by K. L. Noone
“I didn’t know that part.” Bill’s voice was quiet, and quietly furious. Not directed at Kris. “Did he hurt my son? Did Justin tell you anything?”
“Oh,” Kris said. “Oh…ah, that’s not…it’s not my story to—I don’t know if—he didn’t ask me not to say anything, he didn’t say it was a secret but if he didn’t bring it up—”
“Not the details, then. Anything you can tell me.” House-light, topaz domestic light, splashed over Bill’s face like grief. From the kitchen chatter billowed like kites: light, airy, masking pain with affection and distraction. “Please. You’re not a father, are you?”
“No,” Kris said. “No, I’m not. Look, I don’t think it was as bad as that sounded, that last bit. Justin saw something good about him. David. For a while.”
“He always does.” Bill took off glasses, scrubbed a hand over his face. “He always has. Looking for the good in people, even when they don’t deserve it…”
“I know Justin didn’t know,” Kris said. “What David would do. He didn’t expect it. He said it never happened before. The physical—oh gods I’m sorry.” He did not mention other less tangible hurts. Pressure to move in. Dismissal of Justin’s ability to understand complex concepts. Discussion of Justin as property, something David had to have, to take home and claim. And no wonder that’d made someone like that so angry: finding out about a secret, which meant a part of Justin had never been his. “It wasn’t bad. I mean of course it was, it was—but he was more scared than—than physically hurt.”
“He can heal. That way, that is. The body. We learned that much when he was a baby.” Bill tilted that head at him, a water-bird in an incongruous knit jumper. After a moment Kris realized why the gesture seemed familiar: it was Justin’s. “He came to you for help.”
“He did. I don’t know why.”
“Don’t you?” Scholarly inquisition behind wire frames, a teacher coaxing a pupil. “Were you holding his hand?”
“Was I—fuck—dammit, sorry, sorry again, language—he doesn’t—we aren’t—he doesn’t think of me like—”
“But you do.” Bill crossed arms: tall and skinny and tweed-wearing, a fan-boy grown up, but a man who’d loved a demon wife and raised a half-demon son on his own for years, who ran a department full of distractible academics and undergraduates, who had steel and passion for a backbone. “Don’t tell me you don’t.”
“I won’t hurt him.” He couldn’t lie to Justin’s father. “Not on purpose. I never would.”
“I know that. He does too, or he wouldn’t’ve come to you first.” Bill took a step closer. “But he did get hurt.”
“I know,” Kris whispered.
“And I won’t let that happen again. Whether or not I love your music.”
“I know. I haven’t said anything. I won’t.” He felt that this wasn’t quite enough. “He doesn’t want me. And even if he did he needs time. But he doesn’t.”
Bill gave him raised eyebrows this time. Kris tried not to squirm.
“Maybe,” Justin’s father said finally. “Either way you’re not wrong. About needing time. And I’m glad you know it. You know, he did say you were nicer than he expected. In person.”
“He what,” Kris said.
“Oh, ages ago. After he first started working with you.” Bill waved the hand not holding the book. “We were a bit concerned, what with the stories, but then again my son is good at his job. With people. Talking to them. He said…what was it he said, exactly…”
Kris, who urgently needed to know precise wording and intonation, held his breath.
“I don’t recall the specific words—” Kris tried not to visibly sag in place. “—but he said you cared about other people more than you thought you did. And were more easily bruised than you thought you were. A good heart. Something like that. Sorry. My point is, thank you for being here. For him.”
“Of course,” Kris said. “Of course I am. Anything he needs. I’ve told him that already. I mean it.”
Their eyes met through echoed household banter: understanding each other.
Bill nodded, and then switched questions to, “Can I ask you about the lyrics in ‘Ship of Fools,’ because after all these years I still have no idea what you meant with the bit about being a giraffe for love and why the girl is a penguin.”
“Oh, great Midwinter mistletoe and gods of ivy,” Kris sighed. “Look, we were in our twenties and doing a lot of drugs and pink crystal plus vodka is a terrible, terrible decision and I think I misheard something Reggie said and it wasn’t supposed to be a giraffe but we thought it made wonderful metaphorical sense at the time…”
“Yes, fair enough, but why a penguin?”
They’d arrived in the kitchen; Justin, holding a plate of chicken, inquired on cue, “Oh, ‘Ship of Fools’? Yeah, Dad has questions.”
“I have questions,” Kris said. “I was there and I don’t remember writing it. Neither does Reggie. It’s a vast unsolved mystery that a lot of people seem to like to sing along to. Can I help with that?”
“You can put this on the table, and I’ll find beer. I could use one. Dad?”
“Sure.”
“And anyway I always thought the penguin was some sort of reference to being flightless and the relationship not taking wing or something. And I like penguins.”
“He does,” put in a twin, coming and going with forks. “He thinks they’re cute.”
“Depressingly,” Kris said to Justin and Justin’s father, “that’s giving us far more credit than we deserve,” and went to do as instructed with the chicken.
Dinner turned out to be a clamor of family and voices and flavors, savory and spiced and sweet and amiably bickering over the merits of respective college options and James needing to clean up robot parts from the sofa and whether Justin should dye the hair blue-black again for concealment or something more dramatic. The twins were voting for white and gold and elaborate and swooping; Justin said, “You want me to look like a character from whatever video game you’re playing today, and seriously, gold? With these eyes? I’m not a festival tree.”
“Gold tips. You’d look awesome.”
“It’d be different. You like different.”
“I do, but I have meetings to go to, with human non-video-game people, in a non-video-game office—”
James and his mother had devolved into a debate over something complicatedly technical involving robot treads and programming, in between ensuring baby Belle got fed. Ariel, lurking around legs, requested and received bites of chicken. Kris listened, ate too much food, was told to eat even more food, faded into the background in between answering Bill’s questions about songwriting, and watched Justin.
They were a family. And they’d welcomed him without hesitation. The same way no one looked twice at Justin’s hair, or eyes, or parentage; the same way no one seemed bothered that Belle didn’t talk to people, assuming that she would when she felt ready. Chicken and fried bananas and plans for the future and love, and Justin’d brought him squarely into the center of it, and that wasn’t awkward, only good, familiar and comfortable and concerned for each person present, whether that meant university scholarships or a random rock-star companion turning up for dinner or healing from emotional stab-wounds.
He thought about his own father, fleetingly. And then he thought that he was glad that Justin had this: a protective harbor, and people who cared.
Justin, on the heels of this musing, glanced his way. They were sitting next to each other; their arms brushed. Justin’s head-tip asked without words: you’re being quiet, is this okay, are you okay?
Kris smiled at him, nudged sock-clad toes into his under the table, slid another egg roll onto Justin’s plate: I’m good, and so are you.
They were. And Justin ate the egg roll.
“Justin,” Kelly said, surfacing from robotics—Bill had taken over with the baby—“tomorrow we have the university Midwinter party and student project awards for the semester, and of course you’re wel
come to come if you want, families always do, they’ll have the weather talent setting up an ice rink and all sorts of food, we didn’t know you’d be here but that’s not a problem, it never is, but then again we weren’t sure whether you’d want to go out or stay home?”
“Oh.” Justin traded glances with Kris. Suggested, not without hesitation, “We might be busy…writing something?”
“Yes,” Kris agreed. “Absolutely.”
James’s fork suspended itself mid-air. “You’re writing again?”
“Oh no,” Justin said. “Not really—no. I’m helping. It’s only for fun. For the holiday album. It’s Kris’s song. Songs.”
“I did not,” Kris said, “write the line about putting ginger in your gingerbread. And then you made me look up that thing you mentioned, about where you could in fact put ginger. And now I can never not know that.”
“You,” Justin said, “decided to write the part about what you could decorate with the icing. And if you sing it that way on the record one or both of us will be arrested for contributing to public indecency.”
The twins’ gazes, in unison, swiveled from Justin to Kris and back to Justin. Then they smirked.
“I’ve done that already,” Kris pointed out. “At a Soho nightclub, Les Winter’s birthday party—”
“I know that story,” Justin said. “People made sure I knew that story when you started being my client. People made sure I knew that story many, many times over. I don’t even want to imagine how the unicorn statue felt about it.”
“It wasn’t a statue, it was a carousel horse—no, I don’t know why someone brought it to the club to begin with—”
James said, quietly, “Hmm…”
The closest twin said, “Told you.”
The other one said, “We’ll let you know when we decide what we want from you.”
Bill rejoined the conversation at this ominous turn, and inquired of his middle children, “What are you plotting today?”
“James is our minion now,” said the twin closest to him, waving a nonchalant hand. “He owes us. Because we were right about something. It’s cool, Dad.”
“Oh, well…if you’re sure.” At this display of parental faith, Justin smothered a snort in a sip of beer. Kris, having met the twins for an evening, concluded that this was a vastly more appropriate reaction, and nudged their feet together a second time in solidarity.
“Does anyone mind,” James asked, “if I head out? I said I’d pick Steph up before the movie, and anyway it’s the Fearsome Twosome’s turn to clean up. Unless you want me to stay and eat whipped cream right out of the tub with you, Steph’ll understand, so I totally could…?”
This last was directed at his older brother, who waved a half-demon hand at him and said, “Go, I’ve got Kris, we’re fine, say hi to Stephanie for me.” Kris had to focus on a piece of chicken to hide the giddy schoolboy flush of elation.
“Text me if you want me to bring back ice cream,” James said, “and yes, parents, I’ll be home by midnight,” and went out through the garage door.
“Stanford doesn’t know what it’s getting,” Justin observed. “Or Columbia. Whatever they pick. He deserves the absolute best.”
“Would he bring us ice cream,” pondered the twin closest to Kris, “if we texted him, or only you?”
“He would,” Justin said, “but I’m not going to ask, and neither are you. I can get you ice cream if you want it. Not that I’m saying I will. Convince me you deserve it.”
Kris discovered a heretofore unknown wellspring of desire: Justin essentially playing older-brother third-parent to younger siblings had flipped switches he’d never known he had. Making eye contact with another piece of banana, fried or not, did not help.
“Anything you’d particularly like to do tonight, then?” Kelly offered her stepson a smile that managed to be an embrace: commiserative and welcoming. “Whatever you’re up for.”
“Actually,” Justin said, “I thought Kris and I might walk down to the lake. Nothing big. And we’ll be out of your way. I know you weren’t expecting us.”
“When do we get to walk down to the lake at night?” said the twin who hadn’t asked about the ice cream. Kris still wasn’t sure which one was which. He suspected they’d moved around.
“When you’re either at least eighteen or can teleport yourselves out of danger,” Bill retorted instantly.
The twins silently communed. Kris would’ve bet large sums of money that they were debating experimental personal teleportation spells and whether they could perfect one in the allotted time frame. He’d be inclined to bet that money on them.
“That sounds nice.” Kelly was looking at them in much the same way Andy and Eddie had earlier. Kris did not quite know how to feel about this. “Of course the two of you would like space. And, you know, Justin, you haven’t been out there in ages, even when you were visiting, and you used to love it…”
“I still do, it’s just that David’s not big on outdoors—” Justin froze as thin ice creaked and swayed and threatened to collapse. “I, um, thought it’d be quiet. Nice. Like you said.”
“Justin,” Bill said, “I’ve got an academic question for you. I’m giving that guest lecture on international treaties governing universal magical laws and prosecutions next month, the history of the nineteen-seventies conception of the whole United World Initiative Magical Species Protection Laws, and I thought, well, to make it more interesting, if there was music that I could add in…?”
“Oh,” Justin said, gaze returning to the here and now, “you were thinking about rock manifestos, protests—or support, more likely, most of them were, but not all—and popular media manifestations of political sentiment? How early in the seventies, because there’s Mirage’s ‘Chained Illusion,’ and of course the Beat Poets Society’s ‘Alice in Russia,’ but that might be too late?”
Kris, paying attention, saw Justin’s father’s expression right before academic excitement rampaged in; their eyes caught. Bill knew his son very well.
“If you want to share your lecture notes I can find something more specific.” Justin was now mentally immersed in seventies politics and popular media; he’d absentmindedly picked up Kris’s beer and not his own, but forgot to drink from it. “Are you interested in late sixties precursors? Because the obvious one’s Buffalo Roam’s ‘Things Worth Doing,’ as amazingly not subtle as it is.”
Kris put in, “Mirage covered that one once, live, I don’t know if anyone recorded it, but we were opening for them in Dublin and, ah, as far as popular response, the whole arena got up and cheered and sang along? If that helps with international perspectives.”
Father and son favored him with identical expressions of historian delight. Bill said, “Do you remember what year? And do you want to be a source for an academic article?”
“Ah,” Kris said. “Nineteen-eighty…something. I can look up tour dates.” He honestly couldn’t remember. But he must have records somewhere. Reggie might know. “And yes? If you think it’d be useful. How would that—what do you want me to do?”
“Firsthand interviews,” Bill said dreamily, “primary-source impressions, obviously you’re not an unbiased account but you were there, and you had access to counter-cultural popular-media responses to institutions of authority and Foucauldian systems of surveillance and rebellion…”
Kris considered the merits of panicking. Justin’s hand was on his arm. He wanted the rest of his beer. “If you say so…”
“Dad,” Justin said, “I’ll co-author it with you if you’ll stop scaring him. Especially if you want it to be any kind of accessible to a general-public audience.”
A pause landed, delicate as the first kiss of winter snow.
“Oh, stop.” Justin finished off Kris’s beer. “I didn’t say I’d never write anything ever again. I only haven’t had time. I want to, okay?”
“Yes.” Bill had carried on studying his son. “We can plan on that. Kris, what I mentioned earlier, that last point I
made…consider it said again.”
Kris nodded back, this time.
“What point, exactly,” Justin said.
“Oh,” his father supplied vaguely, “it had to do with music, and history, and stories…want to come outline some elements with me? About the sixties precursors?”
Justin regarded this offer with justifiable skepticism. “Of course I do. That wasn’t even good evasion, Dad, wow. Want help with dishes first?”
“If you’re offering,” Kelly said, moving to sweep away emptied take-out containers and collect plates. “You know you don’t have inexhaustible energy, and you’ve brought both of you over, and you’ll need heat if you’re walking down there…”
“Yeah, but dishes’re easy.” Justin got up to assist; Kris did as well, drawn by that slim heat. A moth, yearning. A moth wondering what might be involved in the implication regarding energy and a demon doing the dishes. “And I don’t mind.”
“The twins can do them if you’d rather not.”
“Mom—”
“—we have plans.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Professor Bautista informed her middle children.
“You’re interfering with the creation of art, Mom.”
“And physicists’re supposed to care about truth and beauty.”
“The secrets of the universe.”
“Are we,” Kelly said, but she was trying not to laugh. “You two…”
“Bring everything in here and I’ll do them,” Justin said from the kitchen, leaning on the center island next to a bar-stool, arms folded: a slender long-legged column of demon in clinging black jeans and purple socks and that violet T-shirt. Kelly gave him a fond glance; his father’d wandered off to the study, sidetracked by history.
The stack—only a small one—arrived. Justin pointed a finger. “Pow.”
Plates and forks sat up and sparkled. Radiated thoroughgoing cleanliness and steam.
“I do love having you home,” Kelly said.
Kris asked, “You can do dishes?”
Justin blew imaginary dust from that fingertip and holstered it. “I can sort of banish everything that isn’t a dish. And then superheat it all just to make sure.”