety.

“Hey, you ok-”

James could not finish the question, as Lyra yanked his head down and kissed him.

This was a surprise, though a welcome one. James couldn’t really hold it against her.

At length the kiss broke and the two of them stared into one another’s eyes for what felt like a very long time indeed.

“And they let me carry a laser last time, that was cool too, you know. It’s got a backpack and everything. Living the dream, me,” James said, expertly puncturing the mood.

“Oh shut up,” she said, pounding him softly in the chest while he chuckled. Then Lyra went quiet, hoof still pressed to his chest, her expression suddenly pensive.

"The others don't think you’re...strange or anything for choosing to live here, do they? With me?” She asked, not meeting his eye.

Lyra worried about this, despite him insisting she shouldn’t.

She knew for a fact there were those in town who thought she was odd for having shacked up so eagerly with an alien, and according to James humans could be even more judgemental, and even though there was an exchange station set up the staff there was rotating and they tended to keep to themselves anyway.

James was the only human who lived here permanently. So she worried.

James did not. James rarely did.

"Ah, some of the others stay in weirder places than this. You should see some of the places we’ve found! Obviously no-one wants to settle down in any of the dangerous ones, but some of them? Some of them are pretty interesting. And some are pretty weird. And still they say they want to stay! Takes all sorts,” he said breezily, hoping that that would be enough to put an end to things. It was not.

“Like what?” Lyra asked.

“Hmm?”

“What’s an interesting one?”

James was blindsided. She’d never actually asked him this. Mostly her post-work questioning was limited to making sure he was safe and in one piece and - on those occasions when he was only mostly in one piece - ascertaining what had done it and making sure he was totally okay and then trying to get him to take as much time off to recover as possible.

This was the first time she’d shown any actual interest in the places he’d ended up. He was taken off-guard.

“Uh, well, there was one place which had this kind of, uh, this giant plant that covered pretty much the whole surface. Had its own climate, its own ecosystem, it was pretty wild,” he said, scratching his jaw as he racked his brain.

Predictably, having been asked a question he’d immediately forgotten the details of everything he’d ever done on the job. Having Lyra staring at him waiting for answers didn’t help.

“And kind of like that one there was another where all the animals and plants and everything was all part of one kind of, uh, mind? I think they called it a ‘gestalt-consciousness’ or something? The science bods managed to talk to it. Very pleasant, apparently, very polite and helpful.”

He thought some more.

“Empty places, obviously. Just regular planets with nothing but the plants. And some less hospitable ones that I don’t really want to talk about. Oh, and there was one we found which wasn’t even a real planet. Someone had built it.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I know right? Just this big, big hollow sphere with another one inside and then another one inside that and just on and down. Held up with all these columns. Had miniature fake suns inside each level, just full of all this water and stuff someone had left in there. The bosses almost lost their minds over that one, and still some people wanted to stay there! Place kind of creeped me out, if I’m being honest.”

Not for the first time Lyra was struck with the sudden urge to cling onto James in an attempt to keep him from ever leaving again. Hearing about the sort of places he went to did not fill her with wonder - well, maybe just a smidgen of wonder - but instead only with immense and niggling concerns about his wellbeing.

She forced them down, though. It was his job after all and he was an adult who could make his own choices and so-far nothing had gone too wrong, so it was fine. For now.

“So no, Lyra, no-one thinks I’m weird. Well, they might, but if they do it’s not because I chose to live here.”

“Good,” she said, managing a smile and then snuggling into him some more, listening to his heart.

Again the two of them went quiet. Outside, some ponies passed and their loud, muffled conversation filtered in briefly but not enough for either James or Lyra to really hear what was being talked about, and they passed by anyway and things went quiet once more.

"Anyway!" Lyra said, sitting bolt-upright again and putting on as serious an expression as she could manage. James, who had been dozing off, jolted. "’Weirder places than this’! You saying this place is weird, huh?”

This change of tone was immensely welcomed by James, who squinted sleepy eyes at her and smiled a sleepy smile. Sleepily.

"Well, you like me, so that has to mean at least one pony is pretty weird,” he said, giving her another ruffle, though he missed her head at first and had to halfway grope around to find it. She helped him, taking him by the wrist to guide his hand.

He scratched her behind the ears again. It was a reflex at this point more than anything, one that both of them enjoyed. Her eyes closed and James - still half-asleep - smiled blearily at the look of utter contentment on her face. She swayed in disappointment when his hand pulled away.

“Maybe you have a point,” she said.

Lyra shuffled around in his lap some more to get back into a more comfortable position, pulling his arm across her once she was done.

“Could I ever come back with you? To Earth, I mean,” she asked.

“I, uh, oh, hmm…”

The thought had crossed his mind before, just as an idle daydream, but Lyra had never asked him about it.

“I don’t know,” he said, to her disappointment. Seeing the look on her face he rushed to clarify: “I mean, I don’t know if you’d be allowed. I don’t get to make these decisions. Could always smuggle you back, if you liked?”

She tapped a hoof to her chin, considering.

“Would you get in trouble if we got caught?” She asked. James nodded.

“Heaps of trouble.”

“Maybe try asking first.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. He then twisted on the sofa to swing his legs over one end, picking up Lyra (who squeaked in alarm) and setting her back down again once he’d stretched out and settled.

“What you want to go to Earth for anyway? It’s a shithole. It’s like here only dirtier and full of people. And the horses don’t talk. It’s gross, trust me,” James asked, yawning, fingers tracing across her coat.

He left out the part where the horses also sometimes ended up in lasagnes. He felt Lyra wouldn’t benefit from knowing that and besides, it hadn’t happened in a while. That he knew of.

“I want to see where you’re from,” she said, chin resting on his chest.

“Oh, that’s definitely a shithole.”

“Still,” she said and he craned his neck to look at her a moment. She was giving him A Look, with The Eyes. Those golden, golden eyes. He was helpless and they both knew it.

“We can worry about that tomorrow. Right now I am going to fall asleep on this sofa holding you and you are going to have to deal with it,” he said, putting both arms around her and holding her close.

“How awful,” Lyra grinned, snuggling down.

“I know, right?”