by K. L. Noone
“And this is Kelly, or Professor Bautista to undergraduates and anyone she wants to intimidate—”
“Hi,” Kris said. Justin’s stepmother was pretty, Filipina, and made of curves—petite body, wavy hair, almond-shaped eyes behind fashionable glasses—and shorter than them both. She smiled, but he had the impression of rapid-fire scrutiny, evaluations, and test-tubes and physicist standards of acceptability. She shook his hand, so he guessed he’d scraped by.
“—and those’re the monsters, that one’s Andy and that one’s Eddie, they’re sort of empaths, it’s complicated, and that’s Isabella, she just turned three, don’t worry if she doesn’t talk, she mostly talks to cats. I don’t know where James is. But that’s most of them.”
Isabella gave him a wary but interested glance and held her mother’s hand.
“How does he always know,” one of the twins—Andy or Eddie—complained. “Even when we wear the same outfit on purpose.”
Kris had immediately and entirely lost track, and also wanted an answer to this question. The twins possessed identical everything as far as he could tell: expressions, black hair, dark eyes, and blue sweaters over skinny jeans. They tilted teenage heads in unison, evaluating him over mugs of hot cocoa.
“I am a demon.” Justin leaned in. Intoned, holding up hands like claws, “I need to know who everyone is, especially you, if I’m going to steal your tiny human soul, brat.”
“If you steal our souls,” asked Andy-or-Eddie, with great interest, “do we still have to pass algebra?”
“Justin, don’t give them any ideas, they’ll summon a demon who’s not you and end up in the otherworld dimensions.” Kelly hugged her stepson one-armed, her daughter remaining attached to the spare hand. “Oh, sweetie, your hair…if you want we might have some pink left from last time…”
“It’s all right,” Justin said gently, “I’m fine for now,” and her eyes softened, without losing the worry. “I’ll make coffee, then. You like coffee. And pospas. You should eat.”
“And I’ll bring the terrible twosome back if they end up in the otherworld,” Justin agreed. “I can only hope I’d find them before they ended up running the place. Are you trying to make me feel better with ginger and garlic and chicken soup, Kells?”
“Yes,” his stepmother agreed, instantly and shamelessly. “It worked when you were sixteen, and it’ll work now. James and I even figured out how to increase the efficiency of the stove versus a stewpot…which might still be in the lab for testing, come to think of it…”
“Do the fire trick,” said one of the twins. The other one threw in the “Please?”
“Guys…” Justin tossed a glance back at Kris. “We just got here, we haven’t even put Kris in the guest room…”
“Don’t hold back on my account,” Kris suggested. Mesmerized.
Justin at home looked a lot like Justin having coffee with him, but different too. Relaxed. Comfortable. More free, and Kris hadn’t ever realized he’d been contained, restraining himself.
“Okay,” Justin said, and sketched shapes into the air: birds, flowers, rainbows, burning and crackling. Fireworks blossoming from nothing at all, drawn in saffron and gold and ruby streamers and sparks through domestic air. They twirled and glowed and faded, conjured from light and returning to nonexistence. Demon magic, drawn by demon fingertips, and it lit up the kitchen, dazzling and ephemeral and harmless and wild and playful.
The twins applauded, especially when he drew a dancing skeleton. It doffed an imaginary top hat to Kelly and disappeared.
A chubby grey ribbon arrived from nowhere; it twined itself around Kris’s ankles, and meowed.
“Oh, hey, I was wondering where you were.” Justin scooped up the fat smoke-cloud. It purred. “He’s a marshmallow. His name’s Ariel. The twins went through a Shakespeare couple of years.” When he set the marshmallow down, it went over and stared intently into baby Isabella’s eyes in silent communion.
“Mom,” said one more voice, emerging from wintry backyard into the cocoa-scented kitchen, “the robot’s stuck on the artificial volcano landscape again, I think we need better—oh, hey! Cool, bro, you brought a legend.”
“And this one’s James,” Justin said, mid-hug. “The robot’s for the annual all-terrain competition. Hey, kid. Pick a school yet?”
James made an exasperated sound. “We don’t hear back until April. Steph fell in love with Stanford during the campus visit, and they’ve got great applied interdimensional gateway labs, but Columbia has some awesome undergrad research opportunities and faculty working on otherworld-human biomechanical adaptation, so…” This sibling might’ve been a seventeen-year-old version of Justin, minus demon hair and with the addition of Filipino DNA and glasses. They had the same chin, and nearly the same gazelle height, and they flung arms around each other with equal affection. “I hate waiting. I’m trying not to think about it. Did you—”
“Bring you anything new? I so did.” Justin, fire show over, fished around in the backpack with perfectly ordinary fingers. Held out a flash drive. “Here. Best rock albums that aren’t out yet, courtesy of your favorite sibling. The new Pompeii Burning is on there.”
“And that’s why you’re my favorite,” James agreed, grinning. “That, and I’ve never forgiven the brats for ruining my first date with Steph.”
“Hey,” complained a twin. “We helped. We sat in the theater right behind you and told you what to say.”
“She’s still going out with you, anyway.”
“We don’t know why.”
“Stephanie’s his girlfriend,” Justin clarified for the audience member who didn’t know. “For—is it three years yet? Already? They’re both going to be engineers and revolutionize the world.”
“Almost. End of the month. The anniversary, not the world revolution. We did have plans tonight…new Bond film, and you know how we feel about the shiny toys, and we didn’t know you were coming home, so…but you could come with us if you want.” James eyed Kris with considerable curiosity. “Double date? I mean, as friends? You didn’t bring David…?”
“Wow, tactless,” said a twin.
“Um.” Justin’s shoulders drooped. “That’s not—that sort of. Ended. Yesterday.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry, bro.”
Justin was clearly working hard to smile. “No, it’s okay. Would’ve happened eventually. But thanks. I think we’ll probably just stay home tonight, unless, um, Kris, if you want to go out…I could take care of the hair, hide it, I guess there’s already pink dye around, it won’t take that long…”
Kris’s arms ached to go back around him. “No, whatever you want. I’m here for moral support.”
“And because I can barely make decisions right now,” Justin finished, but he’d found a threadbare hint of that usual humor. “And also Dad’s going to pick your brain about the nineteen-eighties and political protest rock. For which I apologize.”
“I am not,” Bill said. “Maybe a little. Historian, Kris, sorry.”
“I’ve been asked worse—”
“Justin,” Kelly said, “one question, you two don’t mind sharing your old room, do you? We turned the guest room into the twins’ art studio, but of course if you want we can kick their stuff out—”
“Thanks, Mom!” complained two voices in unison.
“—but it’ll take some time. But whatever you’d prefer, both of you. We won’t be bothered either way.”
Justin looked at Kris. Then blushed. Vividly. “I can sleep downstairs. On the couch.”
“It’s your room.” Kris dared to poke him in the shoulder. Heat rushed through fingertips, even though he knew it was psychosomatic. Flaring under his skin. He could think of reasons why Justin might be blushing, some of them good, some of them less so. “You realize we once fit the whole band in one bed in a hostel in Dublin. And I’ve slept in a van. And on a tour bus at the end of a five-week trip.”
“Well…” Justin let it go, shrugged. His hair waved like candleligh
t in a breeze, accepting motion. “If you don’t mind. I did tell you I wouldn’t trust me to make decisions.”
“Come on,” Kris said, hoisting both bags. “Where am I going?”
“Upstairs, first door on the left.” Kelly beamed at him. An impressive amount of welcome radiated from that expression. He’d suspect her of ulterior motives if everyone didn’t know Justin’d only yesterday become single, and surely his stepmother wouldn’t be matchmaking? “Come back down and we’ll have dinner. I’ve been in the lab all day, so it’s take-out, but I did get the chicken adobo you like, and empanadas, and lumpia, and turon, and also there’s a lasagna and a salad because you said you were bringing company and—”
“Egg rolls,” Justin translated, “and sort of fried banana. The last two, before the lasagna. Possibly with jackfruit, depending on which place, for take-out. I can carry that, you know.”
“I actually know that,” Kris told him, mock-glare in place, “Filipino food exists in New York, y’know. Also no.”
“You know that because I took you to that food truck,” Justin said, “and then you looked at me like I was a crazy person when I tried to explain halo-halo—”
“You put beans and milk on ice cream on top of ice!”
“This from the man who told me spotted dick is an actual food that actual British people actually eat.” Justin gave up on taking his bag back. “We’ll be right down to help.”
“Spotted dick?” inquired the nearest twin. “Is that like when—”
“No,” said Bill and Justin and Kelly simultaneously.
“That’s what Google’s for,” grumbled the other twin, poking his sibling.
Kris, juggling bags, found himself inexplicably on the verge of laughter. He escaped upstairs before anyone could ask follow-up questions about toad-in-the-hole, and discovered that he was grinning. It felt good.
Justin came in behind him, grinning too, a slim shape of black jacket and flame. “Sorry about that. They’re unholy demonspawn. Professional opinion.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to get questions about spotted dick. I never—” I never knew you were so good with kids, he’d nearly said; but the image of Justin plus children flowed through his brain and left channels of yearning: a domesticity he’d never imagined. “I never had that,” he finished.
Which earned a faultlessly innocent expression, complete with batted eyelashes. “You never had a spotted dick?”
Kris narrowed eyes at him. “We’re finding an expatriate English bakery and getting you a good jam roly-poly, then.”
“Is that as kinky as it sounds?” Justin’s feet made no sound, sock-clad; when he peeled off his jacket his shirt slid up, revealing unselfconscious fair skin, the line of his hips, his waist. Kris’s mouth went dry. “Should I bring the handcuffs? And…I know what you meant.” When he came over to open his bag, his eyes met Kris’s, appreciative.
Justin had, they both knew, dealt with Kris’s father more than once over the phone. With whining requests for money, with false tabloid stories made up for attention, with phone calls begging for tickets to a Kris Starr show “just to see his son,” which if Justin gave in would immediately be sold on the internet for whiskey money. And his mother, of course, had been gone for years, buried away in the dandelion graveyard with nodding clover. He’d never known any grandparents or aunts or uncles.
He said, “Handcuffs? I don’t know what you’ve been doing at bakeries in the past, but it sounds a lot more interesting than my version.” He was also utterly failing to not picture those slender wrists cuffed to a bed. Or together. Above Justin’s head, in bed. Pale skin and fiery hair and sweetness, yielding…
He dove into unpacking. Shirts, jeans, scarves. No. Not scarves. Fuck.
The room wasn’t terribly large, but as comfortably personal as the rest of the house. A desk tucked itself neatly under the window, ready for writing. Bookshelves, mainly holding colorful old Star Voyager tie-in novels and some oversized music history and some secondhand biographies of famous authors and musical artists, colonized the wall that didn’t have the closet. A tall mirror lurked impressively in the other corner, by the dresser.
The room also had exactly one bed. It was a large bed, solid oak, with drawers underneath. It made voiceless suggestive comments about plush mattress toppers and sharing and getting close. He let this fact register, and then with herculean self-control forced it into the category of things absolutely not to be thought about until later.
Justin didn’t answer for a second, picking up a faded X-23 T-shirt, running fabric through fingers. Not quite looking at him; not not looking, either. “You’ve never been bothered by me, have you?”
“To be fair, I’ve only just found out about the handcuffs.”
Justin, shirt in one hand, sank down on the side of the imposing bed, one long leg tucked up, gazing up at Kris. “I mean…I don’t own real metal handcuffs. They leave bruises. I do own leather wrist cuffs. Not here, back in my apartment. For me, um, I like them on me. But I could tell you anything, I could tell you my actual sex in a bakery story, and you’d still be here.”
“Of course I would.” He sat down too; the backpack sat between them, open-mouthed and delighted. “You do realize you’re going to have to tell that one now.”
“I feel like I should’ve always known that.” Justin gave up on the shirt, toyed with a loose thread on the bedspread. “I used to think I needed to be more careful around you. I knew you were an empath, and you could push people, and I thought, if I wanted to talk to you, maybe you wanted me to, and that was dangerous…but that’s not it, is it.”
“You said I couldn’t make you do anything.”
“I said you could if you tried long enough and hard enough, but—it isn’t that. Different. I told you I was a demon and you bought me pizza. You wanted to know what I could do. When I told David—” Justin stopped. Meteors ahead, scorching earth. “You aren’t scared of anything.”
Kris got up, came around so they were face to face, knelt on the floor in front of him. Took both half-demon hands in his. An absurd knight, an old warrior, vowing loyalty. Fealty and solemn oaths and his heart at a young king’s feet. “I’m scared of bloody everything. Getting old. Being forgotten. Not being able to do it anymore, music, writing, all of it. Hurting someone I—hurting people accidentally. Not being able to help when you need me. I spend a lot of time being scared, y’know, it’s just I’m not scared of you.”
Justin’s smile wobbled but was visible. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Wouldn’t be anywhere else.” He let go reluctantly. Creaked his way to his feet. One knee popped. “Might never look at bakeries the same way.”
“It isn’t even that kinky a story, but sure, if you want to know.” Justin got up too. “When I first moved to the city I lived a block from this adorable cupcake place. And the owner was adorable too, and I used to come in at odd hours because I was writing and I’d have writer’s block sugar-cravings, and he’d give me free taste-tests of experimental flavors, and we barely even talked, but…” With a demonstrative gesture: “Cupcake-related sexual tension. All over the place. Anyway one night I dropped in right before closing, and everyone else’d gone home, and we had sex next to the stand mixers, and I got maple buttercream in my hair.”
“Sounds sticky.”
“But delicious. We should go back down, we did offer to help with food…speaking of, that one obviously didn’t last, he won some sort of baking competition and moved to Las Vegas. I hear he’s doing great, he even catered a party for one of the record label’s bands, not one of mine, last year.” Justin headed out the door; Kris followed, bemused and processing this. “I told you that story wasn’t terribly kinky.”
“Maple buttercream?”
“And now maple syrup equals sex in my head, yes.”
“And I thought I had the best stories. Tour buses and road trip vans and hotels…never breakfast foods.” He wanted to lick syrup off those lips. And other places.
“I’m getting the feeling you might win.”
Justin paused halfway down the stairs. Toes pointed, a kitten or a ballerina trapped mid-flight. “I’m not…don’t think that I…look, I like sex and I’ve tried a lot of, um, I like to experiment, but I’ve never done anything with anyone unless everyone involved wanted to, I don’t cheat on anyone, and for the last six months I’ve only been with—” His face went pale.
“It’s okay,” Kris tried desperately. The moment had collapsed in on itself, mutual teasing become apocalypse. He didn’t know how to stop it. “You’re okay.”
“I never really knew him,” Justin said, still pale under unnerving calm. “I never knew he’d—that he could want to hurt me. He was so angry…But he didn’t know me either, and I can’t say—everything I just said, it’s a lie too, because no one would’ve wanted to sleep with a demon if they’d known…”
“You’re still you.” Kris held out a hand: an anchor. One more reminder; he’d keep offering them as long as need be, as long as Justin would listen to them. Emotion in place: broadcast and perceptible to those enhanced senses. “We decided that already, yeah? You said you never hurt anyone. All good memories, right? Like your cupcake boy. You made each other happy. ‘S what you do.”
“I don’t think,” Justin said, shaky but valiant, “I know anything anymore. Except you. You’re always here.”
“I lean on you enough.” He aimed for casual, landed on earnest, meant every word. “My turn.”
Throat-clearing broke the moment; they both turned. Justin’s father had emerged from the study, book in hand, trailing embarrassment and paternal protectiveness.
“Sorry,” Justin said, “we should, um, go help Kelly with, um, egg rolls or something, we did say we’d—” and fled. Kris’s fingers tingled, having memorized the feel of that hand.
He added finally, uncomfortable with the silent appraisal of a loving parent, “I should be helping too, I’ll just—” and hooked a thumb toward the kitchen and inched that way.