I Am the Strongest Femboy, So Stop Protecting Me!-Chapter 40: Roadblocks, And More Roadblocks.

POV: Aris Ashborne.

The next few days had been a waiting game for Aris. Thankfully, Lyra was being a great help with managing everything related to the Aureate, and it was all going surprisingly smooth, considering the situation.

Amari had quietly left after the initial day, giving him her contact information before disappearing. She still sent him, interestingly enough, videos of kittens occasionally through the messaging app they used. Which for the time being, he was choosing not to complain about.

Silas had visited a few times after then, apparently unemployed now that Gareth’s squad was put on hold until the craze from Aris’s S rank designation and the reveal of his lineage died down.

Virginia was...

...

He felt a little bad for his friend.

The poor woman, now officially an S rank like him, was properly anointed a position of power in her family.

Which was enough for an explanation.

He hadn’t heard anything from her since, he doubted that he would for a long while, and since she didn’t have Lyra anymore, he could only imagine the kind of paper horrors she was having to deal with now.

All in all, things were going surprisingly well.

And he was not complaining.

The reconstruction surgery for Regulus had gone amazingly. Considering the state he was in when Aris extracted him, his recovery was unlike anything that he had ever seen before.

Which, was the first roadblock he had arrived at in this whole babysitting situation.

Now that Regulus was healthy enough to be discharged from the HQ, which they were annoyingly enthusiastic to do so, Aris was the one who was put in charge of finding him a place to live.

Which also came with its own roadblocks.

Finding someone a house to live in was one thing, paying for it was also something he could look past, what he could not get over was the fact that he needed to make sure that there wasn’t any risk of people figuring out who Regulus is.

As secretive as it was, the existence of Aureates was still known by a considerable amount of people. And one could never be too sure who was looking. It would have been manageable if Regulus knew how to carry himself, but he was a literal walking fossil, the world had progressed more than he could have imagined in the years he was gone.

In the end, it was Amari over a phone call that had found him an answer.

"Why not just let him stay with you until he can manage on his own?"

He needed to take her out for dinner one of these days, he decided.

So now here he was, sitting on the back of Lyra’s car with Regulus, heading towards the crown district which would be his home for the foreseeable future.

Regulus didn’t looked particularly shaken about the fact, at least from what Aris could tell.

Lyra however, had her opinions.

"Absolutely not!" She had told him when he brought it up, raising her voice for the first time in forever.

She had only ended up accepting after a long back and forth, and had made Aris promise her that he would keep Regulus away from his room at all times.

He didn’t exactly understand why, but he had reluctantly ended up agreeing to her to make the woman accept.

A faint frown creased his lips as the car turned the corner to their street, wondering what had possessed Lyra to be so surprised about having someone live with him.

He decided to study his surroundings to take his mind off of the subject.

The crown district looked as impeccably kept as ever, the eeriness of it still a worrisome thing even after his week spent living here.

He didn’t see the group of boys playing outside today when they reached the familiar neighborhood. Well, he hadn’t seen them since the incident, which made him worry a little about the kids. The strain seeing a severed limb would have put on a child’s mind was no joke, even if they were children of awakened.

He wondered if he should visit them when he found the time to do so.

The soft crunch of gravel filled the air as the car slowly pulled into the porch of his house, Aris quietly stepped out, beckoning Regulus to step out from the same side as him. The guy still had a hard time figuring out how to open the door for cars somehow.

Regulus lingered behind him as they walked in, only taking a seat once he was asked to do so.

He looked rather uncomfortable on the couch.

Which was quite the amusing sight.

For someone to look so uncomfortable seating on a piece of furniture that was decided with the sole purpose of being comfortable, was a sight to behold.

"You can take the chair if you want."

Aris said as he went towards the kitchen to prepare some tea.

Regulus didn’t protest.

Lyra walked in a little bit later after them, her tablet still in hand as always. She was still sorting through the mails and meeting requests that people were sending him from all around the world, saving the ones that could be of use later down the road, and discarding the ones that were useless.

She glanced at Regulus in the chair.

Regulus looked back at her with the expression he’d been wearing since leaving the medical wing—alert, contained, the expression of someone taking continuous inventory of an unfamiliar environment without making it obvious that was what they were doing. He was getting better at not looking like a man who had missed several decades of civilization. Not good yet, but better.

Lyra looked at Aris.

Aris set the kettle on and said nothing.

She made the sound she made when she had opinions she had already expressed and was choosing not to repeat, a clearing of her throat, which was its own form of expressing them, and sat down at the table with her tablet.

"The Meridian States delegation has rescheduled for next Thursday," she said, shifting into work mode with the ease of long practice. "I’ve pushed the Celesté meeting to Friday. The association has sent three more requests for your availability this week, I’ve declined all of them pending your review."

"Decline them."

"I’ve already declined them pending your review."

"Decline them without pending my review."

"That’s what I said."

"You said pending."

"As a courtesy."

Aris looked at her.

She looked back.

The particular standoff of two people who had this version of this conversation regularly and had both made peace with how it ended.

"Decline them," he said.

"Noted," she said, and made a mark on her tablet that suggested she had noted it in a location adjacent to where she kept her actual decisions.