The Green's Hill Novellas (8 page)

“You don’t!” Charlie burst out, hurt, moved, confused. “You just have to ask.”

“Ask what? Ask you to leave a good life for a country at war?”

Charlie opened his mouth, surprised by the analogy, surprised by the idea. “A country? It’s a place….”

“It’s a
people,
Charlie. And we just lost our prince. And now we’ll be besieged by enemies. Adrian left his vampires to his beloved—the girl, Charlie. A nineteen-year-old mortal girl-child is in charge of a kiss of vampires. Do you have
any
idea how badly this could go?” Whim took a shuddering breath and wiped the back of his hand across his cheek. “We lost six shape-shifters in this attack, Charlie. They’re the first ones to die. They’re our weakest members. Stronger than humans, yes, and longer-lived. But in my world they’re cannon fodder.”

Whim shook his head, his hair a mournful, aching twilight color, and took both of Charlie’s hands in his, even as they sat up in Charlie’s bed, naked—both physically and in any other way two people could be.

“Can you wait another year, beloved?” he asked, his voice raw. “Can you wait until I at least know what I am asking you to become a part of?”

Charlie searched his face and saw only sorrow. “Beloved?” he asked, playing for time. Whim’s face fought against collapsing again, fought to stay composed.

“It’s our word at the hill, our endearment. Can I say it? Will you be my beloved, even if I can’t take you home with me?”

Maybe it was the word. Maybe it was the taut way it passed through Whim’s throat. But Charlie was convinced. This denial—it hurt Whim possibly more than it hurt Charlie. Charlie had a life without Whim. Whim didn’t like his life without Charlie.

“Yes,” Charlie whispered, and it was his turn to pinch the bridge of his nose and squeeze his eyes shut. “I’ll be your beloved. And, beloved, I will be soooo sorry to see you go.”

Whim kissed Charlie’s forehead then, and Charlie closed his eyes and tried to imprint this feeling, this warmth of having Whim there near him, the smell of him, the sound his breathing made in the silence. One more year, he thought resolutely. He could wait one more year.

“Whim?” he asked, trying not to whine. “Could you do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Could you let me see you into the car? Don’t just disappear on me. Not this time.”

Whim’s eyes, which really did move from blue to green to turquoise in the light, flashed bright turquoise, and his hair grew tints of gold.

“That I can do,” he said simply. Then he proceeded to kiss Charlie, pull him down into the bed, and make love to him through simple touch and taste one last time.

Putting Whim into the car hurt, but it felt like a more temporary hurt than just having him disappear. Whim kissed him on the forehead and promised to drive safely and begged him one more time to wait, just one more year, and Charlie promised. And then he was gone.

THE YEAR
seemed to slog by, and Charlie threw himself into his job. Counseling was grueling work. By the time he got the paperwork down, he found he’d been ignoring the students. And when he turned his attention to the students, he was suddenly ass-deep in paperwork. And none of it,
none
of it felt like a winning situation.

He got a small parcel at Christmas—a perfect miniature of his bedroom, complete with a blue bedspread and a purring Texas the cat on his bed. When you blew on it, the wind chimes outside the bedroom window made the sweetest sound and Texas twitched his tail. Charlie put it on his shelf with the others and stood looking at the little parcels of Whim’s devotion to him for a long, long time. If Whim could make it a year, then he certainly could.

In February, he went to a gay bar the day after Valentine’s Day.

It was an unusual move for him, but his whole life had become Placer High School and the needy students and beleaguered administration, and even his band had become a point of stress because nobody had time to rehearse, and dammit, he just wanted company. He hadn’t had a lover since Whim, and that was unusual, and all of his friends had their own girlfriends or boyfriends or family. Mostly he just wanted someone to talk to on lover’s day. He would have tried the regular bars to look for a girl to talk to (he got along with women just fine—in fact, he missed his mother frequently now that he was out of the house), but this was Auburn and he didn’t want to get the shit kicked out of him. So Auburn’s one hole-in-the-wall gay bar was where he ended up, and he was just about to give it up as a bad idea when someone sat next to him.

Charlie was surprised to find he knew the guy, and even more surprised that he was old enough to drink.

“Jesus, Daniel,” Charlie said, “has it really been three years since you graduated?”

“Five, Mr. Fratelli,” the kid answered, smiling a little over his beer. “But seeing you here is still like watching your dog sit up and talk.”

It should have been a good conversation. Daniel had always been a quick kid, funny with the one-liners, happy and easygoing. He’d been in one of Charlie’s first theater groups, and he and Charlie had gotten along very well in that way some teachers and students can. Charlie had never, ever thought of him as more than a kid, a student, somebody to mentor, somebody to help.

Daniel needed a lot more help now.

He’d recently been diagnosed as bipolar. He had no health insurance, no job, and his parents were on the verge of kicking him out of the house because of his sexuality and his refusal to be discreet with his bed partners—even Daniel had to admit he’d been less than circumspect.

When Charlie had asked him, alarmed, if he should be drinking, Daniel had given a fuck-it-all shrug. “Hell, with the meds, it’ll just make it easier for the razor blades to slide in.”

Charlie experienced a horrible frisson of truth. He meant it. Just like Charlie had meant it the night he’d gone wandering the railroad tracks with a gun.

Oh God. Whim. Charlie closed his eyes and wished so hard for Whim that he was surprised the elf didn’t just show up there in the bar, ready to take him away from the pain of the world and the hard choices it held. When he opened them, it was still Daniel sitting on his bar stool, smelling of alcohol and despair.

“Don’t say things like that,” Charlie said softly, placing a careful hand on Daniel’s as it sat near his on top of the dirty bar. “Some of us care about you.”

Daniel turned to him with the greedy love a drowning man shows a rope, and Charlie thought dismally about June, when Whim would be coming for him.

Whim, forgive me. I owed the world for you, and now it’s time to pony up.

HE’D FELT
it, in February, the dreary month when it seemed the siege of his people would never end. He’d felt Charlie’s remorse, a single bloody shaft right to his chest, but he showed up for Litha anyway.

The sullen young man Charlie brought with him and left at the gap in the graffiti wall looked as though he would rather Whim hadn’t, but Whim was too heartsore to care.

“I’m sorry, Whim,” Charlie said, walking the rest of the way across the clearing. He wasn’t running and jumping into Whim’s arms, and that hurt too. Whim looked up to where the boy sat. Dark blond hair, maybe, and probably hazel eyes. Whim didn’t care. He was the boy who would take Whim’s boy away from him, and Whim didn’t care what he looked like.

“You’re not coming,” he said back. “Ever.”

“It’s not forever!” Charlie burst out, and then he looked hurriedly behind him and grabbed Whim’s hand, pulling him into the trees, dropping his voice. “Me and Daniel, it’s not forever, Whim. It’s not you and me. It never was. It was never supposed to be.”

“Then why?” The terrible shaft of betrayal seemed to ache where it landed.

Charlie sighed. “Because you saved me, Whim.”

“You don’t owe me.”

“I don’t….” Charlie blew out a breath and scrubbed his hands through his hair. Whim could see one or two threads of silver in it now, not too much, but still, his mortality was glimmering in those silver threads. “I do, but that’s not why I love you. It’s not why I’ve shown up here, year after year. But I owe somebody. God. The world. Somebody. I came here twelve years ago to kill myself, and the universe sent me you instead. Don’t you see? Don’t you see how wildly out of balance that is? This is me, giving back. This is me, sacrificing a year of my life, of happiness with you, to make up for all of the time I’ve had that I wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t shown up.”

Whim felt his face relax, and some of the pinched misery that had taken up his anticipation of this night faded away. The pain in his chest eased to a dull throb. His people understood good works. They understood giving back. They understood a debt to the Goddess. Whim took several deep, trembling breaths and tried very hard to understand Charlie.

“He thinks this is forever,” Whim stated, wanting to know if Charlie knew that.

Charlie shook his head. “Daniel is really troubled, Whim. His disease makes him selfish, and sometimes unkind. He doesn’t know forever. I just need to get him to a place where he’ll take his meds, take care of himself, learn to exist on his own. Once I know he’s not going to… to rob the world of all he’s got to offer, then I can let him see how wrong for each other we are.”

Charlie’s voice deepened with irritation then, and Whim was heartened (as petty as it was) to see that Charlie didn’t really love this boy. Not like he loved Whim. But still….

“A relationship based on pity, Charlie?” Whim asked, not liking that idea either. “Is that what you think you and I have been? Is that what you think he wants?”

Charlie took Whim’s hands then, regardless of eyes that could be watching, and held them up to his stubbled cheek. “I do not doubt, nor have I ever doubted, that you love me for me, beloved,” he said solemnly, and Whim’s heart actually started beating again without feeling like it was pumping through a sucking chest wound.

“Yes?” Whim asked pathetically, and Charlie eased closer and wiggled, looping Whim’s arm around his shoulders.

“Not once,” Charlie reassured, leaning against him. Whim’s whole body gave a sigh of relief. He had known he wouldn’t get sex this night, but he hadn’t counted on getting a full dose of Charlie, either. Apparently Daniel the chaperone was going to have to live with the idea that Whim got to stand as close as a lover, even if they couldn’t make love.

“What about him?” Whim asked, wanting Charlie to see how this could all go wrong. “Nobody wants to be someone’s pity lay as a long-term relationship.”

Charlie looked up at him, his chocolate-colored eyes dancing with their first glance of humor for the night. “Pity lay? Did you just say pity lay?” he asked, inviting Whim to oh-please-laugh with him a little.

Whim could never deny Charlie a damned thing. “I watch movies,” he replied loftily, and then he sobered. “But this is important, Charlie. You both could end up hurt. Anything that hurts you is always a bad thing.”

Charlie leaned his head against Whim’s chest, and for a moment there was only the sound of their breathing, loud among the trees, and the sound of the train far off in the distance, not ready to roar through their Litha yet.

“When he becomes unsatisfied with pity, then he’ll be well enough to move on,” Charlie said with a combination of heaviness and hopefulness, and Whim had to concede. It was the best scenario this plan had to offer. He would have to hope.

“I brought your toy,” Whim said out of nowhere, because his basic nature had not changed in all these years.

“I thought the one at Christmas was my toy,” Charlie said, content just to lean on him.

“Yes, but I thought this would be good-bye,” Whim explained, reaching into his pocket. “I made you a special one, for good-bye.”

“You knew?”

Whim shrugged. “I… I felt something…. I felt you beg me for forgiveness, in the winter.” Whim looked away. “I couldn’t think of what else it would be.”

Charlie moaned a little and took the small wooden box from Whim’s hand. “I don’t want to look at it if it’s a gift of farewell,” he muttered, but he took it anyway. He opened it, and Whim summoned the light from his hands so Charlie could see. There was Whim, tall, loose-jointed, standing in their clearing, his arm poised to throw a stick across the green. Standing near him was a cat, a large one that came up to Whim’s thighs, getting ready to pounce as soon as Whim threw.

Charlie blew on it softly, and Whim’s arm extended and the cat’s legs moved, and for a moment, Charlie could see what Whim dreamed for them. Charlie could have been that shape-shifting cat, and he and Whim could have spent their days together.

“We’ll live this, Whim,” Charlie whispered, looking at it. “I swear. Tell me that it’s okay. Tell me you can make it another year. Tell me we can be this, this right here, someday. Please. It hurts so bad right now, being here with you and being so close. Tell me this can be us.”

“This can be us,” Whim said, believing it.

“Tell me you’ll be okay,” Charlie said hopefully, and Whim closed his eyes and murmured his first lie.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, and the first attack of stomach cramps was truly horrible. He kept his body still and breathed evenly, and Charlie didn’t even flinch against him.

“Are you sure?”

“If I know we can be together at the end, I’ll survive,” he said, and this was the truth, so the nausea and muscle aches eased back a little. But not entirely. Charlie must have heard something in his voice then, because he didn’t press.

“Then so can I,” is what he did say, and Whim used the opportunity to change the subject.

“Do we have the night?” he asked. “I mean, I know making love is out, but can we sit and talk? He’s right there. I’m not going to simply man-nap you into the night. Can we… can we talk?”

Charlie nodded and cast Daniel a weary glance. “I told him it would be boring. I told him that’s all we’d do. If he wants to fall asleep over there while we talk all night, I think that’s his choice, right?”

Whim had brought the picnic blanket and some food, and Litha was almost like it had been. Before they really started, Charlie ran Daniel a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some melon that Whim assured him he wouldn’t be able to eat. Charlie told Whim about continuing with the job as a counselor but learning the workload so he could still work on his music and write, and Whim told Charlie about the year at the hill.