Page 24

Crispin

C rispin savored the strange feeling that shimmied through him like an electric charge, trying to identify it. It was…

Happiness.

He was so used to his day-to-day routines, feeling satisfied when he accomplished all his tasks at work. Feeling content when Minkis snuggled up next to him at night. Feeling… all sorts of things that were a pleasing color, more peach or brown or warm gray than black. Or white. But not like this.

This was the brilliant yellow of a fresh-bloomed sunflower. The shocking fuchsia pink of a sand flamingo from Oobert Prime. The deep, vibrant blue of the waters around a tropical isle on Earth. It suffused him with pure joy.

“So, what do you think?” Leo was staring at him with those puppy-dog eyes. But somehow they weren’t so much puppy-dog as… well… somehow he had become more Leo , more certain, taller?

“What?”

“I said, where do we go first?” Leo frowned. “Did you hit your head on something? Or did that kiss screw with your brain? It did with mine.”

Crispin blinked. “I don’t know. Maybe if we….”

“Um… Crispy?” This time, it was Leo’s eyes that went wide.

What now? He turned to follow Leo’s gaze, fixed at a point over Crispin’s left shoulder. Another Leo stood there, just like the first, but… different. His clothes were a mishmash of Leo’s, bits of the various outfits he had worn. “Don’t go. We miss you.”

We? “I’m so sorry, but we have important things to do.” Crispin spoke primly despite the fact that he was kind of unnerved.

Another Leo had appeared next to the first, this one with antlers. “Don’t go. We miss you.” The two mouthed it in almost perfect unison, but there was a slight dissonance in the voices.

“Leo, what’s happening?” He turned back to Leo… his Leo—what a wonderful thing that was to think, even in these strange circumstances—who shook his head, his mouth open.

Three more of the strange apparitions appeared behind Leo, one with wings. The third one, strangely, had slitted cat eyes. “Don’t go. We miss you.”

The walls of the room billowed outward, as if pushed by a stray breeze. As if they were no more solid or real than fog. Or tinsel.

More and more of the Leos appeared, each one different from the next, each one pushing out the walls. Suddenly there were ten. No, twenty… no, a hundred of them now, each muttering his own version of “Don’t go. We miss you.”

And then he noticed his Leo. “You’re… melting!”

Leo stared at him for a second before looking down at his own body.

It was, well, not so much melting as evaporating, like a thin layer of snow on the branches of Crispin’s home tree when the spring came. Wisps of Leo’s clothing were trailing up into the air, disappearing into it like so many tendrils of smoke.

“It’s…. I can feel them. They want me back.” Leo didn’t sound scared.

Why aren’t you scared?

“Don’t go. We miss you. Don’t miss. Go. We you.”

The words were jumbling together in a chaotic way, which totally made sense, or at least he would have thought it did if he hadn’t been overcome by a sudden panic. I’m losing him.

“Leo, you have to fight it!” He reached out to touch his charge’s… his friend’s… his lover’s face, but his hand passed through it as if it were made of air.

Leo’s gaze flickered to him, his eyes widening in recognition for just an instant. “It… feels so good. They want me to come home.”

Maybe I should let him go. Leo was back where he belonged. This was his home. To the seventeen hells of Arcturus with what everyone else wanted.

Only he wouldn’t be Leo anymore. He would just be another strand of Chaos. Not the charming, bumbling, unaware of how handsome he was human who Crispin had gotten to know. To care for. To….

“Leo, I love you!” Where did that come from? Only, as soon as he said it, he knew it was true. It had burst out of him from the depths of his soul, fully formed, something that had been growing there for days.

The room went deadly silent.

“You… love me?” Leo stared at him, his tone flat, and Crispin’s heart fell to the ground with a wet, squishy thump.

He doesn’t love me back. He must have imagined it all.

The stolen glances, the kisses—no, those had been real, he was sure of it.

But Leo wasn’t like him. Leo was a literal force of nature.

Who was Crispin to think he could hold on to Chaos?

Even such a handsome and confounding piece of it as Leo? I’m such a fool.

“You love me.” This time it was said with more force. The color came back into Leo’s cheeks.

“Don’t go. We miss?—”

“Quiet!” Leo’s whole being shuddered. His body firmed up, drawing the mists back in. “If we do this, we do it my way.” He glared at the thousands of other Leos that surrounded him.

Crispin stared at his Leo. “What’s… what’s happening?”

Leo met Crispin’s gaze, and this time Crispin felt as though he was the one who was melting.

Leo was himself again, the lovable dolt Crispin had fallen for.

“I love you too, you hidebound idiot,” Leo said as he knelt and picked Crispin’s heart off the floor—apparently this was quite a literal place—and gently pushed it back into his chest.

It started to beat again, and Crispin’s world lit up. He loves me too.

No matter what happened next, that was enough. It filled him with wonder.

Leo frowned. “I have to deal with my… siblings.” He turned away, and it should have been like the sun setting, but instead a steady warmth popped and crackled inside Crispin like a cheery fire. “On my terms, not theirs.”

Leo spread his arms. “I miss you,” he said, his words creating a fog in the air. “Don’t go.”

The thousands of Leos around them began to shudder, to lose cohesion.

One by one they evaporated into gray smoke once more, but their essences—sparkling like a technicolor rainbow—drifted in streams toward Leo.

He held up his arms as the first of the essences transfixed him like a spear, his hair rising into the air and filling with golden sparks.

Crispin stared.

The influx intensified. The other Leos fed their energy into him, and his whole body shifted, sometimes having antlers, sometimes wings, sometimes becoming something else entirely. But he was always recognizably Leo.

Then even the walls melted away, the whole world shuddering and fizzing and bubbling around them as it rushed to become part of Leo. Soon they were in a blank white space. Or maybe it was black, or gray? It was impossible to tell.

As the last of the essences slipped into him, Leo shivered and then collapsed, his eyes closed.

“Leo!” Crispin leapt forward, or whatever happened. Motion in an empty place was as uncertain as color. He was at Leo’s side, cradling his head in his hands. “Leo, are you all right?”

He looked like Leo. He smelled like Leo. But what if he wasn’t really Leo anymore?

Leo remained stubbornly unconscious, a bit of drool slipping down his chin.

He’s not dead, is he? Crispin felt for a pulse. There was none. “He’s… gone.” He killed himself, for me.

His heart shattered in a million pieces. Leo was gone. Chaos was gone. He was trapped in this awful, empty place and Leo was gone and Chaos was gone and he had probably just destroyed everything and Leo was gone?—

“Hello?”

Crispin’s heart raced at that single word. He’s alive!

Leo’s eyes opened wide. But now they sparkled with rainbow hues instead of the dull gray that had come before. His eyes fixed on Crispin. “Who are you?”

Crispin’s heart threatened to drop out of his chest again. “You… don’t remember me?”

A grin spread across Leo’s face. “Of course I do. I was just messing with you.”

“But how? You were dead. I checked your pulse?—”

“This place isn’t real, remember?” He reached up and rested his fingertips on Crispin’s neck. “You don’t have one either.”

Crispin touched his own neck, and sure enough, he seemed as dead as Leo. He grinned.

Leo pulled Crispin’s face to his.

This time, there were no fireworks.

In any case, they didn’t need them. As Crispin discovered over the next few…

minutes? Hours? Time seemed meaningless here.

He and his love became one in a way far more meaningful and beautiful than whatever had transpired with the Chaos creature moments before.

And it was better than momentary pyrotechnics.

When it was over at last, they lay side by side in the nothingness, panting.

“I could stay here forever, just like this.” Crispin had never felt so glorious. So at ease. So right.

Leo’s home reminded him of the Un-Place. Were they one and the same?

Leo shook his head. “Damage to fix, remember?”

He sighed. “I know.” He stared at the blankness—what would be sky in another world—and wondered at such a perfect moment. A stray thought occurred to him, dragging him back to the present. “What did you do? Just before…?”

A lazy grin on Leo’s face told Crispin he knew exactly what “before” meant. “I made them come to me. To become a part of Leopold, and not the other way around.”

“So you’re now…?”

“Mr. Chaos?” He grinned. “Yeah, pretty much.” He shook like a dog, and a whole world of riotous colors exploded out of him, spreading out into a great open field of flowers under a blue sun. “Pretty neat, huh?”

Crispin sat up, hugging his knees, concern impinging on his pure ecstasy. “But are you really still Leo ?”

Leo thought about it for a moment. “I think so. I can leave the rest behind. It’s like… swimming in an ocean, maybe? I can dry off, but I’ll always have a bit of it with me.”

“You’ll carry some of it with you?”

“I guess.” His face scrunched up in that adorable way. “Are you sure you want to be with me? Things tend to be a little… unpredictable with the LeoMonster.”

“After all that happened, and you ask me that?” Crispin laughed.

“I… I think we’re meant to be together. I can’t explain it any better than that.

You’re the missing part of me.” Maybe it had happened the first time he’d opened the Door, when he’d been brushed by what had become Leo. Maybe it didn’t matter why .

A flight of butterflies in a thousand colors exploded out of the vast nothing, surrounding them in chaotic color.

Chaos wasn’t something to fear. He understood that now. “Of course I want to be with you.”

Leo smiled, and the butterflies vanished, leaving just the two of them. “So, how do we get started fixing the damage we caused?”

Crispin was grateful for that shared pronoun. “Well, we need to fix Thea. Can you take us to a particular place and time?”

Leo closed his eyes. “Like where?”

“The Office of the Lost. Early in the morning, before everyone else is there.”

“Not sure. It feels… I think if I concentrate on what I want, I can take us where we need to be. Maybe. But it may not be what you expect, and I will be… limited once we get there.”

Crispin frowned. “Limited how?”

“I can do anything here.” He held up his hand, and clouds gathered above them, thunder clashing with rain. He waved again and they disappeared. “But in the real world, not so much. I’m still figuring it out. I’ve never been corporeal for this long, before… well, before being Leo.”

Crispin kissed his cheek. “And you have no idea how glad I am of that.” He stood, dusting off his pants. Well, of course there was dirt in… Chaoslandia? He held out his hand. “Let’s go. Are you ready?”

Leo grinned. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Their hands touched, and the world dissolved around them.