“Yours, yours,yours,” Nix moans, before squeezing his legs together to pull Grayson’s knot in all the way as Grayson comes with a shout. Grayson’s magic connects them through their soul like a wire pulled taut, and Nix comes again, creating a magic-induced feedback loop that crests twice more before Grayson can wrangle it back under control. Muscles aching, Nix comes back to awareness with his head held in the palm of Grayson’s hand. They’re still leaning up against the paint table, with Nix clutched to Grayson’s chest like the pressure could meld them into one being.
Theyareone, when they’re like this.
A cool, magical breeze flutters through the room, and several candles gutter out. It’s not dark, though, as the full moon shines through the skylights, providing enough illumination that Nix can see a corner of Grayson’s newest painting over his soulmate’s shoulder. The Art Houseand the main house have several of Grayson’s paintings on its walls, many of them of their family members, or Tsuki and the cats.
There’s even a memorable one of Rowan-wolf under a full moon. But the ones withjustNix always show parts of Grayson that he insists he keep for himself, or for Nix. He rarely hangs them, saying they are too personal, too much a piece of his soul made visual.
“Gray,” Nix whispers.
“Mmm?” Grayson says from his place in Nix’s throat. He is sucking what is sure to be a very large hickey, directly under his ear.
Nix gives him a small push to get him moving, and his deflating knot slides free with a mutual groan. Pleasure fades into that familiar ache of separation.
As Grayson had said, it always feels too long until the next time.
“Whoa,” Nix murmurs, gesturing to the easel. “Can I?”
Grayson smirks, and helps Nix down. He bends to retrieve the rose-colored couch-blanket and wrap it around his chest, so Nix can grasp the ends in front and hold it up to ward against the chill.
It’s not the first time Nix has come face-to-face with one of Grayson’s masterpieces after being well-loved. The walls of their home are covered in them, but this painting glows in the moonlight.
It’s Nix: bare-shouldered, the rose-colored blanket wrapped around him, a pink mark on his collarbone peeking out over the edge. His toes are bare, and the beam of light from the skylight illuminates his pink cheeks and bright eyes. It’s like looking into a mirror of this exact, precise moment in time.
“How did you…whoa,” he says a second time.
“I still don’t always know why or how that stuff works, yeah? Do you like it?” Grayson is always wary when it comes to his slight precognition Talent. He’s always worried the others will think it’s Mind Manipulation used to create the moment, rather than Divination to anticipate one. That they could ever think he would manipulate them is ludicrous. It’s a fear that hasn’t faded in all this time, despite copious reassurances. The stain of Withers’s legacy and his earliest days at The Guildhave lasted all this time.
“Did you know I was coming?”
Grayson snorts at the innuendo, but in the end he lets it slide. “Started it last week…so no. You know how all the…times and placescollide sometimes? So it could have been you anywhere, anytime.” He pulls Nix in, wrapping his arms around him from behind, and presses his nose into Nix’s neck.
It’s uncanny. There’s a small scratch on the hand holding the blanket up that Nix got today from Doodle when he’d had to chase her from the garage, and a fading bruise on his jaw he’d gotten from Gideon in the gym yesterday before they’d made up (out) on the padded floor.
At first glance, an observer (as if this would ever see someone’s eyes outside of the Art House) might see only a gorgeous portrait, a slice of Nix’s everyday life. But then he notices the sparkle in his eyes from being well-loved, that hickey, and a sheen of slick and cum on the inside of his bare thigh, peeking out from where the blanket is almost—not quite—closed.
“It’s magical, Gray.” He’s understating how beautiful it is, because he feels all the love and magic his soulmate has poured into the portrait reflected back to him, and all the love Grayson is pouring into their combined soul, right now and always.
“Of course it is; it’syou.Everything is magic when it comes to you.”
XV
Happily Forever After
You might remember this cast of characters from Darkness Echoes and Eternal Light. Nix is called upon to do a big thing for someone, and we get a taste of the future.
Content Warnings
None
Happily Forever After
The final notes ofMy Love Mine All Mineby Mitski dissolve like stardust in the softly lit hush of the reception hall. Celeste Stavros catches her new wife’s waist in one hand and the nape of her neck in the other, dipping Winnie low over her arm. She presses their lips together with a reverence that looks like forever.
Around them, fairy lights create a magic all their own. The DJ whispers the next track into being, and Celeste spins her wife outward, their fingers trailing from wrist to fingertip until they finally—reluctantly—break contact.
Celeste finds her teary-eyed father at the edge of the dance floor, where he waits for his turn to lead her in their father-daughter dance.
Nix loses sight of Winnie as she disappears in the crowd, her white gown trailing behind. He’s surprised when she reappears behind him, her gentle hand on his shoulder.
