He dropped to a crouch, looking up at the girl with his eyebrows raised and head tipped.
“You can ask, but I won’t promise to answer if it’s not my secret to talk about.It wouldn’t be nice of me.”
“Okay,” Dulce said with a grave nod.
“Grand.What would you like to know?”
“Are you gay?”she whispered.“That’s when a boy kisses other boys.Uncle Michael says you are.‘Cause Tio Tio brought you.And you have lipstick.”
Uncle Michael ought to mind his own bloody business.
Declan kept that thought behind his lips.He had half-expected it to come from the brother-in-law directly, truth be told.Antonio’s family was enough like Declan’s that he’d started to slot the various members in against his own.
Needling, affectionate sisters who weren’t quite sure what to do with the odd little brother.Children too young to shy away from the wayward uncle.An older brother, in-law or otherwise, whoalsodidn’t know what to do with the younger and was, in fact, a great bloody shitehawk about it.
“Old school.”Antonio had said of them.“Just ignore it.”
“I’ve kissed boys,” Declan whispered back.“And girls.People who were neither.”
Dulce frowned at him, eyebrows furrowed.“Both?”
“If I want to kiss someone, and they want to kiss me, that’s all that matters to me.”He’d not answer withboth.But that was another conversation.“As for my lipstick, I just like how I look with it.”
Another beat of silence from Dulce, her brows furrowed.Declan somehow withstood the scrutiny, eyeing her in turn (though with far less doubt).Finally, she seemed to accept his explanation.Or simply decided to move on.
“Have you kissed Tio Tio?Gabriella says he has a boyfriend.‘Cause of the flowers.And Mama said he must like you, because, umm, he was standing real close.”She wrinkled her nose.“And Uncle Michael said, he said, ‘great, two crazy queers under his roof’ and Aunt Angela told him to shut his mouth, and who paid for the roof?Which, I don’t know who did.We’re not supposed to saycrazyabout Tio Tio.”
Uncle Michaelreallyneeded to keep his mouth shut.
Declan wished for anger.Righteous fury.Instead, Dulce’s concerned, innocent retelling fell into a quiet, coiling sadness.
“Your Tio Tio had a difficult go of life,” Declan said slowly.Careful.“And he’s very lucky to have your mama and aunties speak up for him.What your Uncle Michael said is something that could make people like Tio Tio and I sad if we heard them say it.”
“Don’t be sad,” Dulce patted Declan on the knee.“Mama says we don’t pay Uncle Michael any mind.She says he talks out of hisbutt.”
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.”
Ifthatdidn’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.
