“Cora, Perry. Perry, Cora.”
Sometimes, Matt forgot that Perry didn’t know everyone he knew. Being in the inner circle near Norseton’s leadership, Matt took for granted that he’d had access to far more newcomers and VIPs there than Perry. There was rarely a point when Perry wasn’t with him, so the situations that occurred when Perry wasn’t there tended to slip from Matt’s mind.
And Cora wasn’t exactly a recluse at Norseton. Even Perry’s granny knew her.
The observant werewolf gave Perry a lazy salute and leaned against the motel reception desk. “Nice to put a face to a name,” she said. “People in Norseton tend to talk about you and Matt in the same breath, and yet I’d never managed to cross paths with you.”
Perry shrugged and smiled. “Whenever I’m there, I tend to go straight to my granny’s apartment.”
“See, your granny…her, I’ve met.” Cora smiled the smile of a woman used to keeping secrets to herself. “Poor colorblind thing. She calls my mother on FaceTime every day and asks if her shirt matches her skirt.”
“Everything she wore back in the realm was either brown or gray. Made things easier. I didn’t know she was colorblind, either, until a year ago when she felt safe enough to ask me what shade my eyes were.”
“She was afraid people in the realm would find out?” Matt asked.
Perry performed a slow nod. “Fairies never spoke of their flaws there. Information has always been a dangerous thing. They always worried they’d become a target of some sort.”
“They were probably right,” Cora said. “Same way with shifters. Never let on that you’re not at a hundred percent to anyone except the person who gave birth to you, and sometimes not even then.”
Matt happened to know Cora was speaking of hypothetical treachery. She trusted her mother completely. They didn’t team up for jobs as often as they had before moving to Norseton, but when they did drift back together, they worked as though they’d never been apart.
“How’d you manage to not absorb that indecipherable accent of hers?” Cora asked, chuckling.
“I’m sure I had a similar one when I first joined up with Heath, but I was pretty young when I left the realm. Still had an ear for languages and could flatten the dialect I learned first, I guess.”
Hmm.
Matt couldn’t recall ever hearing Perry speaking anything but English. He made a mental note to ask him about that bit of trivia later.
Thom spoke Welsh. Ethan spoke various Northern European languages. Arthur spoke German. Sully spoke Mumble. Heath and his sister Siobhan spoke more languages than they could keep track of. Sometimes, Matt felt a little inferior with his grammar-optional English and his stilted Spanish. Given his upbringing, he was doing the best he could.
Simone poked her head out of the back room where the weapons safe and various motel incidentals resided. She looked at them all in turn in her usual inspecting way. “Don’t go out running and ripping tonight. Cora, you just got here. Let Laurel find you a room so you can unwind and get reacquainted with humidity.” She pointed to Matt and Perry. “You two are supposed to be off today. Matt, why are you wearing a hat? You and your dad don’t really do hats. That’s Lyman’s thing.”
Rolling his eyes, Matt gave the brim of his baseball cap a squeeze to make the stiff cardboard a little rounder. “You’re right. I don’t do hats. Might be that something happened.”
“It’s not that bad,” Perry said timidly. He wasn’t exactly afraid of Princess Simone, but even after around three years of knowing her, he wasn’t used to volunteering opinions in front of her. She never seemed to forget anything. Perry had once told Matt that he wished she would forget things on occasion. That way he wouldn’t feel like he was disappointing her if he ever changed his mind. Basically, Perry was being Perry and being a Magna Cum Laude worrier.
“We essentially have the same haircut,” Perry said. “I think it’s more conservative than he usually gets.”
Simone studied him—really studied him, and Matt could tell she wasn’t impressed.
Perry’s cheeks were red enough to stop traffic.
“Direct the insults to me,” Matt pre-empted. “My skin’s thicker.”
“How dare you? I would never insult Perry.” She blinked several times at Matt, and he grimaced because shit-talking and general bogusness were behaviors he tended to reserve for Heath. Heath was an ordinary sort of dick, but Simone was the sort of creature he had to tread carefully around. He suspected that she allowed annoying people to continue living solely because the alternative would create more work for her than she felt like doing.
He was going to move very carefully and keep his mouth shut until he was certain she remembered they were family.
She turned her focus back to Perry. “They cut off anything resembling a curl.”
Perry shifted his weight and dragged a hand across his scalp. “They’ll grow back.”
“But I’m annoyed now.”
“Why are you annoyed?” Nadia called from the weapons vault. “Do I need go Karenize someone?”
Matt gave Perry a discreet nudge with his elbow and whispered, “See? Told you.”
“Yep. You told me.”
Without peeling her gaze from Perry, Simone called behind her, “They got haircuts. Whoever did them cut off all of Perry’s texture. It’s like they were trying to turn him into a 1950s sock-hopper or something.”
Perry’s eye twitched.
“Where’s the place?” Nadia asked.
“It’s all right,” Perry insisted frantically. “I’ll get a hat, too.”
“Triggered,” Matt mumbled.
“I’m not triggered!” Nadia shouted. “I just like things the way I like them. I bet he looks like an old man now. Does he look like an old man, Simone?”
Simone opened her mouth to respond, but before she could hedge, probably, Cora interjected. “I think his hair looks good, but I don’t know what it looked like before.”
“He was a darling cherub with big, golden-brown curls,” Simone said.
“Gods,” Perry muttered. “Now I’m darling?”
Matt grunted. “Darling cherub” probably wouldn’t have been Matt’s phrasing, but there was a reason he’d only gotten a C in his high school creative writing elective. “Darling” seemed about right. The ladies in the crew really doted on Perry. Matt had been jealous about the excess of attention when he first arrived, but it didn’t take long for him to realize how smothering fairies could be when they made someone their pet.
“We’re doing a communal dinner tonight.” Simone gave her head a mournful shake. Her gaze was still on Perry’s hair. “Since the whole crew is at home for a change and Ollie and Nadia are visiting, makes sense to fellowship. We’ve got some human guests in the motel we need to get squared away, but we’ll leave the on-call phone number up here for them if they need anything. Eight o’clock.” She finally looked back to Matt. “You two, scram.” Then she looked at Cora. “You hold tight. I’ll page Laurel. I think she went to make sure some rooms had been cleaned.”
Cora held up a hand in a no-rush gesture. “Don’t stir up a frenzy on my account. I’m fine to stand here and soak up vibes for a while. Helps to settle the wolf in me when I arrive somewhere new.”
Matt liked Cora. She minded her own business and had an uncanny knack for keeping Ótama out of trouble. She tended to have a prescience for what would make the witch curious enough to drift and tended to beat her there. According to Cora, her ability wasn’t magic so much as, “I’m a socially-aware Black woman and I have a mother who can turn furry during full moons. Forecasting shit hitting the fan is an innately necessary skill.”
Perry led the way back to the apartment. Once inside, he heeled off his sneakers and transferred the laundry loads. “What time did the princess say?”
“Eight. That gives us about ninety minutes. How many socks do you think we can roll in ninety minutes?”
Pausing his hand halfway to the dryer knob, Perry grimaced. “Knowing the two of us, zero.”
“Okay. So, our metrics are little on the shameful side. Let’s rally and commit to being less awful. I don’t want your granny giving me that look again the next time she visits.”
“The look wasn’t just for you. It was for both of us.”
“But she asked me specifically how I can live like this.”
“Which, in my mind, implies that everything is my fault and you’re just the victim.”
“Nope.” Matt shook his head. “You didn’t hear the tone, Perry. You didn’t hear the tone.”
He dumped the basket of dried clothes onto the coffee table and made the room-to-room circuit in search of dirty laundry. It seemed like washcloths and towels were in filth abundance, so those needed to go into the washer next.
Simone had once offered to hire someone to clean for them, but hearing that, Matt’s father had leaned across the kitchen island, looked Matt in the eyes, and said, “No son of mine is going to behave as though he wasn’t taught better than this. Gods help his future mate if he doesn’t get it together.”
Shit, I gotta do better.
He’d gotten sloppy because he thought he didn’t have anyone to impress, and that wasn’t fair to Perry. They both had to live there.
While Perry folded the load fresh from the dryer, Matt knelt in front of the coffee table and started sorting socks. Within fifteen seconds, his eyes crossed.
There had to be fifty white socks in that pile and none of them seemed to have come from the same pack.
Perry turned on the television and found a travel show that had a host with a tolerable voice but content bland enough that they wouldn’t keep looking up from their task. “I can handle this if you want to clean out the fridge.”
“We can do that tomorrow. Half of this is mine, so I’d feel bad if I left you to it.”
“I have a system. See?” Indeed, Perry was infinitely more efficient at pairing socks than Matt had been. He could find identical lengths and styles just by glancing over the tabletop. Matt had to physically hold them up to compare. He quit that and focused on undershirts instead. He even turned them right-side-out before folding them.
“My dad used to have a routine,” Matt said. “Whites on Mondays. Sheets and towels on Tuesdays. His stuff and work clothes on Friday nights. Lyman and I got ours done over the weekends. I think we should probably have a routine.”
“You mean for the days we’re actually here?”
“I guess that’s where things kind of fall apart. I feel like Dad wouldn’t like that as an excuse, though.”
“We can experiment.” Perry sawed the pile of rolled socks in half and pushed one part toward Matt. They didn’t know anymore who’d bought them. Socks were free range clothing articles in their apartment.
“Experiments could be fun.” Matt had really been echoing his overenthusiastic eleventh-grade chemistry teacher’s messaging, but the statement tugged at something else in his brain.
We can experiment. Experiments could be fun.
And Perry had soft hands.
Matt huffed and chased his mind from the gutter. They had all the science projects they needed on the coffee table in front of them. If he needed a hypothesis, he could postulate that they would get half the laundry done before they got hungry or bored or drifted to piss and ended up taking naps.
Perry had moved on to pajama bottoms. He was the only one there who wore them. Matt tended to be a minimalist at bedtime, but he hadn’t always been that way.
Occasionally, he wondered what he could do to get a rise out of Perry—just in good fun, the way one friend would troll another. Those experiments had all fallen flat because it was basically impossible to perturb Perry. He would just look at Matt and say, “Oh. I just thought you were trying something different.”
Matt wondered if Perry would be the same way in the bedroom whenever he started feeling like he wanted to spend more time there recreationally.
Matt grimaced.
Focus on your fucking science.
He smoothed the creases out of an undershirt with more force than he needed to and sent a few ankle socks flying.
There would be a point when Perry would start inviting lovers over to their apartment, and Matt would have to pretend to be as dignified about the situations as Perry had been for him. The idea of Perry trusting anyone to be with him actually perturbed Matt. People weren’t going to get him. Matt barely got him.
Matt flicked their underwear into two sorting piles. They couldn’t share that even if they wanted to.
He’d rolled four pairs of boxer briefs into compact parcels before his fidget reflexes kicked back in and the “BTW…” part of his brain chimed.
He’d forgotten about something. Experiments had reminded him.
“When’s the last time you checked the mail?” Matt asked. He tried and failed to match the next underwear roll to the shape and size of the others.
“Sometime last week, I think. Are you expecting anything?”
“Yeah.” Something Matt didn’t want dropped at the door.
When Matt had placed the online order, he’d been unclear on what courier the package was being shipped through. The best-case scenario was through the postal service. At least then, it’d get put into the apartment’s locked mailbox and the only people he had to worry about seeing it were Perry, the mailman, and the dozens of postal employees that handled it along the way. Supposedly, it had a “discreet label” on it, but that didn’t mean shit in a world where almost everyone had a smartphone in their pocket and could reverse-search addresses. “Let me go look.”
Halfway to the door, Matt stopped and pointed at Perry. “Do not fold any more of my laundry. I’ll do it. I mean it.”
“I don’t think it matters who does it as long as the task gets done.”
“No, because then I’ll get used to having the task done, and my laundry is not your job. I don’t want to start expecting clean clothes when I’m not doing any of the cleaning.”
Truthfully, if Matt had the time, he wouldn’t mind doing Perry’s if he needed him to. Perry did so much for him and had helped him get acclimated to the crew so tirelessly. A few loads a week seemed like the very least Matt could do.
He grabbed the mailbox key from the hook on the way out the door and sprinted down to the centralized mailboxes without bothering to put shoes on.
He tossed the circulars and junk mail from their box into the recycling bin Laurel had helpfully dragged out there and reached in deep to grab the parcel locker key. There were actually two packages inside. One was for Perry. The other was Matt’s discreetly labeled order.
Insomnia shopping was to blame. When he saw the order confirmation in his inbox the next morning, he had no initial recollection of making the purchase, but the object made sense given his situation at the time.
He stacked the credit card bills on top, locked the mailbox, and picked his way carefully across the asphalt lot.
“Christ, I thought you were your father,” Arthur called over from his bike. He was cleaning out the saddlebags. The fairy was on the road so much that Matt had almost forgotten what he sounded like.
Matt tossed a scowl over his shoulder. “He’s still taller and he has more hair than I do right now.”
His father having hair was weird. Matt wasn’t sure if he hated it, exactly, but someone—and he suspected Tess was to blame—had apparently convinced his father to grow it out more than a couple inches. Matt had expected him to move beyond the Air Force cut eventually, and he had done that soon after meeting Tess, but never in his life had Matt ever seen his father have enough hair to fall into his eyes. And because his father was an exceedingly practical man, for the moment, the excess hair was clipped back with one of Tess’s butterfly clips.
If he was going for the Conan the Barbarian look, he didn’t really have to work that hard.
Arthur called up to the second floor Matt had climbed to, “What’d I miss?”
“Shit. What haven’t you missed? I’m sure everyone will catch you up at dinner. Are you done with your undercover stint?”
“Finally am. Long gig, but the carefulness mattered. Who’s the woman in the office with the princess? Is she human?”
Matt paused at the railing. “Oh no. That’s Cora. Werewolf from Norseton. Like I said, they’ll catch you up at dinner.”
“Werewolf, hmm? What time’s dinner?”
“Eight.”
Arthur grunted and turned his attention back to his cleaning task. “I don’t even know where my fuckin’ apartment key is.”
“Don’t let Simone hear you saying that. She’ll find you one, but she’ll make you do a hundred burpees or some shit like that first.” Matt let himself back into the apartment and shuffled his bare feet against the rug. “I don’t remember Arthur’s hair being that red.”
Perry’s brow creased as he finished tucking in the sleeves of a T-shirt.
That was Matt’s shirt.
“Perry—”
“I know, I know, but it was there. I had to do it. I have to do all the same types of items or I lose my rhythm. I have to reteach myself to fold every time.”
Since Perry did seem to be in something of a groove, Matt wasn’t going to argue with him. He’d make the chore up to him later somehow.
“I’m not on crack, right?” Matt asked. “Wasn’t he a little closer to blond the first time I met him?”
“No, your memory is accurate.”
“Which is the right color?”
“The deeper one. Magic affects coloring. The fact that it looks redder now means he’s in a good headspace. How long was it?”
“About as long as yours before the butcher barberess got hold of it.”
Perry laughed and tossed another shirt onto the pile of Matt’s things. “He’s had a good few months, then. I’m glad for him.”
“He’s a mystery to me. The entire time I’ve been here, he’s usually been somewhere else.”
“He’s good at solo missions and doesn’t mind the long ones. I think once we defected from the realm, he was so pleased to not have Queen Rhiannon breathing down his neck all the time that the social component of being in the crew wasn’t as significant for him. He’s very good at missions that require meticulous investigations. Holds information in his head really well.”
“Good to know.”
Matt handed Perry his mail and backtracked to the kitchen for a knife.
His package was discretely labeled, but excessively taped. He could possibly end up needing a chainsaw to get through the seals.
“Ah, I forgot my granny said she would mail this.” Perry had gotten his package open and was peering into the open end. “I’m pretty sure I told her to save the stamps. Someone from Norseton could have brought it to me.”
“What is it?” What Matt had in his box was definitely not the sort of object to be ferried by friends.
“Collection of journals. Lots of musings about different kinds of magical situations my ancestors were a part of. She thought it would help me focus my energy better.” Perry slid the package onto the TV stand, apparently having no immediate interest in educational ventures. He gathered up a pile of his clothes and carried them to his room.
While he put away his clothes like a responsible fairy, Matt ran the blade of a steak knife around the seams of his box until the layers of tape gave way. Finally, he could lift the lid.
He gave the packing slip a cursory scan and, with heart pounding and lips twitching with amusement, rooted through the packing material. His fingers laced around a satin bag which he lifted, along with the free sample packet that’d been tucked beneath.
Perry walked out of his room as Matt was tearing open the Motor Oil-brand lube pack with his teeth.
“Free with purchase,” Matt explained.
“You ordered lube and it came that fast?” Perry’s brow creased.
“Oh. No. I actually wasn’t expecting this.” Matt held up the satin bag as though toasting a dear friend at his wedding. “That’s what I ordered.”
“What’s inside of that?”
“Take a look.” Matt tossed the bag to him.
Perry took an innocent gander, and almost immediately dropped the pack. “Gods.” With uncoordinated hands, he managed to catch the object before it could hit the floor.
That’d possibly been a hair over the line of Matt’s usual foolishness and fuckery. Apparently, he’d finally found a way to jar Perry.
“I’m so sorry, man. I figured you’d have a laugh at my expense.”
“Laugh?”
Matt scoffed and caught the toss back. “I figured I should keep my options open. That’s apparently what I was thinking at two a.m. last Wednesday when I was searching the internet in private mode.” He tapped the end of the bag against his jaw and stared contemplatively at the ceiling. “I remember that Thom once told me that I’d better know what I liked and didn’t, because I’d never know how winds will change. Fairies are opportunistic creatures, right?”
He looked down in time to see Perry’s excruciatingly slow nod. His eyes were opened wide like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Matt was out of shoes. He finally had clean socks, though.
“So, I just thought I’d see.”
“Ah.” That strained sound Perry made was accompanied by a slouch and a sideward look.
“Come on, that’s hardly the strangest shit I’ve ever said to you,” Matt said. “I tell you things, and half the time, I don’t even know why I do.”
“It’s… It’s not strange,” Perry said in a rush. “I just didn’t realize you were that flexible.”
“I wasn’t until I was.” Word soup, but the phrase made sense to Matt.
“Don’t you have a type?”
“Do I?” Matt had to really think about that, but when he tried, he couldn’t really pinpoint what he’d like. Maybe it was too specific, or too broad. He didn’t know. So, he said that.
“You know, not every relationship with a person with a penis requires sodomy,” Perry said.
“Do you watch porn? No, that’s a ridiculous question. Of course you don’t watch porn. Maybe one day you will, and you’ll want to try to recreate the sensations you see others having.” Matt slid the stainless steel plug out of the bag and rolled it over his palm. “And maybe you want it to be realistic.”
He’d spent a lot of time thinking that through. There was no reason he couldn’t use a plug or dildo while being with a woman, but in his amorphous fantasies, that wasn’t the kind of energy that made him come.
“I just thought I’d try.”
“Then you should,” Perry said quietly after several seconds. “You should learn if you like it. Tell me what it’s like, and I promise I’ll try not to blush.”
“Tell you? No, I mean…” Flooded with a sudden surge of self-doubt, Matt tossed the bag back into its box. It was so typical for Perry to go above and beyond to minimize Matt’s embarrassment. Maybe the conversation made him uncomfortable. Or maybe Matt’s particular sort of magic was impacting Perry’s perceptions and massaging his feelings. Matt was the sort of witch who could not only intuit emotions, but decipher them. That Perry would become affected by his energy before long probably wasn’t much of a stretch.
He was about to ask if maybe they should take a break from each other to give Perry the best possible chance at not turning into an absolute shit-heel. Even if he’d been able to get his jaw to move and his mouth to shape the words, the knock on the apartment door revoked the priority.
“Yes?” Perry called out.
“It’s Arthur. Can I come in for a minute?”
Matt cleared the evidence of scandalous mail from the counter and nodded to Perry.
Perry allowed Arthur to enter, but Arthur didn’t move beyond the doormat.
“I was meant to have time off, but Prince Heath and Thom were trying to sort out who to send to conference with those shapeshifter groups. Ethan’s name was floated, but he’s got the kids, and I think we’d all like to limit how much questing he’s assigned to. Last thing we need is another fairy quitting because of his spawn.” Arthur gave Matt an eloquent look.
Matt crossed his eyes.
“I said I’d go with Cora,” Arthur continued. “Apparently, you two are going, too?”
“We are?” Matt snorted. “I mean, okay. News to me, but probably Heath hasn’t caught up to us yet.”
“Oh. Well, sorry to be the news-bearer. Also, you’re going to have to formally introduce me to Cora so we can put our heads together beforehand. I can’t speak to her unless someone who’s vetted us both can connect us.”
“Why? That seems like an old-fashioned inconvenience.”
“Curse,” Perry said in his usual non-judgmental tone. “Pretty much everyone in the crew has had one at some point or another.”
“Mm,” Arthur conceded without emotion. He jammed his hands into his pockets. “At least I’m actually able to tell people I have it and what the requirements are. Some curse-bearers are punished if they describe their affliction to the wrong people.”
“Do I even want to know how you got it?” Matt asked.
“No.” Arthur gave him a chilling stare. “You don’t.”
“Fair enough.”
“Glad we understand each other.” Arthur tilted his head toward the open door. “So, at dinner? You’ll introduce Cora to me?”
“Yeah. That’s not a problem, man.”
“The requirements are first names, last names, and how you know us both. Otherwise, I won’t be able to speak.”
“How are you able to do your job if you’re lone-wolfing and don’t have people to make introductions to the people you need to talk to?”
“I ask a lot of favors of the people I encounter who I can actually talk to.”
Being a bargain-averse witch, that extra effort sounded like hell to Matt, but he nodded anyway.
Arthur waved as he left.
Perry closed the door behind him. “I don’t know Cora’s last name, but Arthur’s is Weber.”
“Okay. I’ll do the introduction.”
The dryer motor slowed and stopped.
They both headed toward the laundry closet at the same time, but Perry halted him. “I’ll get it. That’s my sheets and such.” He seemed unusually grave about the load for some reason, so Matt didn’t even bother floating a joke or a tease.
“All right. No argument from me.” Matt put up both hands and backed away. “I’ll go be useful somewhere else. I’m not a puppy. I don’t actually have to trail you from room to room. Maybe I’ll put my own laundry away.”
Perry’s slight smile somehow managed not to be scolding. “Couldn’t hurt.”
The longer Matt stared at him, the more he doubted that the expression Perry wore was a smile at all. It seemed tight and forced. More like a grimace.
And his posture was tense.
Perry was a worrier in general, but at home, he usually was able to find pockets of serenity.
“You all right, man?” Matt asked quietly, but Perry was obviously unwell.
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“I know you were tired. I’d thought maybe you’d shaken off the exhaustion by now. Fairies tend to be a little more resilient than guys like me.”
“Probably just hunger.”
Matt didn’t think so, but he nodded anyway. “Okay. Maybe you need to throw some elbows around tonight to get all the servings you’re entitled to.”
“I may have to. Magic’s always a tactical option, too.”
“Do what you gotta. I plan to.”
“Me, too,” Perry said to himself, many seconds after Matt started walking away.
Matt didn’t turn back. While Perry was unlikely to volunteer information about his wellbeing, Matt also doubted he’d respond well to persistent interrogation. Matt wasn’t dropping the subject. He was giving the discussion an intermission. Perry had slipped through the cracks enough in life. If Matt didn’t keep an eye on him, no one would.