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Ethan Shaw carried two knives, one for lilies, the other for veins.
“It’s a solid wage, Ethan. Not like it’s a—” The first knife clattered on the rectangular table, then the second. Sopping flowers landed with a splat next to an unopened power bill. “—hard gig, Ethan. Just take it.”
“Why is the floor wet?” Peter repeated the question, hollering through the lighthouse, “Darling, why is the floor wet?”
He batted at Peter’s broad chest. “—damn moth won’t change my mind. How was work?”
two palms clasped his waist, turning him, and his beautiful, ridiculous husband wrinkled his nose.
“What if it bites you?” he muttered, and straightened his glasses with a bent knuckle. “My mother’s exact words after I told her we were engaged,”
Because love was indomitable, but it could be lost and ruined and squandered.
Marriage was intrusive and messy, but somehow, Peter Vásquez made it easy.
The garden shed hugged the backside of the lighthouse, a small, lonesome thing overgrown with white sage. Ethan stepped over a wandering pumpkin vine and scanned the planter boxes, brimming with turnips, radishes, bushy spinach, and sweet onion,
“If it was dead, we’d smell it.” “Or the saltwater delayed rigor mortis—Ethan, please—”
“Fine, okay. I’m starving.” “You’re also bleeding. C’mon, let’s get you inside. We’ve got lasagna, don’t we?” “Yes, and butter lettuce from the garden. I’ll make a salad.”
Peter had lifted Ethan onto the countertop and taken his hand in a firm grip, tending to the shallow prick on his wrist with peroxide and bandages. It wasn’t quite a cut, just a small puncture, but allowing Peter the opportunity to mend him put them both at ease.
Truth be told, it was for his heart. Because Peter was kind and good and humble, because he blushed like a raspberry whenever people looked at him for a little too long, because he’d loved Ethan Shaw fiercely since the day they’d met.
“I would’ve bled every drop of magic to bring you back. I would’ve killed to bring you back. That selkie got a small taste of me; you were given the opportunity to take all of me. There’s your difference, darling. If that botched ritual had called for a sacrifice, I would’ve slit the first throat within reach. Surely, you’re aware I wouldn’t do the same for a seal.”
Ethan rolled his eyes, angled the screen between his thighs, and snapped a picture. Ethan Shaw: Should’ve stayed home <3
It was a heady type of missing when you missed a person you already belonged to.
Between dainty hills peppered with alder trees and hemlock, Casper appeared. There were square houses painted white, beige, and gray; little cars parked along the sidewalk next to scooters and bicycles; and boats easing into port and bobbing lazily at the docks. Tourists moseyed about as they always did, dipping into the Casper Brewery and browsing boutiques for Icelandic souvenirs. The locals bounced from the pub to the market, nursing cigarettes, manning registers, nannying children, mending nets. Like most coastal towns, Casper leaned toward the ocean, always damp, always creaky, always
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An orange tabby napped on a table stocked with beeswax candles, and the person behind the counter tilted their head, sweeping upturned eyes across Ethan.
“The pleasure’s mine,” he lied,
Lastly, he sent a glob of saliva into the bowl. Witchcraft wasn’t exactly cute. Spit, blood, semen, bone, flesh, hair. It always called for something.
The smell of tangy cheese, rosemary, and cooked pumpkin wafted through the lighthouse. Evening blanketed Casper, deepened by rain and blustery wind. Water streaked the window, and black reigned past the sharp cliffside, blotting out the gibbous moon and the many, many stars. Ethan hated being stuck in weather like this, but he loved the atmosphere. The mood. He lit wicks stacked inside an iron candelabra in the center of the dining table. Tested the gourd in the oven with a fork. Lowered the needle on their ivy-green record player and hummed along to Bon Iver.
“Of course, I want a family, but for my husband, my partner in life, to think I… For you to think I don’t want you…? Darling, that’s unacceptable.” Darling. The timbre of his voice fluttered in Ethan’s chest.
“You’re the only person I see, Ethan Shaw. I’ve wanted you since I was twenty years old—hardly a sailor, hardly a man, but entirely yours. I think about you constantly. Today I was…” He huffed out a laugh. “I was undone by you.”
“Who are you?” Peter asked. “Nico,” the selkie said at the same time Ethan said, “The goddamn seal.”
“Anyway, I’m his partner—hello, again—yes, me, the one who breathed life into your lifeless body.” He gave a sarcastic, little wave.
It was strange, sharing the silence with a man who’d always fit into his life like an organ, and a man who’d wandered into their home like a leak or a bear—capable of causing invisible damage or very real, very visible problems.
both Peter Vásquez and Nico Locke carried a bit of Ethan with them. His magic, his lifeforce.
Ethan folded against Peter’s chest and hid there, seizing through trapped sobs and ugly gasps. “Te amo,” Peter whispered, “te amo, te amo,” like a chorus in the dark room.
“Remember when you pushed me into the bathtub? Awful brute.” “Pushed you? Please. My graceful, brand-new husband sat on the edge of our honeymoon suite garden tub and fell backward.”
They’d married inland, under a blackberry bramble during a hot, humid summer. Miranda Park had wrapped their hands in red thread, told them to sip from a chalice filled with honey wine, and officiated their union. They’d danced and drunk and laughed until sunset.
He held Ethan’s face between his palms and thumbed his lips, an odd, intimate thing, touching where he was wrecked and overworked.
He pulled Ethan into a steaming shower and kissed him against the tiled wall. They soaped each other, and Ethan laughed as he scrubbed his sudsy fingers on Peter’s buzzed head.
Peter had eyes like a Labrador or a golden retriever. Big gentle eyes framed by girlish lashes. He could never harden them. Not at sea, not at home. Even in his anger and his worry, his eyes were brown sugar. Warm and syrupy and readable. Those same eyes had looked back at him since they were boys—since he’d hardly known he could be a boy—and he knew the hurt splintered behind them.
“How long were you a seal?” “Peter,” Ethan hissed and smacked his arm.
He plucked at his bandages. “These itch. Really itch. Like, bad—” “Well, don’t scratch it,” Ethan snapped.
“Can you handle the tea?” Peter frowned. “Or I can fix the tea while Nico enjoys the beginning stages of sepsis. Your call, love.” This time, Nico frowned. “You’re dramatic,” Peter said, his curtness almost coy, and he made for the stove. “And you’re petty—Nico, come here; sit down.”
Through the window, gray skies reigned, cloaking the sun and turning the town varying shadowy shades. The fireplace still burned, and the smell of sourdough wafted from the toaster, accompanied by soaking tea leaves, sweet butter,
Oh, darling, oh my God. You sweet, stupid man—”
I prefer my men with a deeper complexion, anyway.” He brushed his knuckles across Peter’s brown cheek, smoothing a piece of his short beard into place. “Colombian, specifically.” “Is that so, brujito?” Little witch. Ethan smirked. “Yeah, it’s true.”
“I heard you, necromancer. I have good ears.” “Fine, well, it’s not your concern,” he said, mouth stuffed with sweet bread. What else did you hear? He ran hot beneath his clothes.
“Are you eating that like an apple?” Nico asked, hollering over the sea’s loud song. Ethan chewed. “It’s a tomato, and I’m eating it like a tomato.”
“I’m not sure what you’ve done to me, what your magic’s done to me. But I don’t think I can handle ever hearing you like that again.
he heard his husband at the forefront of his mind. If anyone ever has you, be fast. Remembered his weakness last night and whipped around. Make it hurt. Aimed the sole of his foot at Nico’s kneecap, forcing the selkie to trip despite his larger stature. Use your strength first, magic second.
For becoming self-made, for having a womb, for harnessing magic, for being different.
Ethan leaned closer, placing his mouth dangerously close to the selkie’s cheek. “Think about how you’ll feel if I rip it back out.”
“Because life isn’t guaranteed, but it is precious. I’ve given you a second chance. Take it, leave it, I don’t care what you do with it.
“You’re tiny and awful. You know that, right?” “I do.”
“Do you like potatoes?” “Everyone likes potatoes.” Nico hopped to keep up. “Okay, do you have potatoes?” “Yes, Nico, I have potatoes.” “What about a vegetable? Carrots? Salad?” “I can make a salad if you’d like.” “I can make it. I just—” “Yes, Nico, we have the ingredients to make a salad,” Ethan said.
know it’s not an excuse, but trust doesn’t come easy, and you…you disarm me. I’m sorry for before—I am—but I need you to understand that I’m trying very hard to keep my wits about me. I can’t remember…anything, really.”
The selkie’s cheeks darkened. His mouth made the shape of the word domesticated, and he shifted from foot to foot. “You confuse me. You both do.” “I confuse myself.” Ethan shrugged toward the store at the end of the block. “Now, c’mon.”
