by R. Cooper
“Turn left up there, then go ahead and park wherever seems good.” Lis stretched to look out the front window, but didn’t seem to see anything to excite or alarm her. She settled back to stare at Clematis. She was still tense, jittery, but she managed a smile. “Flor is probably saying something very similar right about now. He’s probably gushing to Randolph since I’m not there. And he’s not the type to wait for someone who isn’t worth it, is he?”
Clematis kept his attention on parking, putting lots of distance between Randolph’s car and the others on the street. He turned off the engine and looked up at an average house, with maybe an above average number of flowering plants in the yard, even for this time of year. The small trees had birdfeeders and squirrel feeders and a few ribbons in their branches. A fairy lived here.
He also noted the security system placard in one window. An overprotective were lived here too.
“Do you think it’s selfish to make him wait?” Clematis didn’t look at her. “I don’t even know what I’m waiting for, except that he could change his mind. He should. I thought, I don’t know, it would hurt less this way. When he goes. That I would at least be able to control myself. But instead I’m… Sparkles.”
Lis unbuckled her seat belt and stretched over to squeeze him tight. “If I had found you when I lived here, I would have loved you the way you should have been loved,” she ground out fiercely against his shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Ssh.” She rubbed his other arm comfortingly, which was when he noticed he was trembling. The lump in his throat wouldn’t go away. “You’re mine. I’m going to help take care of you, and honestly? I cannot wait to introduce Calvin to his new son.”
Clematis couldn’t breathe. Then he could but only in great gasping lungfuls. “Lis—”
“No, listen. I’m going to be direct because you don’t understand otherwise.” Lis raised her head. She was sparkly and damp too. “I know Flor loves you, because he has the same fury in him that I do whenever you insist you were better before, or that there is nothing good in you. You’re mine now, and when you’re ready, you’ll be theirs too.” She nodded toward the house, then again in decision. “I will grant Flor partial custody on the condition that he says please when he asks me.”
“He won’t like that.” It was the first thing that came to mind.
“Maybe. Or maybe he’ll love showing me how much he adores you.” Lis was briefly smug, despite the tears. “But you’re right. He won’t like asking. He’ll live with it, though, for your sake.”
She narrowed her eyes when Clematis opened his mouth to object.
Clematis lowered his head and breathed hard for a few seconds. “Flor—” His voice cracked and then was small and timid. “Flor will do whatever I ask him to.” The truth made him shudder. “He loves me. You love me too.”
“Yes, Dollface, I do.” Lis leaned back in her seat, like someone worn out, but left her hand on his arm.
They sat that way for a while, five minutes maybe, and then the door to the house opened.
An older human man stood there, white, with light eyes and very little hair on his head. He was in a sweater and jeans, and wasn’t very tall or very short. Average, except for how he seemed to take up the entire doorway with his presence, and how his gaze went right to Lis and stayed there, and the yellow radiance that haloed him.
Lis was frozen. “Oh, my love,” she whispered. Clematis didn’t think he was meant to hear.
“Was he always like that?” Clematis asked faintly. He had the impression the human—Calvin—had noticed him. But he had eyes only for Lis. His shimmer was deep and pure, like the echo of a bell.
Clematis had to remind himself that this human had been the one to push Lis away. His lovely shimmer meant nothing, even if somehow he’d never lost his shine.
“He was even brighter, before.” Lis exhaled. “Drew every fairy in town. But he was always mine. He still is.” Lis finally turned her head to look at Clematis again. Her cheeks were rosy. Her eyes were practically glowing. “I think it’s time you talk to Flor. Whatever you decide, you should talk to him. It makes you happy, and I like seeing you that way, pretty as your sparkles are.”
Clematis glanced out the window but ducked his head before Calvin could focus on him. “Lis.”
“Go talk to Flor.” She took his face in her hands to stare at him intently. “Be happy. Then bring him to me. He has to meet the parents properly, Clematis. It’s tradition. You’ll see. Your family is going to grow.”
“Lis, I—”
“You love me. I know, Dollface.” She gave him a sweet, if wet, smile. “Now go. I’ve got my other kid to sort out, and I have to talk to my idiot love. Go! Go find your Flor.”
She kissed his forehead, then grabbed her bag and tore out of the car in a flurry of motion. She stopped to wave at him, leaving her tears untouched on her face, and didn’t start to turn toward her human until Clematis had pulled away from the curb.
Chapter 20
THE FREEWAY was busy, but the traffic was moving. Clematis stayed in the slow lane and took the wrong exit when he was close to Madera and had to stop at a gas station to put his head on the steering wheel and just breathe. He got back on the road with only a small break for tears and two cans of treacly energy drinks that made him red-faced and restless and eager to return the car to Randolph and finally have his feet on the ground again.
In the early evening at the very, very end of summer, the tall buildings made the sun seem to set earlier than it should. Clematis left his sunglasses and Walkman in his sweatshirt pocket, but zipped it all the way up, his wings inside, except for where they poked out at the top and bottom.
He gave the bare details of what had happened to a worried Randolph, then slipped outside. He had no idea of where to go. He had no idea of anything. He should go home and try to think over what Lis said, what’d she’d done. Claimed him, the way her were son-in-law would have done.
It made sense now, how her son would be the type to keep a werewolf.
But he smiled and put his hands to his face and walked blindly, hopped up from the energy drinks and Lis saying those things. His cheeks were wet. He was still smiling. Everything was weird. He was weird, that was what Flor would say, but sweetly.
And oh. Oh, he suddenly wanted to see Flor more than ever.
His wings pushed against the sweatshirt, trying to flap as hard as they could as he walked. The hour was late for the MCC table to still be up, unless there was a late campus event that meant the others would feel they’d be needed. Clematis headed to the university anyway and pulled out his phone.
He hesitated, his stomach fluttering as much as his wings, and couldn’t think of what to say. He wrote, I want to see you, then erased it and rewrote, May I see you? Only to stop after he sent it and lean against a low wall and have trouble breathing all over again. Because what Lis believed to be true might not be. Flor might not be in love with him anymore.
But if he wasn’t, he was still his friend. And Flor would like to know what Lis had said. Not the parts about him, but the rest. That she wanted Clematis to be—that she’d called him hers. Her other son.
Clematis stopped dead again just inside the university’s walls and stripped off his sweatshirt to let his wings go mad. He tied it around his waist, which was the sort of thing Flor would never do. He was an icon. Clematis was not. Clematis was a dork. But Flor liked that.
Clematis must have been smiling, because the students walking past him gave him odd looks. He was going to have to tell Flor that, and then about Lis and her human and her son’s werewolf mate’s magic problems. Then about his job and the new dogs he was going to meet, which maybe Flor would like to meet too.
The number of students around him increased the closer he got to the campus center. A lot of them were simply standing around, on their phones or earnestly discussing something.
Clematis belatedly noticed that many of the lamps along the paths had come on, although the sun had not fully set, and t
hen that though he was receiving more than a few stares, none of them were leering.
He slowed his pace, then stopped when he reached the main cluster of buildings and the juncture of many of the footpaths. Students were gathered here for no reason he could see. A lot of them were heading toward the History and Anthropology Department building, which was older and had one of the large, old-fashioned halls where there were often guest lectures or movie screenings.
Figuring it something of that nature, he continued on until he reached the bookstore, which was now closed.
There, he stopped again, but not for the bookstore.
On a bench, amid all the students but not a part of them, was a glorious shine. The kind of glimmering, living mass of colors and light that should not have belonged to one human but inexplicably did.
They had not been bright the last time Clematis had seen them, years ago. They’d been muted then, but no less beautiful, an aurora borealis of yellows and red-orange and tracks of gold around one small, slender, slightly underfed frame.
Clematis came closer without conscious thought, taking in the familiar mop of pale blond hair, and light skin with pink splotches, and a distracted, thoughtful frown adding distinction to a cute, sometimes pretty face.
“Arthur!” he called out happily, and Arthur looked up in confusion.
He was not relaxed. His shoulders were too straight for that, but when he saw Clematis, the faint traces of surprise and welcome vanished from his expression. He stiffened, then darted a wide-eyed look around them. He also slapped a hand to the stroller next to him, although he already had his ankle hooked around one wheel. His grip was white-knuckled.
“Clematis?” Arthur sucked in a breath. He glanced over his shoulder one more time, then focused on Clematis with all the considerable attention he was capable of.
“You remember me?” Clematis stared at Arthur in amazement and didn’t understand the furrow in Arthur’s forehead. But Arthur had always tended to frown, usually absently, when he was concentrating.
“I—” Arthur’s mouth softened, nearly falling open, but then he snapped it shut. “I remember you.” His voice was quiet, careful, like a church mouse.
But of course, Arthur was no mouse.
Clematis beamed at him. “Look at you. You look so well! I bet no one has to sneak you oranges in class anymore.” Arthur still had something of the lean body Clematis remembered. He’d had muscle, then, mostly in his legs from riding his bicycle, but had still had a soft face. But he’d always been pale, with shadows beneath his eyes from too much work and too little sleep, and probably not enough food. “Oh, are you taking classes? I haven’t seen you around, but I’m not here as much anymore.”
“No, I got my degree. It took a lot of work, but we made it happen,” Arthur said in a faint, flat voice.
“Are you going to teach here?” Clematis swept a look over him. “I always thought you’d end up a professor with a bunch of devoted students following you around. I can’t get over how different you seem. You’re so much more adult now, although you always were very serious. Too serious, I used to think. But I’m not good at making people laugh.” Arthur was in a buttoned, long-sleeved shirt in a shade of blue that made his eyes stand out. His jeans were form-fitting, the kind Flor would wear when he felt the need to wear pants. He had color in his cheeks, and some plumpness as well. Someone must be feeding him these days, better than Clematis had been able to manage. “Did you find someone to keep you? You must have. No other grad student I know looks so content.”
“This is… more than I remember you ever saying.” Arthur studied him, angling his head to the side to consider the sweatshirt tied around Clematis’s waist.
Clematis’s skin seemed to cool and prickle with a bolt of nerves. He had almost forgotten how piercing Arthur could be. “I remember that look now. It makes me feel for any students you might have in the future. That look could intimidate a dragon.”
Arthur blinked, then turned up the corner of his mouth as if that was funny. But the glint in his eye didn’t change.
Clematis shifted from foot to foot under that regard, then ducked his head. “Is that a baby?” he asked shyly. “Are you just watching it, or… is that your baby?” He perked up. He hadn’t known Arthur was into women, but it was always possible. Some humans were very slow to realize they could like different genders. “You have a baby!” he announced when Arthur’s silence went on, but Arthur’s smile inched up, and his eyes filled with fierce pride.
Something inside Clematis twisted, squeezed somewhere around his heart, but it was only for a second. He’d known even back then he would never get to keep Arthur, and it was so nice to see him happy. “A baby,” Clematis said again in wonder. “That’s great!”
“My husband and I think so too.” Arthur still had the flat, disapproving note in his voice, but then he glanced at the stroller as if he couldn’t help himself, and his colors flickered and brightened.
“Husband?” The twisting sensation around Clematis’s heart disappeared, and he was too distracted to find it odd. All feelings were odd, anyway. “You got married? Are you very happy?”
Arthur frowned again, deeper this time. “I am,” he declared, despite that. “You… seem to actually care.”
“Oh.” Clematis immediately stiffened and stepped back. “Should I not care?” Arthur’s frown possibly wasn’t as harmless as he’d thought. “Oh.” Clematis heaved a breath. “I hurt you too, didn’t I? Of course I did. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have approached you. I’ll go.”
“Hurt me too?” Arthur echoed. “Are you asking?” His voice got higher, then harder. “I used to imagine us meeting again, and it was never….” Arthur paused, then fixed Clematis with a glare Clematis felt down to his toes. “I thought you’d forgotten about me the second you closed the door behind you.”
“Forgotten?” Clematis shook his head at the very idea. “You? Arthur, you were radiant then. Which is nothing to how you are now. Now, you’re mesmerizing, you know. It’s probably all the happiness you feel. You must… you must feel very safe. I think that’s… when people know love—when they are loved, I mean—they feel safe to be themselves. To be happy. But I’m being silly. What do I know about anything? When I met you, had that class with you, I made you want me. Not with glamour or magic, but I did. You thought I was handsome, so I was kind to you, and I listened, and I brought you food and tricked you into thinking I was good. But I knew it couldn’t last, and that soon someone truly great would find you. But I took what I could get, and then I left. That’s what I used to do with the shiny ones.” He rolled a shoulder uncomfortably, but it didn’t help. “I would make them want me, and then I would leave before they could stop wanting me. I did try to make it good while I was there. But I suppose that doesn’t matter, does it?”
He didn’t bother to wipe his eyes. If he was crying, there was nothing to be done about it. He’d already confessed the worst to Arthur anyway.
“I wanted you,” Arthur said, very softly. Clematis met his eyes in shock. Arthur stared back. He had not lost his frown. “You were the first person to make me feel warm in a long time. You were the first—I thought you cared. Then I was sure you didn’t. Now you’re here, and you remember all these things, and I don’t know what that means.”
“I remember everything.” Clematis forced himself to be still. “I wanted to make you happy, but that fairy wasn’t me.” He couldn’t look at Arthur’s suddenly flushed cheeks or startled eyes. “Not all of me. I kept that from you because I thought you wouldn’t want it. You were kind and sharp and going to go far, I could tell. Soon you would’ve realized I was trying to be what you wanted because I wasn’t that at all. And that hurt you.” Clematis sighed heavily and hung his head. “I didn’t think of how you would feel when I was gone. I knew you would expect more, but I told myself—lies. They were lies. Because I was scared and selfish. I hurt you.”
Arthur lifted his chin. “No, you made me feel like no one would ever wa
nt me.”
Clematis caught his breath. “I’m so sorry.” He looked Arthur over in alarm and took an urgent step forward. “Arthur, I’m so sorry. Not feeling wanted, being alone when you don’t want to be is—you say it’s fine because you have to, because what else can you do if you need to get through the days, but it’s so hard. You do stupid things to feel wanted, even for a few minutes.” He shook his head. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I’ll go. But I’m happy to know you’re doing so well. Congratulations on your husband and your baby.” Clematis glanced over at the stroller again and the rays of shining light peeking out from the blanket hanging over the top to shield the sleeping infant from the outside world. “I can see the glow from here. Of course that’s your child.”
Arthur’s eyes widened, and then he turned sharply to stare at the stroller in evident bewilderment when a small coo came from behind the blanket. His baby wasn’t sleeping after all. “Glow?” Arthur asked in a careful, soft voice. “Do you mean shine?”
“Yes.” Clematis hesitated. “Didn’t I tell you how much you shine?”
“Yes, but…. You meant it. Fairies don’t lie.” Arthur sighed at some realization, then gestured at the stroller. “You can see the shine already?”
“Children are always bright. They haven’t been tested yet, by life, by bad things.” Clematis bit his lip before carrying on. “But your child’s shine is streaming out in all directions. Like a lighthouse, or a beacon. They probably get that from you.” He considered this. “Although anyone to win you must also be special, so your husband must also be—”
“Clematis,” Arthur stopped him with a whisper, “this isn’t shine. Or at least, it’s not entirely shine. I can see some of it too. But I didn’t know it was that—a beacon?” The smile that gradually took over Arthur’s face was so charmingly besotted that Clematis smiled tentatively back. Arthur adored his baby. He would take good care of it. He was fierce like Flor and smart like David and had once been so hungry to be loved that Clematis had looked in his eyes and known him immediately.
