Sweet Clematis

by R. Cooper

  “Maybe… when I have more practice, I could help teach you?” Clematis licked soda from his lips and stared over at the building for the history and anthropology departments. “Then you could have one too.”

  Flor stopped, then skipped fluidly back into motion. “David would probably teach me if I asked.”

  “Yeah,” Clematis agreed instantly. “Yeah, of course.”

  “I don’t own a car, though, so I don’t need to,” Flor went on. “So which way is it for the coffee?”

  They were already heading south, not that Clematis minded.

  “This is fine.” Clematis swept a look around the immediate area, but no hateful humans seemed nearby. A few paused to stare at Flor, but Flor filled out his shorts very well, so that was understandable.

  Clematis pulled his gaze up as Flor mumbled under his breath. Then Flor turned to study him. He’d done that a lot in the past two months, as if every time he spent time with Clematis, he saw something that would baffle him. “I can be bossy,” Flor admitted, scrunching up his face. “It’s okay to tell me no.”

  “It’s sensible to go this way.” Clematis shrugged just to watch Flor’s eyes narrow. “And everyone knows you’re bossy, Flor. It’s not a secret.”

  “Ass,” Flor groused at him, then turned back around. “What’s your favorite coffee drink?”

  “You don’t have to get me one.” Clematis looked down in time to catch Flor’s sideways glance. “I have stuff at home.”

  “Ugh,” Flor said, but with a smile this time.

  CLEMATIS GOT an extra-large sweet cinnamon blended coffee with whipped cream while Flor excitedly told a very confused human barista about Clematis’s new driver’s license. He sipped it slowly after they left the coffee shop and was still working on it as they crossed the street and walked a few blocks.

  “I just get mad when people don’t seem to realize how hard it is for us to do the things they get to do so easily.” Flor ate candied orange slices with vicious little bites. “It’s like how they treat any fairy who tries to go to school.”

  “Someday, some fairy will do it and actually graduate. Probably Frangi.” Clematis pulled out his straw to lick up the whipped cream.

  “Why not you?” Flor demanded, turning his head to look at him, then blinking and turning away. “Why not go as far as David? You take classes.”

  “Not officially.” Clematis popped the straw back in to drink some more. “I don’t have the grades or the money. It would have to be a really smart fairy anyway.” Someone like Tulip, but Clematis didn’t want to even say the name.

  He glanced behind him, just in case. But of course, Tulip wasn’t there. Tulip was back in his apartment, probably, with David, probably, which was why Flor was with Clematis and at his own apartment, which was in the same building, or with his real friends, who mostly also lived there.

  Flor harrumphed grumpily and had another orange slice. He had now gone blocks out of his way and showed no sign that he was going to turn and head home, or off to see whoever he was currently sleeping with, or dating, or whatever. Clematis was pretty sure Flor was fucking the troll who ran the library where Tulip volunteered, but that was yet another subject he wasn’t going to bring up. Despite what Stephanie said, he did know when to be quiet without being told.

  Sometimes.

  “So, that party was the day you gave him up?” Clematis asked stupidly. Flor stopped floating and dropped to his feet. His shoulders were drawn. His smile was a ghost of a thing. Clematis hated it as much as a fairy could hate anything. “No, I mean, I just meant—I didn’t know that. I thought it was before. On the first day of spring, I saw them, um, out in the park. And David had a flower crown.” A very old fairy tradition that a lot of fairies didn’t do anymore. But Tulip had sat next to David beneath a tree and woven him a crown announcing his intentions, and then kissed him and sat in his lap and all but fucked him, which was a huge deal because David wasn’t prudish like most humans, but he was shy—private. Stephanie said David was private, not shy.

  That was probably true. David had been very open about his desires once he and Clematis were alone.

  “It explains some things,” Clematis finished, with Flor still silent. Like why Tulip had reacted so dramatically when Clematis had suggested he share David.

  Clematis thought of how the air around Tulip had filled with swirling, furious glitter, how he could still hear Tulip’s voice as Tulip cursed him.

  He shoved the memory away. “I’ve got some dried pineapple and mango,” he said, glancing over until he could see some of the tension leave Flor.

  “I like mango.” Flor was quiet.

  Clematis nodded. “I know.” He ignored Flor’s sharp look up. He turned another corner, then pushed open the wooden fence that was the back entrance to his building. Humans all lived in the two upper floors, but the ground floor had his small place, and then Mrs. Galarza’s apartment, as well as the laundry room.

  He kept his key on a chain around his wrist some days, although today it was in his pocket since he’d known he’d be wearing clothes for a while.

  “Are the puppies home?” Flor skipped ahead of him to cross the yard. The two fluffy dogs immediately appeared in Mrs. Galarza’s living room window, sitting on the back of her couch. They barked ferociously for all of five seconds, then started wagging their tails and pressed their noses to the glass. Flor pressed his nose to the glass in front of them. “Hey, babies!”

  Clematis exhaled slowly and waved to Mrs. Galarza when he noticed her in the background. She had her eyebrows raised at Flor. Not that she disapproved of Clematis bringing anyone home, it was just that he didn’t, and she knew he and Flor weren’t like that, and also she didn’t want Flor fogging up her window.

  “Come on, loser.” Clematis reached his apartment and went inside, leaving his door open and hoping Flor wouldn’t notice he’d forgotten to lock it again. He doubted Flor was much better, anyway. He put the melted remains of his blended coffee by his kitchen sink and opened a window, although his apartment was never in the sun and never got that hot.

  Flor trailed after him and closed the door. “I’d like to get a dog someday. Maybe if I ever get a place that isn’t an apartment. But—” He stifled the thought there, as many fairies did. In a city like Los Cerros, with a longer being presence, small neighborhoods existed full of houses fairies could afford. But most fairies didn’t work at jobs that paid well and had to live in the areas deemed acceptable for people like them. Which was why so many fairies and a few elves lived in Flor’s building.

  Flor’s family was out in the suburbs somewhere. Maybe he wanted to move back there someday, although Clematis couldn’t imagine him mowing a lawn or whatever suburban people did.

  He could imagine Flor with a dog, though. And cats and fish and possibly a lizard. “Don’t you already have enough to take care of?” Clematis asked anyway, because a pissy Flor was better than a wistful Flor dreaming about building a bower and having a family and some human to share it with. Flor was only twenty-something. He might be mature in a lot of ways, but he had years, decades, to wait to settle down. He shouldn’t ache for it like some older fairy. “Your apartment is wall-to-wall plants.”

  “Speaking of.” Flor’s tone brightened as he hopped away from the door, abandoned his bag, and threw himself dramatically onto Clematis’s couch. The couch was secondhand, with pale green stripes that didn’t suit Flor’s complexion or his pink shorts. But something like that probably would never occur to Flor as something to give a shit about. “How do you live without a single plant in the house?” Flor gestured emphatically around the small apartment. “Not even a cactus!”

  He said something like that every time he came over.

  “I don’t get any direct sunlight here,” Clematis answered, like always.

  “And I said I could get you something that doesn’t need it,” Flor countered with a little huff.

  “And I….” Clematis took a moment to tug off his shirt and kick
off his shoes. “I don’t know any of that stuff,” he finished as he took his shoes and lined them up by the door so he wouldn’t lose or forget them. “I’ve only ever lived in cities.”

  “House plants,” Flor said with finality. “You need some.”

  Clematis considered him as he went around his tiny living room, picking up garbage or clothes he hadn’t taken care of the night before. “You’d have to tell me what to do,” he allowed at last and went into the kitchen area before he could see Flor’s immediate reaction.

  “Really?” Flor sat up on his knees. “Oh man. I have to think about it. Everybody always wants cut flowers. Nobody ever wants a live plant. Begonias? Oxalis? African violets? A heartleaf philodendron? Hmm. Wait, you really want a plant?”

  Clematis walked over to hand him a bag of dried mango, which Flor dug into with a hungry, satisfied sound, only to stop with his first piece in his hand. “You need to eat too.” He held the piece out, frowning in a way that shouldn’t have been fierce but was, so Clematis sighed and took it.

  “I was getting myself something next.” As he said it, Clematis went over to grab a pink apple from the basket by the fridge.

  Flor made a face. “That isn’t enough, and you know it.”

  “It was cheaper to get a whole bag of these from the market than a candied one.” Clematis had a bite while he grabbed a few more things and settled on the other side of the couch.

  “You got a license today. I think some caramel on your apple wouldn’t hurt any,” Flor said seriously through a mouthful of mango.

  “I’ve got some honey?” Clematis suggested, then liked the idea so much he got up and went back to the kitchen, where he had a huge jar.

  “That costs more than caramel. How did you swing that?” Flor paused. “Do I want to know?”

  “I’m not fucking a human just to get honey.” Clematis snorted as he sliced up a few more apples, stuck them on a plate, and drizzled honey all over them. “But I do sometimes fuck a beekeeper. Well, technically, she fucks me. This was a present.”

  Flor briefly stopped chewing. “Maybe if you got some more sugar in your diet, you would sparkle more. Fruit is good, but you can’t go wrong with sugar. Though honey and apples is always good.”

  Clematis licked honey from his fingers and resettled on the couch, putting the plate between them.

  Flor looked from his mango to the apples, hummed, then picked up a piece of apple. “Ah, fuck that’s good. I guess soon I’ll be eating nothing but fruit and real food too. Now I kind of see why my parents eat less sugar than I do. It must be an age thing. I forget how old you are sometimes.”

  “Fuck off.” There was no way Clematis was as old as Flor’s parents. Fairies inclined to settle down usually did so in their fifties or sixties. If they had settled in the suburbs, they might even have been in their seventies when they had Flor, since younger fairies who had children could be as flighty as humans thought they were. “I’m not old,” Clematis insisted. “I have a television now. Watch it if you want.” He’d given in and gotten a small flat-screen last year but everything on there seemed depressing. News and boring human dramas and historical series without a single being in them, as if beings didn’t exist then. The only bright side was seeing Farewell-to-Spring on that soap opera, an actual fairy playing a fairy, and a wildly popular character as well, although Clematis didn’t care for soaps.

  “You’re really going to act like you didn’t do something amazing today?” Flor was a huffy, sparkling mess, licking honey from the edge of his mouth. “Because you did. Ah! Did they give you a card or anything? Let me see it!”

  Clematis flushed to the tips of his ears. He was so warm it stung, and he turned his face away as he got out his preliminary license and slowly unfolded it before handing it over.

  Flor got honey on one corner. “Clematis. Fairy. Approximate age—? Do you not know your birthdate? Eyes: Green. Hair: Brown. Wings: White. Must not drive with radio, music, or other media playing in vehicle. No more than two passengers at a time.” Flor snorted. “But a human with six kids in a minivan with movies playing isn’t distracted at all.” He resumed reading silently, skimming over the fine print at the bottom before looking up again. “This is amazing. You know that, right? I’m—” He seemed surprised. “—proud of you.”

  Clematis jumped up from his seat and got some water. “You could probably have done it easily.”

  “Maybe,” Flor agreed in a funny voice. “But today you did it. Are you… are you blushing?”

  Clematis took a deep breath.

  “Oh my God,” Flor sighed, but with a faint laugh at the end. “David does this too. Just admit you did good, you weirdo.”

  Clematis looked over sharply, but Flor was focused on trying to put the license carefully down on the old trunk that served as a coffee table without getting more honey on it.

  “Maybe the heartleaf,” Flor mused out loud. “All you’d have to do is keep the soil damp.”

  “You aren’t watching TV?” Clematis’s voice was only a little rough.

  “Nah. I’m supposed to go out later, and I don’t want to get sucked into something.” Flor scrunched up his nose. “And I’m probably stopping you from whatever you were going to do without me here. Which is still not eating.”

  Clematis was probably as pink as one of the apples, but he dutifully sat down and began to eat again.

  Flor unfolded his legs from under him and poked a stack of books on the floor with his toe. “Are these your textbooks? You actually bought them?”

  Clematis crunched through another apple piece and picked up his scissors before replying. “Yeah. Used, though. So?”

  “Nothing.” Flor went back to eating mango. “They cost a lot. Everyone complains about it, along with the stupid-high tuition.” Clematis nodded and pulled out his plastic sandwich bag full of coupons and a couple of local flyers he’d picked up the other day. He opened them up as if Flor was staring at him and snipped out several offers that looked interesting. He could do some of them online, but it was easier to remember things if he had the papers in his hands. “My mom does that,” Flor commented. “She has a little plastic file folder thing and a whole system for it.”

  “Really?” Clematis looked up from an offer for cheap clementines. “Does it work well? I used to keep mine in a fanny pack, but then someone told me nobody wears those.”

  Flor blinked several times. His lips curved up before he forcibly flattened them. He cleared his throat. “You wore a fanny pack?”

  “I didn’t take it off, so I couldn’t lose it or forget things.” Clematis used to wear his sideways, at his hip. “I think they must have been designed for fairies, originally. It was really helpful.”

  “Oh.” Flor’s shoulders dropped. Then he nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. For fairies or forgetful humans. And then other humans started making fun of them. Still—” Flor suddenly smiled. “Do you have a picture of you wearing one?”

  “No.” Clematis went back to his coupons. “This was before cell phones were everywhere.”

  “Right.” Flor nodded, still smiling. “I keep forgetting you’re old. You don’t get memes. You don’t even have a gaming console.”

  Clematis lifted his head to focus on Flor with a small, confused frown. “I’ve never played a video game.”

  “What the—” A bit of mango fell out of Flor’s mouth. “Every time I learn something new about you, it’s always something weird.”

  Clematis frowned harder. “What’s so great about video games?”

  Flor squinted at him. “The coupons, the coffee, the fanny pack, now this. You were born an old man, weren’t you? I should tell everyone. Maybe then they’d see you’re not—” Flor looked away. A second later he lifted his chin. “How you are,” he finished.

  The TV screen stayed black, propped up on a thrift store entertainment center that always smelled of orange oil. Paperbacks filled the shelves beneath it—romances mostly. Clematis had almost a complete set of the histo
rical young adult novels about human women falling in love. He’d read them at the library as a child and it had taken him decades to track down this many. Flor would probably think that was funny, but he didn’t mention them.

  “There was an arcade in the movie theater near where I grew up. But movies cost too much and my—my mom didn’t get a chance to take me much. Anyway, I liked the comic store better,” Clematis admitted quietly. Comics had been uncool back then too. Flor might not remember or know that. “I couldn’t afford to buy anything, but I liked to look. They get mad when you don’t buy things, although Mr. Teo was always nice to me.” Flor was oddly quiet. Clematis shot him a glance. “I didn’t grow up in the suburbs, Flor.”

  He didn’t mean it as a comment against Flor—what did Clematis know about the suburbs anyway?—but Flor lost his smile, then worked his jaw.

  “I’ve eaten enough of your food.” Flor twisted the bag of dried mango closed and set it aside. “You should finish your apples,” he said as he got up. He patted his hips and then his ass before finding his phone tucked into his shorts. “Seriously,” he added and took a moment to dart his eyes around the room. “You should treat yourself to something. Maybe call Tarō,” he joked. “Although, you know Tarō reads poetry for fun and he’s got a soft heart.”

  “I’m not going to seduce your friends, Flor.” Clematis couldn’t smile, but he met Flor’s stare. He took a deep breath. “I didn’t seduce David either, despite what you think.”

  “I don’t think anything,” Flor said quickly. “I don’t think about that. But I should go anyway. Virgil gets off work soon. I said I’d meet him at his place.” He picked up his bag from the floor, then stopped. “Thanks for having me. Don’t… don’t forget to eat.”

  He darted out the door and shut it fast behind him.