A Demon for Midwinter

by K. L. Noone

  “I didn’t, because it was a good story.” He glanced up from tea, found Justin looking at him, looked away. “Are you sure you want to know? You said easy. And you should be resting.”

  “I’ve got tea and you. I’m doing okay.” Justin set down the tea, though, and scooted closer to him. “Doing something for someone else—even just listening—sort of helps. Like I can do something good, you know? But don’t tell me if it’s a story you don’t want to share.”

  “You are,” Kris said, “almost certainly the strangest demon in this entire dimension, running around rescuing people,” but he was smiling again, terribly fond, deeply goldenly in love. He would’ve told the story anyway—not a problem, not so many years later—but given those words, he had to. Anything, everything, every piece of himself. “So. Yes and no, I guess the answer is. I did sort of push Lynnie into listening to our demo tape, not exactly on purpose, like you said, but I was excited, I was a kid trying to get a break and she was already famous, just starting to be, and we were over at her place and I said, I want you to love this…”

  “Ah,” Justin said, acknowledgement without judgement.

  “I didn’t think about it. No, that’s not true, I did, after, but I told myself it wasn’t any worse than what anyone does in this fucking industry, especially back then. I didn’t tell her to do anything specific with it—I actually tried to tell her to forget it and get high and come back to bed—but of course she did, she gave it to her people, and then they thought we were good, and then we had a record deal…” He couldn’t look. “I told her I’d made her love it and she laughed and told me not to apologize for doing what it took, everybody uses everybody, and could I get back to making my tongue more useful.”

  “But you did tell her.”

  “I didn’t try very hard to change her mind. I could’ve. But we were getting everything we wanted, and Reg and Tommy were thrilled, and I let myself believe her, that it wasn’t a big deal, that it was good.” His tea was growing cold. The television went unheeded to commercial.

  “So,” Justin said, “yes and no.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then that whole story came out, including all the sex, and you didn’t deny it, because you got the publicity, and they let you keep the record deal because of the publicity.” Justin favored him with utterly forthright directness, head tipped, scrutinizing. “The execs who signed you before the story didn’t do it because you pushed them, though. You hadn’t met them. So they did it on the basis of that demo tape. You were good.”

  “Yeah, but if I hadn’t—”

  “Oh, it’s absolutely a fucked-up thing you did, don’t get me wrong.” With a half-annoyed glare at him. “I’ll be offended on her behalf. But you did apologize, and you offered an out, and you didn’t mean to do it. And you were what, nineteen? Twenty?”

  Kris winced. “Seventeen.”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t underage! I was legal!” In England, anyway. He did not mention how long he’d been hanging out around the club scene, desperate for an escape from council-estate mediocrity and his father’s drunken belligerence, yearning for the flash and the melody, the stardom and the beckoning spotlight. He’d had an eventful few years already at that point. “Made the story even better, didn’t it?”

  “No,” Justin said, now looking faintly alarmed. “I knew you were young, that was part of the—the legend, Kris Starr and Starrlight and the whole rebel image, but seventeen. I’m not sure whether I’m impressed or concerned that you were capable of getting three rock stars into bed with you by then.”

  “I wanted to be them,” Kris said. “I told them so. They thought I was adorable. And I learned a lot.”

  “Including that very useful thing with your tongue.” Perfect innocence, at least until Kris caught his eye; Justin’s smile escaped into freedom. Kris was glad to see it. Justin added, through another sip of tea, “You wouldn’t do it now. Pushing people. You try not to.”

  “No,” Kris said. “No, I wouldn’t. Or—not on purpose. Not like that.” He clutched his own mug. Hoped it believed him. Hoped Justin believed him. “I don’t always know.”

  Justin waved a hand around them: yes, and we’re way up here in this lofty penthouse because you do try, don’t you.

  “Yes, fine…I try. Not to. You know what I did. You know why we split up. The band.”

  “I know.” Justin gave him a sort of sympathetic eyebrow-wiggle. The hair danced, casting flame-shadows on the morning wall. “I figured you didn’t want to talk about that one.”

  “I don’t really, thanks.” His hands felt colder. Empty despite the tea. Of course he wasn’t a good person. He never had been. Manipulations, lies, rock and roll, all-night parties and flaunting of the riotous image, the fame and money and intoxication, and the untrustworthy bruised hollowness in his bones. He did try to be better. He’d learned the hard way. He’d never be able to undo the past. “Is there anything else you need? Anything I can do?”

  His demon gazed at him for a second. “You wouldn’t know how to make pancakes, would you?”

  “…what?”

  “Breakfast food? Waffles? No?”

  “I’ve…never made pancakes. And waffles aren’t real.”

  “What do you have against waffles? Can I go through your cupboards?”

  “They were only invented by bored pixies in Belgium in the nineties. Yes, of course, but I don’t think I’ve got food…”

  He considered this a success when Justin, halfway to getting up, flopped back down on the sofa laughing. “And, what, Diet Coke is a secret potion made by selkies? I’d even believe that one.”

  “Designed to use up excessive kelp in secret flavorings. Were you seriously hungry?”

  “I am now that we’re talking about breakfast. Do you at least have bread?”

  Kris trailed enthusiasm and appetite into the kitchen. Either Justin was feeling better or demons needed calories, which might in fact be the case, judging from the previous encounter with the pizza. “Bread, yes. Kelp, no.”

  “Eggs?”

  “Why?”

  “French toast?”

  “Ah…”

  “Hmm. Okay, I can do something about that, hang on.” Eggs materialized. So did a few other ingredients.

  “I try not to do that too much,” Justin said, hands busy. “Even if I leave money. It confuses employees. Inventory. I say I try not to, but sometimes it’s too easy…” The hands slowed, came to rest, holding a spoon. “I’m not human. Not exactly. Even though I look like I am.”

  “You want something, and it turns up?” He propped elbows on the counter. “Would you like help? Is that cinnamon?”

  “Yes…it’s the way I see the world. The cinnamon’s just cinnamon. You can open it.” Whipped cream was also happening, forming peaks and mounds of white. “Everything’s reachable. If I ask for eggs, or a record, or a bowl—thank you—everything’s sort of here all at once. Overlapping. You don’t see that way. Humans. I never really unlearned it; you can’t when it’s all the time. I do pretend, though.”

  “And you make breakfast.”

  “I learned to make whatever my wonderful adorable utterly terrifying younger siblings would eat.” Justin was turning his bread into French toast. Kris’s kitchen had never witnessed such culinary prowess, and opened up burners and flames in amazement. “I’m not technically a good cook except for a few specific things. Whatever I’ve practiced. And thank you for being calm about that part, too. I’ll try not to feed you anything charred to pieces.”

  Not calm, Kris thought. Angry. Furious that someone hurt you, you with cinnamon at your fingertips and the strength to either be okay or fake it well enough…

  He figured it out, belatedly. “You’re distracting both of us, aren’t you?”

  Justin’s smile wasn’t exactly happy. “Guilty. If I stop moving, if I have to think…right now it mostly feels like a dream.” The hand holding a plate quivered fractionally; Kris had the impression
he wanted to touch his cheek, his throat, the places where no more bruises lay. “I told you he’d never done anything like that. I didn’t know he could. It’s possible I’m not the best judge of character.”

  On the heels of this statement, dismissing it, the plate landed in front of Kris. It held golden-brown sweetness, cinnamon cream, and strawberries. “Where’s yours?”

  “Next. You first. Tell me if that’s too sweet, though. I like sweet.”

  “It’s incredible.” He added, around a too-large bite, “Don’t say it’s your fault. It’s his.” The French toast was, fortunately, genuinely delicious; even if it hadn’t been he’d’ve been eating it. His more usual breakfast of coffee and whiskey cheered on this development from a countertop. “You like people. You look for the best in people. That’s not a bad thing.”

  Justin poked his own slice with a fork and didn’t eat the bite. “I think it depends on the people.”

  “Don’t.” Kris put a hand out without thinking: set it on his demon’s forlorn arm. “Don’t lose that.” The words hung lightly in the air between them, etched in dusty sunrise gold and toasted spice. Justin’s mouth tipped upward; Kris broke the spell with, “Speaking for me. As one of your people. Old and tired, and you keep telling me you believe in me.”

  “And you literally gave me your shirt and your bed.” Justin looked at the hand; Kris, terrified, yanked it away. What if his demon didn’t want to be touched? How could he ever want to be, after—

  “I don’t mind,” Justin said.

  “Oh…you heard that…”

  “It was loud. Not so much words, but I got the idea.” With a tiny smile, directed more at breakfast. “Just…don’t do anything too forceful, maybe. But I like it when you—it feels nice. Like I can reach out and find you.” That smile went sideways for a second, self-aware. “So that’s consent, I guess.”

  “Is that…” He couldn’t begin to navigate that question. Too huge, too catastrophic. “Were you…he didn’t…did he…I won’t ever touch you if you don’t want that. I swear.”

  Justin, wearing Kris’s shirt and pajama pants, nibbling French toast, looked down at his plate, and then up at Kris, and nodded. Kitchen light gleamed above them: a witness painted in breakfast food and stalwart granite countertops.

  “Okay,” Kris said, “so that’s—that’s fine, you just tell me when or if it’s okay, if you want me to.”

  “I know about consent,” Justin said. “And it wasn’t like—I thought he cared, I thought we were—he never, um. He liked taking control, in bed, and sometimes out of bed, which is fine, I like belonging to someone anyway, I always wanted to. But then yesterday, when he—when he hit me. That never happened before. It almost doesn’t feel real, except that it was. I’m okay with being touched, I think I’m okay with, um, sex—” They both paused, but he was speaking in the abstract, and went on quickly. “I know there’ll be something—if you’re angry with me, or—but if you’re asking about the sex part and whether I ever felt like I couldn’t say no, maybe I should’ve figured that out, but I didn’t realize. I always wanted to say yes, I’m pretty much always in the mood, so I honestly don’t know what would’ve happened if I’d ever said no. Sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  “You said sorry. Just now.” He held out his hand, palm up; Justin put fingers into his without hesitation. “You don’t need to apologize.”

  “I did say it, didn’t I.” Even that hair managed to sigh. Fire-crackles and dismay. “I’m a disaster right now. I’m—”

  “Don’t you dare,” Kris interrupted, and squeezed the fingers in his. “Don’t say it.”

  Apology cut off, Justin discovered a bubble of self-directed wry amusement. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you. My job. Professional, capable, managing musicians…”

  “Saving babies. You do that a lot?”

  “I try to be good at helping other people. Even when my life’s a mess.” Justin, a bit uncertainly, added, “You remember the fire that started in that hotel downtown, last year, and the people who couldn’t figure out how they got out, from the top floors…”

  “That was you.”

  “I couldn’t save everyone. I tried. I woke up behind a Dumpster in an alley twenty minutes after the fifth person. I think I meant to hide so nobody’d see me, but it’s kind of a blur. I had the universe’s worst headache and the nosebleed to match.” Justin drank more tea, regarded the empty mug with some surprise, set it down. Kris said, “Earl Grey? Or I can try to make coffee?”

  “I can—”

  “Not after telling me that story you can’t. Go sit down, I’ll worry about clean-up later.” He pointedly waited until Justin had curled back up on the sofa, and poked at tea because it felt like solid ground mid-crisis. He needed a deep breath or two. Justin unconscious, bleeding, in an alley. Having saved people.

  “I’m not a good hero,” Justin said from the cushions. “Like I said, it was only five people. And I dropped the last one when I passed out. Broken leg, I heard.”

  “And he was alive with that leg, wasn’t he?”

  His demon aimed a halfhearted scowl at him but accepted this point.

  “You are good at helping other people,” Kris said, rejoining him. “Here. Sugar? Milk? Another blanket? Bad covers of other people’s award-winning rock songs?” My heart, he didn’t say. A love song. Anything I can give you. Pulled right out of my body, my soul, and set in your hands. If it’ll make you smile even one more time.

  “…sugar,” Justin said, distractedly accepting some, evidently pondering the word. “If you’re rewriting ‘Sugar’…for the holiday album…if we’re having fun with it anyway…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just a line or two…we were talking about spices earlier…”

  “Hmm. Sugar and spice…”

  “Being naughty and nice?” Justin made appreciative sounds at his tea and the sweetness thereof; steam brushed his eyelashes and mingled with flame-burst hair. “I like it, though. How kinky do you want me to get? Because, um, baby, you’re a sugarplum…”

  “That’s not that bad.”

  “Sticky-sweet and in my dreams?”

  Kris clung to Earl Grey and forgot how to form words.

  “It’s not as if your original version isn’t,” Justin said. “Come over and get it, that sugar in your tea…I mean, if we’re talking barely disguised metaphors. If you want the less kinky version I was thinking about gingerbread and building a house together. Innocent and precious.”

  “Um,” said Kris’s voice, without input from the rest of him, which remained focused on Justin and sticky and sweet dreams.

  “Of course there are other things you can do with ginger,” Justin went on. “But more seriously, if you want something you can sing in public, well—we can build a house, baby, out of sugar and spice…”

  “Um. Public. Right.”

  “Just ideas. You can ignore me.”

  “No,” Kris managed, “I like it, we should write some of that down, here, I’ll play for you if you want to write—” Mercifully, he could use the guitar as a shield. Now was completely not the time for that interest, the time might in fact be never, and he knew that, he knew.

  And Justin had been talking about sex, and consent, and nearly always being in the mood, and kinky song lyrics. Had brought the topic up, in fact.

  He ran fingers through opening chords. Justin drank tea and beamed at him: blanket-wrapped, healing and excited, stumbling back to normality. Both of them, he thought. Maybe.

  He played his own music, and Justin sang along and came up with new words; the words ranged from ridiculous to scandalous, from earnest to family-friendly, and somewhere in the middle of time and tea and leftover pizza for lunch and discussions about meter and rhythm they found at least two new versions of that song, scribbled in Justin’s messy journalist handwriting on a conjured-up notepad.

  “I love it,” Justin said, “especially the first one. I don’t know w
hen you could ever sing that one for anyone, but I do love it.” His hair billowed into gleeful sparks; he’d sat up and had been using a knee as a writing-desk.

  “You count as anyone.” Kris played a few notes at him: the opening thrum of the Beat Poets’ “Standing Here.” “Can’t you see me—you—standing here…You know I’m giving you writing credit.”

  “Oh no, you don’t have to—” Justin pointed the pen his direction. “It’s your writing originally.”

  “And you’ve made it more fun.” True, and he’d not known how true until he said so. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat around with someone and simply invented, messed around with lyrics and chords, and laughed aloud. “You deserve the credit.”

  “You can’t put my name on a Kris Starr album,” Justin said, but in a way that meant he’d like it if so. “It’s your name.”

  “So I can do what I want. Be eccentric. Revitalize my career with my manager’s input.”

  Justin gave him a look.

  “You did write it,” Kris said. “Or rewrite it. Twice.”

  “We did, I think.”

  “Well, in that case. Shared writing credit.”

  “I feel like I should argue more,” Justin said, “but the teenage daydream version of me wants to scream out loud and dance around your apartment, so…”

  “Feel free. I’ll play for you. A soundtrack.”

  Justin rolled eyes, extended a leg, nudged toes into Kris’s thigh. “I’m trying to be cool.”

  “Extremely so.”

  “Not that you haven’t seen me…well, you’ve seen me. Pretty much all of me, by now. The good, the bad, the horrifying.”

  He’d been trying not to ask. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Better,” Justin said. “I think—better. More like me.”

  “Good,” Kris said, “that’s…good,” and then they sat on the sofa gazing at each other, conversation idle and radiant as sunbeams, as the tranquil stripe of light through curtains, over fabric and a guitar-string, over Justin’s knee and toes left tucked under Kris’s leg.

  The hush stretched out. Balanced emotions on a precipice. Hummed on the brink.