Chapter Eight #2
Declan couldn’t help the faint smile at Dulce’s giggle. “Aye, so folks who say things like that tend to. Your Tio Tio and I are friends, that’s all. Not boyfriends.”
“Oh! Good. Mama says Tio Tio needs more friends, too. And that Uncle Michael, that he doesn’t understand that Tio Tio is just sick.
He’s got, umm, a thing with his brain that he has to take medicine for.
Or else he sees stuff and does bad things.
But it’s not his fault, she says. Mara says he used to see fairies. ”
“Oh,” Declan echoed, faint. At Dulce’s concerned look, he hastened to add, “I knew; you didn’t spill your uncle’s secrets.”
“I don’t see why it’s so bad, though. I wish I could see fairies.”
Said by a little girl to a fae who, with his glamour down, looked more like what children feared may hide under the bed or in the closet than pretty pixies and merfolk.
Claws. Alligator teeth set in a too-wide mouth. Dark hollows and pale eyes, black and purple and gray cracks along bone-white skin. Wings stripped of flesh.
He wouldn’t wish Hollow sight on little Dulce, no matter how appealing she found the idea.
No. Instead, Declan grinned, teeth blunt, and dark lips a perfectly acceptable width. Waved his hand, pale in a regular human range, with only rings and painted black nails to be found. No wings for her to see, though he distantly felt them pulled in tight, glamour to glamour.
“I suppose it’s like heights or deep water.
I don’t mind them. I’m quite fond of heights, in fact.
But I know people who aren’t. Just because, or something bad happened around them.
” Such as lack of food, being treated as a sometimes beloved pet, or abandonment in a world that heard truth and believed it illness.
“Though I’m not a doctor. I may be talking out of my butt too, accidentally. ”
“Tio Tio doesn’t like water,” Dulce confided, eyebrows once more knitted together. “He won’t go swimming with us.”
If that didn’t land like a blow to the gut, nothing would.
A door nearby opened, and the warmth of Antonio’s approach poured over Declan, that pleasant scorch of heated sand.
“What’d I tell you about Declan, bratling?” the man asked. He scooped Dulce into his arms, tickling her until she squealed, before tossing her onto the couch. “Let the poor man be.”
“We were just talking.” Dulce objected, still laughing.
“Sure you were.” Antonio flashed Declan an apologetic smile that burned through Declan’s quiet sadness as the sun through fog. “Sorry about that. Claudia drives a friggin Jeep. My sisters were supposed to keep you company”
His voice lifted on the last sentence, an accusation intended to carry to the kitchen. Declan grinned at him, almost entirely genuine this go about, gone soft watching the tickle attack. He stood with a slight, dismissive wave, head shaking.
“Dulce was a perfectly lovely hostess. She pointed your photos out for me.”
Declan drifted closer to Antonio as Dulce beamed at the compliment. Antonio curled his warm hand around Declan’s arm. Squeezed, gratitude bright through their bond.
“You did, huh?” Antonio asked her. Dulce nodded, still bright eyed and mid-giggle.
“Oh, aye,” Declan said with a soft laugh of his own. “You’ll need to fill me in on the flaws of jeeps, however. I’m afraid my knowledge of them is limited to ‘they lack doors.’ ”
“Oh, you don’t want to get him on that rant,” Claudia called from where she crossed the living room toward the kitchen. “My car is fine.”
“Yeah? Then why are you always having me fix it?” Antonio grinned at Declan, then glanced at the clock. “Tell Ang’ that we’ve gotta head out soon.”
“Can I come?” Dulce asked. “We can sleep over.”
Antonio sighed and tweaked one of her curls. “Sorry, brat. Not tonight. Declan lives sorta far away. I gotta drop him off first.”
“He could sleep over too,” Dulce countered. Precocious wee thing. Declan liked her.
“Men don’t have sleepovers with other men, Dulce,” the shitehawk Michael corrected, filtering into the room with Angela and Elaine. Declan eyed him sidelong. “That’d be dirty.”
Seeing Michael take an elbow to the ribs from Angela did little to soothe Declan. Elaine frowned at Michael and Dulce, Declan’s favorite, glanced between the adults, puzzled.
“Tio Tio isn’t dirty,” Dulce objected, finally, into the sudden, awkward silence. “It’s the engines. They leave stains.”
Oh, aye, Declan liked Dulce very much.
“Yeah, bratling. They do.” Antonio kept his attention, very deliberately, on his niece.
“I won’t have you influencing the girls with your habits,” Michael spat, with the confidence of a man who knew he’d not be thrown out of the house for his words. Who knew that Antonio, too often discarded, his agency stripped, didn’t have that luxury.
Antonio just shook his head. “Pick your friggin moments, Mikey.”
Silence again, from the sisters. And Declan refused to think if a fascist and six people eat together at a table, what do you have?
“I don’t think pillowfights are catching, Mikey.” Declan smiled at Michael, bringing his own pretty manners to the fore. “And thankfully, showers exist, which I’m sure is a relief to you and all other interested parties.”
Antonio snickered, shifting his weight to be that much closer to Declan. Michael looked as if he were about to choke on his tongue, flushed red. And Elaine, now Declan’s favorite of the sisters, smirked, for all that she didn’t speak up.
After a beat of silence, Declan turned to Dulce and added, “I must be at home early, otherwise I would be delighted.”
“Which is why we need to jet.” Antonio reached to ruffle Dulce’s curls, but his eyes, Declan noted with delight, were on Michael. “Gotta tuck Declan in before his bedtime so he’s not grouchy in the morning.”
Michael said nothing still. A good choice on his end, and disappointing for Declan’s sharper side. Declan smirked at him and winked, when the human made the mistake of glancing in his direction.
“I guess,” Dulce conceded, looking to Declan. “You’ll come back again, right?”
“Yes,” Angela put in, sounding choked. “Of course. We’d love to have you. Really.”
“I’ll do my very best to keep from annoying Tio Tio into not bringing me about.
It was very nice speaking with you, Dulce.
” She beamed again. Declan looked back to the sisters, the ones he could see.
His early minders hadn’t raised him without proper manners.
“It’s been lovely meeting you. I can see why Antonio cares so much for his family. ”
The worst part was, he could. They loved Antonio, and he them. Declan knew what it was to love and be loved by those who never truly understood, who might love you a little better if only you weren’t how you were made.
Just because it would hurt to lose it didn’t mean their love was harmless.