Lonely Hearts (22 page)

Then he shook them off, pulled out his phone and sent a text to Lewis.
Give me a call when you're off work. I have a proposition for you.

While the rest of the White House hugged a shell-shocked Lewis as Elijah delivered the news of who their newest resident would be, Baz leaned against the kitchen counter and scoured the Internet for leaks about his mother.

Mostly the Beltway media circle-jerked over whether or not Paul Barnett would get confirmed, and conservatives trotted out their usual scree about how Paul Barnett was more liberal elite than the Kennedys. Baz dug into a few deeply partisan sites, where he found a lefty blog bragging about inside intel saying Gloria Barnett Acker was on the short list for Senate replacements, and a right-wing one painting his mom as out of touch and snobby and dumber than a box of rocks all in the same breath. That was all, though the teasers on The Maddow Blog hinted Rachel was about to spill all the beans. Baz had an email from Giselle too, with five attachment files full of media training PDFs. Pursing his lips, he closed the mail app.

He put his phone away and did his best to engage in the happy moment in front of him. Having come straight over from the cafeteria, their new resident was dressed firmly as Lewis, but Baz didn't want to make assumptions on who it was wiping away happy tears while perched delicately on a kitchen stool. He wasn't the only one wondering, it turned out, and Mina broke the ice by coming out and asking, “Should we call you Lejla or Lewis? How do you want us to refer to you?”

“I don't know. Lewis for now, but not…not for long. I want to be Lejla, but it hurts to be her without
being
her, if it makes sense. I compartmentalize her like a separate self, though that's actually wrong. She
is
me. But I'm still working on accepting that and being comfortable allowing others to address me that way.”

“Keep us posted, okay?” This came from Giles, lacing his fingers around Aaron's on the tabletop. “We want you to feel comfortable.”

“When will you move in?” Aaron asked.

Lewis blushed and tugged at his ear. “I—I don't know. When can I? I mean—I haven't talked to my parents about rent, and Elijah didn't say how much it was.”

“You can move in tonight, if you want,” Baz said. “Have your parents talk to me about rent, but it's not going to be an issue.”

Lewis began weeping again. Giles and Mina exchanged glances, then began a campaign to haul ass across campus that exact second and move their new resident in immediately. When this idea got some traction, Baz fished out the Tesla keys and tossed them to Aaron.

“Go ahead and get started. The football team should still be at practice, so you've got a clear shot. If you take my car and Giles's both, you might get all of it in one trip. We can move the spare bed from our room.” Another news alert flashed on his phone's home screen, and a wave of weariness hit Baz in the gut. He caught Elijah's eye. “Hey, babe, can I talk to you?”

Elijah went still. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I—” He rubbed his jaw and stifled a sigh.

Aaron came to the rescue, herding the others out, leaving the two of them alone. Elijah leaned against the fridge with his arms folded nervously over his chest once they left.

Baz flattened his lips. “Don't look at me like that. I want to tell you something, okay?”

Elijah relaxed, but not much. “Sorry. It's been a weird day.”

“Yeah, well.” Baz fished his laptop out of a sea of junk mail on the table and flipped it open to Google News. The article about his uncle for AG was at the top of the feed. “I need to talk to you about this.”

Elijah glanced at him. “I take it you knew this was coming?”

Baz nodded. “I've known for a while but wasn't allowed to tell anyone. Not even Marius or Damien, not you.”

“It's not so bad, right? It's not like he's President.”

Baz pulled up one of the lefty blogs about his mom. “No. But she's about to be a senator. They'll dig into all aspects of her life.” He swallowed and spit the rest of it out. “They'll investigate me, and everyone associated with me.”

He waited to see how Elijah would react. He wasn't sure what he expected, but what he got was Elijah's face shuttering as he fixated on a dent in the tabletop. “So probably it's not good for you to have controversial people around you right now.”

Baz frowned. “No, the controversy will bloom up around me naturally. Why do you say that, though?”

Elijah spun the computer closer to him, typed in his name. After clicking a link, he turned the computer to Baz. “I found this earlier today.”

Baz read the bullshit about Elijah being a manipulative evil elf with bile in his throat. His nostrils flared, and he curled his fingers on the table edge. “What a bunch of fuckers. Don't listen to it, Elijah. They're a bag of skinny, withered dicks.”

“Yeah, well, there are quite a few bags of dicks repeating this same shit. Like they all got together and decided to paint me as the kind of jerk who deserves to be shot.” He hunched into himself, reverting to the sour Elijah Baz had found huddling at the railing at Walter's wedding. “I won't be offended if you have to distance from me while this blows over. I get how it goes.”

Baz pulled a chair close and took Elijah's hand. “I don't want to be distant from you. That's not why I brought this up. I wanted you to know, is all. We might have to dodge reporters. I didn't want you to be surprised.”

Elijah remained slouched, and if Baz didn't have such a tight hold on his hand, he'd have pulled it away. “Fine.”

It wasn't fine, but Baz didn't know how to make it better.

Elijah jerked his head at the door. “We should go get the room ready.”

They worked in relative silence, their greatest conversation happening when they maneuvered the spare bed from Baz's room down the stairs, or at least the parts of it Baz could handle. The others helped with the heavy mattress once they were back, and soon the house was full of happy chatter as Jilly and Mina plotted a room makeover and Brian busied himself with connecting Lewis's computer to the house system. Aaron and Giles gave their new guest a tour of the kitchen and other public areas, encouraging Lewis to make himself at home.

Baz and Elijah stood on the fringes, present but absent all the same. It occurred to Baz he should have the conversation with the others he'd had with Elijah, a warning of what might well be coming.

All he wanted, though, was to find the way to wipe the hurt and isolation off Elijah's face. Something he had absolutely no idea how to do.

Chapter Eighteen

For the first few days after Lewis moved in, everything continued as it had been, this time with Lewis decorating the couch and the kitchen table when he wasn't working at food service. He dressed in either male clothing or decidedly ambiguous clothing exclusively, but Elijah noticed his housemates took pains to refrain from using pronouns and stumbled over whether to reference Lewis or Lejla.

Elijah had a hard time balancing Googling himself with the quiet, steady process of Lejla's coming out. He noticed Baz seemed screen-obsessed too, though they never discussed their findings. Baz disappeared several times with a severe-looking blonde woman in a navy suit, and when he returned, he always had a headache. Elijah assumed Baz Googled Elijah as much as Elijah Googled Baz, which meant Baz knew the drumbeat of conservative blogs eager to cast Elijah as some kind of evil gay mastermind was steadily growing, and Elijah knew the neighboring blogosphere was digging deeper and deeper into Gloria Barnett Acker's closet, hoping to find pay dirt.

They never discussed Elijah's offer to fade into the background and take potential heat off Baz and his family, but as the articles about Elijah's machinations grew longer and more intricate in their descriptions of his wickedness, Elijah worried he should bring it up in case Baz was about to do it first.

Then one day they were both distracted from their private worries. At breakfast Elijah paused his obsessive Googling to tell Mina for the millionth time he truly, completely, utterly did not want to be in the Saint Timothy Chorale and had no plans to try out when the door to the kitchen opened…and Lejla walked in.

As much as the first few days in residence had been gender male or gender ambiguous, this person was so clearly
Lejla, female
the vision took Elijah's breath away. She wore a pretty sundress, dainty white ballet flats, a cardigan, and had a bow in her hair—all things he'd bought that day he'd exploded in Target. She lingered in the doorway, a little hunched, a lot unsure, and the rest of the house stilled, waiting.

Eventually she spoke. “I'm Lejla today.”

She seemed terrified—defiant, somewhat, but mostly dazed as if she'd announced she was jumping off the top of the chapel bell tower without a bungee cord.

Mina rose first, embracing Lejla and murmuring quiet congratulations. Jilly joined in, and Aaron and Giles, and Brian. Elijah hovered to the side, unsure of how to hug it out until Mina pulled him into the thick of it.

Baz, who remained perched against the sink, slow clapped. “I think this calls for a celebration. How do you want to mark the occasion, Lejla?”

She was free of her hugging housemates now, her face flushed. “I'm not—this isn't a full thing. I'm trying it out for today, and only in the house. Sorry if that's ungrateful.”

“Not at all. But I
meant
something here. For you, and for us to share with you.” Baz's smile made Elijah shiver. “I was thinking about pizza, beer, and a Studio Ghibli marathon. Unless you're busy this weekend?”

Lejla grinned. “I'm not. I asked for the weekend off work so I could get ready to tell my parents on Sunday, when they come. I have an appointment with Pastor at his house this morning, and then I'm free.”

Baz winked as he pushed off the counter. “I'll make the appropriate preparations.”

Elijah hadn't realized how seriously Baz considered
appropriate preparations
until he got roped into assisting. “We need decorations for a movie marathon?” Elijah asked as they pulled up to a party store.

“No, we need decorations for Lejla. Brian's printing out some posters while Aaron and Giles do some creative cutouts, but we're bringing the balloons and streamers and noisemakers. And plates and cups, and a helium tank to blow up the balloons.”

“I'm assuming there isn't a section for
congratulations on your gender transition
.”

“Like that's going to stop us.”

They bought a boatload of decorations, including a few generic movie-themed items. Baz planned to pull a banquet table out of storage and set up a concessions area in the back of the room—he already had a movie-theater-grade popcorn maker. He purchased popcorn boxes, cups, and a few film reel and clapboard props he decreed were within the acceptable boundaries of good taste. They went to the grocery store and stocked up on candy, popcorn, oil, nachos, soda and beer. He also ordered a stupid number of pies from Pizza Lucé to be delivered later in the evening.

“I had no idea you had this queening-out party-planner side,” Elijah said as he aimed the Tesla for home.

“You never heard about my White House parties? I know you never came to them, but surely you heard about them.”

“I did, but I wrote it off as more choir insanity.”

“Mmm.” Baz trailed a finger along Elijah's arm. “So has Mina convinced you to join choir yet?”

Elijah winced. “Not you too.”

“I'm just saying, I need a new choir roommate for tours.”

“You have me as a roommate right now in the comfort of your own home.”

“I suppose I could ask Aaron.”

The implication being, of course, he and
Aaron
would fuck. Elijah was unmoved. “Yeah, well, that will make you appreciate me more when you come home because I'd put all my
poor Elijah
money on me being kinkier than he is.”

“True.” He ran his fingers up Elijah's arm, teasing the hair behind his ear. “It'd be fun to be in choir with you, is all.”

Elijah nudged the touch away as he pulled into the driveway. “How about we focus on planning this party.”

The others had the living room blacked out when they arrived, and the furniture arranged around the television. Mina and Jilly took over setting up the concessions table, and Aaron and Giles added the decorations and streamers to the pile of anime cutouts. Lejla seemed taken aback by it all at first when she returned from her therapy appointment, but she blushed when everyone clapped and cheered. When she saw the
Welcome Home, Lejla
sign, she began to cry.

“None of that.” Baz put an arm around her and led her to the open DVD cupboard. “This is your party. Give me an idea of what you want to watch, and you can get yourself a plate of food and something to drink.”

Looking through the cabinet, all her protestations fell away. She shrieked several times—apparently Baz had three or four versions of each movie, always including the Japanese Blu-ray. There were more titles there than Elijah knew existed—if they watched them all, they'd be at it twenty-four/seven well into the next week.

After fifteen minutes of passionate debate, Lejla and Baz decided to start with the English dubs of what they called the “standard canon”. First up was
My Neighbor Totoro
, followed by
Princess Mononoke
,
Castle in the Sky
,
Howl's Moving Castle
and
Spirited Away
. Those were pretty much the movies Elijah had seen, except for
Totoro
, which he'd heard of but couldn't track down. It was good—cute, very Miyazaki, and the music was all Joe Hisaishi, so it was great. The other films were familiar, but it had been awhile since he'd seen
Princess Mononoke
and
Castle in the Sky
.

Howl's Moving Castle
naturally resonated in a way it never had before because now Howl was firmly Baz, the handsome, charming boy wizard who didn't want anyone to see how tender-hearted and vulnerable he was. Elijah was Sophie, a self-depreciating young woman enchanted to live as an old woman, where she became oddly much freer. When Sophie released Howl from his curse, Baz's arm around Elijah's shoulder tightened, and when their doppelgängers kissed during the closing credits, Baz made quiet love to Elijah's neck.

Spirited Away
got to Elijah the way it always did. They'd had a copy in the homeless shelter where he crashed sometimes, and he'd gotten himself through some dark nights pretending he had a home to go to and all he had to do was get his name back and defeat Yubaba. His own fantasy novel had begun as a kind of fan fiction of the story, except his lead was a young gay man whose parents sold him to the witch. And yeah, the lead had sex with his version of Haku the dragon boy.

The pizza had arrived during
Howl's Moving Castle
, and by the time
Spirited Away
finished, everyone declared themselves stuffed.

“It's only nine.” Baz nudged Lejla. “I'll keep watching, if you're game.”

Elijah was on a bit of Ghibli overload, but though Jilly, Mina and Brian bowed out, Elijah, Aaron and Giles remained. He'd admit he dozed as Baz and Lejla got into some seriously deep cuts—Elijah napped through
Porco Rosso
and
Whisper of the Heart
. He was about to give in and go to bed when Lejla went up with Baz to switch the movie and gasped.

“You have
Black Butler
! Oh my
God
.”

Baz grinned at her. “I'm game if you are.”

“What's
Black Butler
?” Giles asked before Elijah could. Baz and Lejla regarded Giles with something between exasperation and pity.

“An anime adaptation TV series of a Japanese manga.” Baz turned to Lejla. “English dub, or subtitles?”

“Sebastian's English dub is so fucking sexy, but they fuck with the translation too much. Has to be Japanese with subtitles.”

Elijah raised an eyebrow. “Sebastian?”

“Yes. The demonic, kick-ass butler is named Sebastian Michaelis.” Baz's smile made Elijah want to go upstairs and get naked. “Want to see?”

“Sure,” Giles said, arm around a lightly snoring Aaron.

They ended up watching the first episode in both English dub and Japanese with subtitles. Sebastian was sexy evil, and his cultured British voice did nasty things to Elijah's insides and made him yearn to turn off the Blu-ray and go write fan fiction.
That
was the fuck-me guy chewing on his glove in the tailcoat on Baz's shelf. But when they watched the Japanese language version, Elijah noticed the subtitles had nuance the dub didn't, and soon they switched to the Japanese episodes only.

It was a seriously fucked-up show. The premise was a young boy, who'd been about to be sacrificed in some occult ritual, calling out to a demon and entering a pact to surrender his soul if the demon first rescued him then avenged the murder of his parents. When this mission was achieved, the demon could eat his soul. Somehow this meant the boy, Ciel, lost his right eye to some weird pentagram thing and had to wear an eyepatch. The demon, meanwhile, became Sebastian Michaelis, Ciel's butler, and took a ridiculous amount of pride in being fussy British and carrying out Ciel's orders. Usually this involved dismembering people with forks and knives which he stashed in his pockets and whipped out like claws fanning from his fingers.

At first Elijah thought he was writing in his own gay subtext, but pretty quickly he understood he was all but handed the pen and paper to slash Ciel and Sebastian, Sebastian and Grell (a grim reaper who fancied Sebastian) and pretty much anybody else he cared to. The “boy” was technically twelve, but he read as twenty-something. The show writers had a thing for putting him in drag, and during the scene where Sebastian helped Ciel into a corset, it was basically a panel out of yaoi. The lyrics to the opening credits kept talking about kisses and love and moonlight final nights, and they never missed a chance to pose Sebastian as sex on a stick.

When they finally went to bed at three in the morning, Elijah's body was stuffed with junk food and his brain with Japanese movies and television. While Baz took out his contacts, Elijah lay spread-eagled on the bed in pajama pants, staring at the ceiling while soundtracks and images exploded in his mind's eye. They only dimmed a little when Baz leaned over him, eyes naked in the red glow of the room.

Baz trailed fingers down Elijah's neck, and Elijah's dick stirred easily to life. During the movies he'd felt like he couldn't keep up with Baz and Lejla's anime intensity, but now Elijah had a nearly naked Baz in front of him, and mostly he was thinking about sex. He stared at the divot in Baz's clavicle, on the right side, just above an angry red scar. “
Black Butler
is pretty trippy.”

“I thought you might enjoy it. I have all the manga, but there's some great art and cosplay online, and fan fiction.”

Yeah, Elijah would be finding it directly. For now
his
Sebastian kissed his neck, and Elijah wrapped his body around Baz's, encouraging him to take what he wanted, which became Elijah kneeling and bent over a pillow, gasping out his name as Baz drove into him from behind. They spooned together after, Elijah in front, and Baz whispered in his ear, “Let me know if you want to have a little
Black Butler
role-play.”

The comment fueled some steamy, fucked-up dreams where Sebastian Michaelis made love to Howl Pendragon, usually with Elijah in the middle of their sandwich.

He slept in the next morning, and when he came downstairs, he found Lejla and Baz watching
From Up On Poppy Hill
. They put in
Ponyo
when Jilly and Mina wandered in with their breakfast, and
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
after that. Elijah elected to do a few loads of his and Baz's laundry while they watched
The Cat Returns
, but when they resumed their
Black Butler
screening, Elijah sat on the floor between Baz's legs, hiding an erection under his pillow while Baz teased his neck with fingers and occasionally his lips.

In the late afternoon they stopped, as Lejla's parents had arrived.

The Abrahamsens weren't quite as patently awesome as Giles's family, but they weren't Elijah's or Aaron's, either. Lejla had fallen back to not quite Lewis but definitely not the full-on
girl
she'd been all weekend. Her parents didn't seem terribly surprised, but they clearly sensed something was up. Lejla waved over her shoulder as she walked to their car so they could go to Pastor's house.