“And I’ll teach him how to clean up his room before we construct Lego bridges and blow them up with tiny bits of C-4.”
Bruce blinked. “Seriously? You blew up your Legos?”
“Oh yeah!” Laddin looked like he was in the midst of a really good memory. But then he focused back on Bruce. “This isn’t infatuation, and I’m too old for endless rounds of fucking.”
“You’re a year younger than me!”
“Exactly. Which means it must be getting pretty boring for you too.”
It had been. Until he’d met Laddin.
“It’s what I want, Bruce. I want a life where you come home to me and little LB.”
“Lyndon B. Johnson?”
“Laddin and Bruce. LB.”
“Except your name is A-laddin. And no kid of mine—pretend or otherwise—is going to be mistaken for a politician.” His expression softened. “How about Aaron? That was my grandfather’s name, and he was a pretty cool guy.”
Laddin grinned. “I like that.”
“Yeah,” Bruce said. “Me too.” And by that he meant he liked the whole vision. The two-story house, the kid blowing up his toys in the backyard, and Laddin with his arms open wide when Bruce came home from work. “I like that a lot.”
“I love you,” Laddin said, and this time the words settled deep into Bruce’s heart and soul.
“I love you too,” Bruce said, the words a bare whisper because he was awestruck by the power of them. He was in love. Real love, with someone who loved him back. Someone who knew who he was deep inside and still wanted to build a home with him—who wanted to make a family with him. It made his knees weak with gratitude, with joy, but most of all, with love.
“I wish it was real,” Bruce said.
“It is real,” Laddin said. “Because we’ll make it so.”
“Yes,” Bruce agreed. For Laddin, he’d make it work. “We’ll adopt, right? No firstborn from us.”
Laddin nodded, both aware of the fairy promise. “I don’t need a baby from my body. I just need a child and someone to raise him with.”
With that thought in mind, with the image of their family settling into his heart, Bruce pressed his mouth to Laddin’s. It was meant to be a soft kiss—they were still in the middle of a battle, after all. But along with the love came passion. And so when he kissed Laddin, his mouth grew firm and hungry. Laddin was equally bold, equally demanding.
With every twist and thrust of their tongues, they loved each other. Completely, lustfully, and with their whole hearts. Heat built while the fairy power zipped between their bodies. It was lust, joy, and wonder, plus a myriad of other wonderful emotions mixed in. But most of all, it was love, newly found and shared between the two of them.
Eventually they had to stop kissing because they needed to breathe. When Bruce pulled back, he realized he couldn’t hear hissing anymore. Then Laddin looked around and whispered, “Where’d it go?”
Bruce looked up. He saw blue sky, and he heard silence.
The demon was gone. The kangaroos and their riders were gone. Even the lich was nowhere to be seen. And while everyone else was looking around in dazed confusion, Erin clapped her hands in delight.
“You made it smaller!” she said in satisfaction.
Actually, Bruce was pretty sure they were both bigger, right then, which was embarrassing because they were both still naked from their romp as wolves.
“What the hell is that?” Wiz said from down by what had once been the edge of the lake.
“It’s a baby!” Stratos said as she bent down to see. She didn’t touch it, but just squatted down and stared.
Bruce and Laddin looked at each other, their eyes wide with shock. Bruce was the first to speak. “It can’t be.”
“I bet it is.”
“But… it can’t!”
“Yes, it can. The pixies made what we thought about—him.” Laddin looked down at Erin. “Right? That’s our baby?”
Erin nodded. “You had a very good thought.”
“Yes, he did. We did!” Laddin said as he took off running down toward the edge of the lake.
Bruce watched him go, his mind refusing to move but his body quickly following anyway. But when he got to the edge of the lake, Lady Kinstead was there, and she knelt down to where Stratos refused to go. With gentle hands, she scooped up the child and wrapped him in her scarf. Laddin was at her side, looking the baby over with greedy eyes.
Then he looked up at Bruce and pointed to the child’s face. “He has the dimple. Right there. Your dimple.”
Lady Kinstead smiled. “And he has your eyes and nose,” she said sweetly. Carefully, she offered the child to Laddin. “You have a beautiful son.”
Laddin gathered the child. Someone had taught him how to hold a baby, because he quickly tucked it close. Then he looked up at Bruce. “We made a baby,” he said, laughter in his voice. “Bruce, look!”
Bruce was looking, but his mind couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. “We were just talking,” he murmured, even though he knew it was a lie. They’d been creating. They’d been forming a future with words, fairy magic, and love.
He stepped closer. He had to see. He needed to know if it was true.
Others were coming over as well. On two feet or four, they edged closer, but Laddin was holding the child as if it was the most precious gift in the world. Which, now that Bruce thought about it, it was.
“Hey, little Aaron. I’m your daddy,” Laddin cooed. “Well, I’m Daddy Number One. Daddy Number Two is over there.” He looked up. “Come on, Number Two, say hi to your son.”
Josh had made it to Bruce’s side. His face had a streak of mud across it, but that didn’t dim his grin. “You have all the fairy magic in the world, and you make a baby with it? What, no power left over to give Uncle Josh a Ferrari?”
Bruce shot his brother a look. “You
