Robin swallowed. He didn’t think he was offended, just a bit lost. “Because I’m so helpless?”
The frown came back, sharp and genuinely angry. “Needing help doesn’t make you helpless. And everyone will be helpless at some point in their lives. Even the wise. Even the powerful. Everyone. That’s why we have friends and family. Why we’re supposed to have the coven.” He pulled in a shaky breath and seemed to make himself stop.
Robin ran his thumb across Lucas’ cheekbone. He thought of Lucas going through physical therapy after the lightning strike because he’d had trouble walking and holding things. He’d regularly forgotten words, some had said, had slurred speech when overly tired.
People thought of what the strike meant for them. Not what it had done to Lucas.
“So,” Robin began, easing it into the quiet, “you get off by helping me?”
He got a stern look.
“So notget off,” Robin corrected himself. He fanned his fingers over Lucas’ cheek, then, watching closely, drew them down to Lucas’ chin, which inched up without any pressure. Images hovered at the edge of Robin’s vision but the picture before him was much more compelling. “You take pleasure in it,” he reasoned slowly. “Even though I’m bossy?” He had to ask. Lucas mentioned it so much.
Lucas stared up at him, then his mouth curved, a smile there and gone. “I like it when you’re bossy.”
“Oh,” Robin said, then really understood. “Oh.”
“Just as you are,” Lucas elaborated, rightly thinking that Robin needed more information. “You don’t need to do anything else.”
Robin withdrew his fingers before they could coax out any other revelations. This was more than enough for the present. “That’s a lot to absorb in the secret hours of morning, if you don’t mind putting this discussion on pause for another time.”
He didn’t know why that would bring that same quick, almost hidden smile to Lucas’ face. “On pause,” Lucas echoed, then added, “No. I don’t mind.”
Robin peered down at him, then found himself petting Lucas’ cheek again, then the hollow of his throat when Lucas swallowed. Robin wanted to trace his mouth.
“I’d still like to kiss you.” It fell from him on a sigh.
Lucas shifted his arm to splay his hand over Robin’s hip. It took only the slightest nudge for Robin to rise and then settle over Lucas. Lucas slid his other hand up Robin’s back.
Robin put his hands on either side of Lucas’ head, sinking into the pillow.
The first brush was light, just a breath, a whisper.
The second was nearly part of the first.
Lucas’ hands pressed, warm along Robin’s spine, firm at his side. His fingers curled, holding, or asking.
Pleading.
Robin sank deeper, calming him with kisses three, four, and five, quick and pleased against soft lips.
He kept count until seven, when he slid down to feel more of Lucas against him.
He murmured something when Lucas’ hold tightened, enchantments he had no magic for, or just something silly and heated like a twitterpated, adoringLucas, and thenLucasagain.
Finally, he nearly added, but was busy pressing kisses to a mouth saying it for him.
They might have reached a dozen kisses, two dozen, three, when Robin thought he heard banging downstairs, but at the moment, the antics of his long-dead ancestors were not remotely interesting enough to take his attention from this.
This, he thought, smiling, and kissed Lucas again.
Eleven
Robin woke alone on the day of the solstice, far past the dawn. The fire in his fireplace was out, his wet clothes gone and probably in the washing machine or in one of the sinks in the laundry room.
The land around the house was not any kind of farm anymore; no one needed to rise with the sun to tend to anything. But today was Midwinter according to ancient calendars from another part of the world. Yule, a day for the return of light to combat the dark and for the sun to be welcomed. Lucas probably had felt the pull of it as most others did not.
And Lucas was supposed to go home to his family today, Robin remembered. It made him move slowly as he tried to find clothes, recalling too late that he had finally done some laundry, but left it in the laundry room.
