Robin poked the air in front of him. “You never said. We aren’t all like you, wise one. You could try being less cryptic.”
Lucas hesitated, then gave Robin a narrow stare. “Iwasdirect once.”
Robin waved his hands around impatiently. “Lucas, whatever you said in bed isn’t what I’m…” The confused expression on Lucas’ face made him trail off. “If not that, then what else did you mean?” Robin sucked in a breath before the question was even finished.When you use your gift, Blessing. “Thatwas direct? Wait. Wait.” He made sure their eyes met. “Didyousee us as old and married?”
Lucas nodded.
Robin’s heart started to do things hearts shouldn’t do, so he pulled Lucas’ coat tight around him and held it closed with one shaking hand.
“But not how we got there,” Lucas said, his voice irritatingly even and warm. “I assumed you knew it too. I didn’t know then that you weren’t using your gift.”
“Even if I had been, we were seventeen! And this isn’t the Middle Ages—shut up!” Robin yelled that part with his head back, so any dead nosy parkers would hear it. He tried to breathenormally but Lucas was just watching quietly and saying these things. Lucas was right. Lucas was always right. “Who says I’m using it now?” Robin demanded anyway, as though he hadn’t used his Sight in front of Lucas on purpose several times now, once for nothing more than ice cream.
…And making Lucas happy. But Robin wasn’t going to think about that now.
Lucas regarded Robin in a way he hadn’t before, with caution and the light gone from his eye. “I would say do as you will, but you seem to See whether you want to or not.”
“Always right,” Robin hissed at him.
“I’m sorry,” Lucas said simply.
“Don’t be sorry,” Robin snapped. “Keep being wise and tell me the rest.”
Lucas lowered his head until their eyes were level. “Who am I to tell the weaver the pattern?”
Robin took a deep breath, and when that didn’t work to clear his mind or slow his heart, he took another.
Who was he? Lucas knew exactly what he was. He was too great for the likes of Robin Blessing, and yet there he went, deferring to Robin again. Spinner, Lucas called him. Weaver.Blessing.
“Were you going to wait forever?” It did not come out angry. Robin blinked and glanced away, then looked back up when Lucas didn’t speak. “Ten years is a long time. All this year, I was alone. And you….” Didn’t come. He wondered if Lucas had felt like this in his hospital room, looking around for the one person who hadn’t shown up. “You saw us like that? At seventeen? And then I just… left you?”
“You always came looking for me.” Lucas had the audacity to smile for a second, the secret one that Robin forever wantedmore of. “If too much time had gone by without us speaking to each other, you would show up at the house with a present for someone. Maybe you weren’t looking for me,” he added, careful, “but you always found me.”
Yes, he had. Or Lucas would be the one to come out here and knock on Robin’s door on some Greysmith errand. Just this week, he’d done it. “Lucas.” Robin wanted to pull at his hair in frustration. “Iwaslooking for you. That isn’t… You should’ve done more.”
A frown appeared. “Like what?”
“I don’t know!” Robin gestured expansively. “More!”
“I could say the same for you,” Lucas pointed out. He didn’t even sound annoyed.
Robin felt like a box of matches.
“You should have thought you were worthy of more from me,” he explained, then relaxed all at once as it came out. “The least you deserved was an explanation from me. A date. A kiss.Something. I mean, us? Married? That can’t be right and still, we weren’t even that. We weren’t even close friends anymore. Look at you.” Robin reached out and Lucas bowed his head to let Robin’s fingertips brush his white lock. “You’re marked for something special.”
He caught the curve of a smile, there and gone, as Lucas raised his head back up.
Robin curled his hand to keep the tickle of Lucas’ hair at his fingertips. He couldn’t seem to get angry again, or even make his voice anything but sad. “Stop being so confident.”
All remaining traces of the smile vanished. “I never was. Not since I first asked and it was clear you didn’t like the idea. And then I realized that you didn’t use your gift, so I thought I mustbe wrong. I demanded… I was going to demand to know what was supposed to be if not what I thought they’d told me. I was furious and embarrassed and not even eighteen. So I went to the square and to the spirit that resides in that little, scarred body, and they…” Lucas stopped and took a breath. “And I was reminded that I already had my answer. But then you didn’t visit.”
Robin swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
Lucas took another breath. “I know that now, and why you didn’t come.”
“Yes.” Robin waved off his teenage agonies. “But I should have anyway.”
“Arguing with me again.” Some light slipped back into Lucas’ face. “Do you know how confusing you are? Avoiding me and then seeking me out just to snip and snap at me without fear? There were signs. Just before Phillip weakened, or that Midsummer after Flora slipped and fell…. There were signs. A lost bird outside my workshop, a skein you’d given my mother tangled and snarled when she pulled it from storage. They would happen and I would try to find a reason to see you.”
