Chapter 4
Chapter Four
One week since he was summoned and Lord Mabon still hadn’t gotten used to waking up wrapped around Locke like a vine strangling a trellis.
Every morning, the same thing. He’d enter his meditative state on his side of the bed. Respectable distance. Dignified. Appropriate. By dawn he was plastered against Locke’s back, arms locked around the mortal’s waist, pumpkin head tucked against the nape of his neck. Full contact. Zero dignity.
This morning was no exception.
Locke’s breathing was still slow and even. Asleep. Good. Lord Mabon carefully extracted himself, unwinding his arms and rolling away before Locke woke and they had to pretend this wasn’t happening. Again.
The bed was too small. That was the problem. Locke’s full-sized mattress wasn’t meant for someone of Lord Mabon’s height, and certainly not for a deity who’d spent 259 years sleeping alone in an enormous four-poster bed in a castle.
He’d suggested taking the grandmother’s room that first night. Although a queen size bed still wasn’t enough it was better than the smaller bed Locke owned.
Locke had looked up from the grimoire he was reading and said, “If you want to, sure. But Grandma’s space is... I don’t know. It feels weird letting someone in there when she didn’t say it was okay.”
And Lord Mabon had felt it too. The old witch’s magic saturated that room, woven into the walls and furniture and air itself. Sleeping there would be like sleeping in someone else’s skin. And after all he didn’t want to sleep alone.
“I’ll stay here,” he’d said.
Locke had just shrugged. “Cool. Fair warning, I’m told I’m a blanket hog.”
He wasn’t. Lord Mabon was the blanket hog. And the cuddler. And the one who apparently couldn’t go six hours without gravitating toward the only other living thing in the bed.
Pathetic.
Lord Mabon stood and stretched, his carved face shifting from the soft expression it wore while sleeping (he couldn’t help it, didn’t even realize it was happening until the second morning when he’d caught his reflection) back to something more authoritative.
More appropriate for a deity of his standing.
And as for this apartment, it was a nice simple little dwelling. But not up to a harvest God’s standards of living of course, but he could make it so, and so he did.
Vines covered every wall, winding up from the baseboards and across the ceiling in burgundy and burnt orange.
Autumn leaves clustered in the corners, never wilting, always perfect.
The herbs the old witch had hung from the kitchen ceiling were now interwoven with strings of dried apple slices and acorns.
Every surface bloomed with small white pumpkins, and the air smelled perpetually of rich spices.
He’d started with the living room. Then the kitchen.
Then Locke’s bedroom because he’d been spending so much time there anyway, and waking up to plain pale yellow walls was offensive to his sensibilities.
And of course he could just return home, but what would be the fun in that?
This was the first time he had been summoned in two centuries…
two and a half but whose counting…and although times had changed and it was clear the old ways had long since passed away, his curiosity still remained.
Or more like he was eager to give up the warm body laying next to him every night.
But he would never say that part out loud.
Redesigning the shop had been next on his list.
“Absolutely not,” Locke had said, physically blocking the door to Moonlit Mysteries. “You are not turning Grandma’s shop into an autumn forest.”
“It would be an improvement.”
“Jack. No.”
“The aesthetic is currently early-2000s purple mysticism. I’m offering you timeless seasonal elegance.”
“You’re not touching it.”
The young warlock had put his foot down and Lord Mabon had conceded. Barely. The apartment was enough. For now.
He moved to the kitchen and started breakfast. Cooking had become his routine, something to do with his hands while Locke slept. French toast today. The bread was already soaked, the bacon waiting. His familiars bobbed around him.
“Boss is trying SO HARD,” Pip whispered, doing a loop around the stove.
“It’s culinary artistry,” Russet corrected from the counter. “Not trying. Succeeding.”
“He’s trying to impress the cute warlock,” Bramble said flatly from the windowsill. “We all see it.”
Lord Mabon ignored them.
Although come to think of it the Lord had been the primary cook for this past week.
Seven nights of waking up tangled around Locke.
Seven days of learning the ins and outs of the little blond warlock, like the way he hummed while restocking shelves, how he took his coffee with too much sugar and too light on the roasting, the fact that he was completely oblivious to his own magic even though it leaked out of him constantly.
Candles burned brighter when he walked past. The herbs in the kitchen grew faster.
The protective wards his grandma had built practically sang.
And let’s not forget that for these past seven days Locke had been trying to yank the jack-o’-lantern off Lord Mabon’s head.
It began around day two when Lord Mabon was sitting at the kitchen table when Locke just... grabbed the carved pumpkin with both hands and pulled.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to see your face!” Locke grunted, pulling harder. “This thing has to come off!”
“It doesn’t.”
“Everything comes off!”
“Not this. It’s my face.”
Locke stepped back, panting slightly. “Your face is a pumpkin.”
“Currently.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m choosing to manifest this way.”
“Can you unchoose?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it!”
“No.”
They’d stared at each other. Locke looked like he wanted to argue further, but something in Lord Mabon’s tone must have stopped him. The carved pumpkin stayed.
But Locke kept looking at him. Studying him. Like he was trying to see through the carved surface to whatever was underneath.
Lord Mabon told himself it didn’t matter. Told himself he didn’t notice the way Locke’s gaze lingered on him sometimes, curious and interested in a way that made his carved mouth tighten involuntarily.
He finished the French toast, arranged it on two plates with the precision of someone who absolutely was not trying to impress anyone, and turned as he heard footsteps on the stairs.
Locke appeared in the doorway, hair sticking up on one side, wearing an oversized t-shirt and flannel pajama pants. His hazel eyes were still half-closed, one hand rubbing at his face as he yawned.
Adorable. Objectively. Factually.
“Morning, Lord Mabon,” Locke mumbled, shuffling toward the coffee pot.
The name. The full formal name. It grated.
That had been yesterday. Day six. But it started bothering him on day three.
Day three. Locke was making himself toast, badly, as usual, when he said, “I can’t keep calling you Lord Mabon. It’s too formal for someone who makes me breakfast every morning. How about I just call you Mabon?”
Lord Mabon straightened, immediately offended. “My title is not negotiable.”
Locke grinned, that crooked, mischievous grin Lord Mabon was getting to know all too well, and said, “Fine. Jack.”
“That’s not my name.”
“Jack-o’-lantern. Jack. It fits.”
“It absolutely does not.”
“Morning, Jack!” Locke said brightly, taking his burnt toast and leaving the kitchen.
Lord Mabon sputtered. Complained. Insisted this was unacceptable.
Locke just kept calling him Jack.
By day four, Lord Mabon…Jack had stopped correcting him.
By day five, he stopped noticing.
Now, on day seven, Jack realized he’d actually started thinking of himself that way. Jack. Not Lord Mabon, King of the Equinox, Guardian of the Harvest, Master of Autumn. Perhaps this was a way to adapt as well.
Just... Jack.
It should have bothered him more than it did.
“Morning, Jack,” Locke said now, present day, shuffling to the table.
Jack. Not Lord Mabon. Just Jack.
He liked it. He shouldn’t, but he did.
“Good morning,” Jack said, setting the plate down. “The menu for this morning is apple cinnamon French toast with Candied bacon, and fresh pumpkin bread.”
Locke stopped mid-shuffle, blinking at the spread. Then that smile broke across his face, the genuine one that reached his eyes and made them crinkle at the corners.
Pride flickered through him. His food. His mortal enjoying it.
“You made all this? Again?” Locke sat, still looking half-asleep but delighted.
“Someone has to prevent you from burning down the kitchen.”
Locke took a bite and made a small sound of appreciation that Jack absolutely did not commit to memory.
They ate in comfortable silence, something they’d fallen into easily.
Jack had forgotten what it was like to share a meal with someone.
Forgotten the simple pleasure of watching someone enjoy food he’d prepared.
“This is really good,” Locke said through a mouthful of French toast. “Like, seriously. Where’d you learn to cook like this?”
“I’ve existed since the first harvest,” Jack said. “Feasts are as natural to autumn as bees to summer.”
Locke paused, fork halfway to his mouth. Then grinned. “So... YouTube wasn’t an option then?”
Jack stared at him. Locke’s grin widened.
“You’re mocking me.”
“Little bit.”
“I’m a deity.”
“You’re a deity who makes really good French toast.” Locke took another bite. “I’m allowed to mock you a little.”
That crooked grin. Jack looked away, pretending to adjust his robes. Definitely not charmed. Definitely.