Page 48 of Better in Black
Zachary began to calm a bit; his sobs became a bit more spaced out, his breath hitching.
Kellington turned to Thomas. “I hope you know,” he said, as though reciting from a card, “that the Hell Ruelle is always appreciative of the Nephilim’s presence in the city and their enforcement of the Accords, to which we are enthusiastic signers. That said,” he added, “get out.”
“All right, Zachary,” Alastair said. “Come on, it’s time to go.”
Zachary tensed up again. “No,” he declared. He reached down and grabbed the seat of his chair with both hands.
“Zachary—” Alastair said, his voice rising.
“Alastair,” Thomas said, “can I speak to you over there for a moment? Kellington, perhaps you could have Zachary’s lemon squash refreshed? We’ll be off in just a moment.”
Kellington looked sour. Thomas yanked Alastair into the closest empty alcove.
“Alastair,” he said urgently. “I know you said he’s like you, or like you wanted to be, once. But he’s also still a child. He stuffs candy in his mouth and cries and gets all sticky. He’s a child’s idea of what an adult might be. So we can’t just berate him into doing what we want. He’ll become more and more defensive.”
“He drives me absolutely bloody mad.”
“Yes,” said Thomas. “Yes. He is your brother. He drives you mad because you are brothers. Driving each other mad sometimes is going to be a permanent part of your relationship. But also loving one another despite all that.” He leaned forward and rested his forehead briefly against Alastair’s—if there was one good thing about the Hell Ruelle, it was that here was the unusual public place where this behavior would barely be noticed, much less disallowed—and whispered, “And I love you, so I want you to hear that I’m not criticizing you. I understand. But you have to talk to him like you care about him.”
Alastair pulled back, calmer than before. He nodded, looking stoic, and they went back over to Kellington’s table.
There, Kellington had not refreshed the lemon squash, but it didn’t matter, because Zachary had his eyes squinted tightly shut and was humming “God Save the King” as loudly as he could. Alastair again sat next to him and patted his back.
“Look, Zachary,” he said quietly. “I know you want to play with the cards and have more lemon squash, and you absolutely can, that’s absolutely all right. But you don’t want to be like this forever. You’re my little brother and you’ve got your whole childhood ahead of you. You shouldn’t lose that. Let us take care of you.”
Thomas thought this was well done, but Zachary drew himself up tensely. “Oh, you want to take care of me, do you? Of course you do. In the way you want. Because you don’t like me like this.”
He pushed himself up from his chair and folded his arms athis brother, in a very Alastair-like gesture. “But you don’t like me much anyway, do you? You don’t like anything I do or how I do it, you just want me to do what you say. I’m a grown-up, I demand respect, and I can chew on the Duke of Wellington’s head if I so choose!” With a flourish he drew a large lolly from his pocket and slammed it on the table. “This should settle my debts,” he told Kellington coldly, turned, and in high dudgeon stormed out of the room. Alastair sadly watched him go.
“We have to go after him,” Thomas said.
“I know, I know,” Alastair said. “Only give me a second. I really thought I had it that time.”
Kellington picked up the lolly and gave it an experimental lick. “Now get out. I’d ban you both if I could.”
“If you could?” said Thomas.
Kellington grimaced. “Yes, well. I am not about to cross Anna Lightwood. She scares me.”
Back in the filthy alley containing the Hell Ruelle’s front door, Alastair put his hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “You have to talk to him next time,” he said. “He won’t listen to me.”
“Alastair,” said Thomas, “do you know why I fell in love with you?”
“Not the time,” Alastair started to protest, but Thomas put a finger to his lips to shush him.
“When I met you,” he said, “first at school and then when you moved here, you weren’t that different from him. Except, I suppose, you couldn’t yet grow the mustache.”
“I am a bit jealous of the mustache,” Alastair admitted.
“Do not grow a mustache,” Thomas said doggedly. “My point is, you were like Zachary is. You said it yourself.”
“Demanding?” Alastair said wryly. “Supercilious?”
“Defensive,” said Thomas. “That’s what I saw, after a while—thatall of your bluster and hardness was to defend yourself. Against the world, against your father. But I started to see through that to the boy you really were within yourself, who wanted desperately to love and to be loved. Even though you’d grown up too fast. Because your father didn’t want to deal with a child, so you tried to make yourself an adult. What you said to Zachary before, about it being terrible to miss those years—I know you missed them. And it’s your love for Zachary that makes you not want that for him. Tell him you love him, all right? Even if he drives you mad.”
Alastair’s look had softened. He leaned in and kissed Thomas. Thomas let himself fall into the kiss for a long moment, feeling the warmth of Alastair’s mouth against his, the flutter of his eyelashes against Thomas’s cheek.
Reluctantly, after a moment, Alastair pulled away. “We’d better go find him.”
