A Demon for Midwinter

by K. L. Noone

  “You’re safe,” Kris said, “you’re safe, you’re fine, you got away—” and then held out a hand, not knowing what else to do, not wanting to touch without asking, but—

  Justin reached out. Put fingers into his hand: tentative but full of need, a flower straining toward cloudy-day sun.

  Kris curled fingers around his in response—gently, gently, no pressure in his grip, like holding a precious eggshell, a glass snowdrop, a tear—and said, “You did get away. That’s—that means he’s even more wrong. About you.”

  “About me?”

  “You could’ve done things to him. You can…” He hunted for words that wouldn’t bite. “Summon things. Push things. Teleport people. You could’ve done any of that. To him. But you didn’t. You ran.”

  “Because I’m scared.” Justin shut his eyes. “Like I told you. Scared of everything.”

  “Oh fuck no,” Kris said, angry now: at David, at the situation, at his own inadequacy. “No. Listen. It’s not being a—a coward or whatever—when you’re stronger than he is. And you know it. If you’d fought back you would’ve hurt him. And that’s not you. You don’t hurt anyone.”

  “I’m a demon,” Justin whispered. “Maybe I do. Maybe I am—what I am, maybe he’s right, I don’t know anymore…”

  “No.” Kris squeezed his hand. Done being subtle: time for sincerity. Passion. “Look. Look at this. Us.”

  “You…holding my hand?”

  “I know you. You’re as human as I am. Okay, you can conjure up coffee, that’s pretty inhuman, but you’re a person. A good person. I know you and I know that. And if he was your boyfriend and he can’t fucking see it—” He stopped shouting. Lowered his voice. Got control. Justin had visibly tried not to flinch at the raised tone.

  Wincing internally, he finished with care, “Then he’s wrong. Trust me.”

  “I still don’t understand.” Justin sounded plaintive, even younger than usual and confused by a world full of pain. But he also sounded like he might be willing to hear the words. “Why would he think—if it wasn’t true, if I hadn’t somehow—why would he be that scared of me if I’m a good—maybe I didn’t even notice when I—”

  “Because sometimes people are wrong,” Kris said.

  “But I did lie about—”

  “He might’ve been scared,” Kris admitted, “but still wrong. People think they know about demons—bloody hell, love, come on, I thought I knew about demons—and yeah, you lied to him, and yeah, he might’ve been upset.” He hated himself for saying so—he hated David Ross more, for making this necessary—but that much was fair, and Justin wouldn’t believe him if he didn’t acknowledge it. “But he could’ve talked to you. He could’ve listened to you. You didn’t just hide it to fuck with him, you hide what you are because people only barely accept pixies and gnomes and the selkie-pups, they can’t handle demons, not yet, which is fucking wrong too, is there some kind of activist fund or—what?”

  “Is there a Demon Anti-Defamation Fund,” Justin said, sniffling, laughing briefly: mildly hysterical, walking on a cliff’s edge, but better than two minutes ago. Meters away from falling, not inches. “Oh, Kris. Kris Starr. Thank you.”

  “Um. Any time. I’ll be the celebrity face of the cause if they’ll take an ancient rock band front man.”

  “With a new holiday album. Oh…oh, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t get around to—I meant to listen to—”

  Kris opened his mouth to say that this was not a problem, to dismiss the idea, to point out that Justin had obvious larger concerns. He saw genuine dismay at this final perceived failure, and had a flash of genius. “Hey, no worries, love, you’ve been preoccupied, anyway it might be a good thing you didn’t, because we can do it now if you’d like? With me here for your notes?”

  Justin swiped a hand over eyes, dislodging bits of crystal before they could fall. His gaze, after, was profoundly grateful. “Yeah, if you wouldn’t mind…”

  “Why would I? You’re good at your job, and I want your input.” He added, getting up to fetch his laptop, “Even if you are a bloody journalist,” and heard a gulp of confused laughter from the bed. Success.

  When he came back his demon was sitting up more, back against the headboard, looking like someone determinedly battling internal shock to a draw, but alert and interested in finding distractions. “Can we start with ‘Horn of Plenty’? That’s the one I’ve listened to least, I’ll admit it, something was bothering me about the arrangement.”

  “Anything you want.” He found that one among the recordings—currently track six—and let it play. Winced at his own lyrical alterations and terrible harvest-related puns. “Gods, I’m sorry about that one.”

  “Which part? The bit about showers of nuts? I like it.”

  “I did not write that,” Kris said—he’d been apologizing for the line about a cornucopia of love—and went and checked his own revised line-edits. “Well—okay, I did, but in context—”

  “You can try to write a half-hearted midwinter fluff piece,” Justin said, “but you can’t get rid of the kinky rock-god brain, can you.”

  “You know what, let’s see you do better with a title about horns of plenty—”

  “Oh, I’d just go right for the innuendo. Embrace it. Embrace the horn. You know you want to.”

  “We were trying to write a new eternal holiday classic here, weren’t we, I remember you saying—”

  “Don’t listen to me, I make terrible choices. Um, showers of nuts, plenty of fruit, ripe and juicy. All you could ever…eat.”

  This was gallows-humor, camaraderie in defiance of creaking ropes and wooden arms and endings, but done well; Kris ended up torn between delight, relief, and eternal thankfulness that he was sitting with a pillow and his laptop on his lap, concealing his reaction to casual commentary about juiciness and consumption. He retorted, “Are you seriously telling me to turn this one into three and a half minutes of sex jokes?”

  Justin put his head on one side. Considered. “Actually, yes.”

  “What.”

  “That’s what was bothering me. The emotion behind it doesn’t work with the lyrics. You feel—you’re projecting this kind of—determination, hope, wistfulness, this day’s whole recording is—” Justin paused, blushed fiercely: they both remembered what Kris had been trying to do. “So. Yes. Ah. But those lyrics, this whole idea—look, it’s inherently ridiculous, isn’t it? And you’re not really a family-friendly…I mean, you were a sex symbol. Are! Are a sex symbol. Oh no, someone, the Oak King himself, stop me talking.”

  “No, keep going, I used to be a sex symbol, thank you, got it—”

  “I am so sorry,” Justin said from under the duvet, which had turned into a sort of apologetic armor over his face. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t think that. I don’t know why I say things.”

  You don’t think that, Kris thought. Open to interpretation: Justin had never seen him as a sex symbol? Or did not think of the term as past tense? “No, I get what you were saying. We used to sell the image, the rebel, the leather and spandex, all that. And if I’m making the emotion more sort of…what you said, family-friendly…the innuendo doesn’t work, does it.”

  Justin popped back out from self-imposed duvet isolation. His hair stood up in rumpled swirls of flame, burning nothing. “For that song, no. I’d say either rewrite the lyrics to go more pensive or—and this’s what I’d rather do—just go with it. Rewrite to make it even more what it is, record it again—record a few of them again, I think, for better continuity of emotion—and have fun. If you can’t have fun in rock and roll, when can you?”

  “Would you help? Ripe and juicy fruit, all that—”

  Justin’s eyes and mouth got wider, curious and astonished. “You’d want my help with your lyrics?”

  And Kris remembered suddenly that Justin was only twenty-eight, a writer at heart, and a fan; that was the expression of a boy with a dream about to come true. He fell more in love, more hopelessly, if that could be possible: not bec
ause he was flattered, though he was, but because the reaction was so transparent and unselfconsciously displayed.

  He said, “Sure, why not?” and Justin’s eyes lit up. Cinnamon candy and sunbursts, matching the hair, and asking, “Can I make absolutely terrible jokes about plums?”

  “I may regret this, but yes. Stay put for a sec.” He came back with his guitar, the oldest acoustic one, and tested fingering, cringed, did some tuning. “I don’t mean you have to come up with plum-related jokes right now. Take your time. And also parsley, sage, rosemary…”

  “Kris Starr playing for me,” Justin said. “And peppering your comments with bad puns. And I’m in your bed. Fifteen-year-old me would never believe this.”

  “Yours was worse than any of mine. Give me a minute and I’ll come up with something about cardamom.” Justin was indeed in his bed. He was pretending not to be aware of this. Every atom of his body shouted otherwise. Every piece of him prickled and shivered with the knowledge. Certain bits threatened to grow stiff.

  He also knew what Justin had been through that evening. Arousal faded, faced with complicated hurt. He’d meant to make another joke, words about salt, or nutmeg, or the aforementioned cardamom, if he could think.

  “Honestly,” Justin mused, returning to his own previous comment, “fifteen-year-old me was much more into sad angry screaming emo-punk bands. Still a fan of yours, of course, but I was having a moment. Avenge Me, ACH, Radioactive Hero Man, all that.”

  Kris tried not to wince. He’d only heard of one of those. One was enough.

  “I saw that.” Justin poked him with a toe. “Radioactive Hero’s still around, you know. And they mattered to me when I was different from everyone else and lonely.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Hey,” Justin said, and poked him again, eyes utterly limpid. “You wouldn’t know how to play Blind Panther’s ‘Snapshot,’ would you?”

  “I take it back,” Kris said, “you’re not allowed to write anything for me, get out of my bed, that was a bloody low blow even for a demon,” and knocked a knee into Justin’s, under the blanket. “Don’t think I meant that.” Both Starrlight and Blind Panther had been nominated for album of the year, that year. And Justin plainly knew who’d won, and who should’ve won, because “Sugar In Your Tea” was clearly a far superior song to “Snapshot” and the award was silly and biased anyway.

  “You never learned it out of spite? Seems like something Kris Starr would’ve done. Covered it live on stage and done it better.”

  Kris eyed his demon. Justin smiled at him. Kris plucked a string or two. The opening notes rang out, a bit out of practice.

  Justin laughed.

  “All I’ve got’s a snapshot of you, and it’s not enough…” Kris sang at him, only half-trying, and Justin promptly dove in to sing along, adding after the chorus, “Dad was a fan of theirs too. Sorry.”

  “Everyone’s allowed to like both proper football and your American football, as long as you admit ours is better.” He’d kept playing. “Never did get to do it live. Reggie thought I was being petty.”

  “You? Never.”

  “Oh yes. I’d’ve done it in drag, too, glitter and all. Abuse of empathic power. Convincing everybody present that my version was best. I had a whole plan, and Reg had to go and have common sense. He always was the adult in the room.”

  “And now I’m holding an unreasonable grudge about the lack of visuals.” Justin yawned, then looked surprised. “That wasn’t because of you.”

  “No,” Kris said. “I know.” Aftermath, shock, coping mechanisms, and the toll of the experience landing at last. “How’re you feeling?”

  “I’m thinking about plums and you in drag,” Justin said. “I’m not thinking about—about anything else.” Under tender lamplight, he was thin and strong and sculpted from courage; he bit his lip and let it go. “I know I will be. Later. But you made me laugh.”

  “That’s the plan, right? Make you feel better?”

  “You made me feel like I could do something. Write something. Help you.”

  “You do,” Kris said, hands resting over guitar-strings. “You do that all the time.”

  “I’m always safe with you,” Justin said. “I never realized that. Until now. But I always am.”

  Kris played ironic self-deprecation at him: plucked notes like heroin, like whiskey, like cigarettes and daydreams. “Forgotten all those stories, have you? No, just get cozy under there, shut your eyes and rest.”

  “Sing to me,” Justin said, half a joke, half a small plea. “If you want.”

  A flicker of “Snapshot” landed in the night; Justin breathed out in amusement, curled up amid pillows, closed eyes. “If you want to do it once for an audience…”

  “I’d touch you, baby, if you were real,” Kris sang at him, “but a snapshot’s all I can feel…”

  Justin was real. Justin trusting him was real. Justin falling asleep while Kris sang a not-truly-that-awful song by a rival rock group, a lullaby of longing intangible fantasy, that was real too.

  Triumph, a weary raised-arms salute after a long black night, rose up and sang along as well, deep in his soul. He looked at Justin, now breathing soft and slow.

  Exhausted wild exultation scampered down his spine. He was more tired than he could remember having been for ages, but in a good way, a cleansing way, and he knew he wouldn’t sleep.

  He put the guitar away carefully. He did not get out a drink, though he could’ve used one or six. He sat with Justin as the night crept steadily toward day. Justin, framed by dark sheets and pillows, did not wake. The fire-blossoms of his hair had calmed into still embers, napping, too.

  Justin stayed asleep for several hours. Kris watched him for a while, became aware that watching someone sleep was about as exciting as Reggie’s discourses on grape cultivation in drought conditions, and continued for a bit longer out of perverse determination and a mild sense of transgressive guilt at how closely he was gazing.

  Justin really was lovely. Those long dark eyelashes, that plush mouth, even the burning hair, which at some point had stopped being disconcerting and become merely present. The way he managed to pose gracefully even in sleep: a quality many people’d kill to have, Kris reflected.

  Not only that, though. Not only physical. Justin Moore had rescued himself first and asked for help after that, had gathered up all that strength and leaned on Kris. Who made him feel safe.

  Lamplight shimmered along Justin’s cheekbone, a fairy-story written in topaz and demon-skin.

  Safe was good. Safe was what Justin needed. If safe was also not precisely exciting—if Justin saw him as an elderly harbor to hide in, not an avenging lover—

  Then that was what he needed. Kris sat on the side of the bed and looked at his heart as it slept under covers; he understood pain, he thought, in a way he never had, the good kind of pain, sharp and visceral and bittersweet as a sacrifice. Demons. They did steal souls.

  He unearthed a paperback book—an old tattered memoir by the lead singer of the New York Astral Queens, who’d paved the glitter-rock way and flamed out too soon—from a shamefaced tangle of jewelry, and remembered he’d stopped around chapter two. He tried to read.

  Justin did not wake. At first Kris was glad: sleep would be restorative, helping to start to cure wounds both physical and emotional. Justin wasn’t bleeding anymore but had used up strength in transportation and self-healing and processing raw emotion. Sleep was good.

  He did not want to fall asleep, himself; he was standing guard. He did anyway, not meaning to, for twenty minutes or so; he woke with a jerk and a crick in his neck, balanced at the edge of the bed. Justin did not stir.

  Was that normal? Maybe it was. Maybe he didn’t know enough about demons, or half-demons, or healing, or trauma. Or Justin in particular.

  He worried. The clock ticked over. Morning arrived.

  He read a bit more.

  He worried a bit more.

  He should know how to help. He needed to know
how to help.

  He eyed Justin again, and had what under the circumstances was an entirely justifiable momentary bout of panic. A demon—a half-demon, which was even more bizarre, how did that even happen—in his bed. Traumatized. Terrified. Coping via jokes about music and horns of plenty, and confessions of intimate trust. Kris Starr, aging rock-star scandal personified, was two hundred percent not equipped to handle even one piece of that list, let alone all of it.

  But Justin felt safe with him.

  He took a deep breath, let it out.

  A few minutes after that, when the impulse to scream out loud and bury his overwhelmed head in a bottle of scotch had dissipated, he got up and went out to the kitchen and stared at various drawers. Where would that note be—?

  He left the bedroom door open. He could see the bed if he stayed at the right angle.

  He rummaged around in the junk drawer, failed to find what he was looking for, hastily called Reggie, endured a two-minute grumble from California about interrupted family time for the sake of a scribbled-down number, and called that one.

  He risked a peek back through the open door. Justin was still asleep; good.

  Two rings made it through before Melinda picked up; despite the time difference and the time under the bridge, her voice remained as firm and no-nonsense as ever. “Hello?”

  “Hi.” He kept his voice low. “I don’t know if you remember me—it’s Kris, ah, Kris Starr—”

  “Of course I remember you, Christopher.” Melinda Fielding sounded precisely the way he’d remembered her: firm, competent, compassionate, crisply accented as a Disney-caricature nanny. She’d been recommended by someone, he no longer recalled who, years ago when poor Tommy’d overdosed and Kris and Reggie had been flailing and in need of a therapist. Kris had gone twice and then pretended to be fine: flamboyantly casual, fashionably self-destructive, diving into fame and the search for a replacement drummer and the band’s next album. He’d assumed Reggie’d quit seeing her as well; he’d learned much later that this assumption had been dead wrong.

  Doctor Melinda Fielding was also among the very, very few people who called him Christopher. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t mind it from her.