Page 23 of Arrows

Van set a hand on his shoulder, light enough to not take offense if Lorre pushed him away. Lorre did not, so he slid the hand up to the back of the magician’s neck, under long rumpled hair, and started kneading tension away. Lorre folded up both knees, put his arms on them, hid his face in the arms, but did not move away from being soothed.

Van kneaded a bit harder, comforting. Got even closer, up against him. Bodies, bare, making contact. Touching.

“Because,” Lorre said, muffled, “the folk stories say his father was the fire. All those centuries ago. My mother was a river. I don’t know anyone else like me.”

Van needed a second to work through those improbable statements; and then the sheer awful emptiness of it, the endless void, the infinity of no one else, horrified his soul.

“I told you not to ask,” Lorre said from behind a waterfall of hair. “But you can keep doing that. Good anchor.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Never mind. Go away now. Stop speaking.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I can turn you into a minnow. Don’t pity me.”

“It’s not pity,” Van said, hand resting over the nape of Lorre’s neck. “I’ve got you. Anything you need.”

“I don’t need anything.” Lorre sat back, shaking the closeness off. “Especially not from humans.”

Breathing, in and out. Even and steady. Even though it hurt. “Of course you don’t. So you want the Crown because it’s safer with you, like you said?”

“And because I don’t know how he did the perpetual fire, and I want to know.” Lorre made a wry face at the strawberries from across the tent. “If someone can do something I can’t, I need to learn.”

“So that you can be the best? You are, I thought.”

“It’s not about being the best,” Lorre said. “It’s about being—” He stopped. Waved a hand, not magical, or not visibly so. “Never mind. You should go.”

About being valuable, Van thought. About being good enough. About not being alone. “You can keep saying that, and I’ll keep asking if you mean it.”

“No,” Lorre said. “I mean you should go because—because your friend is afraid for you, and worrying about you, and in love with you. He’s thinking it very loudly. Or feeling it. He doesn’t trust me with you. And he’s right about that, and he does love you, and I think you should go and live utterly ordinary lives and be happy. Be in love. Someone should be.”

Van couldn’t think. Could barely breathe. Those words, thrown out there—Lorre thought that Milo felt—and if Lorre said so, it was true, it had to be, and that meant—

That meant Milo’s grin and freckled hands and sturdy warmth at his side forever—the rightness of it, the understanding like a cloudburst, like a cleansing annealing deluge—

But he was here, too. And he could see Lorre not meeting his eyes. He got out, “Lorre—thank you, I—he and I—but he never said—”

“He’s been saying it,” Lorre said. “I can feel it. No, I don’t know what people are thinking. I can’t read minds. But I can feel…the shape of some emotions, sometimes. Especially when it’s about me. Yes, self-centered, arrogant, I know, I’m all of that.”

“You’re not really,” Van said, automatically; and then he nudged Lorre again, gently, and said, “Maybe only a little.”

He got the very real smile again, for that.

“I’ve never seen the inside of your tent,” Lorre said. “So I can’t drop you inside it. Maybe over by the cooking-fire?”

“And now you’re helping me.”

Lorre shrugged a shoulder: naked, beautiful, hair looking exactly like he’d been recently fucked, eyes looking much older, the age he truly was. “I like being unpredictable, and everyone thinks I’ve kidnapped you. So I’ll return you. To your true love.”

“My…you think he is. You mean it.” Van heard the words with wonder; breathed them again, to taste and feel them. “He loves me. I love him.”

“Of course you do.”

“It’s real.”

“You’re still going to have to talk to him. I can’t help you with that.”

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