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Elliot took a deep breath. “I discovered my shifting ability when I was ten or eleven. I realized I could finally play music! The… potential sexual aspect of blowing into my dickhead never occurred to me until my brothers caught me practicing and ridiculed me. It doesn’t feel like a blow job, though. It feels like creation and enchantment and flying all at once! I don’t know how to describe it.”
I turned so I was fully facing him, our noses brushing. “Like how casting a spell feels.”
Elliot raised his brows. “Is it like magic? My family were all witches, but they didn’t talk about it around me.”
“They sound snootier than me when I’m washed, done up, and in designer clothes. Fuck, I miss all that. But I’ll tell you anything you want to know about witches. Magic feels like you are the world and the world is you and you can reshape it on a whim. Like electricity on your skin, but it cannot hurt you. Like flying through dark skies and breathing storm winds.”
His dark eyes glistened, and I worried I had said something wrong. “That’s just like playing music.” He sniffed. “I had magic all along like my dad and siblings. I just didn’t know.”
I let go of his hand to wrap my arms around him and hold him close. He buried his face against my neck and pressed his hands to my back.
“They should have been proud of your skill,” I said.
Okay, sure, his skill was weird. But there was no reason to reject or hobble your child just because it was hard to understand them.
Elliot sniffed. “They wanted to be proud, I think. My parents bought me a normal clarinet and signed me up for lessons so I could develop my skills in the usual way. A regular instrument always felt clumsy, like attaching a prosthetic leg to an Olympic sprinter who still had two legs of their own. Why did I need a tool to do what I could already do myself?”
I stroked his curls. “You stood up to them?”
He shook his head. “That’s the thing, I didn’t for long. I got tired of the constant punishment and ridicule. Maybe it would have been different if I had support from friends or teachers, but everyone who discovered my ability only sneered and laughed. No one said it was good. So, I stopped fighting. I took the normal clarinet and the normal lessons. I went to university for music to be a real musician in an orchestra so my parents wouldn’t be ashamed anymore.”
I clenched a fist against his back. Anger bubbled in my chest for all that was stolen from him and for who he could have become had his parents protected him.
It was a rage as familiar as my own skin. It was the same I held for my parents and teachers, for Juniper, and for the families of many of my friends in Free Jinx.
“You deserved better, and if you want me in your life, I will make sure you have it.”
Elliot tensed against me. “How? Very few will ever accept my music. I know that.”
I grasped the back of his neck gently. “I started a whole town for people the world rejected… and they’re all trapped and maybe dead, but still. If I could give them a place to belong, I can do that for you. No hiding.”
I felt him smile against my neck. “You sound like Jag.”
“Because he’s right. I’ll fight for you and protect you until you get your fight back. Even after you do, I’ll still fight.”
Elliot didn’t say anything for a long time, but he didn’t pull away from my hug either.
Grab his butt,my brain said.
Fuck off, we’re having an emotional moment.
Keeping my hands on his neck and upper back, I said, “What changed to make you play your dickstrument again?”
Elliot rested his chin on my shoulder and sighed. “I met Jag and Moe. Jag was actively searching for people with a similar ability to him. He figured others must have made a deal with his crossroads djinn too, and he wanted to start a band.” He snorted. “Somehow, getting a dicktar reawakened his desire to be a musician. He found Moe through posting a personal ad for musicians who played body parts.”
I laughed. “Moe would answer an ad that sounds like a creepy scam.”
“Yeeaahhh, he’s definitely answered worse ones.”
I stoked the back of his neck. “How’d they find you?”
Elliot shifted his hands from my back to my hips. “Well, my brother Jamie is a terrible gossip and told everyone he knew about my claridick. Somehow, the rumor made its way to someone in Moe’s band and to Moe. He and Jag tracked me down. I lied about my cock until they dropped their pants and showed me what they could do. Right there in my apartment lobby. Thankfully, no one else was around.”
I burst into laughter. “Did you strip down too?”
“Not until later. I couldn’t believe there were others like me. I could play the way I preferred with others in a band! Performing with a traditional instrument never led to anything; I wasn’t skilled enough to be a professional that way. The three of us rehearsed and wrote songs… and then we got arrested at our first public performance.”
And his hope was stolen, along with his freedom. I kissed the side of his face. “Your woodwind is better than most people’s… well, woodwind.”
