by Roan Parrish
Because Corbin couldn’t be sure his miracle had worked. After all, what was he, with his makeshiftery, his ersatz spell craft, in the face of the curse that had dogged the Wales for generations? And if he hadn’t broken the curse, and he let himself be with Alex, then Alex was doomed. But there was only one way to know for sure, and if he was wrong, it would be too late by then.
So he’d left.
He’d torn himself away, leaving the barest, neediest, most grasping parts of himself in Alex’s outstretched hand.
Now everything was darkness and cold and wind, the only warmth the promise of home, which was dark and cold and empty.
“Finnian,” he whispered, voice ragged. But Finnian didn’t come because he wasn’t the one Corbin really wanted. “Carbon?” No.
He didn’t want any of them. He didn’t want pieces or shades or lines on the page. He wanted flesh and blood and bone and sweat. Heart and cock and mouth. He wanted Alex. He would always want Alex.
The woods were dark in the new moon, spindly shadows looming. Night birds cawed, their calls spread thin and shriekish by the wind. There was no peace here tonight, no comfort from the plants and trees, their roots singing to each other, deep beneath the ground, a world of understanding with no words. His ears prickled and his feet felt numb. He considered, for a moment, never returning home.
No one would know. No one would miss him. If he cut to the bottom of things, the house was just a house, the garden just a garden, none of it holding him here the way it had held the aunts, cradled them. They had found their peace here, their moments of happiness, such as they were. It had been their succor against the world. Their sanctuary.
He had imagined it might be the same for him.
But there was no sanctuary anymore. He carried the storm inside him.
When the trees cleared on his back garden, he found Alex standing near the kitchen door, head hanging down, Wolf alert by his side.
He froze at the tree line, caught between longing and fear. Part of him wanted to step backward into the woods and lose himself in the darkness. But as Wolf sensed him, Alex’s head jerked up, and in his face was suffering Corbin couldn’t abide.
He walked slowly toward them, and Wolf relaxed. “Corbin,” Alex said. Alex wouldn’t stop saying his name, and every time he said it, the cords that bound them together tightened.
“We have to talk,” Alex said. “Let me in? Please.”
Requests and commands and desires and magic words.
“Okay,” Corbin said, finally. “But . . . but you can’t touch me. Not yet.” It’s not safe; I won’t risk you; please don’t let me hurt you.
Alex flinched and hung his head, but then he nodded, giving Corbin a wide berth as they went inside. Corbin made a fire, stacking the wood deliberately so he wouldn’t have to speak. He was assessing the risk.
Finally, “Corbin,” Alex said. He gave the fire one last poke and turned. He’d never seen Alex look lost before. He hated it.
Alex sat on the couch and waited for Corbin to sit down too, before he spoke. “Right now, I’m feeling like I took advantage of you. I’m your employer, and I feel like I pressured you into something you don’t want, and I feel like absolute shit about it. If that’s not the truth of what’s going on here, I really want you to tell me. Please?” he added.
Corbin’s pain turned to horror. That Alex could think he was at fault, when it was Corbin. When it was the curse. He shook his head. “It’s not. That’s not the truth at all.”
“Then, please, Corbin. I know it’s really hard for you to explain things sometimes. I know there are things you don’t want to talk about. But please, will you try?”
Corbin tried. He opened his mouth and sorted through the words like stones, searching for the right one to start. And he didn’t find it. He piled the words up and made a cairn and looked at it and knew that it was what lived inside him: a grave marking the place where something could have been. He felt a tear cut a track down his cheek.
“Corbin. Baby. Please. Let me help. This is fucking killing me.” Alex’s face was broken.
“That’s what I’m afraid of!” Corbin yelled. “That it will kill you. That I’ll kill you.” He clasped both hands over his mouth to keep more stones from rolling out.
“What?”
He shook his head. Shook it and shook it until he was dizzy and his hair was blotting out his vision, like ink splashed across a page.
Then Alex’s face was there, right in front of him. Alex didn’t touch him, just looked at him.
“Listen. Whatever you’re thinking or feeling. Whatever you’re afraid of. I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me all of it. And I promise—Corbin, I promise—I won’t leave. I won’t stop caring about you. I won’t think you’re crazy. Whatever it is, I know it’s real for you. I want to hear it.”
Corbin groaned at the edge of command in his voice. He wanted to tell Alex everything. Wanted to disgorge a lifetime of secrets into his gentle, waiting hands.
Alex’s eyes looked like home. His voice sounded like comfort and ease. His arms offered a haven.
“I want to,” Corbin whispered. “I’m scared.”
“I know,” Alex said, and the certainty of it settled in Corbin’s chest. He breathed in deeply to give it more space.
And then, with that certainty wrapped around his heart, holding him together, he spoke.
“I’m cursed. My family is cursed. Anyone we truly fall in love with—if they truly fall in love with us too . . . they die within a year.”
The force of Corbin’s heart slamming against his chest made him woozy, and blackness crept into his periphery.
“I can’t touch you because I can’t let the curse—the poison—get all over you. And I can’t . . . I can’t let us be together because then what if we . . . what if you . . .”
“What if we fell in love.”
Corbin bit his lip and nodded. It sounded ridiculous, put so baldly. That Alex could love him. That Alex could ever choose someone wrong, like him.
“Did your aunts tell you about the curse?”
“Yeah. I’ve known since I was small. Aunt Hilda’s man, Davey, died in the Marines, ten months after they fell in love. Aunt Jade’s wife Maria was healthy until she died of a heart attack in her sleep, exactly six months after they got married. My father died of an aneurism a few months after I was conceived. And lots before them. Lots and lots. They all died. Everybody dies.”
Alex’s brows were drawn together, but it wasn’t judgment or scorn, nor fear.
“I tried to break it,” Corbin said, “I swear I really tried. What you said that day about bread tasting bitter . . . I went in early every day and I put all the bitterness, all the taint of the curse into the dough and then I burnt it. I thought maybe if I could get it out of me then I could finally . . . touch you. And then the oil. The miracle. I repeated it with the suf— Um. The doughnuts, and then I scorched them in the burning oil. And then I made good ones—better ones—for you. To, to reverse it. Sweetness for sweetness.”
Alex was watching him intently, and he started to speak, but Corbin barreled ahead. “I watched so closely to try and see the signs—any signs that it was gone. Or that I was hurting you. And I tried to stay away. Alex. I tried so hard, I promise. I tried to stay away but I couldn’t. Nothing had ever felt the way you felt, and the baking, and I just . . .” He hung his head. “I wanted it so badly,” he whispered. “Even though I knew I was putting you in danger. I have to be alone. I know that. I’ve always known that. It felt so good for just a little while, though. Not to be alone.”
Silence for what felt like forever, and Corbin couldn’t look at Alex because the world would come crashing down. Finally, he felt Alex breathe in and out.
“The idea that if you ever love someone, if someone ever loves you, then they’ll die,” Alex said finally. “That’s a really scary thought.”
Corbin nodded, relieved that he understood the risk, the threat, even as his heart broke all o
ver again. He curled up on the couch, knees to his chest, like a pill bug, and tried to make himself smaller. Tried to wrap himself around the breaking thing inside of him and hold the pieces together.
“Corbin.” Alex’s voice was painfully soft and Corbin squeezed his eyes shut against the resignation he heard there. “There’s a problem, though.”
Fear lanced through him, and he sat bolt upright. Could Alex already feel some of the poison working its way inward from when they kissed? “What. What is it. What’s wrong.”
“The problem is that even if you don’t touch, even if you keep things back, even if you don’t go out to dinner or to the movies, the feelings are still there. Because love doesn’t live in kisses and flowers and first dates. It lives in your mind, in your heart. The problem is that I already love you.”
Once, as a child, Corbin had been running upstairs and tripped on the rug. His head slammed into the bannister, and he fell to the ground, dazed, unable to make sense of the words of his aunts, looming over him.
He felt that way now. Alex was looking at him, Alex’s mouth was moving. But everything after love you was a smear.
Then Alex was touching him, hands wrapped tight on his forearms, shaking him gently. The world came back into focus and Corbin realized the smear was tears and it was his heart pounding so loudly in his ears that he couldn’t hear anything else.
They stayed that way for a long time, Alex’s hands on his arms, Alex’s eyes searching his face. Long enough for Corbin to process what Alex had said before love you.
He realized that Alex was absolutely right. Love didn’t live in kisses and first dates, but in your mind and heart. In the way a person could come to dwell there, uninvited, without ever touching you. In the way you thought about them and dreamed about them and wished about them, curse be damned—because though you could choose not to act on the feelings, the heart knows no logic but its own.
He grabbed at Alex, and at his movement, Alex came to him, pressed up close against him, fingers whisper-gentle but hands firm enough to pinion.
“Tell me,” Alex said. “Tell me all of it.”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he whispered. “I was going to be alone. That was the plan. I—I’ve always known it. The curse is strong, stronger than anything. But then I saw you and you touched me, and it felt the way the aunts always described.”
“How did it feel?” Alex’s voice was a caress, his face all Corbin could see. Alex blotted out everything.
“Like the right thing. Only I didn’t know what the right thing was. Like magic. Only I knew it wasn’t. Like. Like everything was pointing me to you. Except why would it, because the curse.” He shook his head.
This was what he’d been struggling to understand since the beginning. If they were cursed, why would the signs lead him to the person who might activate it? The only explanation was that the universe, instead of being indifferent, or kind, wished for him to suffer. And Corbin couldn’t believe that. It wasn’t what he’d ever known. The sky and the trees and the grass and the seasons—no, the universe wasn’t vengeful. And Corbin was so small.
But if not, then . . . what?
“Why were you cursed?” Alex asked. “Did someone do it? I’m afraid I don’t know that much about it.”
“No. The curse was a wish for love that rebounded, formed itself around the wish, and twisted it inside out. You can’t wish for things like that. You shouldn’t wish at all, unless you know what you’re doing.”
“Your aunts told you that.”
“Yes. But everyone knows that. You can’t tinker around in the guts of the universe without knocking loose things you can’t control.”
“So with the baking, you were trying to siphon power from the curse little by little, instead of tinkering?” Corbin nodded. “That’s smart. And you thought it worked, but then you just panicked a little. In case it hadn’t?”
Corbin nodded again. “Do you believe me.”
“I believe you absolutely,” he said. “I believe that your aunts told you that, I believe that their lovers died. I believe that you’ve spent all these years alone. Thinking you’d always be alone. Which—” Alex sucked in a breath and dropped his forehead to Corbin’s bent knees for a moment. “It breaks my heart, Corbin. But the curse itself? I’m not sure.”
Corbin cocked his head in question.
“I’ve never thought about it before,” Alex said. “I’m not sure the world I’ve experienced is a world where curses are quite as . . . rule-based as what you’re describing.” He looked thoughtful. “But I’ve certainly known people who had awful luck. They could do the same things I did and end up with far worse results. They were terribly unlucky in love. Things in their lives fell apart for seemingly no reason at all. And I’ve known people who were the opposite. Things just happened for them, without them even trying.”
He took Corbin’s hands and ran his thumbs over Corbin’s knuckles.
“Who’s to say what the difference is between bad luck and a curse, or good luck and a blessing? I really don’t know.”
From somewhere outside, a woodpecker knocked three times, then three more. A log cracked in half in the fire, sending sparks upward. And Corbin began to cry.
He had never been ashamed of crying, but it wasn’t something he did in front of other people, either. Now, though, he looked into Alex’s eyes and he cried.
Corbin found himself lifted in strong arms and settled onto Alex’s lap as Alex sat back down. Alex’s arms were tight around him, and he cried into Alex’s chest. He cried for a long time.
He cried because reality had cracked open and inside had been another reality instead of nothing. He cried because no one had ever tried to understand him before, and Alex was trying. He cried because even if Alex didn’t believe the curse was real, he believed it was true for Corbin. He cried because maybe, after a lifetime of living inside himself, he wouldn’t have to be quite so alone.
He cried until he was exhausted. Then Alex picked him up and took him upstairs, shouldering open the door to his bedroom and striding inside like he had every right to be there. The air crackled and awoke, and Corbin could feel it even though his eyes were hot and swollen nearly shut.
“Go to sleep, baby,” Alex murmured. “We’ll figure everything out tomorrow.”
The fingers of sleep clutched at him. But as Alex’s warmth retreated, Corbin was wide awake. “No!” He reached for Alex, pulled his sleeve until he sat back down on the bed. “Don’t leave. I’m—I’m afraid if you leave . . .”
“What?”
“You’ll never come back.”
Alex brushed his hair back. “I would never do that. But of course I’ll stay. Do you want me to stay here with you, or downstairs?”
That Alex didn’t even suggest he could sleep in Aunt Jade or Aunt Hilda’s room sent Corbin’s heart humming.
“Here,” he whispered. If the curse was going to snap at Alex’s heels and drag him down, surely it wouldn’t be sleeping next to each other that would spring the trap? And Corbin didn’t have the energy left to take every precaution.
Alex’s smile was so soft, so intimate, that Corbin blushed and looked away.
Corbin started to undo his jeans, but then froze, hand on his zipper.
“You don’t sleep in pajamas, huh?” Alex said with an appreciative smirk. “Well, I certainly don’t mind. But maybe we want to go with underwear and T-shirts, just the first time.”
Corbin nodded, relieved. He wanted to touch Alex, but the idea of all that skin . . . He shivered. It was too dangerous. Because of the curse, and for reasons he wasn’t quite ready to process.
Alex opened his dresser and rummaged around, pulling out a clean white undershirt. “Here,” he said. “Do you want me to turn around?”
Corbin flushed, but he shook his head. In his mind, Alex had watched him do this a hundred times. The idea of Alex’s eyes on him now made his blood boil. He stripped off his wool sweater and the thermal shirt beneath it slo
wly, baring the skin of his stomach and chest to Alex’s gaze. He pulled it over his head and dropped it next to the bed. He saw Alex swallow hard.
Next, his jeans, unzipped and slid off his hips, over his thighs, down his legs, and onto the floor. Then his socks.
Corbin sat on the bed, naked but for his underwear, and watched Alex watch him, searching the other man’s face for some sign that he was pleased with what he saw.
Alex cleared his throat and adjusted his jeans, and when Corbin glanced down, he had all the sign he needed. He felt a surge of power at Alex’s arousal. He pulled the clean white T-shirt over his head and shifted his bare legs under the covers. Alex never took his eyes off him.
“I don’t think my shirts will fit you, but you can try.”
Alex shook his head as if dazed, and went back into the drawer. The sight of his hands touching all of Corbin’s things settled comfortably in Corbin’s stomach. Finally, he found a white tank undershirt. Looking back at Corbin, he unbuttoned his own shirt and let it fall to the floor. Then he undid his jeans and slid them off. He stood before Corbin, letting him look. It was only fair.
Corbin took in his broad chest and shoulders, large rib cage, and the rounded muscles of his arms and chest. The stretch of smooth skin and light brown hair in a trail down his stomach. He had thick, powerful thighs and a slight softness to his stomach that made Corbin want to rest his cheek there. He looked bigger without clothes, more immediate.
Once Alex pulled on the tank top, which stretched tight across his larger frame, Corbin reached out a hand to him and the air buzzed as they drew closer. The sudden thereness of Alex in his bed made Corbin shrink backward.
“I’ve never slept in the same bed as anyone,” he said softly.
Alex looked like he was trying out things to say and rejecting each of them. Finally, he just leaned forward and kissed Corbin on the cheek, lips like the press of a thumb to the jam-filled cookies they’d made the week before. It made his heart race and his chest feel tight, and all he could think was So much, this is so much, is it too much.