by K. L. Noone
And then he’d used it to hurt people, deliberately or not. Didn’t matter, in the end.
And after that he’d played halfhearted local fairs and small-scale shows while pretending not to care, and had hidden in his penthouse and stopped writing and believed he’d kept those shining streams bricked over, when they’d dwindled to nothing anyway.
He’d have to practice. And that hurt, but it hurt like the stretch of a long-unused muscle: relearning old shields and active awareness. It hurt like a thawing-out, and icicles melting. Like a cracking of the core where he’d buried the person who’d once written his heart into anthems for fans.
If Justin wanted him or didn’t want him, if Justin only ever wanted to be held and lean on a friend, that would still be true. Kris knew it would be. He’d woken back up and remembered how to hurt for someone, and even if it did hurt he welcomed the wound.
He said to Justin, “Your hand feels cold. Are you cold? We should go back. I’ll make tea. Or whatever you want. Pizza. Coffee. I can practice making your coffee. Want me to? Practice?”
“What,” Justin said, “in this dimension or any other, just happened.”
“James might’ve brought back ice cream, but I think you’d rather be warm, right? Fire and all?”
“Kris?”
“Yes?”
“I’m very confused.” Justin looked at their hands. “And yeah, okay, getting cold. But I thought—you said being around me makes your control slip, and I can’t ask that of you, I should’ve never asked, I can take you home if—”
“That’s not what I said.” And Justin had said his name, or rather the name he’d chosen, the self he’d wanted to be; he didn’t want to be that self, not exactly, so many years on. But he’d seen the world as glorious and beckoning, back then. He thought he could see it from a dock on a lake. Lit by demon-light. “I said you make me want to try harder. Come on. Back to your house. You can put the fire out, it’ll be fine, it’s a short walk.”
“That’s not what you said either,” Justin muttered, but let himself be pulled to his feet. He remained astonishingly light: hollow bones and feline grace. Possibly inhuman, come to think of it; but Kris didn’t care, and offered an arm, old-fashioned as courting in a park. “Lean on me.”
Justin paused. Faint fire limned his cheekbones in gold. Those words.
Those words, between them. Hung with resonances like holiday greenery round a hearth. Reverberating.
“Don’t worry about me,” Kris said, “as far as the fire, you can turn it off, I’m warm enough.”
“You can’t see in the dark.” Justin accepted his arm. The acceptance lay someplace between amusement and tiredness and wanting closeness. Kris put the arm around him instead, at that, drawing their bodies closer; Justin wrapped an arm in turn around his waist, under the big puffy coat. “I can, though. Some. Not as well as my aunts. But you can’t, so I’m mostly using it for light. Uneven path.”
“Do we need it?”
“I’d rather not trip over a rock and break Kris Starr’s arm. I’ll make it smaller. Less hot.”
“If you’re sure,” Kris conceded, and held him, and watched him, and matched their steps together. Justin did not lean on him much, not fragile. Strong. Stronger than anyone ever.
Their boots left prints on the path. Those would match too, he thought, if he glanced behind them.
The family had gone, whisked off to beds as if by a witch’s curse; Kris and Justin, coming in through the kitchen door, encountered low light and a pot and the homey scents of chicken and garlic and ginger, plus relatively ominous bubbling from a tubular apparatus growing out of the stove. Justin picked up the first of two notes. “Kells either thinks I need comfort food or you do. Maybe both. She made pospas.”
“Which you said was…”
“Chicken soup. Essentially. Sometimes with a hardboiled egg.”
“Why is it trapped in an unidentified flying object?”
“It was brought to life in a house with a physicist, an engineering genius, and two artists, and whatever it was they said they did to the stove. Also James says there’s double-chocolate fudge raspberry ripple in the fridge and he’s still up so knock on his door if we need anything.” Justin handed over the second note. “That last bit’s for you. If he and Steph ever have kids, he’ll be either the best or the worst parent in existence.”
Kris unfolded paper. James’s handwriting, small and neat, instructed him to make sure he eats enough because demon metabolism runs at a measurably higher rate but he’ll try to give you the most of everything, so don’t let him, okay?
“Is that why you always have food? Chestnuts, French toast, your maple buttercream cupcakes…”
“It’s why I don’t put on weight,” Justin said. “I like food. Do you think chicken soup goes with fudge raspberry ripple?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Not in the same bowl! They both did nice things for us. We should appreciate both. And I’m hungry.”
“Disturbed,” Kris said, “this is my disturbed expression, can’t you feel that?” and reached out a thin amber thread of the real emotion to tap him on a shoulder: helplessly endeared. “Where do you keep bowls?”
Justin ended up devouring two bowls of soup and two of ice cream, fortunately in succession and not concurrently, during the course of a late-night re-run of the classic black-and-white It’s a Good Life After All!. Kris put an arm around him on the sofa—which was as friendly as it looked—and borrowed bites of ice cream and watched fictional characters encounter wild time-traveling magic and reshape their lives, only to discover that they were happy the way they’d been, and the world wasn’t as cruel and uncaring as it seemed. He’d seen it, but not for years. He knew it’d attained Midwinter classic status.
Justin, tucked under his arm and licking ice cream off the spoon, glanced at the television, and then up at him. And smiled.
And Kris thought about reshaped lives, about choices, about roads taken and not taken. About ending up here and now. About families and rock shows and exhilaration in the screams of a thousand fans, and the way Justin’s hair brushed his cheek when leaning closer, warm and weightless as phoenix-feathers.
Justin smiled more and finished off the defenseless ice cream. Kris’s heart got bigger, billowing, gauzy, full of gold.
When the movie finished Justin started to say something, yawned, and waved at the bowl, which went away someplace, no doubt to clean itself of its own volition. Justin yawned again, adorable and kittenish, and Kris suggested, “Bed?” while giving in to the impulse to stroke a hand over that hair. It licked merrily at his fingers.
“I think so, yeah.” Justin did not appear inclined to move, having melted into the petting. Kris faced a mental war between responsible care involving his demon and a proper bed, and their current highly satisfactory situation. Justin solved this by sitting up more and stretching. “You’re a good pillow.”
“My entire life’s ambition,” Kris said, only mostly teasing, “a pillow for a demon,” and slid the hand under his elbow again, getting up. “Stairs?”
“I’m fine,” Justin said, and he did look it, fed and rested and soft and fuzzy in sock-clad feet and that time-worn T-shirt; but he didn’t move away from the hand.
They wandered upstairs together, quiet in the night.
Kris, upon opening the bedroom door, spotted the bed itself; he thought about easing his demon into it, and he thought about how nice beds were when one was not exactly young anymore, and then rationality caught up and kicked him in the heart. With pillow-shaped boots.
One bed. Him and Justin. Who’d fallen into his arms out by the lake. Made of cinnamon eyes and slim tempting hips and that half-shy half-flirtatious mouth.
And they had one bed.
He’d known that intellectually—hell, he’d even said blithely that it wouldn’t be a problem, he’d slept on tour buses and on shared mattresses with Reggie. He stared at the bed.
It stared back as
sarcastically as solid wood and mattress-foam could. He thought it might be laughing.
Justin peeled off his shirt, tossed violet fabric at a chair—it landed and clung in an act of improbable determination—and then froze, having visibly come to the same realization. “Um.”
Kris cleared his throat. Justin shirtless was a dream, a fantasy, a glory of slender waist and smooth skin and tiny pert nipples, dark and taut and mesmerizing. The jeans sat far too low and hinted at too much. “Um. Right.”
“Right.”
They stared at each other instead of the bed for a second or two. Felt like longer.
The other realization hit like a ton of pink embarrassment-shaped bricks. “Can you feel what I—”
Justin winced. Pink in those cheeks too. “You’re a little loud.”
“I’m so sorry—”
“No, it’s a compliment, thanks!” He’d started laughing, and ran both hands through fiery hair and then came over and put arms around Kris’s neck. Kris stopped being horrified at himself because Justin was laughing, and put arms around him in turn, and said, “Sorry about that.”
“I don’t mind.” Justin leaned into him, gesture a combination of unselfconscious eroticism and unthinking trust. “I told you that if I could…if I thought it was a good idea…I don’t want you to think I don’t. I do. I think I do. I’m only feeling…skittish, right now. Bruisable. If that’s a word.”
“You’re the writer. It can be a word if it wants to be.”
“Authority accepted. Kris Starr says so.”
“An argument against, rather than for, I’d think.” His hands rested on Justin’s back, over bare skin; his hands had never known any sensation so wonderful before. He did not move them, not up nor down, only soaking in the knowledge, the way this felt, this caress. “You tell me what you feel up to. If you want me to keep up better shields. If you want space, if you want…whatever you want. Your terms.”
“Terms.” Justin took a step back; his arms slid away from Kris’s neck, which got colder. The movement wasn’t a rejection, only a temporary regaining of balance, a retreat to casual in the face of intensity. “I can’t think like that yet. I don’t trust myself. I want you and I know I’m not in the right place for that, and I feel safe with you, but it’d be comfort for me. And I don’t want to use you. And I would be.”
“I’m here,” Kris said. “Use me if you want. Ah. That came out—never mind how that came out. God.”
“Either way I’m not going to have sex with you at my parents’ house.” Justin raised an eyebrow his direction: finding a way forward through humor, avenues among thickets and thorns. “For one thing, lots of empaths in a small space. For another, the lock on that door is a hundred percent useless.”
“The—”
“The twins can pick locks.”
“Why,” Kris inquired rhetorically of the ceiling, “am I not even surprised?” The ceiling shrugged back. It wasn’t either.
“You’ll want,” Justin pointed out, “to sleep in pajamas,” and moved away to find his own, to wriggle into plaid flannel pants and a faded grey shirt adorned with the crimson Youngstown University logo. Kris missed the moment in which actual changing happened, fishing around for his own clothing; he found this both frustrating and a source of relief, because he knew he’d’ve looked—those endless legs, that elegant shape—and he knew he shouldn’t. Space. Letting Justin set those terms.
He’d forgotten his toothbrush after all; Justin paused with his own in his mouth, waved a flamboyant hand, held it out. Kris said, “So you memorize people’s toiletries, do you?” and his demon tried to say something through a mouthful of toothpaste, waved the hand some more, and ran back to the sink. Kris, breathless and halfway through removing eyeliner, thought: I could watch him wander around in pajama pants with a toothbrush forever.
Justin turned back around. The hair shimmered twice over: reflected in silver in the bathroom mirror. His eyelashes were red too, Kris noticed suddenly: a deep dark almost-black, cherries and plums at midnight, highlighted by overhead lamplight. “That’s what you think. You haven’t seen me in the morning before coffee. Also who says it was the right toothbrush. Also yes it was, I remember things I see, and it was next to your sink. I’m not going to give you someone else’s, I’m not that mean.”
“Only to your siblings?”
“Only when they deserve it. I’m setting an alarm so we get up for breakfast before everyone goes to the university party, sound good?”
“Mmph,” Kris said back around the toothbrush, and Justin bumped a shoulder into his in the bathroom doorway, going out.
When he came back into the bedroom Justin was already lying in bed, on his stomach but up on elbows, flipping through email on his phone. The covers’d been kicked down; he looked thoroughly domestic, built for scooping into arms, bright-haired and bright-eyed. Kris took a breath, feeling rather as if he’d been skewered by rainbows, and sat down on the other side. Next to that youth and loveliness and pain and courage he knew himself to be old and tired and dim around the edges; and yet Justin wanted him here and had teased him about the toothbrush, and Kris Starr wanted to dance across a stage.
Justin set the phone down, plugged it in, smiled at him. “I’ll have to deal with some work in the morning. A couple contract negotiation things. Phone calls. Then we can work on your songs, if you want.”
“As long as you’ve got more terrible puns about holiday baked goods. I think that’s required.”
“Mistletoe berries, this time. Um. How do you want to…” Justin trailed off. They both considered the logistics of the bed and two bodies, and the way Kris had sat down close enough to touch, and the fact that they were touching, casual and easy.
“I cuddle,” Justin said at last, an apology and a dare.
“I steal blankets,” Kris said. “Or so I’ve been told. Though that was Reggie, so it’s possible my subconscious wanted to bother him.”
“I have to ask,” Justin said. “I have to. I’ve always wondered. You all used to flirt, on stage—and you even made out with him, a few times…”
“Oh. Right. Ah, a lot of that was the performance—making fans scream, shocking old conservatives, all that—but yeah, a bit.” They’d ended up face to face. Cuddled under blankets, a defense against chilly New England winter air. Close enough that he could see every stripe of extraordinary color in Justin’s eyes, russet and ochre and copper and carnations.
“A bit?”
“Reg likes women. But he won’t say no if it’s on offer. If we got drunk, or high, or were sharing a single bed in the worst hotel in Leeds, and someone felt like lending someone else a hand. Mostly it was all hands. My mouth, once. I’m not really his type. Why are we talking about my former bass player’s type?”
“Because I asked,” Justin said, simply, “and you told me.”
Kris, in response to this, moved an arm, offered himself; Justin’s smile made the whole bedroom smile too, and he fit himself neatly into the arm, tucked along Kris’s side, head on Kris’s shoulder. Kris’s heart hummed melodies, especially when he dared to lean his own cheek into that hair and Justin put a hand on his chest. The light turned out, courtesy of a vague demon-gesture. Kris murmured, “Go to sleep,” meaning, rest.
“I am. Kris?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t mind you letting me feel it. When you think…what you were thinking, about me shirtless…”
“Oh—”
“I mean, I can’t quite believe it—you, thinking that, about me—but you keep showing me, and—and if you do mean it, if you could…”
Kris affirmed this want both verbally—with an indignant touch of mild profanity—and silently, a wave of certainty and desire pooling low and hot between them, shared. He kept it nonspecific and undemanding but unassailable.
“You want me,” Justin said drowsily, nestling more into him. “You know who I am and you want me and you’re trying so hard not to push, I can feel that too, and—it f
eels nice. Just knowing that. I want you to know that.”
“I do. Go to sleep.”
“Mmm,” Justin said, “nice,” and after a second his breathing evened out, body lax and pliant along Kris’s side; he evidently had indeed gone to sleep, following orders, feeling secure.
Kris lay exquisitely still, heart aching with emotion, and felt plumes of fire settle against his face, his throat, drifting out of motion. He held his demon, in Justin’s bed, in Justin’s family home; the overflowing pulse of happiness spilled outward and ran beyond old accustomed banks and brought life to the world. Justin sighed in dreams and that hand curled in on Kris’s chest; Kris exhaled and thought of old songs, fragments of love-lyrics, rhymes and notes dancing on a breeze.
The bedroom calmed and steadied and expanded, a universe woven in nighttime shades and sheet-hills. He knew that if he tried he could pour his feelings out into the world; empathic projection trembled in his hands, in his mind, invisible diaphanous nets he could fling forth and draw in. He felt it all quiver at the edges: desire and amazement and hope and trepidation, fear for Justin and for himself and for this newborn clumsy thing unfolding between them. Anger at circumstances, at a villain; awe at the boy who’d reminded Kris Starr how to smile, how to breathe, how to feel a heart beating and blood running through veins and arteries.
Lying there with his cheek in Justin’s hair, he recalled concerts, festivals, the sizzling energy of packed shows. Himself on his knees singing to fans. Fans singing back, caught up in music and passion and the moments. The show in Buenos Aires when they’d played an extra two hours and brought fans up to join them on stage. The San Francisco night when they’d run across the stage in rainbow body paint, more than half high, and announced to the world that love for everyone and everything was amazing, and also here were the opening chords to “Sugar In Your Tea.”
Days and nights in recording studios, swinging from someone’s too-hot borrowed garage to slick polished engineering. Himself wandering around a run-down London flat with pencils and scraps of paper, scribbling lyrics, pausing to stick his tongue in Reggie’s ear. Tommy had been even younger than both of them, and prone to self-destructive obsessions: alcohol, pink crystal, and a rather hopeless crush on Frankie Jupiter, which in retrospect they should’ve talked him out of, given what’d happened with poor Frankie and the drugs. But then they’d all been young.