Nose wrinkling, Hiraeth huffed a breath of air. "I should be asking you that, love! You're the one who had a big shock today."
"Asked you first," Lucas said smugly. "Deal with it, my man."
That drew a laugh out of Hiraeth, who sank back down onto the floor. "I'm all right," he said, his tone going a bit softer again. "It's hard having someone you adore come to you for help when you've no idea what to do for them, you know? Ahhh, and it's clear he's picking on you a little too. I don't want to intervene and make it seem like you can't handle it, but should I? What do you want me to do?"
Even though Keith had been wondering the same thing himself, abruptly it seemed… simple. "Don't worry about it," he said firmly. He lifted one of those socked feet and kissed it. "I'm fine. We're fine. He's being a bit bratty, but I'm not going to be talked into breaking up with you."
"He tried to talk you into breaking up with me!?" Hiraeth sat up abruptly, eyes huge.
"Not—exactly? Maybe?" Keith scooted back a few feet, frowning at the obvious panic on Hiraeth's face, waving his hands as if he could soothe it physically. "It doesn't matter, because it won't happen."
"Please don't break up with me! I mean, unless you're not feeling it, because of course I won't force you into anything but, I, I really would rather not, we, that's—" Hiraeth seemed to trip over his tongue, words dissolving into a loud whine.
Lucas laughed at that, a gentle sound. "Given how hard it was for Keith to work up the nerve to ask you out, man, I think you're safe."
"Hey," Keith protested with no heat. He grabbed Hiraeth by the velvety antlers and hauled him up for a hug. "It's fine. You're fine. If we have problems, we'll talk about it, all right? Him having problems with us isn't the same thing as us having problems." He tried to put authority into his voice.
"Same," Lucas agreed. "It's not that Keith and I are a package deal, you know? I could sit outside the door if I wanted to give you private time, but I'm here because I want to be with you too. You get it?"
Hiraeth seemed very small and still for a moment. And then he nodded, conking Keith lightly against the side of the head. "All right. You're saying it, so I have to believe it."
He leaned up for a kiss and Keith pulled him closer, kissing back firmly, making sure Hiraeth knew he meant it as Lucas put a hand down against the back of Hiraeth's head to hold him in place between them.
It was, at best, a symbolic gesture, but Keith hoped it was a good one.
chapter six
Keith and Lucas headed back to the dorm before it got too late. Keith wasn't entirely sure he wanted to leave Hiraeth alone, not given the uncertainty he was clearly feeling, but he knew Lucas was going through some stuff too. After seeing Shaunee, Lucas definitely needed the space to try to figure out what to do about her. If they were there with Hiraeth, even if they all meant to do otherwise, Lucas would try to prioritize someone else.
Besides, Keith really did need to go get a change of clothes.
He sank down onto his bed with a sigh, hauling his shirt off and sitting there for a moment before digging around for a tank top to sleep in. "Lucas…"
He didn't need to finish. Lucas knew what was on both their minds. "Yeah," Lucas agreed softly. "I seriously don't know what to do about her."
"Me neither." Keith changed into a new pair of boxers, then hugged his knees, curling up in his narrow twin bed against the back wall. "Really want to give you a hug too, though."
Lucas sank down onto the bed as well, a weightless cold patch growing steadily more frigid as Lucas's mood dragged the temperature down. "I could honestly use one."
Keith patted the mattress next to him; even though there wasn't really space, Lucas climbed up and curled down against Keith, partly through him. It chilled Keith to the bone, but he just pulled the blanket over himself.
"Can I go into you?" he mumbled. "I can hug you that way, at least."
Lucas let out a soft laugh. "Yeah," he said. "You know it. I trust you in there."
Keith closed his eyes. He imagined himself—his mind, his heart, his own ghost—overlapped on his prone form, separate from it. It never stopped feeling a little silly, cartoon-like, but it worked nevertheless: he detached, disassociated.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself away from his body and into Lucas's mind.
***
The street corner was, thankfully, abandoned. On Lucas's worse days, the car was there, and Lucas's body as well, broken and bent in ways a body shouldn't be.
Despite the shock of seeing his sister, this must not have too bad of a day. It was just a street corner, cracks running through the pavement, weeds growing through the cracks. The first time Keith had come here, Lucas's grasp on himself had been nearly lost, and it had been shrouded in mist. These days, it looked like the actual place, sunlit and affable—just completely devoid of any human life.
Keith sometimes wondered what he'd encounter if he went exploring now, took a street down another way. Lucas's past, probably, his memories, the things that made Lucas Lucas, not just an unfocused Terror. There might even be scattered symbols of Keith, or of their relationship together and with Hiraeth.
There was no need to go wandering, though, and Keith didn't want to. As a ghost, if Lucas didn't stay exactly how he was, there was a good chance he'd move on. If it were his time, and if he wanted to, Keith wouldn't hold him back.
But Keith didn't want that day to happen any time soon, and he definitely didn't want it to be due to his meddling if it did.
Lucas was sitting cross-legged in the road, and Keith padded over, barefoot but warm in the sunlight. Lucas smiled, lighting up his whole face, and held up a hand to him.
Keith took it, felt his fingers actually catch hold of Lucas's, the feeling of flesh against flesh instead of curling intangibly into a cold wind, and swallowed the knot in his throat that always welled up when they did this. Here, each of them was as solid as the other, as present. He let Lucas pull him down, practically crawling into Lucas's lap as they pressed close, held each other, squeezed for the pure joy of being able to feel each other fully.
They sank to the concrete and just lay there for a bit, holding each other and breathing.
Finally, Lucas said, conflicted, "I don't know what to do, man. Anything we say to her could hurt her. It's been five years, but it's only been five years at the same time, you know? Trying to say, hey, your brother's ghost is around, he loves you, or… pass on any last words or anything, I don't know… any of that could just reopen the grief all over again. She's living her life now. I don't wanna make it harder for her just so I can feel like I'm doing something."
Keith nodded against his shoulder. "I've been thinking and thinking and I'm just… stuck," he admitted. "I can't think of any way that it won't be bad. Even me just being there might be bad, considering everything. But… I mean, me being there might also give her the chance to say things to me that… maybe she's wanted to."
His voice trembled at the last. He wasn't sure he was strong enough to bear that guilt, not when wielded by someone who'd lost Lucas herself.
"Shaunee's not that sort," Lucas said firmly, though with a worried line between his brows. Grief could do a lot to a person. "But… yeah. It might be good if you were at least there to talk to. Other than that… I don't know. Maybe we can ask Hiraeth to give her the doll for free, say that I'd come in to ask about putting it aside for her when I had more cash or something, before I died. Could probably make a whole yarn about how it clicked for him when he saw you. Remembered the news about it or whatever."
"Yeah, maybe," Keith said. "It'd be nice if you could give her something, even if she doesn't know it's from you now."
Lucas nodded, sighing. "Yeah… just something to get my feelings across. That I still love her. That I'm thinking of her. You know? I wish I could say it to her myself."
Keith nodded. He pulled Lucas closer, holding tight. "I do know. Just… letting her know how you feel, in some way
that won't be too painful for her."
They were silent for a moment.
"Can I kiss you?" Lucas blurted, voice tight and a bit high. "I don't… I don't know that thinking any more about this will do any good, and you feel so nice in my arms—it's always just so damn nice to actually feel you—"
He sounded like he was on the verge of tears, and Keith's heart gave a flip he was sure he could feel in his real body, back in the bed.
"Please," he said, with a little hitched breath, and leaned up, running his palms over the tightly coiled curls of Lucas's hair, kissing his soft mouth firmly, trying to make Lucas feel how much he loved him, how much he hurt for him.
For a moment, Lucas's mouth trembled under his, and then he was kissing back, a broad swipe of his tongue into Keith's mouth, needy and aching for the sort of physicality that was denied to him outside of this place.
Keith couldn't resist that, and wouldn't even if he could. He plastered kisses over Lucas's face, his breath gone ragged. "I love you," he said. "I love you."
It wasn't an I'm sorry, not really, not anymore, but it was difficult for the edge of that not to seep in there, between the reality of seeing Lucas's sister today and Lucas's pain-creased brows. "Yeah," Lucas said, voice rough. "I love you too," and then he was sitting up and pulling Keith's shirt off.
Keith laughed softly, a relieved sound. This, at least, was something he could do. He tugged at Lucas's shirt in return, helping them both strip bare so they could lie skin to skin in this unreality, finally warm, heated and sweaty and touching each other with greedy fingers, moving together and pulling pleasure from each other with a firm grasp and hitched breaths.
"I love you," Keith said again after, spent and content on the roadside, and Lucas turned his head and smiled.
"Hold me, yeah, I love you," he said, and Keith squirmed closer into his arms and squeezed him tight.
chapter seven
It had been another long day already of staring at random antiques in the hopes of magical revelation, and Keith's heart wasn't in it, his mind far away, repeating the plan over and over until he was sick to death of the intrusive, unending rhythm of words, but unable to stop it from pattering on and dragging him around behind it, battered and bruised from the relentless motion.
The moment the shop bell jingled, Keith put the container of transparent (and thus kind-of-water-colored) rocks he was hopelessly examining to the side. His hands were numb, his heart racing, and he hoped all to hell it wasn't some other customer. He had to get this over with.
Muttering, "Sorry, be right back," to the two Others, Keith he slipped into the main room as quietly as he could.
Lucas pressed tightly and nervously to his side.
"What's your pet fish's name?" he heard a girl's voice asking Hiraeth. They'd left the tank out in the main room, since the back was so small.
"Um! Well, he's just Fish," Hiraeth said. "We're not an inventive lot in my family."
Still hidden behind one of the rows of shelves, Keith peeked out, hoping he didn't seem like as much of a creep as he felt.
"That's to the point, I guess," Shaunee said, amused.
She'd changed, of course. When Keith had last seen her, she'd been a twelve-year-old girl in a black dress with neatly-bound cornrow hair, half-hidden in her parents' embrace. Her face had been ashen with grief, eyes wide and wet as she and Keith looked at each other across the burial plot. Lucas had been shouting beside him, sobbing and yelling his desperate pleas, in agony at seeing his family mourning him, and Keith had been desperately telling himself it wasn't real.
Here and now, she was in her late teens, the sides of her head shaved and an elegant puff of corkscrew curls filling out the rest of it, tumbling down over her forehead. She was dressed in bright clothing—a yellow top, white jeans—that highlighted the warmth of her brown skin.
The difference was striking. Keith's hand sought out Lucas's, passing through that cold patch of air. For a moment, he didn't think he could do this. His knees locked; his feet went numb, icy. The back of his throat was a desert wasteland.
But he wasn't doing this for his own sake, he reminded himself. If Shaunee had something to say to him, he could at least give her that chance, and let them enact the little play they'd planned out to get her a gift from Lucas.
He swallowed hard and forced his legs to move, stepping out. "Ah—y-yuh—" Words weren't working right. He drew a deep breath. At least he didn't have to fake how seeing her again had completely undone him.
Shaunee turned at the sound, and for a moment, he could tell she didn't recognize him, since she was just giving him the slightly-weirded-out look he was sure his unhinged appearance demanded.
Then her eyes widened a little, the uneasily placating smile falling off her face.
"Keith Marose?" she asked, after a long moment where they simply stared at each other.
He forced himself to bob his head, an awkward motion. "Yeah. Shaunee, right?"
"Yeah, that's me." She broke eye contact, looking down at the hardwood floor, rubbing her heel against a scratch she found there like she could rub it away entirely if she focused hard enough. "How have you been?"
Alive, came to mind as the immediate answer. He swallowed a hysterical laugh and shoved his hands into his pockets to have something to do with them. "I'm doing okay," he said. "I'm… sorry."
"No, well, it's good that you're good," she said. She picked at her nail polish on an index finger with her other thumb, absently, and smiled after a moment. The expression was sad and hurt, but almost relieved. "I'm sure Lucas would be glad too. I'd heard you were kind of a mess after."
"Kind of…?" Keith asked, giving her a twitchy smile. "I mean. Yeah. I imagine it was worse for you."
"I mean… a different kind of worse, maybe," she said. A bit of her nail polish flaked off and fell to the floor. "I'd heard you were honestly a bit of a basket case after. Seeing his ghost everywhere. I'm… sorry if we, you know, contributed to your guilt—"
His heart was doing something impossible inside him. He wasn't sure he could breathe. "No," he said. "No, I mean—none of you said anything wrong. And it's only right you got to grieve. It wasn't about me. He's your brother."
She shrugged a shoulder. "Yeah," she agreed. "Still. Shitty situation all around. He wasn't the sort who would let someone get hurt in front of him if he could help it, and I guess he decided he could help it. But…"
Here it came. "But?"
"I guess I was kind of jealous too. That you got to be the kind of basket case who still saw Lucas. While I just got to be one who didn't. I mean…" The sound she let out resembled a laugh, but there was no humor to it. "I missed him. I didn't think he'd be the sort to want to torment the person he helped, though, so I can't imagine him as a ghost. Even back then I figured you were just… having a hard time."
Keith tried to keep breathing. It was a manual action, rhythmic, necessary. "Do you… believe in ghosts?" It wasn't what he'd meant to ask. It wasn't in their script.
She seemed as surprised to hear it as he'd been to say it. "I used to, I guess," she said. "I sort of still do. Maybe our 'selves' are just energy, I don't know. If they are, why shouldn’t they stick around? That's the theory, right? But… well. I never saw him, even though I'm sure he'd want to say goodbye, so I can't really believe it in practice. You know? Besides… I'd rather he be at peace and happy, not restless. So that's that."
"Shaunee," Keith began, and then trailed off. What could he say? There was no way to prove it to her, and saying it on its own was cruel.
"I'm right here," Lucas burst out, agonized. He'd stepped out from around the shelf as if drawn out, gaze intent on her with the whites of his eyes showing all around. "I'm right here, Shaunee…!"
He was just feet from them both. Keith couldn't keep himself from glancing at him, immediately wishing he hadn't. She tried to follow his gaze to the blank spot there—
Hiraeth, behind the counter, cl
eared his throat, drawing both their attention back. Before he fully turned away, Keith saw Lucas give Hiraeth a panicked glance, half-grateful, half-resentful. "Shaunee!" Hiraeth said, as if he'd just placed the name. "Shaunee, Shaunee… what's the last name?"
"Brown," she and Keith answered at the same time.
"Shaunee Brown, is that so…" Hiraeth dug around behind the counter. "And Lucas, huh. That boy, five years ago…"
Her expression shuttered. "I should go—"
"No, hang on," Hiraeth said. He was doing a great job with the script, sincere and earnest, his eyes wide. Then again, Keith thought, he was a much more experienced actor than either himself or Lucas. "His story stuck in my mind because he'd been by the store before. He wanted to get a gift for his sister Shaunee. It was that doll you were looking at earlier, actually. He couldn't quite afford it so he had me put it aside…"
"What?" she said, stunned and teary, laughing a little. "Luke? He never liked antique stores."
"For real though," he said, gesturing at his heart in a messy cross. "Listen, this feels like it was meant to be, so I want you to take it. For free. I've found the accessories too, so—"
She was already shaking her head. "I can't possibly," she said. "I couldn't possibly take that. Thanks, but this is so… I don't know…!"
"I want you to, Shaw," Lucas said. He'd stepped closer to her again, one hand out. The pain in his voice was raw, aching. "Please, I haven't been able to do anything for you in so long, I just want you to know how I feel. I need you to know how much I love you, how much I miss you—"
She couldn't hear him, was still babbling excuses at Hiraeth over his voice—she wanted to accept it, but she just couldn't, it was too much, this was all too much—and standing there, helpless to take action, listening to the way their voices overlapped and wound around each other, Keith became abruptly, stranglingly overwhelmed with how unfair it was.
If Wishes Were Fishes Page 5