Page 10 of By the Fae

It was Tuesday. I had two whole days ahead of me without the chance of accidentally bumping intoher. A smile slowly eased itself across my face.

I threw my keys into the dish by the front door and headed into the living room. Dima hovered above one couch, his quilt spread out on his lap, the hoop in the centre as he worked on whichever identical section he was currently sewing. Sugar Paste knelt at the coffee table, her university coursework splayed over it, spilling onto the rug.Thatcat sprawled out amidst the chaos.

“Hey,” said Sugar Paste.

Her real name was Joey, but I’d only ever known her as Sugar Paste. The nickname came about when my flatmate, Taurin, her mate, husband, whatever, had done a cake decorating course.“I’ve been fondling sugar paste all evening,”he’d said. To which I responded,“Sugar Paste, is that your new girlfriend?”And it sort of stuck. For me, at least.

I grunted my response and threw myself next to Dima, my vampire flatmate.

“Uh-oh, someone’s having a bad day,” Sugar Paste said. She collected up her paperwork and crammed it haphazardly inside a clear plastic wallet.

Stay out!I told Dima.

I wasn’t going to pry, he replied. Fucking liar. He looked at Sugar Paste and lifted a shoulder. Dima was an unregistered telepath. Telekinetic too, but his ability to float objects around the room wasn’t the thing I was concerned with at that moment. It was his gift to cut straight through my thoughts, unpick, and unpack everything, and lay it bare before me. That scared the shit out of me.

I wasn’t ready to delve into my own thoughts, let alone have Dima, with his fucking sunshine and rainbows outlook on everything, rummage around in there.

Optimism and I had a rocky relationship at the best of times.

Leaning forward, I pulled a battered tin from under the sofa and took out a pre-rolled joint. “Anyone?”

“I’d love to, but I need to go to bed,” Dima said, with an affected yawn, flashing off his fangs.

“Can’t. I’ve got uni later,” said Sugar Paste.

I threw the joint back in the tin and puffed out a sigh. Fine, I would just wait until Taur got home. Smoking by myself always led me down a rabbit hole of paranoia. I’d end up questioning every decision I’d ever made since I learned to wipe my own ass.

“So, what’s up then?” Sugar Paste said, opening up all the blinds and curtains once Dima had floated off to his coffin for the day. She sat opposite me on the sofa, tucking her legs underneath herself. Immediately, Not Ludo, her ginger scruff-bag cat, hopped into her lap.

“Humans,” I said, letting my head fall back against one of Dima’s quilts.

“Humans in general, or one human in particular?”

Sugar Paste was human, the only one of my four flatmates. Yet she never seemed overly bothered whenever I launched into another anti-human tirade. For the most part, she tended to agree with whatever I’d said.

Humans were the only species that would ever get me this worked up. For one reason and one reason only.

To them, everything revolved around love.

Like love makes the world go round. Love is the medicine of all that ails. Love will conquer all.

Blah, blah, blah.

It was stupid. Love did not cure or save or help anyone.

All it ever did was destroy. Tear up lives. Consume you with pain.

I’d seen it firsthand, though never experienced it myself, thank Gods. Mal, my other flatmate, an incubus, fell in love once. They were fated mates. Nothing either of them could do to stop it. But, and here was the biggest but, she was human. His lifespan: two-thousand years. Hers: eighty. Not eighty thousand. Obviously. Just eighty. Eighty fucking years. They were happy for thirty-ish. Blissfully ignorant of what was stampeding towards them.

Her hair greyed, her skin wrinkled, backache set in, bad knees, eyesight fading, hearing going too. Mal’s jet skin remained as flawless as ever. His body, his joints, his reflexes, as perfect as the day they’d met.

Eventually, it became too much for her. For both of them. He couldn’t save her, and it tore him apart.

Centuries, it took for him to move on. And I’d known him the entire time. I still occasionally found Mal staring off into the distance, his eyes wet, his breath shaking, his wings drooping down his back.

This was why fae did not fall in love. Or if they did, like my parents, it took them hundreds of years. Longer than any human’s natural lifespan.

We don’t lie, and we don’t take risks with the heart.

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