Couple milestone: be hit on, as a couple, in a dive bar in Fremont.

(My partner discerned that I was not up for any of that at this time, and politely brushed the guy off. The guy was later seen hitting on another couple that included a boobilicous brunette. It was very, very loud in there, and I was hitting sensory overload between the audio, the crowd, the lighting, and standing without a wall at my back.)

So I went to Tacoma for a week, to visit my primary partner. It was a very nice visit and everyone had fun!

I flew out Monday the 10th, marred by some lateness from the previous plane arriving, but I had a very lovely chat with my seatmate and gave her some info on self-taught programming for her teenage son who is very good with computers and might be interested in programming if he doesn't go the heart surgeon route. (He is whip-smart, autistic, and interested in planes. And computers. And being a heart surgeon.) Upon seeing my partner, I kissed them hello straight off and then we loaded everything into the car and headed for the next stop (taking time to update the local branch of the polycule on what was up).

My partner met my sister, yay!

There were cheesecake-related shenanigans.

I got to meet my partner's co-workers, and see them at work in one of the more rewarding aspects of their job -- plus some of the stuff that goes into making that happen.

I got to meet some long-time internet friends in person (tygerr & wife), see Ex Mrs. Shawn #1, see vlion and wife and kid. Stories were told. I got to meet rynia and their wife and another friend, plus my metamour, and the people whose couch my partner will be occupying for the next little bit. And I got to meet the people whose spare room my partner and their cat are currently in. Plus see a few bandmates. And a few of my sister's bandmates. And my metamour's mother and brothers. SO MANY PEOPLE.

Very good times were had by all. We listen to some of the same podcasts, and our philosophies of laundry are compatible. The food choices worked out. norabombay and I bat around some thoughts on alpha/beta/omega dynamics as they are seen in fanfic, and basically you'd need some hardcore preparation for an omega heat. You'd want frozen burritos or something that are super quick to fix, a room with a nice comfortable bed, and a fuckton of lube and such. Water bottles for bed. You know.

^_^

Despite some concerns, we did not get told that we were disturbing other guests. We may have been doing it wrong.

^_^

I left on Monday. I did most of my weeping and clinging on Sunday night. I'm adjusting to life back home, but with a part of my head that I didn't realize had been quite so on-edge now purring quietly to itself.

We'd sort of wanted an oasis of calm with just the two of us. Instead, we got the edge of a crisis, as my partner's hosts had been told that it was renovation time and they needed to find a new place. And my partner had various things at work on four of the weekdays. Plus I wanted to meet people while I was there, and show off my partner. So it wasn't just the two of us alone with no worries, it was commuting and work and locating moving boxes and all sorts of little things.

Our emotions and our physical interactions had been growing wildly out of step. It's one thing to spend comfortable time in each other's virtual presence, swearing at traffic or grumbling about an essay or something. It's another to actually touch each other. I had been a little worried: would I push them away in the middle of the night? Would I be able to fall asleep with their skin touching me? As it turned out, if I tiptoed out of bed in the middle of the night to pee, they'd wrap back around me when I came in, and when they got out of bed with their alarm on a workday, I'd grumble something sleepy at the loss of their touch.

When I was an impressionable teenager, I read some MSR portal fantasy with soulbonding, where some form of magic had bound Mulder and Scully tightly to each other; in the early bits of the fic, the space between them decreased, so they needed to be in physical contact at all times. (This was down to some malfunction, and the bond was fixed later on.) But in the beginning, as the bond strengthened, the physical distance decreased.

But that's ... kind of not where things go.

Given the opportunity, my partner and I will snuggle up into each other. We're both a little short on skin-to-skin contact, so I will likely as not have my hand grasping their shirt collar, fingers tucked against their neck. But it doesn't hurt to let go. It's not a problem of scarcity. If they let go, they will come back and hold me again. If I let go, I will come back and curl around them. There's a security. They are a fixed point. My anchor. My love.

Parted from me and never parted; never and always touching and touched.