A Demon for Midwinter

by K. L. Noone

  He drummed fingers on the table. Justin hadn’t called.

  He sent a text before he could think better of it: hey, just wondering, was the recording that bad?

  No answer. Not immediate, and not by the time he’d wandered off to find mismatched fluffy socks because his toes were cold. Aging rock star, dressed in sweatpants and an ancient T-shirt and orange-and-violet nonmatching fuzziness on his feet, no make-up, story at eleven.

  He picked up his mobile, called Justin’s number, thought what the hell am I doing?? and hung up halfway through the ring.

  He turned on his television. He thought about Justin on his couch, eating pizza, laughing. He turned off his television.

  The evening wore on. He got more and more concerned as it did. Justin had promised. Justin kept promises. To clients, to friends, to someone who cared about him.

  He called a second time, and this time left a message, saying hey, hi, it’s Kris, just checking in, please call me.

  Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing at all.

  And now he was worried. He knew Justin had a possessive boyfriend. He knew Justin had been planning to talk to that boyfriend about his secret. He knew David had already been annoyed by yesterday’s lateness. He didn’t really think anything would’ve happened, of course not, but—

  But, but. Ice down his spine. Ice with lots of crawling skittering legs.

  Silence sat on the penthouse like lead: grey and oppressive.

  He juggled his phone from hand to hand.

  He checked the screen. He let a finger hover over the redial button. A fourth call or text would be too much, surely?

  On the edge of a couch-cushion, he forced himself to exhale. Jitters bolted down his spine and shoved his legs into action. He found himself on his feet headed for the kitchen, for—a drink, food, tea, some kind of motion—

  The air split apart above his sofa. Bonfire and smoke flavors on the wind. A body.

  Justin missed landing well, hit the arm of the sofa, slid to the ground. Red splashed the sofa-arm. Smeared lower.

  He did not get up, barefoot, dressed in pajama pants and a too-large shirt that showed bruises when it crumpled up too.

  Kris flung himself that way. “Justin! Justin, no—no no no, wake up, look at me, come on—oh fuck please wake up—Justin—”

  Dead weight in his arms. Head falling back. So much scarlet, demon skin shivering with desperate power—Justin was in proper demon-form, the tiny gauzy horns and the burning hair and the tint of infernal flame to his arms, his cheeks—and blood, that was real blood—

  It painted the side of his face. Near one closed eye. His mouth. Vicious, sticky, apocalyptic. Bruises scrawled ugliness across Justin’s throat as well, beyond the ones glimpsed under his shirt. Red got on Kris’s hands, shirt, floorboards.

  “No, come on, you can—you’re here, you’re breathing—” True. Had to be. Was. “Stay with me,” Kris pleaded. “Stay with me, love, keep breathing, that’s—that’s good, that’s so good, you’re here, you’re still here—” His left hand, wet, slipped when he grabbed his phone. He kept his other hand over the worst cut, the one narrowly missing a shut eye.

  Justin coughed. Flinched: not as if it hurt, or rather as if it did, but the sensation of hands on him hurt more. He caught himself, though. “Here…”

  “Yeah.” He was barely aware of talking. Words falling out like drops of salt-water. Hands busy. None of the cuts seemed bad, thank God. But they were plural, made by sharp edges or impacts or men’s rings, and they were accompanied by those telltale bruises. “We’re here. I’m here. What—no, never mind, stay still, I’ll call—”

  “I can heal.” One more cough. But at least he was awake: awake and present and talking through pain. “But…I was already in this…form, so…it hurt this one…give me a sec…”

  “Please,” Kris begged through blinding fear. If Justin couldn’t—“Please try. You can, you can heal, I’ve seen you—”

  Demonskin grew paler, softer, more human; the faint outlines of horns vanished. Wounds showed up worse: darker against white flesh, fragile flesh. Kris choked on an inhale; held breath like butterfly-wings, easily torn.

  Justin didn’t move, no energy to spare, but pushed himself into one more back-and-forth. A reset button, he’d said once. Demon-shape. Losing tattoos and hair dye. Fixing broken ankles. Human again after.

  Injuries disappeared. Drying blood didn’t—it clung determinedly to mortal cheek, hair, hands, and Kris’s couch—but Justin opened eyes and inhaled and struggled upright. “Kris.”

  “Don’t move yet!” Exhaustion would be a factor. He knew that now. “Let me help, come on, easy…” Between the two of them they got more vertical, Kris sitting against the side of the couch, Justin propped up against him, more or less in his lap. “Here, stay put, just breathe, love, I’ve got you.”

  “Kris,” Justin said again, less painful but more ragged, and then clung to him, face buried in Kris’s neck, trembling.

  The night thundered with heartbeats. With unanswered questions. With the raw edge to Justin’s breathing, not quite tears but close, and the way Kris’s hands shook with adrenaline even as he rubbed his demon’s back. He ordered them to stop that the shaking, which halfway worked.

  Justin was here and healed—physically—and safe with him. That mattered most for the moment.

  He was beginning to have an idea, an unformed simmering furious idea, of what’d happened. He hoped he was wrong. He was scared he wasn’t.

  That’d been a beating. Up close and personal. Justin’s shirt was too big to be his own; he’d been wearing someone else’s. And he’d said he planned to be brave, to talk to his boyfriend about his secret at last.

  His right hand wanted to tense into a fist. He forced it to relax, to stroke Justin’s hair. Not what they needed. Not yet.

  “…better,” Justin whispered. The word brushed like feathers across Kris’s skin: barely present broken shafts. “I’m so tired, though…”

  “I know. I know, it’s okay, you’re okay, you can rest.” He guided that head back down when it showed signs of lifting. Ran a hand over fire-strands: more soothing. “You want to stay here for a while? Or in bed?”

  “Here?” Justin didn’t protest being coaxed back into place. “I don’t…I can’t think. I don’t want to move. Please just hold me.”

  “Of course.” He tightened his arms. “Of course, love.”

  This got a wavering sigh, and some of the tension trickled away. “You haven’t asked me what—what happened…”

  “Do I need to? You tell me when you’re ready.”

  “Thank you.” Justin relaxed a fraction more. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Kris said softly, “you don’t have to. I want to help.” Justin wasn’t a small person, made of infinite legs and willowy model-height, but he felt small right now, cradled in Kris’s arms. Wounded and younger, in need of protection. And Kris knew rationally that this was preposterous—demons had more power than he could imagine, and his personal half-demon had escaped whatever that’d been tonight to come here—but couldn’t help the flood of emotion: the grief and rage and need to protect. The bleeding strings of his own foolish love.

  He held Justin for a while, the two of them entwined on the floor. Lamplight kept the living room bathed in gold; kept burning against the knowledge of darkness. Time burned away too, and he kept holding on. Justin cried a little, seemed to get better, started shaking again; Kris held him through that too, more than once. Talked to him, even when he couldn’t answer. Started singing: fifty-year-old pop songs, lullabies, his own chart-topping hits. Justin almost laughed and curled a hand into Kris’s shirt. Safe in the light.

  Eventually something shifted, lifted, altered: intangible as the evaporation of tears, as the recognition that nobody’d followed after to cause more harm. Justin swallowed, sat up but stayed under Kris’s arm, breathed, “Thank you.”

  “No need.” He touched that cheek, the smudge of dried blo
od next to that eye. “Can we clean you up? Bed, maybe? Or coffee?” He’d’ve said tea, unthinking embodiment of the English comforting stereotype, but if his guess was right he couldn’t.

  Justin touched his cheek, too. Their fingers met, brushed, skimmed away. “We should…should I try to clean your couch? Or…oh, no, I ruined your shirt, your apartment…”

  “It’s an old shirt. Want to get up?”

  Not his bedroom; he took them a step that way but had frantic second thoughts. Too intimate, too presumptive. The guest bedroom. Barely used. Impersonal. Better, right?

  Not better. He sat down on the bed, discovered a slab of impenetrable wood, scooped Justin back up. “No. Come on.”

  His bedroom after all, then. A tangle of jeans spilled denim at them in astonishment from the floor by the hamper, a sprawl of jewelry laid siege to the dresser-top, and two untouched writing-notebooks shed astounded dust from his bedside table, but the space felt like a safer haven. Like concerned barricades closing around them, shield-walls guarding bodies inside.

  He eased Justin down on his bed. Justin managed to focus on him, having recovered somewhat, but long eyelashes quivered like the pain of volcanoes. Those fingers felt cold. Dull red streaked the too-large collar of that shirt as if he’d been painting. He hadn’t been.

  “You’re safe,” Kris told him meaninglessly. “You’re safe, I’m right here, I’m with you, okay?” As if blood didn’t lurk on the couch-arm, on the floor. Words like dry ashes of a lie. He touched the closest cheek again. “Can I clean this up?”

  This got a slow nod. Justin kept watching him, very quiet, out of words.

  Kris ran into his bathroom, grabbed water and a washcloth, ran back out, sat gingerly down beside all the quietness. Promised, trying to be clear about intention while his pulse pounded, “Tell me if you don’t want me touching—if you don’t feel—if anything doesn’t feel good, yeah?” and dabbed at stubborn streaks. At least the bruises and split skin underneath had gone. Justin nodded again but didn’t say anything, only closed his eyes as Kris swiped blood out of an eyebrow. Trusting him.

  Hands and warm water and careful cleansing. Bedroom growing warmer too. Gradually, bit by bit, but true. More true when Justin opened eyes and unearthed a ghost of smile. Kris remembered to breathe.

  He stopped after shock-pale skin was sufficiently—without a shower, anyway—washed free of reminders. Dove into his dresser. Emerged with spare clothing: loose pajama pants of his own, an old soft long-sleeved shirt in plain unpatterned sky-blue. “Feel like changing?”

  Justin looked at clothing. Looked up at him.

  “We’re close enough,” Kris babbled, “you’re, y’know, in better shape than I am, but it’s just pajamas, it doesn’t matter, it’ll fit, you can wear anything of mine you want, do you not like blue? I might have other shirts?”

  Justin laughed, a broken burned-out gulp of sound, and put a hand over his mouth as if bewildered by the noise. “No.” Through fingers. Moving them to talk: “No, it’s—I’m—you’re being so wonderful and I—of course I like blue, you’ve seen my hair—oh, no, Kris—”

  Kris flung arms around him. Held him close. Waited while Justin took a few deep breaths: not collapsing, stepping back from the brink. His heart was teetering on that edge as well, horrified and fiercely in love and aware of its own fleeting selfish glee that Justin’d come to him. He shoved that sickening thought down and stacked drum-kits and bars across it. No. This wasn’t about that. Maybe never.

  “You want me to step outside,” he asked, “while you change, love? And—and maybe, I know you can heal, I know you’re doing okay, I know, but—should I call someone? Hospital, doctors—anyone you want to report this to…”

  “No. I can’t. I don’t know.” Justin twisted pajama fabric between hands. “He never…he’s never hit me before. Not ever. And I haven’t even told you…no, don’t leave. I don’t want to be—I feel safer with you here. Maybe turn around?”

  “Sure.” He stared at the wall until his eyes blurred and burned. His guess had been right. He hated that it was. Behind him fabric swept and rustled: off and on.

  “Okay,” Justin said. “You, um. Can turn back around. And come here?”

  “Of course.” When he turned, Justin was sitting back on the bed, hugging a knee to his chest. He’d folded his own clothes on the floor; his hands looked like they wanted to shake but were being kept busy. He’d always been roughly Kris’s height, but thinner and lighter in build; the shirt hung a bit too big, but in a cozy oversized way, snuggles of sky-hue. “You can,” Kris said, “get in bed, you know,” and tugged at blankets until Justin gave in. “You should stay warm. Rest.”

  “You should know,” Justin whispered, bundled into night-black duvet and expensive silky sheets. “I should tell you.”

  “Only if you feel up to it.” Kris stretched out on the bed next to him: lying down beside him, but atop covers, face to face and trying hard to express harmlessness and concern with every atom. “Don’t worry about me. Old and tough.”

  “You’re not old.” Justin gazed at him, eyes huge and vulnerable, framed by fiery hair and luxurious bedding. And did not retreat. “You’re Kris Starr. I—I came here because I thought of—I needed someplace safe and I thought of you. Is that…”

  “I’m glad you did.” He rested a hand atop his demon’s shoulder, over the lump of blankets. “Promise I am. Word of honor, all that.”

  “Oh…so…I won’t apologize again. But I will try to clean your sofa. Sorry, Kris.”

  “There are…people…who do that sort of thing. For money. People who like money. Specialized sofa-cleaning wizards. I’ll figure it out. How’re you feeling?”

  “Tired. But not sleepy exactly.” Justin brushed stray sparks out of his own face. “Just…worn out. Everywhere. But I don’t think I could fall asleep if I tried.”

  “You want me to talk to you? Play you something?”

  “Always yes.” The smile made it further this time. A survivor limping away from a battlefield, a breath in the aftermath, a sagging banner lifted by a relief of breeze. “What you asked, about a hospital, police…I can’t. You know why I can’t.”

  He’d realized that the second after asking. Any competent doctor would notice something odd and inhuman; police officers would ask questions. Justin wouldn’t be able to explain either the cause or his own lack of visible injuries. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m trying to process it all.” He had a cheek pillowed on one hand, heartbreakingly innocent. He wasn’t, Kris understood—too much knowledge about pain and fear and prejudice—and the contrast stopped the world for a moment. Lurching in its rotation.

  Justin went on, voice hushed, “It was a good day, you know. Before—before this. It was—we slept in, we, ah, stayed in bed, um, you get the idea…for a while, and we went out to see the Midwinter decorations and this year’s Endless Burning Yule Log…he even let me buy a chocolate one, you know, one of the miniature edible ones? For fun?”

  Kris wanted to knock that he let me phrasing over and set it on fire. Like the Endless Burning Yule Log. Like the scream of his anger: Justin didn’t hear that? Didn’t see it?

  He wanted Justin to tell this story, if it’d help. He said nothing. He sat on all the fury. And he lay in bed with his demon, nearly nose to nose, and tried to say with his expression, go on, if you want to talk I want to listen, tell me.

  Justin told him that they’d come back to David’s apartment, that they’d made love again—and of course they had, of course they would, with Justin pink-cheeked and holiday-giddy and tasting of chocolate and excitement; Kris’s stomach flipped between envy and sick anticipation of upcoming scenes—and then made dinner together, which incidentally explained why Justin’d shown up wearing David’s shirt instead of being stark naked in the kitchen. After that, they’d been lazily watching thirty-year-old Star Voyager reruns, and Justin had been happy, feeling cared-for inside and out, and hopeful.

  “So I told him.
Well, first I said I had something I wanted to talk about. He thought I meant yes I was moving in, and he started talking about how he knew I’d see how perfect we were, how this was meant to go…I had to say no, I really did need to tell him something, and he might not like it.”

  “What’d he say?”

  David had thought it was a joke. Had laughed. Then had stopped laughing. Had shoved Justin off his lap and gotten up, pacing, telling him to stop saying those words. Justin, clinging to a shred of faith in the relationship, had gotten up too. Had demonstrated the truth of his claims by changing forms.

  “He pushed me away. I was standing in front of the bookshelf, and I fell into it, and I said…I think I said his name. And he…” That voice faltered, broke, frayed: melody shredded by fists. “I’d never seen him so angry. His face…I’d’ve said he’d gone crazy, if I hadn’t known why…he told me I was a liar, that I’d lied to him. He told me I was a—an ungrateful—that I didn’t deserve everything he’d done for me. He wanted to know whether I’d been stealing his soul. Bit by bit, at night. He had a hand on my throat.” Justin stopped, touched the spot where bruises’d seared, breathed.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kris breathed back. “You—if you don’t want to say more—”

  “I said I hadn’t, I wouldn’t, I don’t even do that and I wouldn’t do it to someone I cared about. He didn’t believe me. He said—he asked me whether that was why he’d wanted me so much in the first place. Whether I’d used magic on him. As if he hadn’t come up to me and asked to buy me a drink. When I wasn’t looking for anyone.” Justin’s eyelashes were wet. “I don’t understand. I still don’t—when I said no he grabbed the nearest book. It’s funny, isn’t it, the details you remember…it said Corporate Regulations Across Magical Boundaries, all in gold, on the cover…anyway it hurt, and I was so scared that I couldn’t think, I couldn’t even remember how to move…he stopped to shout at me, and I remembered I could get away, and I came here.”