"He is eminently sensible and brilliant and fair-minded and generous and forgiving and funny and principled and good for me as a person, but it seemed rude to sound excessively lovey-dovey about my ex to my wife on our honeymoon."

"Anyway, I'm fine if you want to try to get him back, although I cannot promise to have his expertise on how to do it either as a general skill or as specific insight into him individually."

"Thank you. I don't have much expertise either. If I muck it up with him as much as I did with you he shall leave, and I've never had anyone else - he seduced me, the first time."

"Awwww."

"Were you imagining I had a lot of exes? Makarial was not quite right when he said I was on track to be thirty without kissing anyone but I certainly wasn't going to kiss anyone who wasn't a deeply spectacular and remarkable human being."

"Oh, I didn't know how many you had, but I was mostly awwwing at him being the initiating party."

"He didn't even know I was gay, I don't think! We were best friends, and apparently he'd been flirting with me for a while but I, being oblivious, had not noticed, and he was intensely entertained by this and escalated. He had to escalate a lot. Every single test of his new flying spell ended with him falling down on top of me - and then he would not get up - before it occurred to me what he was doing and then I didn't say anything because I was curious how hard he was going to try."

"Of course you were," snorts Iobel.

"Wouldn't you have been? Anyway, we were swimming in the hot springs and our clothes got stolen by a polecat that he swore up and down definitely wasn't his polecat and I thought 'why not' so I said 'you know, I am in love with you too' and he was so adorably speechless."

Iobel bursts into giggles. "I would've been curious but I probably would have discharged my curiosity by asking instead of experimentally!"

"I'm not sure he had a point at which he'd give up defined in advance, it was more 'for as long as this makes me happy and doesn't bother him'. We certainly wouldn't have gotten such a satisfying conclusion out of it."

"He wouldn't have had to have something defined, he could have just told entertaining hypotheticals," suggests Iobel.

"That would have worked. And then I would have had him several months sooner. See, I should go to you for relationship advice."

"You have done," she points out. "Although I admit I am not sure what to tell you about the situation going forward."

"I know what not to do! I should not go 'yes okay the plan was as badly-considered as you thought but it totally worked you have to admit Iobel is going to be great'."

Iobel giggles. "No, probably not. You could thank him for not cracking up at the wedding?"

"And for coming back when Antir asked. Would I have been able to fix things if he hadn't?"

"Maybe. You were very gratifyingly abashed. But he helped."

"And I can't do gratifyingly abashed now for him because I have no regrets. 

Hmmm."

"What, none? Sure, you like the result, but the process was precarious."

"I regret wronging you. I do not regret talking over with him what I was going to do and then deciding to be a King. And that is when he broke up with me, sensibly enough, but before I'd done anything to apologize for! Maybe that's why. He did not want to break up with me after I'd done things to apologize for and he knew I would."

"I'm not sure forming an intention to do something you'd need to apologize for is itself unworthy of apology."

"...I think I have enough to work with. Thank you. Do you suppose I should go climb through his window right now or wait a few days?"

"Climb through his window?"

"I have a spell for glass but not stone!"