Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Locke led Jack through the hay bale maze, their fingers intertwined, his heart pounding so hard he was sure Jack could hear it.
The festival noise: distant laughter, music, someone shouting about funnel cakes, faded with each turn they took deeper into the winding corridors.
Fairy lights strung between the bales cast everything in soft gold, but it wasn’t enough.
Not for what he wanted to do.
Three months ago, he couldn’t have imagined this.
Choosing someone. Trusting someone enough to lead them somewhere private and dark and intimate.
But Jack wasn’t Corbin. Jack had never been Corbin.
Jack made him breakfast and conjured forests in his bedroom and looked at him like Locke was something precious instead of something to be fixed or controlled or broken down into manageable pieces.
They reached the center of the maze, and Locke stopped.
The space opened up around them. Hay bales forming walls, leading to a beautiful stone fountain carved with beautiful male and female nymphs dancing around jumping fish, the night sky visible overhead.
The moon hung pale and distant, just a regular October moon. Nothing special.
Yet.
Locke turned to face Jack, still holding his hand, and found the deity watching him with an expression he couldn’t quite read. Hope? Nervousness? Something vulnerable beneath the carved pumpkin face that never changed, never gave anything away.
“This okay?” Locke asked, suddenly uncertain. Maybe this was stupid. Maybe Jack didn’t want...
“It’s perfect,” Jack said softly.
And then Jack’s magic exploded outward.
He had been planning this for days. Weeks, if he was honest. Every failed courting attempt had taught him something: Locke didn’t want grand public gestures.
He didn’t want his grandmother’s shop rearranged or elaborate proclamations in front of the theater troupe.
He wanted something private. Something real. Something that was just THEM.
So Jack gave him what he could give in the purest form he could give it, he gave him autumn.
The transformation happened fast. Vines erupted from the ground around the fountain’s base, thick and healthy and alive, climbing the hay bales and weaving through the fairy lights. Autumn leaves sprouted in a riot of color: burgundy, burnt orange, golden yellow, deep red.
Apple trees grew around the perimeter, branches so heavy with fruit they bowed nearly to the ground.
The scent hit them both: applewood burning, sweet and fruity, the way it smelled when mortals used to roast apples over autumn bonfires centuries ago.
Not the acrid chemical smoke of modern fireplaces or the fake cinnamon-scented candles from dollar stores, but real smoke from real wood, crackling and alive.
Mixed with something richer: clove and the earthy sweetness of leaves decaying into mulch, the way forests smelled when autumn was dying into winter.
Flowers bloomed. Asters in deep purple, chrysanthemums in shades of rust and gold, late-blooming roses the color of sunset. Their scent was heady, almost intoxicating, mixing with the apples and smoke until the air itself felt drunk.
The fountain flowed, but not with water. Liquid amber light poured from the stone basin, glowing warm and golden, illuminating everything in shades of sunset. It didn’t splash or spill, just flowed in an impossible loop, casting dancing shadows across Locke’s face.
Jack watched him take it all in. This was what he’d wanted to show him. Not the plastic decorations that littered Hollow Hill’s streets. Not the commercialized mockery of his season. But THIS. Autumn as it was meant to be. Sacred and abundant and alive.
“Jack,” Locke breathed, turning in a slow circle. “This is beautiful.”
“It’s a private world.” Jack gestured upward, and above them, the Harvest Moon appeared.
Not the pale astronomical thing mortals tracked in calendars.
This was HIS moon: the divine version from before they forgot his name.
It hung impossibly low, close enough to touch, amber-gold like honey backlit by fire.
Images played across its surface: fields being harvested, people dancing, leaves falling and returning in the eternal cycle.
The light it cast was warm, tangible, turning everything it touched to gold.
Jack had created this moon over a thousand harvest festivals. He’d watched it illuminate celebrations and ceremonies and sacred rituals. But he’d never made it for just one person before.
Never made it for someone he loved.
Locke stared up at it, transfixed, and Jack could see the reflection in his eyes: amber and gold and wonder.
“It’s beautiful,” Locke whispered, turning back to him. His face was gilded in moonlight, freckles standing out like constellations across his cheeks. “Jack, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
And Jack made a decision.
The glamour fell like smoke caught in wind.
Suddenly he was standing there. Exposed. Vulnerable. Real.
His skin was pale gold, almost luminescent in the Harvest Moon’s glow, like he’d been carved from autumn sunlight itself.
His hair fell past his shoulders, so light it was nearly white-gold, catching the amber light and reflecting it back.
Sharp cheekbones. Strong jaw. Eyes that shifted from gold to amber to deep autumn brown depending on the angle of the light.
And his ears: distinctly pointed. Unmistakably fae.
He still stood six-foot-five, but the intimidating presence had shifted into something else. Something elegant and devastating and beautiful in a way that bordered on painful to look at directly.
Locke’s brain short-circuited.
One second, Jack had been wearing his usual pumpkin head. Carved and flickering and familiar and safe. The next, the pumpkin dissolved like it had never existed, and underneath was… was…
Oh.
Oh fuck.
Locke’s mouth went dry. His heart stuttered. Every coherent thought he’d ever had evaporated like morning dew under direct sunlight.
Jack was gorgeous. Not handsome. Not attractive.
Gorgeous in the way that ancient things carved from precious metals were gorgeous.
The kind of beauty that made you understand why mortals used to worship beings like this, why they built temples and left offerings and wrote poems that didn’t do justice to what they’d actually seen.
Jack was looking away now, focusing on the apple trees instead of Locke. His jaw was tight. His hands flexed at his sides.
“I can go back to the pumpkin,” Jack said quietly. “If you prefer it. The pumpkin is just as much me as this. I didn’t mean to deceive you, I just... it’s safer. Easier. If you’d rather I...”
Locke’s hand shot out, catching Jack’s jaw and turning his face back. His fingers trembled against that impossible golden skin, but he refused to let go.
Jack’s eyes widened. Those shifting amber-gold-brown eyes that Locke could drown in.
“You’ve been hiding a face like THAT,” Locke said slowly, his voice coming out rough, “under a pumpkin? For WEEKS?”
Jack blinked. “I… yes?”
“Jack.” Locke’s thumb traced his cheekbone, following the sharp line of it up to the pointed tip of his ear. The skin there was warm, soft, and Jack shuddered under his touch. “You look like... I don’t even have words. You look like something out of a fairy tale. Like if autumn was a person.”
His voice broke off. Words felt inadequate. He let his other hand come up to cup Jack’s face, holding him carefully, testing the weight of his hair, the texture of it between his fingers.
“Technically that’s what I am.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“I can’t believe elves are real.”
“Fae.”
“Shut up and kiss me.” Locke pulled him down, and Jack came willingly.
The kiss was different this time. Desperate.
Locke’s hands tangled in Jack’s hair that was soft and thick and so much of it while Jack’s hands found his waist and pulled him closer.
Locke could feel the magic humming through the air around them, responding to Jack’s emotions, making leaves dance and flowers bloom and the temperature fluctuate between crisp and warm.
Locke kissed him like he was drowning, and Jack was air. Jack kissed back like he’d been waiting 259 years for this exact moment and couldn’t quite believe it was finally happening.
When they broke apart, both breathing hard, Locke grinned. “You’ve been walking around shirtless making me breakfast for three weeks,” he said. “You knew exactly what you were doing to me.”
Jack blinked, genuinely confused. “I had no idea. I don’t wear shirts in the Loam.”
“You’re killing me,” Locke said, pulling him back down. “You’re actually killing me, and you don’t even know it.”
“Then allow me to finally sate you,” Jack murmured against his mouth. Then he gestured, and a bed appeared behind them.
Not a mortal bed. A bed of autumn leaves, thick enough to cushion, soft as down. It looked like something from a dream, from a painting, from every fantasy Locke had ever had about what magic could be.
“Lie down,” Jack said softly.
Locke’s breath caught. “Bossy.”
“Locke.” Jack’s hand cupped his jaw again. “I need you to tell me you want this. That you want ME. Not just the magic or the novelty. Me.”
He reached up, tracing the point of Jack’s ear again just to watch him shiver.
“I want you,” he said clearly. “I want Jack, the grumpy deity who complains about plastic decorations and taught me I was full of magic. I want the person who’s made every single day interesting since the moment I accidentally summoned him. I want YOU.”
“Then you have me,” Jack breathed, and guided him down onto the bed of leaves. He had imagined this moment a thousand times since he realized he was in love with Locke. But imagination was nothing compared to reality.