Chapter 6

Chapter

Six

T he knock made Cosmo stir, and he found he could move away from Hawk. They slid apart, and he grabbed his robe on the way to the door. Whoa. He was a little sore and a lot…bowlegged.

He cracked the door open. "What?"

"Breakfast. Come on. We're going to Ty's." One of Corbin's green eyes peered at him through the tiny opening he'd made.

"See? I told Hawk that was what we would do."

"You fucked him."

"First, fucked is just not a very nice word." Cosmo stopped, chuckled, then rolled his eyes. "God, yes. Do you blame me? He's beautiful."

"I kind of blame you." Corbin sighed and shook his head. "Still, it doesn't matter. We're going to go to breakfast, and—" Corbin stopped. "What if he can't go through?"

"What?"

What did that even mean? Of course. Hawk could go through. Hawk was a dragon.

"Well, the other dragons can't come through this way. We can meet them out there, but they can't get through…"

"Oh." Cosmo hadn't considered that. "Fuck that's bad."

Not that Hawk couldn't go out, but if Hawk went out, then Hawk couldn't come back in. And if Hawk couldn't go out and come in, then Hawk couldn't be in his house, which was where Cosmo lived.

And Cosmo wasn't living out there because his brothers lived in here and their whole, entire job was to guard this house.

Oh, this was a problem.

Was it fair to just not to talk about the veil with Hawk at all? To not show him where to go.

Seemed like the easiest answer.

"Well, I don't like this at all," Cosmo told his brother. "We have to fix this."

Corbin's lips twisted. "But if we fix it, then we open the veil again, and then dragons can come in and out at will, and I don't think that's the way this is supposed to work."

"We don't know how the hell anything's supposed to work. We are just making this up as we go along, and we both know it. All three of us know it." He was not going to scream. Not.

"True. But we have to at least pretend that we understand this, otherwise people won't trust us when we let them come, and you know, tell them they have to go in. Everyone says that the dragons will come here to get into the veil." Corbin always had an answer for everything.

Cosmo wasn't sure what to even say about all this because there was also an opening to the Land of Summer, and he was pretty sure that the dragons weren't supposed to go in there, even though Dad was in there. This was hurting his head. "How come nobody just lets you have sex and sleep anymore?"

"Do you want me to just bring you bacon?"

"Yeah. Can you just bring me, like, a lot of bacon? Possibly some pastries or something? I'm really hungry, and if I'm really hungry, then he's got to be super hungry."

"Of course. You know that I won't let you starve. Much. And then, only when I'm mad at you." Corbin stared into the bedroom again, then he got an evil grin. "Was it good?"

"Absolutely fucking stunning. I mean. Like whoa."

Corbin groaned. "Really?"

"Uh-huh. Tell me what I want to hear." He waggled his eyebrows at his brother.

"I am so jealous."

He threw the door open and hugged his brother hard. Partially because he loved his weird, crazy elder brother, but mostly because it was really fun to hear Corbin squeal about bodily fluids because…naked!

Cullen would have been even more horrified, but he would take this.

Once his brother left, he went back to sit next to Hawk on the bed, hand on Hawk's warm belly. He was like a furnace.

"What's wrong, sweet?"

"It's obvious, huh?"

"A little bit, yes." Hawk sat up, dragging Cosmo into his lap. "Talk to me."

"So…the veil opened, and a bunch of dragons went in, most of them." That was the easy part.

"Yes, I assumed that was what happened. I missed it, I realize." Hawk gave him a wry sort of smile.

"Yeah. Yeah, you did. Anyway, that was where I wanted to go for breakfast. But dragons who cross the veil don't seem to be able to come back."

"Ah. You are worried I would be stuck."

"Yes, I just found you. I don't want you to go off into this big, huge, magical, wonderful dragon space and not be coming back, especially not when I have to be here to be like Super Guardian Man. And let me tell you how unfair it is that I have to be all Super Guardian Man with my brothers when we're not very big. I don't know if you've noticed. I mean, we're very, very smart and we're kind of mean and we're super good at really screwing things up and making people miserable. But like. Guardians, no."

He just thought Hawk should know.

Hawk blinked at him, kind of frowned a little bit, leaned in. "I have no wish to leave you."

"Well, that's nice." And it was comforting, although it didn't actually answer any questions, because how long could anyone be happy just staying in this one house? I mean, he could go toodling over to the Land of Summer and see his mum; he could go out and see Arielle. He could go out into the human world, even though everyone thought that he was a little strange and possibly permanently flushed. If he had a dime for every human person that had asked if he had rosacea, he would have a lot of dimes.

"So what does that mean in practicality? Because you and I both know that no one can just stay in a house."

"I do not know." Hawk spread his hands. "I mean, I woke up in a cave recently. And…" Those dark cheeks flushed even darker. "I am sure your brothers would not be pleased to hear that some say I am not stable, my love. I have slept a great deal since the dawn of the new century."

He frowned. "Like since the early 2000s?"

"Oh, have we changed, then?"

"Oh yeah that was a while ago. Not too terribly long, but a while."

Regardless, that didn't answer the question about what they were going to do if Hawk went over to Lunastra and then couldn't come back.

Cosmo didn't want to live in a casita. He wasn't one hundred percent sure that he wanted to live where it was winter in June. Just like he didn't know if he wanted to live where it was summer all the time.

But he did know that he wanted to live with his brothers. They'd always been together, and he wasn't ready to discuss them not being that way.

"At any rate, I told them to bring breakfast back. We at least have to discuss this."

Although maybe they didn't have to discuss it. It wasn't like Hawk was officially his, or even unofficially his. It was sort of like not a thing.

People and dragons and fae, they did what they needed to do, and just because Cosmo wanted him to stay, didn't mean Hawk wanted to stay.

Goddess, his head hurt.

"We are officially ours." Hawk touched his cheek. "At least that is how I feel. But if you find you cannot reconcile me with your life, my little rose, I understand." Hawk's expression shut down some. "I am difficult."

"You are?"

"Yes." Hawk didn't elaborate, but he could tell this was going to be a thorny subject.

"Why? I mean, is it a choice? Because we could all just be easy for a while."

Hawk's laugh was like a rusty gate swinging. "I will try for you, but Cosmo, I am old. I have forgotten many things. I hurt sometimes. I was born in Lunastra and I was thrust out and I never could get back. I think it tore something in me."

Oh.

Cosmo stopped suddenly and looked at Hawk, horrified. "Hurting? Oh, dear. Well, then no. No. If you need to go. Then you have to go."

He wouldn't have Hawk hurting, not for something as silly as just being with him. Not when Cosmo could go out and come back and do whatever he needed to. That was… Well, it was mean.

And he wasn't mean.

He never thought he was mean.

Do you want to go now? Cosmo had no idea what was going to happen, but he'd spent an enormous amount of time with the universe telling him what was going to happen and him not understanding what that meant.

This wasn't much different.

"Do we need to find your hoard first? Or if I find it, do you want me to bring it to you? I don't even know what I'm looking for and I sure haven't found it yet. But I've been busy."

Hawk stroked his back, hands never still. "Not if you cannot come with me. Not if I cannot be here, in your home with you. There's a reason you are between worlds. A purpose. I can feel it." Hawk took one of his hands and put it over Hawk's heart. "Here."

"Yes, but?—"

"Mmm. No buts. I feel certain I would not truly belong there anymore, either. It has been…millennia."

"Oh, so you've been gone a long time."

Hawk blinked at him, obviously confused. "Yes. You don't seem to be confused by that."

Cosmo snorted. Confused? Him? "Why would I? My people have been around for millennia." Cosmo imagined he was old enough to have seen civilizations rise and fall. What was time to him?

Sometimes, he thought entire worlds came and went in the moments that he was just playing ball or chasing his brothers through the grass.

In the Land of Summer, time meant very little.

Not to people like him.

Hawk chuckled. "You are different, aren't you? Unique in all the world."

"Not at all. There are two carbon copies of me, a green one and a lavender one."

"No. No, they are lovely and bright, and they keep things growing and sow illusions… But you shine like a beacon. You are a perfect rose in a thorny land, my love." Hawk waxed poetic for him, and it made his heart melt. Goddess, Hawk was like no one he'd ever met in his whole life.

He wasn't sure he could just let Hawk walk away into the dragonlands.

"We'll figure it out."

That was Cosmo's position—they had plenty of time. What else were they going to do?

They could explore the house.

Make love.

Obviously, Hawk could go outside into the human world, so it wasn't like he was being confined to a house.

Oh…house arrest. How funny was that? Cosmo started laughing, the giggles just kind of pouring out of him, and Hawk looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

Which maybe he had. He was considering house arrest of the biggest dragon he'd ever seen.

"What's so funny, my rose?"

"It's hard to explain. It's going to take hours and hours of CSI to get you to get this."

"CSI?"

Oh dear… "How do you feel about television?"

He knew how he felt about television—which was the boob tube was a fabulous thing, and there was a reason that he had agreed to become the guardian of the veil.

He not only got cable; he got Amazon deliveries on a regular basis, because goddess knew those at the Estes clan had requests.

Daily.

He was going to buy stock in Doritos.