by Amy Lane
“Do you have any idea how tense we are here, mate? We’ve got two new shape-shifters on deck. You know that, right? Stronger than hell, and in the middle of some emotional bullshit that would curl your toes.” Teague and his partner in business (and apparently in everything), Jack, had joined the hill the day before. By all accounts Teague was skittish as hell, and Jack was hostile to everyone who wasn’t Teague. Marcus had a moment to think sourly that he was glad he and Phillip weren’t the only ones on the hill with heterosexuality issues, because it made him feel a whole lot less foolish about…. shit. Had they shattered their door?
“I’m sorry, Green,” Marcus said again and was rewarded by another shake from the back of his neck, this one gentler.
“And we’ve got some fucked-up werewolf business going down. You know that too, right? Tomorrow night you’re going on a run with Cory and Bracken—I need to know you two idiots are up to the job! They’re counting on you!”
Marcus grimaced. He and Phillip were Cory’s right-hand men out on the field. Whenever there was a supernatural threat that Cory felt needed her personal attention (and her formidable weapons), she and Bracken put together a team and investigated. They’d gotten pretty good at it—and since she and Green had widened their power base, there had been enough problems to keep Green and Bracken’s beloved pretty busy. Marcus and Phillip were always on her team, and Marcus liked it like that. He hated the thought, but he was pretty sure that if Cory had been on the hill just a little bit longer, had perhaps had a little more confidence in battle, that with all of her sorcerous gifts Adrian might not have had to die on that hillside in a burst of gentle blood rain. One thing was certain—she might not have been a vampire, but Cory took care of Adrian’s people like they were her own children. If she was yelling at someone, it was usually because that someone put his life thoughtlessly in danger, and for Cory, there were no acceptable losses.
It was that thought that finally made Marcus relax. He wriggled a little and was gently put down on the ground, Phillip with him.
“We’re fine,” Phillip said sourly, straightening his casual dress clothes. “He just decided to lose his temper for the first goddamned time in twenty years. We’ll figure it out.”
“Well, I hope so, mate. If you two can’t get this figured, maybe it’s time for a new living arrangement. There are at least three new empty rooms in the darkling—maybe one of you needs to move out!”
Marcus gasped, the sound reverberating around the hall like a rifle shot, and he turned stunned, hurt eyes toward the man who was father, big brother, best friend, best lover, and hero for the entire hill, all wrapped up in one.
“You’d do that?” he asked, his voice so laden with shock and hurt that Green moved his hand up to the back of Marcus’s neck again—but this time to massage and comfort.
Green lowered his head so they were temple to temple and said, “Only if you make me,” very softly. Then he turned those sensual lips to Marcus’s ear and said, “Tell him, Marcus. He doesn’t know where you’re coming from, and he needs to.”
Marcus looked at Green miserably, remembering that long-ago conversation with Grace, where she’d told him that Phillip wasn’t ready yet. But then, how long ago was that? For the first time, the weight of twenty years hit him—truly hit him. Twenty years they had been growing closer together with every sunset. Maybe, if Phillip wasn’t ready after twenty years, he never would be. If nothing else, the weight of this “crush” was beginning to remind Marcus with every passing second that he could never truly breathe.
“We’ll make it right,” he said numbly, and Green gave him a kiss on the temple before summoning something—Marcus thought it might have been a wood troll—that popped out of thin air to start working on their shattered door. Green ruffled Marcus’s hair, and then Phillip’s, and disappeared around the bend in the corridor, leaving Marcus and Phillip looking at each other in silence.
Marcus couldn’t do it—not now. Not in this tense moment of aftershock.
“I’m going to go flying,” he said abruptly and turned on his heel and left.
He knew he wasn’t alone about half a second after he walked outside and leaped into the air. For a moment he thought about ignoring Phillip, but then the thought crashed into his chest that maybe he and Phillip wouldn’t be a team forever. Maybe, in spite of all the time they should have had, all of the promises immortality had to offer, this would be the last time they went flying together.
He looked at Phillip, the man he’d loved for over a third of his existence, and gave a broken grin. The roaring of the wind was almost too loud in his ears to talk, so he went mind to mind, recalling those words from two guys on the top of a snow-covered hill a little more than twenty years earlier.
“Wanna race?”
Phillip let his glee show over their contact, and Marcus leveled out flat and told his spectacularly gifted vampire body to go zoom. Phillip was right there with him. They had no specific path—it was only speed and the joy of flying together that held them to each other’s sides.
They soared, the blackness of the sparsely populated mountains at their feet, the glittering stars of an unlit night at their backs, nothing to lose, and nothing but the dawn to hold them back. Marcus might have just continued forever, straight into the gray twilight of dawn, if Phillip hadn’t been at his side. As it was, Marcus was the one who remembered to turn back, and their trip back to the hill—a bright and misty fairy ring to their preternatural eyes—was straight-on speed. No dodging, turning, cutting each other off, or soaring higher to avoid a collision—simple speed. When they touched down in the garden, they were both laughing with exhilaration.
The top of the hill had been renamed the Goddess Grove, and it was as beautiful and sacred now as it had been the night Adrian had helped make it. For Christmas the year before, Green had installed a granite bench in the clearing by the trapdoor (also magically created) that emerged from inside the hill. Adrian’s likeness was carved on the side.
Marcus and Phillip touched down right in front of the bench just as the sky went a lighter gray. Marcus raised his face up toward the waning darkness and closed his eyes. Green’s ultimatum—and advice—weighed him down as soon as his feet hit the ground.
“I know you loved him,” Phillip said softly. “I mean, I was always sorry I couldn’t be him.”
Marcus looked at him in some confusion. “Who?”
“Adrian.”
Adrian? “We all loved him,” Marcus said, because it was true. In the end, even the elves had loved Adrian—and a lot of them, older than Moses, had sticks up their asses as far as the vampires were concerned.
“Yeah,” Phillip said quietly, “but you loved him, loved him. You know. Like….”
Marcus looked at him, blinking in confusion and feeling hollowed out like the center of Green’s hill would be if the people he loved hadn’t been there.
“Like what?”
“Like you loved Cory,” Phillip said, looking away. “And don’t deny it—you loved her. Right up until the wedding, when you stopped looking at her all cow-eyed.”
Marcus shrugged bitterly. “It was a crush, asshole. Trust me—by now I know the difference between a crush and real love.” The words made him want to rip someone’s head off. He could, too. If nothing else, the past year battling at Cory’s side had taught him that he could be a true vampire, bloodthirsty and ruthless when the violence presented itself. Around Cory, well, it tended to present itself.
“And Adrian?”
What-the-fuck-ever. “I never loved Adrian,” Marcus grunted. “Not like I love you.”
And with that, he couldn’t stand this conversation anymore. He flew down the granite stairway, knowing Phillip would be behind him. Phillip would never be so foolish as to wish the dawn would take him to ease the pain of a broken heart.
HE ROSE the next night trying to tell himself it was for the best. Phillip had made it downstairs and to their room, but he’d spent the night in his unused ki
ng-size bed.
They’d been so late coming down that Marcus hadn’t even had time to cry before the sun rose, and for ten or so hours of daylight, he’d rested in peace.
He woke up the next evening and heard Phillip zoom out of the room. Well, fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Vaguely he thought that Cory had a run the next night—they were hunting a rogue shape-shifter and bringing the new werewolf alpha with them to see if he’d fit with their crew. Marcus would have to tell her, he thought dully. One of them would have to stay back. It would probably be him—the thought hurt, but there was no denying it. Phillip’s customary fearlessness made him perfect for the job.
Awesome. Well, this was why human couples stayed together when they fell out of love—you didn’t just split from your spouse, you split from your friends and your children and even your job. Phillip was the most useful—Marcus would have to hand him over and lose Cory in the divorce.
He stood up and started pulling the stuff out of his bureau to take to another room. He heard a crash behind him, and when he turned around, he was surprised to see Phillip there with Bracken. Bracken was, characteristically, being a complete jerkwad.
“Look, dickweed—just because you want this out of your room doesn’t mean you can rip it apart, okay? Green built this!”
Phillip snorted. “Well, by all means let us dip it in wax and set it up in a fucking shrine. Green doesn’t give a shit. If he gave a shit, he wouldn’t have put it in a room with a guy who went through three beds when he was down in the fucking vault! I just want it gone!”
“You don’t have to move,” Marcus said, staring resolutely at the pile of T-shirts in his arms. Phillip had started giving him the good ones—tight fit, with the ring collar and the nice fabrics—for Christmas. Well, hell. All his clothes were from Phillip. He probably even had some of the bastard’s socks in his pile. The only thing he wouldn’t have was Phillip’s underwear—because Phillip didn’t wear any.
“I’m not!” Phillip snapped. “Dammit, Bracken, take the fucking mattress first!”
“I’m married to a woman who could cook you for fun and laugh while you sizzle—you know that, right?” Bracken growled, but as Marcus cast a puzzled look over his shoulder, he saw that the big elf and Phillip had managed the mattress. It was unwieldy, but they were both preternaturally strong, so away it went. What was left was a frame that was handily jointed in the middle, all the better to disconnect and fit through the door.
“Cory adores Marcus,” Phillip said smugly, coming back in the room and grabbing his end of one of the frame halves. “She won’t cook me, because she knows that will fuck him up royally. So stop making threats and help me get this fucking thing out of here.”
Marcus turned away from his clothes and looked at Phillip in complete and total annoyance. “You’re leaving me, and you’re using me as leverage? Jesus—what an asshole!”
“I’m not leaving you,” Phillip snapped from the hallway. “And you’re not leaving me. So shut up, sit down, and wait until I get this fucking bed out into the hall, okay?”
“Awesome!” Marcus snapped. “Whatever you say, Phillip. You’re the lord of all you survey, Phillip. I live for your command, my fucking liege!”
“Oh Jesus, shut up!” Bracken and Phillip snapped in tandem, and Marcus scowled at both of them. He plonked his ass down, as ordered, onto his bed, the one with the handmade quilt, and stewed until Phillip slammed the door, shouting, “Thank you, dickwad! I’ll remember your cheerful assistance!” down the hall as Bracken thumped away.
Marcus turned to him in disbelief. “Did you just make him haul that down to one of the vacant rooms by himself? Jesus, Phillip—that guy is going to have your back tomorrow. How badly do you want to piss him off?”
Phillip rolled his eyes and looked bored. “Shut up,” he snarled, walking around to face Marcus, and for the first time in their acquaintance, looking well and truly pissed at Marcus and not at the world in general. “Cory’s in the hall, doing some sort of levitation bubble—calls it practice. Whatever. She’s got it, and you and I need to have an actual conversation instead of you shutting up and being all fucking noble and shit!”
“That wasn’t what I was doing—”
“Bullshit! I know you, Marcus.”
“That’s a pile of crap!”
“I do! Now shut up and listen, or we’ll still be hashing this out at dawn!” It was November, and the sun had scarcely gone down an hour before. It was a long time until dawn. “You think I don’t, but I know you. You want to be the good guy. You don’t want to be the bloodthirsty vampire. You want to be the good guy, so you… you’re in love with me for some insane amount of time I don’t even want to add up, and you just… what? Conveniently neglect to mention the fact? We’ve been living together for twenty years—we play chess, cribbage, Scrabble, and Trivial Pursuit and fuck like bunnies, and the whole ‘I love you more than Adrian’ thing doesn’t come up? Not even once? You go out into the world, and you try to recruit lost teenagers and save their poor little souls, and you drag me along when I suck at it, and you do this why?”
Phillip shook his head, and the look he sent Marcus was stark and sad. “I’m an asshole, Marcus. I should have known. Maybe I’ve always known. You do all that shit because you love me. You’ve always loved me. And when it takes me by surprise, you assume it’s all your fault.”
“I shouldn’t have,” Marcus said to no one in particular. “I… I shouldn’t have gone into the vault with you—I mean, I did it because we were going to have to put you down, and I fell, and I fell hard, and I just… I’ve been hoping you could love me too.”
To his surprise, Phillip sank to his knees in front of him and grabbed one of his hands.
“Don’t give up on me, asshole,” he rasped. “Just don’t. You’re going all tragic, like the magic window’s passed. Don’t you see? This whole twenty years—it’s been the magic window, and I’ve been falling through.”
Marcus rolled his eyes. “You just moved out of our room—how far could you possibly have fallen?”
“God, you’re dense! That fucking bed was the problem in the first place, you know that?”
Marcus narrowed his eyes. “I thought the problem in the first place was that you slept with anything that moved and I was your backup fuck buddy!”
Even on his knees, Phillip could look imperious. “But don’t you see? I woke up after being in the vault, and I was in your room but in another bed. I thought… I thought you didn’t want me. That what we did in the vault, that was just… vampire training. I kept crawling into your bed, and you never objected, and I thought, well, maybe he’s okay with it. Maybe he’ll let me stay.”
Marcus squinted at him, completely at a loss. “I always wanted you to stay. You were the one who kept chatting up women left and right. And I can’t do that anymore, okay? I can’t! It just—”
“Hurts too much,” Phillip said hoarsely, propping his chin on Marcus’s knee and looking into his eyes soulfully. “I know. It hurt every time I did it.”
Marcus couldn’t help himself. He framed that narrow face with his hands and ran his thumbs over Phillip’s cheekbones. It had been fifteen years before Phillip would let Marcus touch his face like this. Marcus was going to savor every opportunity—even the last one—to do so.
“Then why did you?” he asked, his voice gruff.
“Because I thought it was something from the change—you know, you fuck nothing but guys for a month, and you walk away a little bent. And then I thought I had the maker’s mark with you, because what I felt for you was a little like what I felt for Adrian, but….” Phillip trailed off and leaned his cheek against Marcus’s palm. “Adrian died, and what I felt for you was even bigger and a lot different and still there.”
“Why all the threesomes?”
Phillip grimaced. “I was trying to make us… you know. Permanent. Cory, Green, and Adrian—that was permanent. Our new werewolves? They’re going to be a threesome, and that’s g
oing to be permanent. It’s like no one gets a one-on-one here—I just wanted something forever with you.”
Abruptly Marcus pulled his hand from Phillip’s cheek and pressed the heel of his palm against one eye after the other. It came away stained in crimson. Phillip grabbed his hand and planted a tender kiss in the center, lapping at the palm.
“I love you, asshole. Isn’t that enough of forever for you?”
Phillip took one more swipe with his tongue. “Well, yeah,” he whispered. “And that’s why I had Bracken get rid of the bed.”
Marcus pulled at his hand again, because his vision had gone red again, and he was surprised when Phillip whispered, “Let me.” Suddenly Marcus was the one with his face framed by Phillip’s long-fingered hands, and Phillip’s thumbs brushed at his cheekbones, coming away scarlet. Phillip popped a thumb in Marcus’s mouth—only to vampires did tears taste sweet.
Marcus suckled and swallowed, then said, “I need to hear you say it.”
“I know you do,” Phillip muttered. “You’ve been waiting for twenty years—you deserve it.”
Marcus had to concede that he was right. “Damned straight.”
“I love you, asshole. I’ve loved you since that first downhill race. I’ve loved you since you looked at me on the ski lift like I was a complete dick, and you still smiled at me. I may have been straight before the change, but if I had met you when we were alive, we would have been best friends until we died, and you still would have been the one person I loved best in the world.”
Marcus managed a grin, one that had Adrian and Green in it, and even a little bit of Cory’s fierce scowl. “Does this mean I still get to top?”
Phillip smiled back. “Can I try it once in a while? Now that I know you love me, I think you’d forgive me if I’m awful at it.”
Marcus found a little bit of a laugh forced from his tight, aching chest. “God, I wish you would. Twenty years—you know, it would be great to try something different.”
