Page 11 of Coffee and Tea

“Never mind,” Colby said, and drank almost all of the champagne-glass he’d been mostly clutching as a defense against random hand-clasps, “perhaps he won’t talk to us, and we’ll never have to deal with it—oh, just talk to me more about water-dragons—”

“Totally. We can go swimming with them. Or flying through rainstorms, the kind you like, all bright and splashing and drenched in water and clouds.” He’d keep Colby safe. In all the weather.

The crowd parted enough that Jason could see. And the glint of extraordinary petite sun-spike beauty took his breath away.

“Ah,” Colby said, the syllable quiet, so quiet, accepting it: which was worse. “Yes.”

“I love you,” Jason said. “And he’s tiny and I’d accidentally step on him. And you’re nicer.”

Colby now looked surprised. “You’ve not even met him.”

“No, I know. But…” He looked again. Fuck. So stunning. Right to the gut, a stab of loveliness, beyond rational thought. Steel lines, sunlight on water, glass edges and fine crystal. Simon Ashley smiled like the first-ever dawn and had flawlessly trendy blond hair and shook hands with everyone easily, so easily, happy to draw attention; he wore an ice-blue suit, no tie, like a pocket-nymph who’d been born to wear fine suits.

No. Not a nymph. An elf, the older legendary kind, beautiful as sharpened arrows.

Jason said, “I meant it. You’re more…warm. Kind, the way you were to me, back when we first met.” Colby’s sweetness, rumpled-chocolate hair, those big blue eyes, the complicated color in them: that darker stripe of deeper blue, the way that Colby had layers and layers of generosity and desires to please and a heart that believed in love, in defiance of scars. “Because you want to be kind. You know, nicer. That…” He looked at Simon again. “I feel like I’d want armor. Lots.”

Colby tried not to laugh, put a hand over his mouth, couldn’t entirely hide the sound.

“The dragons are on your side,” Jason said. “So am I.” He eyed Simon some more. Considered smoky eyeliner, dramatic; jewelry, not too over the top but present, a chunky black stone bracelet, a loop of dangling stylish obsidian leather cord at his slender throat like a temptation.

Simon was speaking to Lakshmi, whom Jason’d met earlier when Colby did the social round of Youth Literacy Foundation directors. Lakshmi beamed and made a gesture, and Jason could almost read her lips: oh, yes, Colby Kent and Jason Mirelli are here, you must know Colby, you attended the same school for a bit, and of course you both love romance…

Simon’s gaze darted their way.

And then he hesitated, and glanced away, and moved—a tiny flinch of motion, or what would’ve been tiny, except that his arm collided with a passing tray of canapes.

Disaster did not happen, because an unobtrusive hand slid in and steadied the tray, and an unassuming shadow faded out of the background and gently took Simon’s hand and squeezed, and then bent down to murmur something in his ear.

Jason considered that.

The person was shorter than himself and Colby, a roughly average height, and also apparently average in many ways: unremarkable, calm, generally a soothing earthen-brown in hair and tanned skin and eyes, though the hair had a hint of grey. They wore a suit, also brown, in the way of someone serenely accompanying a partner, with nothing to prove.

Jason’s stuntperson experience replayed the swiftness of reflexes. The right place, the right motion. Not showy. Smooth.

Something else tugged at the back of his thoughts. Some sense of familiarity, though he couldn’t place it. Not that he knew the person—he didn’t—but something in the touch, the tip of Simon’s golden head into that darker one, the way fingers brushed the back of Simon’s wrist above the bracelet.

Jason knew that gesture. Because he would’ve done it.

And, given everything Colby’d said about Simon’s wounded selfishness, he had no clue what that meant.

Colby had finished the end of the champagne, and was regarding the narrow roped-off stairs to the upper museum floors with some longing. “No one would mind if I suddenly developed an overpowering interest in eighteenth-century botanical engravings, would they…”

“They wouldn’t, but you wouldn’t want anyone to see you breaking a rule.” He took the glass, handed it off to a swooping attendant, bent to kiss his husband. That pretty mouth tasted like champagne and vanilla-beeswax lip balm and a bloom of heat: Colby had bitten his own lip at some point in the last few seconds.

Jason pulled back. Rested their foreheads together. “You want to leave? We can. You’ve done the appearance.”

“I don’t know.” Colby leaned against him; blue eyes traced the line of Jason’s jaw, throat, chest under the tightness of his shirt. That was Colby wanting, wistfully, to curl up into shield-champion strength and hide for a moment and simply be held, the way no one had ever held him or been there for him. But unable to do so, here in public. Even in this for-the-moment unattended corner.

Their suits mostly matched. Not exact, but designed as complements. Lighter and darker, lavender and indigo, similar in style. Jason hadn’t worn purple much before Colby. He liked it. Good with his dark hair, broad shoulders, California-sun-and-stuntman tan. And with those tumbling dice cufflinks, which Colby’d bought him. Because, with Colby, Jason was so much himself, all of himself, in a way he’d never been. Tabletop playing loves and knowledge of Elvish included.

He said, “We can sneak out. I’m good at stealth.”

“You are. My knight. If we—” Colby’s eyes became saucers. “They’re coming this way.”

They were. Simon Ashley, a clumsy but charming pixie, navigated the room by means of nearly running into guests, walking just in front of servers, and bumping a hip against a chair. They all forgave him, the second he smiled. His shadow-brown calm partner kept a hand on his shoulder, and reeled him in before any worse collisions occurred.

“If I could become invisible…” Colby mused.

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