Chapter Twenty-One
The twisting black branches of the bare trees trembled, and the earth shook with each heavy footfall as the cloaked figure approached, no more than a dark silhouette. David stood frozen in fear.
This time, he was entirely alone.
This time, there was no one to break the spell or drag him away.
“One more!” The voice was an unwanted caress, sweeping over him with the whisper of dry leaves.
The man came nearer, still in shadow, though David could just make out the outlines of spiky protrusions upon his head through the material of his cloak—a pair of horns? The sharp points of a crown?
“One more,” he rasped again.
At last David forced himself to move, scrambling backward. Rather, trying to, as the ground had become gelatinous and, for some reason, chartreuse.
The figure lowered its hood.
“One more, and he is mine.”
—
David jerked awake with a deep shuddering breath. For a moment, he was disoriented by the unfamiliar angles of the shadows, by moonlight streaming in from a window on the wrong side of the room.
“Shh,” whispered Meredith, and draped an arm over him. “ ’S all right.”
David shook his head, unable to properly articulate what he’d just seen or precisely why it was not in the least all right, and when he tried, to his own embarrassment, all he managed was a piteous, broken sound devoid of any words.
“There, it’s just a nightmare, isn’t it? I have them all the time,” Meredith reassured him, and drew David closer against him. “It can’t get you, I won’t let it. Promise.”
In his embrace, David drifted back to sleep, and the dream faded from memory.
—
By the time he woke again, the early-morning sky, still overcast, spilled a cool watery light into the room.
The first semi-coherent thought to register in David’s mind was an awareness of how astonishingly comfortable he was in his cocoon of blankets, in spite of the rather pointy elbow jabbing into his ribs.
That caused a number of new thoughts to spring into existence and compete for attention, but he swept them firmly beneath the metaphorical rug to be dealt with later. (It was a tasteful rug, with an orderly geometric pattern in subtle earth tones.)
Meredith stirred beside him, causing the blankets to slip down and expose his back.
David couldn’t resist running a hand over the expanse of pale skin, softer than it had any right to be—perhaps there was something to be said for moisturizer after all.
He slowed when he reached the scars he’d felt the night before.
Upon closer inspection, they were just visible in the daylight, a group of irregular puncture wounds faded silvery white.
With a sudden protective impulse, David pressed himself against Meredith’s back and pulled him close. At his sleepy hum of protest, David leaned in to nuzzle at his jaw. “Hey there, little bird,” he said softly. “You awake?”
“Am now,” murmured Meredith, then added, “ ’M not little.”
The words had quite bypassed David’s brain on the way to his mouth, but he was not awake enough to feel much embarrassment. “Little medium-sized bird,” he corrected, words half lost as he buried his face in a tangle of unruly brass-blond waves.
“That don’t make any sense.”
“You simply don’t understand endearments.” David kissed the nape of his neck. With a soft laugh, Meredith swatted lazily backward at him and missed. “Oh, that’s funny, is it?”
“Your moustache tickles.”
That registered as a kind of challenge, and David seized him around the waist and peppered his neck and shoulder with kisses until Meredith was giggling uncontrollably and struggling to escape.
Finally, he managed to turn over and wore such a joyous expression that David once again felt as though the air were being forced from his lungs.
This time, however, the sensation was not an unpleasant one.
“God, David, I—” Meredith cut himself off and hid his face against David’s shoulder as his laughter subsided.
“You what?”
“Nothing,” said Meredith, “just—” He met David’s eyes with startling earnestness. “Thanks for last night. Meant the world to me.”
That sent a tingling warmth all through him, entirely different from that of the night before. David’s inconvenient thoughts threatened to come crawling out from beneath the rug, and he firmly stamped down the edges. “Well, I know I’m good,” he said lightly, “but I wouldn’t claim to be that good.”
“You’re pretty good—”
“Just pretty good?”
“—but that’s not the part I meant.”
There were many things David wanted to say in response: You deserve nothing less.
I’d do it all over in a heartbeat. I’d have done anything to make you smile again.
(The inconvenient thoughts had not only escaped from beneath the rug; they had set fire to it and now frolicked amidst the flames.) But he mustn’t think such things, and certainly mustn’t go saying them aloud.
That would be crossing a line. After all, as Meredith had said—as they’d both agreed—nothing more could come of this, nothing beyond the physical.
To prevent himself from saying anything foolish, David instead reached over to brush Meredith’s bangs out of his eyes—and then, giving in to his long-held curiosity, back from his forehead.
Meredith shied away. “Oh, don’t, don’t look,” he protested. “I don’t like when you can see my face.”
David frowned. “Is that what you’re up to, trying to hide under all that hair? Come here,” he coaxed. “Let me see.”
“Told you, I’ve got a scar there.” Though Meredith kept his eyes cast down, he didn’t turn away when David brushed his bangs aside once more.
“Where?” After much scrutiny, David finally spotted it at his hairline, small and very faint, and ran a fingertip over the spot.
“What, this? You can hardly see it.” Studying Meredith’s profile, he traced his thumb along the bridge of his nose, and now finally felt where the line of the gentle curve was interrupted by the tiniest bump.
Meredith twisted away from him. “Ah, don’t.”
“You can’t even tell,” insisted David.
“No,” said Meredith reproachfully, “but if you touch there, it goes all funny and I get a bit of a headache.”
David nearly asked how it had happened, but thought better of it. Judging by Meredith’s reaction when Todd had inquired, the topic wasn’t up for discussion.
So instead, he just said, “Sorry,” and kissed him gently between the eyes.
—
David tiptoed past Todd’s closed door, descended the stairs, and took refuge in the shower. The hot water, as usual, brought him a sense of clarity.
What the hell did he think he was doing?
He had kissed Meredith again.
He had slept with him.
He had stayed the night in his bed.
Those were undeniable facts.
Undeniable, too, that he’d enjoyed it. Quite a lot, in fact. To claim otherwise would be the most brazen of lies.
David couldn’t stop replaying it all in his mind: Dancing badly to Nina Simone. Holding each other close as the rain poured down outside. Every touch, every exquisite sting, igniting something within him and turning all his expectations upside down.
He wanted to do it again. He wanted to fall asleep with Meredith in his arms and wake up next to him, to watch him light up at something as inconsequential as getting caught in the rain or winning at Loves-Me-Not, to hear him give that wordless little sigh at being held tight or having his hair stroked that cracked open something in David’s heart every time.
Amidst the steam and cascading water, David was experiencing a revelation. An unveiling, much like brushing aside a layer of fine snow from one’s windshield on a winter morning or finally locating the error that had upset the total of a running balance.
He hadn’t realized—perhaps hadn’t allowed himself to admit—how much Meredith actually meant to him, all his little quirks included. Not until yesterday.
Not until Florian and Lisl had tried to force him to be something he wasn’t, until David had watched his sparkle fade before his eyes, until—worst of all—Meredith had tried to make himself less, for the sake of appeasing people who didn’t appreciate him at all.
Not until the two of them had, after all this time, truly listened to each other, and David had felt the quiet thrill of something finally clicking into place.
Despite his initial hesitation, once he’d gotten started, sharing the private details of his life had come with surprising ease, and he found that he rather liked having someone to share them with.
David couldn’t pretend anymore. He felt something for Meredith, and that terrified him.
There was no way they could be together; in fact, they were already in agreement that it would never work out.
Meredith was the exact opposite of David’s type in every respect, although he wasn’t sure if the inverse were true.
(In fact, he rather doubted whether Meredith had a type.) Their lives were already so intertwined that if things went wrong, as they were bound to do, it would upend everything for them both. It was simply too great a risk.
And anyway, none of that mattered because the simple fact was that Meredith didn’t want him.
David was just a convenient distraction as he continued to pine for the mysterious object of his unrequited affections.
Perhaps there was a sliver of hope that the option of someone both interested and immediately available might outweigh the longing for someone who wasn’t, but David didn’t like the idea of being anybody’s second choice.
Viciously twisting the shower knob to the off position, he yanked aside the curtain and seized the nearest towel.
There he had it. A perfectly sensible reason to take all those troublesome impulses toward affection and sentimentality and kick them right back under the charred remains of the rug where they belonged. He would not waste time devoting any more thought to the matter.