Robin’s hands were freezing and couldn’t seem to close around the heavy, wet weave of Lucas’ sweater. The oak was on fire, a large piece of it on one side of the driveway, smoldering and bright with flames that the rain was already drenching.
Puffs of white steam from his panting breaths were the only color he could see except for the red and orange of the fire and the pale spot that had marked Lucas since childhood.
Robin yelled at him over the thunder. Thankfully, Robin couldn’t hear himself, though his throat was raw so he knew he was loud. The rain stung, full of ice. He might have shouted about that. He had opinions about Lucas standing in it, wise man or not.
At least it finally made Lucas turn to look at him.
“You shouldn’t be out here.” If Lucas was frowning, Robin didn’t care to see it.
Robin grabbed a fistful of Lucas’ sweater as best as he could and pulled hard. “Youshouldn’t be out here!” he shouted back. “Get on that porch, Lucas Greysmith!” He could not take Lucas’ shocked air. Not afterthat.“You are not a wild thing! You do not run toward lightning! I forbid it! Do you hear me? You are mine and I will see you out of this cold and I will see you safe! I promised to take care of you! Do you understand? I will slap some sense into you, I swear I will! Get down here and I’ll do it!”
He couldn’t hear much of his own voice or what he was saying, but he could hear Lucas clearly when Lucas took Robin’s hands to stop Robin from pulling on his sweater and held them still.
“All right.” It was as if Lucas was speaking directly into Robin’s ear, low and tender. “All right, Blessing. I’m sorry. There’s no danger. I’m sorry. Let’s go.”
“No danger?” Robin demanded, slipping on the first step up to the porch because everything was wet and he was shaking. “No danger?” he repeated, slipping again, because no, the rain was turning more and more to ice beneath his feet. “This is an ice storm,” he complained, leaning into the only warm thing in the world, even if Lucas wasn’t really all that warm at the moment.
“They’re trying,” Lucas said, soft and reasonable and somehow still perfectly clear even with Robin’s teeth chattering. “The rest of the world is so damaged, but the kings are trying to keep Ravenscroft as it should be. But there will be people on the road tonight. I hope they pull over to wait this out.”
“Worried about strangers,” Robin muttered, stuttering through each word, trembling harder to be out of the rain and ice, which made no sense. The porch light was dim, the world beyond its circle was dark except for the fire consuming the oak from the inside. “Put it out,” Robin ordered. “Make it stop. Please.”
“The tree is damp from weeks of rain.” Lucas was infuriatingly steady for someone who had rushed out to save some birds instead of protecting himself. “The ice won’t last long. It will be snow soon, then rain again. The tree will survive. It will be scarred but it will live.”
“How can you be calm about it!” Robin glared first at Lucas’ hands around his wrists and then up at Lucas himself. “You just ran out there! After the last time, when I was so scared, and they wouldn’t say anything! I couldn’t see you because I would be in the way, but I heard all kinds of things and none of them true! How could you go out there and risk yourself again?”
Lucas’ hands went slack but Robin kept his right where they were.
Lucas stared at him, frowning.Of course,he was frowning. “Risk and death are a part of this world, you know that. But it’s not my day yet. Not for some time, Robin, if that worries you.”
“If,” Robin hissed back at him. He wanted his limbs to stop shaking but they wouldn’t.
A breath left Lucas, a sound Robin should not have been able to hear, but he could see it, and maybe that was enough for his ears to imagine it too, startled and hopeful. “Youwantedto see me?”
Robin dropped his gaze to his hands, wishing Lucas would hold them tighter. “I wanted to make sure,” he explained himself. “I wanted to know that you were all right. I couldn’t fix you or help you. Not me; I couldn’t charm away a moth. But I wanted to know for sure that you were still Lucas.”
“But you didn’t. You never came.”
Robin shuddered for that and for how it was said, bright as a candle against a black sky.
“Why would you want to see me after…” Robin swallowed. “I couldn’t have done anything anyway, and I wasn’t family. But, yes, I worried.”
“Blessing.” Lucas let go of Robin’s hands, and, when Robin didn’t move away, carefully wiped some of the rain from his face. “You could have come to see me. If I’d known that you wanted to…. You could have come.”
He thought forgiveness and a gentle touch would be enough to calm Robin down, but he was mistaken. Robin wiped his own face and then stepped in closer when Lucas dropped his hand and looked dismayed.
“You could hug me now,” Robin said to Lucas’ sweater. “Please,” he added a second after that.
It was not comfortable, pressed against sodden fabric with ice sheeting down a few feet away, but Robin snaked his arms out to pull Lucas’ tighter to him until Lucas got the hint and held him close. Then Robin rested his hands against Lucas’ chest and dropped his head until Lucas, all on his own, cupped the base of Robin’s skull to keep him there.
“Blessing,” Lucas whispered after a while in that voice of his, and slid his hand down to cover the back of Robin’s neck, which was wet and bared to the cold.
If Robin hadn’t been freezing, he could’ve stayed there forever.
He considered it anyway, for longer than he should have.
The fire in the living room fireplace was still blazing when they finally made it back inside. Lucas waved the birds in and then closed the front door firmly against the wind. Robin walked on, leaving the birds to enjoy the heat in peace.
He would’ve taken a shower to warm up but lightning made that a bad idea, no matter what Lucas said.
