Robin scoffed.
Lucas sat. Awkwardly, and on the edge of the seat of the stuffed chair, but he sat.
“Look…” Robin lowered the mug so he could be serious. “It’s not that bad. What you all are thinking. Yes, the house needs cleaning and some repair. And upkeep. Likewise, the yard and all the old pens and equipment and sheds. And okay, yes, the business is down to only me now. But it’s notthatdire. I just need some time.”
“Which you don’t have, because it’s only you now.” Lucas was gentle. “Which is why I’m here.”
Robin raised the mug again, mostly to hide his face and to let him look away from Lucas’ steady promise of a stare. Lucas was not a regular person, so he didn’t understand sometimes how he came across, how he could sound.
From the corner of his eye, Robin saw a flicker in the doorway, almost like long skirts. Peronelle, as someone in the family had named her, had allegedly been betrayed by a lover and suffered a gruesome death for it, though Robin had never sensed any particular anger from her, or anything like it. She, or at least her skirts, tended to appear when he was feeling his mopiest.
Robin looked back at Lucas. “For a few days, anyway,” he answered Lucas at last.
Lucas got to his feet. “Unless you see a greater need for me, weaver.”
Robin tensed.
His first thought, his first shameful thought after the spike of fear at being addressed by that title again, was that hecouldkeep inventing reasons for Lucas to stay around if Lucas was going to give him permission to.
He would have then wondered, well, why shouldn’t he, if Lucas claimed not to mind? But the answer was the reason for the shame. It was misplaced, but he’d never quite grown out of it. Robin was a few years younger than their Winter King, but he’d still seen how the coven had treated him. Maybe they wouldn’t do that to others, their friends, their families, but they had been more than happy to isolate even a Sibley for the crime of…
Not just loving a man, but who he loved.
They wouldn’t say a word about Robin’s old crush to his face. But the knowledge lurked. If they had reason to voiceconcerns, they would.
Robin’s family hadn’t cared. The spirits with him certainly didn’t. But there would be whispers if he kept Lucas around, and Robin was all alone here. No Greysmiths to stand before him protectively as they’d done for Connor when he’d come out as trans. And poor Lucas did not need more attention on him simply because Robin was lonely.
Tourists and the occasional trip to a convention or supply show did not allow much space for finding friends or lovers, even without having to consider Robin’s problems facing new people. Or the eventualBig Witch Revealas the visiting and somewhat flaky Aunt Esmerelda had once called it, before reflecting that identifying oneself as a witch to an outsider had led to more than one broken heart in their family… and often a midnight flight to get away before the arrival of a witchfinder.
Keeping Lucas close stayed a dreamy thought, a tempting thought, no matter what else Robin knew to be true. He couldn’t, not as he was. But he could at least make it clear that he liked Lucas and appreciated him.
“Lucas?” It stopped Lucas just outside the door. “Thank you for this… and for the memorial.”
Lucas turned, body so very still, expression almost wary. “The memorial?”
“Marise’s,” Robin elaborated, although Lucas had possibly done the same at all of them, even if Robin hadn’t noticed. “You kept a lot of nosy busybodies away from me.” Scared them off, in fact, his fulluntouchable druidvibe in effect, saving Robin from those people who wanted to talk to him about their feelings instead of letting him feel his. “I’ve been meaning to thank you for that.”
He got the sense Lucas was surprised without quite knowing where the impression came from. There was no sign of it on Lucas except for his stillness. “I scare them anyway,” Lucas explained at last. “I might as well use it once in a while. You were tired.”
“I was.” Still was. And hadn’t thanked Lucas then for reasons that were frankly embarrassing now. “Thank you,” Robin said warmly, and had the privilege of watching Lucas struggle for something to say while what might have been a blush slowly darkened the tips of his ears.
“At your service,” Lucas answered at last, then hurried from the door, pausing only to offer an apology to Peronelle as if he’d run into her.
Robin sank back into the cushions and pulled his mug of cocoa closer so that he wouldn’t explode like a flustered, horny teen.
Yes, keeping Lucas around was a lovely thought.
Robin had no time for it, and he wouldn’t disrupt Lucas’ life even more than he already had. And then there was also the matter of that summer, which neither of them had ever directly addressed. Robin would like to be friends with Lucas but his feelings were not friendly and it would be noticed.
Hadbeen noticed, he was certain, by at least Mallory.
But it was lovely to think of, and he was tired, so he sat with his cocoa and let the idea play through his mind. As long as he didn’t look up to the blank glass of the TV screen, or pull yarn between his fingers to see how the pattern would form, then it would stay a lovely idea. A daydream.
Robin had not allowed himself a daydream for a long time.
After dinner, which they ate in the living room because the dining room table held a delivery of shipping boxes that Robin had never put away, and Lucas doing the dishes while Robin imagined his ancestors shaming him for bad manners as a host, Robin put his laptop aside to get some actual work done.
Well, not office work. He rifled through several baskets for cakes of a color and consistency that feltright, ignored any stray dog hair, and reached for the knitting needles that happened to be closest to hand; acrylics, meant to be easier for users with arthritis but they would do for his tired self just as well. And since people loved to request ‘pretty’ things without being specific, the pattern was up to him anyway.
