Scenes From Buffalo Part Six

Major Golden Eagle spoilers ahead! And our Unlikely Triumvirate. 

Severin had an audience in attendance before he managed to get the bag open, this time. Finches, and chickadees, and even a few woodpeckers, their checkered black and white feathers fluttering like playing cards as they alighted on the snow in the gathering crowd around him, looking up with expectant, black bead eyes, waiting for him. The cardinals were his favorites, the males in their brightest red, and the females in their muted browns and oranges, their rust tails, both genders sporting the little feather hats for which they were named. 

He set the bag down on the ground, amidst his circle of supplicants, and unrolled the top. Everyone started cheeping and chattering when they heard the waxed paper crackle. Sev reached into it with gloved hands, and scooped black oil sunflower seed out onto the snow.

The trick, Trina’s mother, Rachel, had instructed him, was to spread it out, that way all the birds got to eat at once and they didn’t have to squabble over the same pile together. So he threw handfuls out in wide arcs, and the birds lifted into the air, the beating of their small wings filling the quiet, as they rushed to follow its descent, and feast.

He’d been at this for several minutes, his breath steaming in the cold, repeatedly tossing the tail of his scarf back over his shoulder each time it slipped, when he heard the crunch of approaching footfalls behind him. A quick glance over his shoulder soothed the sudden rushing of his pulse.

It was only Dante.

The tall, slender vampire was dressed in a black wool coat, and under it, its collar tucked up around his chin, a black turtleneck sweater. He’d been paging through magazines and scrolling through websites, trying to instruct Sev in the finer points of fashion; Sev now knew that Dante’s current outfit – that was the term, “outfit” – was very chic, down to the tight black pants, and even, he suspected, the bright red and black and fur snow boots. There were useful boots, and then there were fashionable boots, and then there were boots that managed to be both.

“You have quite the fan club,” Dante said as he drew alongside him, grinning out at the birds, all eating and warbling happily. He was wearing his hair in its natural state these days, and the slight breeze played with the dark curls, tugging them out from behind his ears so he had to tuck it back.

“It’s because I feed them,” Sev said.

“Ah, you do. But. Unless we’re talking pigeons, wild birds don’t usually sit in attendance like this,” he said, pointing to one lone cardinal, a bright male, who still sat on the ground at Sev’s feet, head cocked, staring attentively. “Cardinals don’t do that.”

“They don’t?”

“No. But I’d say you’ve got a fair bit of magic on your side. Talking to woodland creatures like a character from a film.” When Sev glanced over at him, he found him still smiling – though with an edge of sadness, gaze fixed somewhere out across the snow.

Sev laid down a careful handful of seeds for the cardinal. “Is that why you’re not afraid of me? My magic?”

Dante’s head whipped toward him, blue eyes wide. “Beg pardon?”

“You’re afraid of the others. I can tell.”

Dante attempted a wobbly smile. “Well, I wouldn’t say afraid, they aren’t…”

“But not Alexei. And not me.”

Dante stared at him, and Sev had the chance to watch his face change. He was always watching people, as Lanny had pointed out, and he was, because he didn’t know how else to better learn. People in the real world were always saying things without words; with little flicks of their fingers, and with facial twitches, and long sighs. It was a language he was desperate to understand; one he didn’t feel enough confidence in to participate yet.

Dante’s smile slowly faded; his face grew tense, and his eyes stayed wide, unblinking. He sucked in a quick breath before he spoke, and then it was only a whisper. “I fear I’m only useful to them as an oddity. A dream-walker with a brain to pick.” He grimaced. “And my brain’s been picked enough, I think.”

“But you and Alexei…” He’d seen them; had watched Dante lay his head down on Alexei’s shoulder, and watched Alexei finger-comb his hair in return; had seen the way they stood close, the way their hands touched, in the way of the mated pairs here at the compound. “You’re his boyfriend?”

A quiet smile. “Something like that.” His head tipped, like one of the birds asking for seed. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Sev said, right away, to keep from asking questions – Lanny had also said he asked too many of those. But there was one question he couldn’t hold back, one that came with a strange fluttering in his stomach. “Does he kiss you?”

Dante’s brows lifted.

“The way he…kissed me?”

Dante’s expression softened, his smile bringing out the faint lines around his eyes, this time. A look that warmed him, immediately. “You still think of that, don’t you? That kiss?”

The warmth crawled up his neck, and into his face, not too different from the banked magic of his fire. Sev turned away, looking out at the birds, his chest tight, suddenly.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” Dante said. “It meant something to you, obviously. It was your first, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Sev.” Something smooth and cool touched his chin. He startled, but didn’t duck away from the touch as it turned his head, and tipped it back, so he was looking up at Dante’s face again. It was Dante’s gloved hand cupping his chin, the leather soft as it stroked along his jaw. Dante’s gaze had grown heavy-lidded; his lips pink and damp like he’d licked them. “May I?”

Sev didn’t know what he was asking, not really. He thought that…that maybe…But his pulse jumped and skittered, and the heat in his face was unbearable, and he couldn’t breathe, and he nodded. Because whatever Dante wanted permission for, Sev wanted it, too.

Ghost of a smile. “Sweetheart, you’re blushing.” Then Dante kissed him.

It was soft. So soft. A gentle press of lips to lips. Just before Dante pulled back, Sev felt a hot, warm stroke of what he realized, with an inner jolt, was Dante’s tongue. He stood rooted, stupefied, as the vampire smiled at him.

“And now you’ve had your second,” Dante said. He kissed his forehead, a long, lingering moment, his breath warm when it rustled through Sev’s hair. Then he stepped back, turned, and walked back toward the guest house.

After a long moment, Sev remembered to take a breath, a harsh, open-mouthed gasp. He glanced down, and saw that a small flame had kindled in each palm. He closed his hands to fists, and snuffed them out before he reached, wonderingly, to touch his lips with shaking fingertips.

~*~

“What are you doing?”

Dante stood at the dressing table of their borrowed room, clad in a velvet robe, barefoot straight from the bath, combing his wet hair in front of the mirror. His reflection sought Alexei’s and his brows lifted. “Grooming,” he said, with a small smile.

Alexei heeled the door shut and came the rest of the way into the room. Dante had turned to face him by the time he reached the dressing table, and lifted the comb in invitation. “I could teach you sometime. We really must do something about that side-part you’ve been wearing.

Alexei plucked the comb from his hand and tossed it onto the bed.

“A bit rude.”

“I wanted to break it in fucking half,” Alexei said. “I saw you today with Sev. What are you doing?”

“Ah.” Dante winced. “You aren’t…jealous, are you? It was an overstep, and–”

“Jealous? Are you insane? He’s eighteen” – he counted things off on his fingers – “he’s a mage, and, given that he was raised as a lab animal, he’s not exactly well-adjusted. You can’t go around kissing him.”

“You kissed him.”

“As a distraction! To help us escape!”

“You might like to keep your voice down.”

“Don’t tell–”

He didn’t realize he’d jabbed a finger in Dante’s face until Dante had his hand enfolded in both of his.

Alexei’s anger winked out, just like that, and was replaced with a hard wash of shame. Dante was still getting his feet under him; was only just now sliding back into the smug, gently-mocking persona that Alexei, truthfully, liked best.

“Shit,” Alexei muttered, shaking loose, and plopped down on the end of the bed.

Dante waited a long moment, and then joined him. “Would you like to know why I did it?”

Alexei sighed. “You’re restless cooped up here?”

“Quite the opposite. I like it here. It’s peaceful.” When Alexei glanced at him, he found Dante’s expression to be a sincere one. “Sev asked about us. If I was your boyfriend. If you kissed me.”

“He’s nosy.”

“He’s curious. Full of questions, and hormones. And completely besotted with you.”

“What?” The words hit him like a slap. A shockwave he didn’t want to examine closely – at all. He needed to move, needed to walk away from that kind of assertion.

He tried to get up, but Dante caught his wrist in a light grip.

“Lex.” Entreating.

He was helpless to that; subsided back, even if he was breathing a little hard.

Dante laid a hand on the side of his face, holding his gaze with a steady, serious one of his own. “I know you see it – you’d be a fool not to, and you certainly aren’t that. Sev stares at you – he leans toward you like a flower seeking sunlight. He’s eighteen, yes, and fallen into the kind of hopeless love that cripples eighteen-year-olds the world over. He doesn’t know that’s what happened; he isn’t writing your names inside hearts in a notebook.”

“And you expect me to indulge that? What, as a favor?”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Dante said, softly. His gaze left Alexei shivering internally. “But I think we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of his power. Given what we’re facing, I can think of worse ideas than sealing a mage’s allegiance with love.”

Alexei stared at him, breathing harshly.

“Think on it,” Dante said, “that’s all I’m saying.” He patted Alexei’s cheek and then stood. He picked up the comb, and went back to the mirror, back to his hair, expression unbothered.

Alexei watched him a long moment. When he swallowed, his throat ached. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Then don’t,” Dante said, as if it were simple.

And maybe…maybe it was.