by K. L. Noone
“…got people doing what I want, sometimes…” He almost flinched when that line wrote itself, but it felt real. Bridge, again, heading into a bold brash chorus he’d not quite figured out: “…and I’m saying sorry…”
The chorus stayed instrumental for the moment. He knew what he wanted musically, but not quite the words; something about life and these times and loving one’s demons, something that could be taken metaphorically or literally, he’d sort it out later. He let fingers slow, catching that opening melody again, an echo. “And he tells me I’m okay, sometimes, and I know that I’m okay, sometimes…and if I ask him to stay, tonight…” One more, probably. “So I ask him to stay, tonight, and I ask him to stay, and I…I’m saying always…”
Tea. Writing. He found a notepad on a side-table, borrowed a page, scribbled. Changed a few chords around. Made notes to himself about what he’d want swinging in for the big central sections.
He ran through it again. Beginning to end. He liked it.
And he had an audience. He looked up. Justin, sitting on the arm of the sofa and still attached to coffee, said, “I only came in for the last bit. It’s gorgeous.” He’d put on just a hint of dark eyeliner, making that gaze even wider, but no mascara, leaving long red eyelashes naked and unadorned.
“It’s…not done.” It’s for you. For you and me. If you want it, if you want this, if you want. “Got your contracts sorted out, then?”
“I think so. I’m supposed to be playing recruiter for new talent at the Gilman in two nights, so we’ll have to be back in the city by then.” With a shrug, a gulp of coffee. “It’ll be fine.”
“Will you be?”
“New York’s a big place. And I can teleport. I don’t have to see my ex if I don’t want to.” Justin slid off the sofa-arm and onto the cushion next to him, back against the arm-rest. “And you have an interview—radio, the Marianne Morning Show—next week, Thursday, for album promotion.”
“I do?” That was a big name. Marianne May had an audience. Influence. Taste-making. He wondered what Justin had done or had promised, what favors might’ve been called in. For Kris Starr’s career.
“If you want?” Justin wrapped both hands around the coffee. “I can cancel. But it’s not a bad idea. She’s nice.”
Nice wasn’t precisely the word—Marianne wasn’t shy about expressing opinions, whether praise or critique—but he knew what Justin meant. She’d be fair to him. “No, I can do it, that’s fine, just tell me where and when to show up, you know you can send me wherever you want, I trust you. Thanks.”
Justin watched coffee-steam for a second, smiling faintly, glancing up. “Wherever I want?”
“Anywhere.”
“Here, then.” Justin tucked toes under Kris’s thigh. Ariel lifted an incurious feline head, yawned, approved, and went back to napping. “Right here. Can I hear it from the beginning? What you were working on? If you don’t mind?”
The moment he began, they’d both know it was a love song. A love song, an apology, a promise. His hands clutched his guitar. A string quivered in sympathy.
And all at once family streamed in: from backyard and from study, clamoring and jovial, poking each other and directing traffic, preparation for a party and an ice-rink and Midwinter games and student prizes. The twins arrived from upstairs and gave Kris and Justin’s shared sofa a look of smugness rivaling any feline Kris had ever met.
“How’s the mystery project?” Justin said.
“When you wrote the profile piece on Cassandra’s Children,” Andy said, “had you just slept with their drummer or something? Because it totally sounds like you did.”
“What are you using my old articles for,” Justin said. “And no. Not before I wrote it.”
“Because that’d be unprofessional,” Kris said. He’d met Liam Payne at some awards show or other. He discovered after-the-fact resentment of muscular arms and stylish blond hair and undeniable up-and-coming talent.
“It would have been, wouldn’t it?” Justin said, unperturbed. His shirt had a fashionable too-large neckline. It drew attention to his collarbone, exposed skin, the grace of his throat.
“Don’t worry,” Eddie said to Kris. “We also have copies of a few different things he wrote about you. Like, there’s the one where he’s supposed to be writing about the band, mostly, for a big top one hundred rock whatever feature, but he gave you your own three paragraphs.”
“He says you have poignant world-weary eyes and a voice that sounds like ragged velvet,” Andy contributed. “It’s like he’s writing poetry for you.”
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Justin said, “but the thing you are doing is not a thing that is helping.”
“I don’t mind,” Kris said. Velvet, he was thinking. And poignant. So much for muscular drummers.
“We thought you wouldn’t,” they agreed in uncanny unison, and departed to get outdoor coats, one blue and one grey. Justin pulled knees up, folded himself improbably into hiding in them, and grumbled, “Pretend you never heard that, and also that you don’t know who Liam Payne is.”
“Liam who?”
“Thank you. After everyone leaves for the party I’m going to put glitter in their beds. No, I won’t, they’d like that, and Kelly would make me clean it up.”
“I would,” Justin’s stepmother agreed, reappearing. “What would I make you clean up? On second thought don’t tell me. Especially not if it involves anyone’s bedroom. Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, you and Kris? You’d be more than welcome.”
“I’d have to deal with the hair.” It crackled in affirmation. “And it’s your faculty party. And…I’m not sure I want to meet a ton of people yet. I sort of just want to stay home. Unless Kris wants to—”
“No,” Kris said. “Kris wants to make you write more song lyrics about frosted gingerbread.” He wouldn’t’ve minded being social if requested—he was finding that he liked Justin’s family, which was a bizarre new sensation all on its own—but what Justin needed took precedence.
“You two be safe, whatever you’re doing with the gingerbread,” Kelly said, and went to drag her husband out of the study and away from historical charters of preternatural law.
“She did not just say—”
“Oh yes she did.” Justin did the curled-up hedgehog imitation again, dropping his head against knees, then emerged. “No shame, my stepmother. None. And that answers that question, I guess. She approves of you.”
At this point the family had gathered by the door; Justin got up to see them out, holding out a hand for Kris, who put down the guitar and took it and followed. Bill was putting Isabella’s tiny boots and gloves onto matching tiny hands and feet; the twins came back from the kitchen eating snowball-fluff cookies, and possibly having also exchanged coats. They’d pointedly undone buttons and zippers.
“We’re going out for lunch,” Kelly said to her children.
“We’re teenagers.”
“Growing children, Mom.”
James, from the wisdom of four years older, asked, “Why didn’t you just eat them in the kitchen? I did.”
“So,” said the twin in the blue coat to Kris. “Mom can tell us apart if she really tries, she’s an empath too, more receptive than projective though, so we want to know, can you?” Justin had stuck his head into the hall closet, searching for something.
Kris leveled a finger at him. “Are you the one who took my eyeliner?”
“Borrowed. And maybe. You tell us.” They smirked at him.
“I am,” Kris said, with great dignity, “going to write a song about you. A nasty one.”
Kelly considered her middle children, and murmured, “Please share.”
Justin reemerged from the closet. Pointed. “That one’s Andy. Someday you’ll figure out that that doesn’t work when I’m home. This shirt is so not warm enough. Why do I not have any decent scarves at this house…?”
“Um,” said Andy, “well, you did…”
“It
works on Dad,” said Eddie.
“Does it,” said Kelly, to her husband.
“Er,” said Bill, “well, you see, the thing is, I was writing, and they’re very clever…”
Kris decided that laughing at Justin’s father might be less than prudent, and smothered it under a throat-clearing. “Want mine from upstairs? Scarf.”
“No, I can grab my grey one from—” A skip over the name, that ex-boyfriend’s apartment: barely noticeable, moving ahead. “Where I left it. I should just go ahead and get everything—” Justin stopped. Lips parted. Dismay written in an indrawn breath, wide eyes, abrupt loss of metaphorical balance.
Kris found his hand on the closest demon elbow with no memory of crossing the space. “What happened?”
“He burned my scarf.” Justin put his hand over Kris’s, also seemingly without thought: seeking support. “I think he—he burned everything of mine. Everything I left at his place. I can’t find any of it.”
And he should be able to. Anything that exists, he’d said once; Kris recalled that. Anything he could see, smiling, the universe a kaleidoscope at fingertips.
“Is this the right time,” asked Andy, “to tell you we never liked him?”
Justin blinked. Twice. Made a sound, a fractured jewel trapped between a sob and a hiccup of laughter. “You didn’t?”
Both twins made faces, and shook heads, in unison.
Justin blinked at them again. “Oh. I—um, give me a minute, okay, I just—I need a sec, sorry—” He vanished, extremely literally: a whip-crack of smoke lingered. He hadn’t gone far; they heard the bedroom door close. Not a slam but definitive.
Kris looked at the stairs. They all looked at the stairs. Justin’s father and stepmother traded glances; James said, “Should I—?” and Bill said, “No, he said give him a minute.”
A minute passed. The family, plus Kris, hovered in the hallway. Made an uncomfortable knot of solidarity: love for Justin, need to arrive at that Midwinter university function, shuffling feet.
Justin didn’t emerge. Stairs resolutely empty of half-demon presence.
The twins looked at each other. Tilted heads, processed voiceless communication, looked thoughtful. Then transferred the looks to Kris.
“What?”
“You should go up there.”
“You should go talk to him.”
“Andy,” Professor Bautista said, “Eddie, now might not be the time.” Her glasses sparkled: steel and light like stars, like clarity. “Bill, if you want to stay with him I can take them—”
“He’s okay,” said the twin in the grey coat—Kris had lost track again; they’d moved around—with unnerving certainty. “He’s feeling…sort of unraveled…but he’s okay.”
“Like yarn,” said the twin the in blue coat, as if this might help, and in fact it did somewhat. “Like a big ball of Justin-shaped yarn. Except not a ball. Looser. Less wound up. He’s thinking we should go ahead and go, he’ll be fine, and we shouldn’t worry. He’s thinking it on purpose, he knows we can hear him.”
This prompted another round of densely textured family glances. Kris discovered that he was included, adopted as a person who cared whether Justin felt unraveled.
“We should make an appearance,” Kelly said slowly, “it is a university event, and we promised, and we’re doing the Midwinter scholarship awards…”
Justin’s father eyed the twins. They gave him transparent we already told you what to do eyes. “Kris…I know we’re asking you to, ah, intervene in our family…you’ve already done so much, and…” His face, his voice, his shoulders, grieved: a father wanting to comfort his son, a professor heeding comments from twin empaths, a man wanting to right the wrongs of the world.
“I can stay with him,” Kris said. “I would—I’d do that anyway. For him. Go on. We’ll call you if we need anything.”
In the stillness left by the departure of family bustle—the twins winked at him, and James, to his surprise, hugged him and muttered, “Take care of my big brother,” while Kelly ensured he had everyone’s phone numbers—he turned toward the stairs. Shoved up sleeves. Looked at his hands for a minute: guitar-callused, time-scuffed but firm, tanned. Strong enough, he thought. Strong enough, maybe, to hold on.
He stretched out a wisp of emotion, a tendril, a promise: if you can hear me, he vowed to Justin’s perceptions, I’m coming up to talk, you don’t have to come out but I’m worried, I only want to know you really are well enough. I care.
He wouldn’t be able to pick anything up in return. He’d never been good at reception.
He went up the stairs and down the family-lined hallway. His feet, conscious of being left in charge of the situation, made no sound on thick carpet. He couldn’t hear any sound from the bedroom either.
“Justin?” He tapped at opaque faceless wood. “You all right?”
“Oh,” said Justin’s voice from somewhere lower down, not eye level, “yeah, I’m—the door’s not locked, you can come in, sorry.”
Kris eased it open enough to slide through, then closed it behind himself. Justin was sitting on the floor, hugging knees to his chest, back against the sturdy oak of his childhood bed; he might’ve been crying, but not anymore. The green-clad members of Arbor Dei, the set-list for a Rise Up concert, the framed Spike magazine cover art for Justin’s first lead story, collectively peered down from posters and wall-mounts in concern.
Kris sat down beside him. The carpet was impressively thick. Not a bad setting for a discussion. “You want me to write scathing lyrics about your siblings? I can do that.” He hoped he could.
Justin made a noise that was almost a laugh. Rusty, flayed and sore, but capable of amusement. “No. They’re right, you know.”
“Are they?”
“I heard what the twins said. Downstairs. And I thought about it all. What I told you, the things he—David—used to say to me…I told you he let me have chocolate. When he said I could. I could’ve told you more. He always wanted to know where I was, he’d say I could or couldn’t go out with friends, and sometimes he’d tell me to come home just to see if I would, and he’d check my phone, my texts, he said he wanted to know who I was talking to because he cared about me…I sort of heard it all for the first time. I don’t know who that is. That person.”
“He’s a—”
“I meant me.” Justin tipped his head back; it hit the bedframe with a quiet thunk. “I don’t know how that happened.”
“You told me,” Kris said, “that he could make you laugh. That he made you feel special. Wanted. That’s something.”
“You’re not saying it’s my—”
Kris said an extremely blasphemous word or two. “No I’m not bloody saying that. He never deserved you and you’re better off without him. He doesn’t deserve anyone loving him and you deserve someone who l-loves you.” His tongue’d nearly betrayed him on the word. “You—I mean I can see why you didn’t see it. It’s harder from the inside.”
They sat in silence for a minute, but a kindly sort of silence: reflective, shared, built by and for two on a bedroom floor.
“Everybody left for the university thing?”
“Yeah. They, ah, they wanted to—the twins said you were okay, um, okay enough, and—but they all thought about staying.”
“They sent you to check on me?”
“No.” Forceful; it surprised him. “Would’ve done that anyway. I’m not leaving you when you’re hurt.” He thought about this, added, “I’ll go downstairs if you want space. But. I want to help.”
“You told me.” One corner of that expressive mouth quirked up. “You showed me. I felt that.”
“‘S what it was for.” For you, for you, everything is, it always has been.
Even before he’d known as much himself. It had been.
Justin inched more toward him, body shifting, leaning in. Their shoulders touched. “You want to know something?”
Kris leaned in too. “Of course.”
“I think…I am okay.�
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Kris, prepared to offer more comfort, found himself caught wordless.
“You know what I felt, just now?” Justin batted sparks of hair out of his face, brushing loose flames away. This motion was more steady, more sure. “Relief. More than anything else. I thought, oh, okay, I never have to think about him again, then. And it hurts, of course it hurts, but—I asked myself whether I’d miss him. And the answer’s no. I know I’ll have to work on it, on being me again, and not—not everything I just said, about asking permission to—but it’s like waking up. After being asleep for six months. Maybe I’m not okay yet, but I will be.”
“Good,” Kris managed. “That’s…good. That’s great, I mean, brilliant really, I don’t know what to—you know I’m here. Whatever you need.”
Abrupt merriment danced through nutmeg-and-roses: released from shadows behind those eyes. “And you once told me we weren’t even friends.”
“I was wrong.” Kris held up hands: surrender. “I was wrong and an idiot. To be fair, you never told me you were some sort of miraculous impossible demon-child. Not that you had to.”
“Child,” Justin said, in mock outrage, “see if I ever rescue your favorite records for you again, then, or—or find your phone when you leave it at a recording studio, or—”
“Fine, you win, my life would fall apart without you—” Laughter broke like sunbeams over rippling water, too big to be contained; it wasn’t even that funny, but the relief magnified emotions like glass. Kris added, “I’ll buy you paranormal fruitcake later,” and Justin gave up and collapsed against him and into giggles, and caught breath after: healing, splintering apart and finding joy, letting weight fall.
Afterward, under the watchful benevolence of posters and bed-oak, Justin said, “Can I show you something?” Sunrises after battle, in that question. Anthems and battered armor, holding together. His eyeliner was a bit smudged but holding up equally bravely. “If you want.”