Chapter Twenty-Nine
“You’re never going to wake him up that way,” the Forkupine piped up.
“How, then?” demanded David. “A potion? A spell? Whatever it is, I’ll do it, or find it, or get someone who can.
” He didn’t care if he had to go hunting for the rarest herbs or throw himself upon the mercy of someone with a more withering look of disappointment than Mrs. Jupiter; he’d do whatever it took.
The Forkupine laughed, the sound of a million forks tinkling against a million drinking glasses. “No, silly, it’s nothing that complicated—just the standard method.” When David only stared in incomprehension, the Forkupine elaborated, “True love’s kiss, of course!”
“Oh,” said David. “Right. Of course.” He looked down at Meredith, then at the assembled residents of the Midnight Wood. Though it would hardly be the first time they’d shared a kiss, the idea of an audience left him self-conscious. “I don’t suppose you’d mind—”
“Say no more,” said the Forkupine with a knowing wink, and gave David a rather spiky nudge to the ankle. “We’ll be waiting just the other side of those trees.” To the others, he called, “Clear out, you lot! This is an intimate moment deserving of privacy!”
Only after the group had vacated the clearing did David realize he still held the last piece of splintered mirror glass. Absently, he slipped it into his pocket, then brushed Meredith’s bangs aside, leaned down, and kissed his forehead.
Even before David had straightened back up, Meredith’s eyelids fluttered, and a bit of color returned to his cheeks. Then his eyes opened wide, and in the next instant, he launched himself upright and threw his arms around David in an embrace that knocked the breath out of him.
“Oh, David, I was so frightened,” he whispered, and hid his face against his shoulder.
David held him just as tight and leaned down to kiss the top of his head. “Of course you must have been. But it’s all right now.” He stroked Meredith’s back, trying to return some warmth to the exposed skin that still held a chill from his long repose upon the damp rock. “I’m here, love.”
“I know.” Meredith looked up at him, eyes the color of the sky after a heavy rain. “I knew all the time my big strong bear would come for me.”
“Your—” David was too astonished to echo him; Meredith never ceased to find ways to make him blush.
“You heard me, precious.”
It left David just as breathless as the crushing embrace of a moment before. Then, anxiously, he stepped back, holding Meredith at arm’s length to look him over. “Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you?”
Meredith paused to take stock, then shook his head. “Nah, I don’t think so. Just feels as though I’ve slept for ages. But you’re bleeding,” he said in dismay, catching hold of David’s wrist.
Only now did the sting across his palm register. “Must’ve been from this.” David produced the last shard of mirror glass.
“What’s that?”
“I pulled it out of your heart.” At Meredith’s look of alarm, David hastened to add, “Or, rather, a symbolic representation of it on a metaphysical plane.”
“Oh.” Meredith nodded placidly. “That’s all right, then.”
David sank down next to him upon the stone. “You weren’t quite right, you know. About how your heart looks. It hasn’t got all the black spiky bits on.”
Meredith plucked the nearest candleflower within reach, turning it slowly as he watched its light fade. Without looking at David, he said, “It feels as though it does, sometimes.”
Wrapping an arm around his shoulders, David pulled him close again.
“I know. But really it’s an enormous jewel, huge and sparkling and filled with light so bright you can scarcely bear to look at it.
It was—God, I wish you could have seen it yourself.
It was beautiful.” He hesitated but decided to press on.
“And I think I understand some things about you now that I didn’t before. ”
Meredith tensed against his side and appeared to remain intensely interested in his wilting flower. His voice held a deliberate unconcern as he asked, “Oh, yes? Like what?”
“Mainly that you’ve been hurt a lot, more than I ever knew.”
When that got no reply, David shifted to angle himself toward Meredith, who was now shredding the white petals to bits. He kept his eyes downcast, and David touched a finger to his chin, tilting his face upward until their eyes met.
“Listen. Whatever has happened in the past, whatever you’ve been going through now, you don’t have to deal with it alone.
” David’s heart ached knowing that he’d been trying to, but that wasn’t going to be the case any longer.
“I can’t put everything right, not by myself.
I think you’re going to need someone more qualified than I am for that, but I’ll still be here with you all the way.
And not just me—you’ve got so many people who care about you.
” People who wouldn’t hesitate to show him a bit of extra kindness if only they knew he needed it. “But—”
“But they can’t help if they don’t know anything’s wrong, is that it?
” asked Meredith, once again practically reading his mind.
He gave David that quick sideways look that he understood at last—the look that meant Meredith was apprehensive of his reaction.
“Because there is. A lot that’s wrong. I don’t know how to talk about these things, David, only after everything you told me trying to wake me up, I can’t go letting you down now.
” He took a deep breath. “I really haven’t been all right.
For a while. I mean, sometimes I am, but other times there’s things I can’t get out of my head, even if they happened years ago.
These past few weeks, I haven’t been able to stop thinking of that night—those men—if you and Mrs. J hadn’t shown up when you did.
And s-sometimes—sometimes I just feel so sad for no reason at all. ”
With that confession, he hung his head as though awaiting judgment.
David reached over and took his hand. “Sweetheart, it’s all right.
No matter what anybody’s told you, there’s no shame in feeling that way.
Nobody is going to hurt you or stop liking you just for admitting that you’re not okay or asking for help.
Not now. Not anybody who matters. It won’t make me love you any less.
And I do love you.” Though he couldn’t help wishing the circumstances were different, David still couldn’t stop himself breaking into a smile.
“It’s nice to be able to say it to you when you’re awake. ”
“I love you, too,” said Meredith. Tossing away the remains of his flower, he curled his fingers around David’s wrist and rested his head on his shoulder. “God, I do. I’m sorry I made you think I didn’t, all because I was too scared to come out and say what I was really getting at.”
“I’m no less to blame there,” said David. “I should’ve known better than to believe that’s how you’d react if we’d truly understood each other.”
“But you do, though. Ordinarily, anyway. You understand me like nobody else ever has.”
David hugged Meredith to him, too warm in the humid forest, one bony elbow digging into his ribs, tangled hair catching in his beard—and completely perfect in his arms. “I could hold you like this forever.”
“You couldn’t,” objected Meredith. “Not really forever. You’d have to stop sometime and make tea, and I’d need to look after Bianca, and I hope you’d want to do, you know, other things.”
“You don’t do so well with hyperbole, either, do you, love?”
“Nah, never could get the hang of triangles.”
David buried his face in Meredith’s hair until he managed to stop laughing. “Okay,” he said at last, releasing him and wiping his eyes. “How about I say I’d like to do it forever, if I could, allowing appropriate breaks for tea and what-have-you. Is that better?”
Apparently that was no good, either, because Meredith drew back, wrapping his arms around himself and gnawing at his lower lip.
After a worrying length of time, he looked up at David with troubled, searching eyes.
“Do you mean it? That you could see a forever with me? Only—you know I’ve never been serious with anyone for any length of time to speak of, and I’m not at all sure I know what I’m doing. ”
“Nonsense,” said David. “We’ve stuck by one another for years now.
This is hardly much different, just adding in a few things that we ought to have done long ago.
” He reached out and took his hand. “When you ask if I see a forever with you—” David’s voice caught in his throat, but he wasn’t going to hold back, not anymore.
“Meri, the truth is, I can’t imagine one without. ”
The brightness of his smile—his real smile, not the sharp false one—caught at something in David’s heart, caught and squeezed so that he thought he might not be able to bear it.
But bear it he did, because Meredith sat up on his knees and reached out to cup David’s face with both hands, stroking his beard, tucking a strand of too-long dark hair behind his ear.
“Good,” said Meredith. “Because I might need that long to tell you all the reasons I love you, after all them things you went and said to me. ’S only fair, after all.
” He traced a thumb below David’s eye, wiping away a tear he hadn’t realized he’d shed.
“Like how I always feel safe with you, because I know you’re always looking out for me even if you pretend you’re not.
I adore the way you can never quite manage to intimidate anybody until it’s actually important, and how you get so embarrassed over the least little things.
And you aren’t afraid to talk some sense into me sometimes, even if I don’t always like it. ”
“I think you might be overestimating me there,” said David, but everything inside him was positively melting into a puddle.
“Well, for instance, you might have convinced me perhaps there are some surfaces that just don’t need decoupaged.”
David never thought he’d see the day when Meredith would admit a thing like that.