The Key

Chapter 38

Casper narrows his eyes and tilts his head, but Dan mirrors the motion, almost preempts the reality with his impression. Faintly, Dan laughs, and Casper cannot guess at the emotion inside that sound.

“No, seriously,” Dan says. “How are you still you?”

“I don’t understand the question,” Casper says.

“You spent a week pretending to be someone else,” Dan tells him, incorrectly. “You telling me that’s actually who you are?”

“I pretended to be human,” Casper allows.

Perhaps unable to face that sentiment, Dan looks away from Casper’s face and back to his wing. “Can’t believe I thought these were fake,” he says, still touching the coverts. Casper should fold it up, should move away, but Dan keeps touching him and Casper hurts enough already. “The way you held them, they didn’t look real.”

“It was intentionally awkward,” Casper admits, voice as soft as Dan’s touch.

They look at each other. They keep looking.

Dan pulls away.

“Shirt,” Dan says, shuffling off the bed and onto his feet. “Let me, yeah.” He turns to the desk, turns his back entirely, the whole exposed expanse of it, and pulls open the bag. The shirt is a muted tan, and Casper’s mind stalls before recognizing a familiar object in a strange place.

“They sent a shirt,” Casper says, surprised into stating the obvious. It’s the one Inias typically wears, the one he had loaned Casper while Balthazar altered his outfits this past week. Past month, it’s been almost a month now.

“Yeah,” Dan says, passing it over.

Casper takes it.

Their hands do not touch.

Casper puts it on, flipping the flap over his back between his wings. He pulls his head through the hole and arms through the sleeves, and he tries not to struggle with the buttons down each of his sides while Dan watches.

“Need a hand?” Dan asks.

He very nearly accepts, but to have Dan that near would be too much. “I already have two.”

“Smartass,” Dan calls him, and it might still be an endearment.

Casper secures the shirt.

Dan stands between desk and bed, returning to neither. He is untouchable, a sigil beneath his feet. Behind him, a stronger breeze pushes night air inside. It smells like rain, but none yet falls.

“The stuff that was just us,” Dan says. “Did you mean that?”

“Yes,” Casper says.

“All of it?” Dan asks.

“Yes,” Casper says.

“Swear it,” Dan says. “On whatever you love most.”

“I swear it on Hannah and Balthazar,” Casper says. His tongue wants to continue. He stops before the third name.

Dan looks at him long and hard before nodding. “So we’re back to the original plan.”

“Dan?”

“You finish up your ‘project,’” Dan tells him. “Your archangel patron releases you into our service. You’ll live in the capital as a Man of Letters. Angel of Letters. Whatever. Hannah and Balthazar too, if they’ll take orders from my dad.”

As Casper stares, Dan continues, “Charlie’s been pushing to get a couple angels for Moondoor. Pretty much every foreign head of state has, and Raphael’s already laid down the condition that no angel is permitted in an international dispute. If we get three, everyone smaller will want three to be ‘fair’, and everyone bigger will want more to be ‘proportionate,’ but there you go. Politics. Everyone gets an angel squad to wipe out demons within their borders.

“Giving over the tablet is Parliament’s thing, technically. Confirming alliances. But we got international pressure to do something before a demon-making archangel with a proclivity for k********g heads of state wakes up, so we’ll see how fast things go once everybody starts making concessions to us. There’s a lot of places that’ll be pissed we’re not consulting them, but the timetable is too short and they’re too far away, so they’ll just have to suck it up.”

Casper keeps staring.

Dan shrugs. “Yeah, Sam didn’t so much take a nap as give me a crash course in what I missed, out hunting down your feathery ass.”

Responding to the one thing he is certain about, Casper replies, “My ass is not feathered.”

“Kinda missing the point there, Cas,” Dan says.

The hope is too thin to give voice to. The weight of breath might be enough to break it.

“What is the point?” Casper asks instead.

“That as long as my dad’s cover story holds, this is going to work out for you,” Dan tells him. “All you gotta do is not go poking holes in it.”

The dread returns.

“And the extent of that cover is?” Casper asks.

“Seer Shurley found your portal through a vision,” Dan says, listing on his fingers. “He asked you to send help for something demon related at the castle. You showed up, and we agreed to scratch your backs if you’d scratch ours. We kept it a secret because Chuck said there was a spy somewhere. Because s**t nearly hit the fan with Lucifer, we’re putting additional terms into our side of the arrangement before we let you all out.” He lowers both hands, spreading them palms up. “That’s the story all of you have to stick to. Just that. No one looks stupid, no one looks duplicitous. Chuck looks annoyingly vague, but he’s a seer, that’s what seers do.”

“His Majesty mentioned one of those additional terms,” Casper states, braving the subject Dan has avoided this entire time.

“Yeah,” Dan says. He sticks his hands in his pockets. “Bobby mentioned.” He looks at Casper with an expression that might be intended to be blank. “He said you refused.”

“I did,” Casper agrees. He kneels higher, the better to tuck his wings in properly, bracing.

Dan doesn’t fight. Dan doesn’t argue. Dan looks at him as a man already the victor and says, “Too late, dumbass, you already agreed.”

“No,” Casper begins to say, but Dan shakes his head, pointing at him.

“Down in the vault, you said you’d be mine if I still wanted you,” Dan says. “Gave me a lot of crap about changing circumstances and not being a good match, but guess what? I need you. And I figure that counts.”

“We can find a way around the arrangement,” Casper promises him. “You don’t need to do this. It’s the rest of your life, Dan.”

“What, you don’t think you can stick out forty years?” Dan challenges.

“Fifty,” Casper corrects unthinkingly. If given the opportunity, he’s sure he could push that number up to seventy, push Dan up onto a full century of life.

“C’mon, that’s still nothing to you.”

“That’s not my point.” He arches in an appropriate display, making his agitation clear. “You deserve a spouse you can trust.”

“You telling me I can’t trust you?” Dan asks.

“You said you don’t,” Casper tells him.

“Good thing I got fifty years to learn how,” Dan says with a blasé shrug.

“Dan,” Casper says, because this is absurd. “You would be tied to me for the rest of your life.”

“Thanks for the heads up, but I know what marriage is, Cas,” Dan says.

“You’d be miserable,” Casper tells him.

“And you actually care,” Dan says. “Look at that, that’s husband material right there.”

“Dan.”

The mocking look—for that’s what it must be—in Dan’s face relents. “You spent that last night ready to jump me the entire time,” he says. “I don’t know if that was one last goodbye or one last hurrah before f*****g off forever, but I do know you want me. You do want me, don’t you, Cas?”

Casper looks down. Dan comes forward, filling his vision, and Casper looks away to the wall.

“Do you want out for you?” Dan asks, more serious, no longer taunting. “’Cause we could do something then. Call it a mourning period, get us a fifty year engagement. Not sure how well that would fly, but then, I’m not the expert there, huh?”

Casper keeps his eyes on the wall.

“That was a joke, Cas. Flying.”

“I know,” he says.

“Look at me,” Dan tells him, and Casper obeys. Dan is serious and close and beautiful. “Do you need me to tell you what my face means now?”

“No,” Casper says.

“Do you want out for you?” Dan asks again.

Slowly, as barely as he can, Casper shakes his head. He pushes down the words. He pushes down the shame.

“If you can deal, I can deal,” Dan says. “Don’t worry about me. You weren’t going to pick me over your siblings, right? So you gotta suck it up and marry me. I’ll be gone half the time anyway. I’ll be out on patrol hunting so much, you’d think you were single.”

“I’d go with you,” Casper tells him, fighting not to press flat. “If I am to be in your keeping, then you are to be in my protection.”

“You proposing to me now, Cas?” Dan asks, only half a joke in his voice.

Steeling himself, Casper nods.

Dan’s eyebrows rise up. His lips part. “All right,” he says. “Yeah. You can hunt with me. You can, yeah.”

“I specialize in demon trapping and slaying,” Casper explains.

“We’re counting on that,” Dan says, and he touches Casper’s shoulder. His palm slides against tense muscle until his fingers bury themselves in scapular feathers. “I’m gonna kiss you now,” Dan warns. “Engagement s**t and all.”

Casper rises up. He stands on his knees, and Dan guides him back down. His mouth is soft and strange, like a long-abandoned nest, and Casper presses tighter into that place where he once knew comfort.

For the first time, he holds Dan properly, his arms around Dan’s waist, his wings over their shoulders and down Dan’s back. Though there’s no answering reach of wings around his sides, he’s not lacking. Dan’s mouth freezes against his for only a second before Dan accepts the embrace. Dan feels around, not knowing where to put his own arms, but he responds quickly when Casper guides them up around his own neck.

Their mouths part. Their foreheads press. Dan holds Casper’s head with one hand and fists Casper’s scapular feathers with the other. Casper splays his flight feathers, the better to hold Dan’s body all the way down.

“I’m still pissed at you,” Dan says against his mouth.

“I know,” Casper says.

“Good,” Dan says and kisses him again, more biting than before. His hands press harder, his mouth harsher, but he tastes nearly the same when he pushes past Casper’s lips and gives himself to him. Casper sucks and pulls, accepting Dan as a welcome guest. When Dan hums his approval, Casper continues as if he might never stop.

They don’t kiss long enough. They explore each other, certainly. Holding Dan fully is a heady thing, an impossible hope fulfilled. Dan touches him back, touches his wings everywhere he can reach. Their kisses turn shallow, exchanges of warm breath and brushing contact, the better to let them focus on their hands. But they still don’t kiss long enough.

Too soon, always too soon, Dan pulls back. “So, uh.” He clears his throat. “We didn’t have a witness, so technically, still not engaged. Whoops.”

“According to the oldest version of the tradition, we’re now married,” Casper reminds him.

“We gotta get you caught up on current events, dude,” Dan says, eyes still on Casper’s mouth. “No, we need a witness. And, uh. I might actually need to kiss Jo again, so my dad can witness, too.”

Although it means largely releasing Dan, Casper displays what he thinks of that. Dan’s eyebrows rise as Casper’s feathers shift under his hands.

“Still gotta do it,” Dan tells him. “And if I have to talk you into marrying me, you don’t get to be jealous.”

“I’m fine with Dame Joanna,” Casper says, “but I dislike your father.”

“He has that effect on people sometimes,” Dan says. “If it helps, he f*****g hates you.”

“I’m uncertain how that would help,” Casper says.

“Even if it doesn’t help, he still hates you,” Dan says. “Anyone who makes a fool out of him, that’s his general policy.”

“That wasn’t what he was upset about,” Casper tells him.

“Well, he never says that’s why he’s pissed,” Dan says. “He’d have to admit somebody pulled one over him to do that.”

“He was irate I’d made you look weak,” Casper says.

Dan blinks down at him, his hands tightening on Casper. He covers the pause well, almost immediately saying, “See, told you he’d say it was something else.” He clears his throat and adds, “It’s, uh, it’s Jo you should worry about, though. The second you try to back out, she’s stabbing you, and she’s been training with Michael’s blade too.”

“All right,” Casper allows.

Dan stares back at him. “All right?”

“Yes,” Casper says, and nods. “It’s not too late for you to change your mind, but-”

“But shut the f**k up,” Dan says lightly.

Casper kneels back down, folding his wings high behind himself. Dan’s hands trail off his wings and down his arms.

They look at each other.

They keep looking at each other.

“I have questions,” Casper says. “May I?”

“Ask ’em,” Dan allows.

“What is this called?” Casper asks, and he hits his palms together.

Dan stares at him before a laugh bursts out through him. It’s a small laugh, as they go, but it’s more than Casper thought he’d ever hear out of Dan again. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Casper says, nodding. “What everyone would do after the musicians played. What’s it called?”

“You mean clapping?” Dan asks, laughter still in his voice.

“Clapping,” Casper repeats. “Is it to signify gratitude or appreciation?”

“Uh, both?” The corners of Dan’s mouth turn up, his upper lip rising. His cheeks shift and his eyes crinkle. “You don’t know what clapping is?”

“We don’t do it, and I couldn’t ask before,” Casper explains. “Why do you sometimes close one eye?”

Shaking his head, Dan shows more and more of his teeth, but it is anything but a gesture of aggression. “Why do I wink?”

“If that’s the word,” Casper agrees, his feathers fluffing up as if Dan’s smile is the sun.

Dan makes the motion, the wink. He does it easily, still grinning.

“What does it mean?” Casper asks.

“Lots of things,” Dan says. “Like we got a secret.”

Casper nods, thinking of Sir Robert taking his leave while knowing Casper’s lie. “I see.”

Dan smooths his smile down from his mouth, but it remains in his eyes. “All right, what else you wanna know?”

Shaking his head, Casper says, “Only serious matters. They can wait.”

“But winking couldn’t?” Dan asks. “Seriously?”

“I thought it would amuse you,” Casper says, lowering his eyes as he speaks. When he looks up again, Dan is leaning in close.

“Still mad at you,” Dan says, looking more calm than angry.

“I know,” Casper says, lifting his chin higher.

They kiss, lips pressing, then brushing, then pressing again. Casper visits Dan’s mouth, and Dan’s tongue proves an admirable host. They kiss. They keep kissing. Dan’s hands are warm on his face and in his hair. Dan breathes into him and Casper inhales. They trade breaths. Tension trickles out of him, turning heat into warmth, force into comfort. His eyes have closed and he cannot open them. Dan nudges him farther back on the bed before climbing on as well, also kneeling.

Their bodies press together in a way they haven’t before. Casper inhales sharply, jerking back to higher awareness, and Dan licks into his mouth. Casper holds him low and Dan makes an even lower noise.

“Keep that up, and we’re gonna have to get a chaperon,” Dan warns.

“Oh,” Casper breathes against his mouth, and releases him with slow hands.

Dan huffs closer still, moving to kiss Casper’s neck. “Did I say stop?”

“No,” Casper says, tilting his head, covering the back of Dan’s with his hand. He holds Dan there, just like this with teeth and tongue and lips, and his body wants to sway. He holds Dan less and less, and Dan holds him more and more.

“Hey,” Dan says gently, which is when Casper realizes the kissing has stopped. He’s simply slumping against Dan now, his chin on the man’s shoulder. “You all right?”

“If I relax any further, I might fall asleep,” Casper murmurs.

“Kind of insulting,” Dan says. He keeps petting the backs of Casper’s wings anyway, playing with the divisions between one set of feathers and the next. With his other hand, Dan scratches the back of Casper’s head, and Casper turns his face against Dan’s neck. “Then again, you were basically a corpse for like two weeks.”

Breathing him in, ignoring everything else, Casper nuzzles closer.

“C’mon, time to lie down,” Dan decides for him.

“I can stay awake,” Casper promises, making only a token effort to push off him. “I haven’t slept since…” He shakes his head, the date escaping him. “There was an archdemon involved. Smoke. Flaying.”

“Yeah, well, there was an archangel this time. Almost some flaying, too. Nope, move it, c’mon. Head on the pillow side, this time, down you go.”

Unsure what to do with the cushion but certain he’s not meant to bury his face in it while unconscious, Casper turns the pillow lengthwise and rests his chest on it. It makes a satisfactory gap between his mouth and the bed itself, and his wings have a better angle to droop off his back. He turns his head and looks up at Dan, who stares down with the same face he’d made when Cas asked about the clapping.

“Lift up,” Dan says, nudging Casper’s left wing. Casper lifts. Dan sits down on the bed, back to the headboard, his legs stretched out before him. “There,” Dan says, and he settles Casper’s wing across his legs. His boots feel strange under Casper’s flight feathers.

Arms folded beneath his cheek, Casper blinks up at him slowly.

“Are you sure?” Casper makes himself ask.

“We’re the best option we got,” Dan says, fingers brushing down from Casper’s scapulars to his marginal coverts. “We can swing it. You guys need your freedom, we need people who can kill demons. We just gotta keep faking things a bit longer, all right? Whatever people expect, I’m only asking you to marry me, Cas, not to love me.” And his hand stops moving.

Casper looks up at him, at the side of his arm and his unkissed neck, at green eyes not looking back. “You could,” he says quietly.

Dan looks down at him. “I could what?”

“Ask,” Casper says, and he doesn’t bother disguising the tension in his body, in his wing under Dan’s hand and across Dan’s legs.

Dan looks at him long and hard and says, “Go to sleep.”

Reaching up, Dan slaps the magelight over the bed, next to a chalked ward. Sympathetically joined, all the magelights dim the same amount. Dan lowers his hand and Casper shifts up, lifting himself with the wrists of both wings, his left forewing spread entirely across Dan’s lap.

Dan frowns down and Casper reaches for Dan’s hand with his left. He guides Dan’s hand to his right forearm, still pressed against the bed. He pushes Dan’s palm under the cuff of his flared sleeve, against the inside of his wrist.

When Dan’s frown only deepens, Casper manifests his blade. Dan’s eyes widen as Casper’s fight to fall shut. Casper has barely enough power, but he does have it. He manifests his blade hilt-first, a seam of his own light outlining the blade.

“Draw it,” Casper rasps.

Dan’s hand under Casper’s, fingers wrapped around a hilt Casper can still feel from the inside out, Dan pulls. The blade leaves Casper’s skin and his consciousness tries to go with it, but Casper holds on.

“Whoa, hey.” Dan hurriedly turns the blade around and presses the hilt back against Casper’s arm. His voice sounds far away. “You put that back in.”

“No,” Casper says, weakly tightening his fingers around Dan’s hand. He pulls his right arm away, tucking it against his body, hidden under his wing. He lowers his head back down and closes his eyes. “It’s yours now.” And he wraps his left arm around Dan’s waist. He tucks his face against Dan’s hip, holding on to sensations so different from grief and guilt.

“Cas,” Dan says, like he doesn’t know how to say anything else.

“I’m going to sleep now,” Casper says, and he does.