by K. L. Noone
They’d expected to live forever. Stars.
He’d last been on stage three months ago at a county fair in upstate New York, a quick and bloodless appearance, enough to satisfy the promotional terms of his current contract. He’d done a few other things—morning talk show chats, an email reply to one of those classic-rock retrospective articles for Stone in which he’d mentioned five of his favorite songs, the foot-dragging and fucking-around he’d been doing with the dreadful holiday album. Obligations, all of them. No joy. No thrills. Aging fans, aging self, battened-down empathy, empty gestures.
Except Justin had turned his holiday album into terrible adult-rated puns about gingerbread and white icing, and Kris had gotten out a guitar and written music, and he knew this was some sort of middle-aged rock-star crisis cliché, himself and his pretty-eyed twenty-eight-year-old manager, and he cringed at the thought.
Except, he thought again. Except that that wasn’t the story either, nothing was that simple, and his pretty young manager was a demon and infinitely more complex and not quite human. Justin had a story too, one not centered around Kris, one built of this family and this life, a love of music and a joy in writing, secrets and bruises and bravery, and if his story’d collided with Kris’s at last, it was because Justin had chosen that. Had chosen to come to him.
Kris Starr, curled up in bed with his demon, in the kind of respectable suburban home that younger him would’ve mocked in song lyrics, thought about other people being people, and being real.
He’d always been a better projective talent. Not receptive. Not listening. He rubbed a thumb over Justin’s shoulder-blade, through the shirt.
He wanted to listen. He was trying now.
Too late, and too old, to do much good, maybe. But he was trying. And every time Justin smiled, he thought that maybe at least the trying mattered.
He shut his eyes and let the world fall where it wanted. Threads of the past, the present, possible futures. Steady hushed breaths, in here and down the hall and out across the endless harmonies of life, empathy, emotion. Serenity in this bedroom, in defiance of wounds.
He fell asleep not thinking about anything much: only about a sense of connection, a lingering diffuse glow, and the weight of Justin on his shoulder.
Chapter 5
Kris woke up first, before Justin’s alarm had even gone off, and spent a dizzying few seconds processing whose bed he was in, whose house, what ceiling loomed overhead, and why his left arm was pinned in place. The answer made him laugh, softly and foolishly, and grin at the ceiling in question for a minute.
Justin’s hair left small hot butterfly-kisses on his cheek, sleeping flames that coiled in and out in slow rhythmic curls. That felt right too.
He lay there for a while wondering what time it was—he couldn’t see the clock without moving, and he refused to disturb his demon—and what to do with himself. Christopher Thompson might’ve once been a morning person. Kris Starr found this idea possible but unlikely.
They hadn’t moved much during the night. Justin’d meant it about cuddling, apparently, and was a quiet sleeper but a clinging one, rather like an unfairly attractive limpet. He was also warm, more so than human normal; Kris worried over this until realizing that it was likely a good sign, that Justin hadn’t used up energy reserves, that his demon was, well, a demon.
Then he worried a bit more, because his particular demon was half human, and body temperatures that high in humans could be a problem, and he didn’t know anything about demonic hybrids, and why didn’t he know? And was he worrying over nothing, or something?
Then he realized that he was turning into the sort of person who worried about worrying, and he had to stop and rearrange mental furniture for a while. Maybe he was getting old. Or just in love.
Justin stayed asleep, anchoring his left side. That was fine; he needed the rest. Kris stayed put and avoided thinking anything intense or overly forceful, anything about love or want or his own needs and being rescued by this anchor.
Morning, as morning did, tiptoed into the bedroom and hung pale gold around curtains and desk-edges. No expectations. No pressure. Ethereal as rainbows, as horizons.
The bedroom door opened. Matching bodies popped in. Kris nestled himself more protectively around Justin and glared.
He knew this effect would be spoiled by newly awakened hair and pillow-creases. Didn’t matter. He’d defend Justin with the best of his inadequate strength against menaces domestic and otherwise. “Go away.”
“Nah,” said a twin, happily. They were wearing pink today, and rainbow jewelry, and expert eyeliner; Kris had seen less flawless professional jobs. “We’re here on a mission—”
“—and you’re adorable, because—”
“—you adore him.”
“And he looks happy. Can we take a picture?”
“No!”
Justin’s alarm, choosing this moment to chime in, added pop-punk opening notes to the debate. The closest twin picked the phone up, silenced it, and eyed Kris Starr with ominous speculation and a camera-lens.
Kris hissed, “Don’t you dare.”
“It’s his phone—”
“—and he’d like it.”
“You’ll wake him up!”
“We’re supposed to.”
“That’s what younger siblings’re for.”
“It bloody well is not—”
The twin on the right leveled a finger at him. “Only child?”
Kris refused to volunteer any corroboration. Tried to project crankiness that way, plus a towering shield around his tired demon.
“Anyway,” contributed the non-pointing annoyance, “as much fun as this is, Mom told us to.”
“To get you for breakfast.”
“And that’s not even intimidating.”
“We’ve seen photos of you in leopard-print spandex.”
“Who’s wearing leopard-print what?” Justin said from Kris’s shoulder, not bothering to move.
“You did wake him up,” Kris snapped, making this as much of a threat as he could while whispering, “Never mind them, they’re eyeliner thieves, go back to sleep,” in that direction.
“Someone mentioned food,” Justin said. “I’m awake. Leopard-print?”
“Oh yes,” said a twin. “It clung.”
“Oh, those pictures. Right.” Justin yawned, detached himself from Kris’s shoulder—which instantly missed him—and sat up. His hair restyled itself into frisky waves, up and ready for the day. “I like those pictures.”
“We know,” said the other twin, meaningfully.
“Thank you for that,” Justin said. “Andy, is that my Pride bracelet?”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe,” Justin echoed, in a voice that very definitely had multiple younger siblings. “I want that back.”
“We just borrowed it to get a copy made,” said the twin that wasn’t Andy. “There’s a kid at school who can do replication. And we both like it.”
“Still. Give it back.”
“Tell us which one was your original,” Andy said, “and you can have it. And anyway you left it here last time, and you know better.”
Justin groaned, collapsed theatrically back into the bed, and pulled a pillow over his head. Midnight-blue fluffiness failed to hide tendrils of fire, poking out around the side. “Why are you in my room? Also it’s the one you’re wearing. I can tell.”
“He’s not a morning person,” noted Eddie.
“I have a job,” Justin said from beneath the pillow, “that involves late nights and sleeping in. I don’t have to be a morning person. I am going to banish both your laptops to the depths of the Stygian Pit of Eternal Midnight, I swear to Mithras.”
Kris, attempting to not laugh out loud—Justin being a petulant non-morning-person older brother was the best thing he’d ever encountered upon waking up, ordinary and hilarious and magnificent—patted him on the shoulder in commiseration, and contributed, “There might be coffee?”
The n
oise that emerged from under pillow-fluff was not entirely human, though it ended with something about hazelnuts.
“If I were you I’d leave now,” Kris said to Andy and Eddie. “And give back his bracelet.”
They looked at each other, shrugged, and tossed it his direction, departing, not without blowing him a kiss. He snatched rainbow stripes out of the air and tapped the nearest visible bit of demon. “They know when to listen.”
“No they don’t.” Justin hauled himself out from bedding, rumpled and cranky and unfairly pretty. “They’re horrible. No, I don’t mean that, I love them, you know I do, they just think personal property is a concept that applies to other people. Which is partly my fault; they’ve seen me conjure stuff out of thin air, and they think it’s fair to do to me.”
“You pay for everything,” Kris said, “and you don’t take anything that belongs to someone already, as far as I know,” and held out a hand, getting up. “We should get dressed? And find your coffee? With hazelnuts? Unless that was some other word you mentioned.”
And Justin laughed, and took his hand.
Breakfast in the Moore-Bautista house happened in a tapestry of chaos and order, eggs and pancakes and bread and honey, Professor Moore absentmindedly reading an article on an e-reader with a forkful of bacon forgotten mid-bite and Professor Bautista and her eldest son making plans about robot treads and mock-volcanic terrain, the twins taking turns feeding the baby, and Justin vanishing behind the largest mug of coffee Kris had ever seen and then going back for more. He personally settled for tea—they had indeed bought multiple varieties, everything from English Breakfast to Earl Grey to Earl Grey with lavender to vanilla rooibos to dragonwell green to blueberry ginger, most of which looked new, as if someone’d hastily gone shopping before they’d gotten up—and ate more than he meant to. Kelly kept putting eggs on his plate.
Justin reappeared from coffee-oceans to say, “You don’t have to eat all of that, you know.”
“You do,” James put in, halfway through sketching some sort of circuit diagram on a napkin. Kris hadn’t thought he’d been listening. “Family rule. You have to eat everything everyone gives you. Sorry.”
“Trial by breakfast foods?” He regarded the bacon. This was American bacon, which he’d never quite gotten used to, and it knew as much. He tapped it with a fork. “I can handle that.” Family, James’d said.
Justin took the bacon off his plate and ate it. Around it, informed his brother, “Unfair target, kid, he’s not used to us.”
James looked Kris up and down across orange juice. “He’s doing fine.”
“I’m so thoroughly glad you approve,” Kris said, extra-British just for fun, and after a moment’s internal debate took and hid James’s fork when the circuit diagrams called again. Justin nearly choked on a sip of coffee but gave him an elated grin upon surfacing.
Kelly, either oblivious or approving of this byplay, handed over Filipino bread for the second time. “Pandesal? Kris, if you haven’t, you should have one. Two. Eat more.”
Kris accepted, because if this was a challenge he was perfectly willing to keep up with Justin’s stepmother. James also claimed one, and frowned at his plate and his pancakes. “I thought I did have a fork.”
This time Justin all but fell over laughing, and had to duck away on the pretext of more coffee. Kris picked up his tea, Earl Grey and lavender in a Youngstown University Department of History mug, and took a tranquil sip.
After breakfast everyone split off into various directions, ostensibly to get ready for the faculty-and-family Midwinter party, in reality to pursue a multitude of interests for an hour or so before being forced to give in and get dressed. The twins decamped to their room and their mysterious art project; James and Kelly surrendered to the lure of the robotics competition. Justin made an apologetic face and said he needed to make a few phone calls: “Following up on a couple of contract memos, trying to find some sort of manager to talk to on behalf of, um, well, you don’t know them, they were at the Buccaneer Festival, the New Regency, and I like them and I need to know who to contact…”
He said this with baby Belle in his lap, making red and gold sparkles explode and dematerialize while she giggled; Kris watched this intermingling of identities, a prism reflecting the young trendy acquisitions representative for a major record label, a boy with a happy baby, a slim figure of demon-magic, the person Kris wanted to throw arms around.
Justin’s fingers slipped. The next shower of sparks went quite a bit taller than the previous, and redder.
Belle giggled more and slid out of her brother’s lap to dance in vanishing glitter, under falling living-room stars. Justin had gone pink and flustered; the hair displayed precious bashfulness. No wonder he kept it disguised; aside from the practical, it gave all those emotions away.
He didn’t keep it disguised around Kris. Not anymore.
“No,” Justin said, not quite meeting his gaze, shy and courageous, “I don’t have to, with you,” and took Isabella outside for parental supervision in the robot yard, and came back. They’d changed out of pajamas before coming down; today’s demonic outfit consisted of leggings and a flowing thin shirt that proclaimed I heart gingerbread lattes, only the heart’d been replaced by a mug wrapped in a Midwinter scarf. Kris, who’d thrown on day-old jeans and an ancient Aeromancer band-logo shirt with long sleeves and a necklace or two, was finding every piece of Justin’s fashion choices distracting. “I’ll just run upstairs and shut the door and make some calls, I shouldn’t be too long, I think Dad’s in the study if you want company, or there’s books everywhere, or, here, I can—”
A guitar materialized. Kris’s own, acoustic and simple and timeworn and familiar. He took it. “Encouraging me to work?”
“I didn’t mean it like that! I only thought, if you wanted the option—I can send it back if you—”
“No,” Kris said, “you won’t,” and played a little riff on “Come On Over Tonight” at him. His demon obviously had experience giving younger siblings something to do; the effort ought to be appreciated. Besides, he had been writing music again. “Will anyone care about the noise?”
“Anyone in this family? They’ll take it as a challenge. And Dad’ll love it. Kris Starr, playing music in his house.”
Kris snorted. As if that were a desirable scenario.
“I’ll come down and work on lyrics with you when I’m done.” Justin paused as if about to say more, but in the end only touched Kris’s shoulder lightly and smiled and went away upstairs.
Kris Starr pondered his guitar, found and poured more tea, and took the mug and the instrument out to the living room. Beyond glass doors he could see James intently examining robot treads, framed by flying autumn leaves, and straight grey-brown tree-trunks, and the glint of the lake in the distance, blue and gold and cool with New England midwinter charm. Inside a working miniature train set chugged along the fireplace mantel; spruce and pinecones and lights bloomed in unexpected places, on bookshelves, from lanterns, over windows.
He sat down on the couch, tucked one leg under himself, let fingers brush over strings.
The cat arrived out of thin air, leapt up beside him, and became a large grey puddle of laziness. “Hey,” Kris said to him. Ariel purred, flopped onto his back, and dozed off.
He might be alone—other than well-fed feline approval—in the room, but he couldn’t be lonely; greenery wiggled leaves at him, and Justin would be coming back, and he knew if he poked his head into the office Bill would plunge readily into conversation and history, and if he ventured outside James would ask him whether Justin had been eating enough and then offer to let him drive the robot.
He’d begun unconsciously playing the first few notes of “Winter King William.” His mother’d always liked that carol.
No one came in to tell him to stop and behave himself as a guest, so he played a bit more of it, and then “Silver Bells Ringing,” and noticed Bill popping out to beam at him halfway through the bit about the sleig
h ride. He paused; Justin’s father waved a hand, gave him a thumbs-up, and ducked back into the study, leaving the door open. Kris considered this, and ran through a verse of Starrlight’s “Little Black Dress” in reply. The professor was a fan, after all.
Justin, he thought. “Little Black Dress” slowed in tempo, lingering, turning into random musings. The world came back to Justin, these days, or his world did, at least. A shared bed or two. Late-night food. Music.
The way he wanted to be a better man, a more worthy man. Because Justin deserved that. Not because Kris had any expectations, not that he’d make any demands; he’d step away if Justin ultimately decided against whatever they were or were becoming. But because he could be a better friend, someone who could be leaned on, depended on, if he himself were better.
He rather liked the sequence his fingers’d flowed into. He did it again. Started humming along. Switched keys. Started over. Demons, and demons, and there were different kinds, weren’t there…everything he’d been and done…
“I got a demon in my head tonight, I got a demon in my head tonight…” Repeated; repeated and starting slow, clear but muted, only his voice and occasional highlighting notes. It’d be a contrast. He could hear it already, thinking about where it’d go next.
“I got a demon in my head, and I…” That’d be a pause, an indrawn breath, the swell before the storm: he could feel it, oh he could feel it, the pregnant pulse of an opening, the tension of an audience, of his beating heart.
He finished, half-singing, “…and I want him there,” and in a stadium it’d be a scream, a shout, an affirmation, kicking off drums and bass and orchestral support crashing in. A band at his back. Music launching them into the stratosphere. Rock and roll.
Softer, again, a different verse, he decided; and played around with words. Empathy. Heartfelt. If the first bit’d been Justin, this one was himself. And a story. “I get feelings in my head, sometimes…I get it all out of my head, sometimes…” Inside, outside: projection and power and everything he’d ever done with it.