#he mostly just told me about legos and transformers and then asked me to draw with him

[cetoddle]

i’m so goddamn tired

[platypanthewriter]

The Devil Looks After His Own Ch2

Part 1:  Little Steve Harrington is so lonely he tries summoning a demon with a ritual advertised on TV--but luckily, it doesn't work, and a buff, non-human nanny hired by his mom shows up minutes later.  Years later, they're best friends, and Steve still doesn't know the truth.  For @magniloquent-raven​!

The other thing that Billy did that no other grown-ups Steve knew had ever done was have sex in bathrooms.  He wasn’t sure for a while—because Billy always made sure Steve was fine, settled with his pancakes at IHOP, or in the play area at Fred Meyer—but Billy would leave for about twenty minutes, and come back sweaty and grinning, and kind of tired.  

Steve snuck after him, once, and saw someone holding Billy’s wrists against the wall of the bathroom and kissing him, sliding his hand down to unbutton Billy’s jeans and pull his penis out, and Steve had stared through his fingers just long enough to see Billy grinning into the kisses, and shifting his hips.  

Steve’d run back to his pancakes, his heart pounding.  

He realized, thinking about it as he drew designs in the syrup with his fork, that Billy was that thing he’d heard yelled when somebody kissed boys—a slut—and he wondered whether it mattered.  Billy did everything he was supposed to do, and he was nice, and stuck around with Steve in the shoe section while Steve tried on every single pair, and then when Steve didn’t want any of them, Billy took him to three more stores.  

It couldn’t be a bad thing, Steve thought, biting his lips, not if Billy was one.

When the guy who’d been kissing Billy walked out—he had gray speckled feathered wings, so Steve was pretty sure it was him, even from the back—Steve ducked his head down over his pancakes.  By the time Billy wandered back, still grinning, to slump in the booth, Steve’s jaw had firmed.  Billy had looked happy, and he was okay, Steve was pretty sure.  Probably.  Even if it was the kind of thing that made parents yell like they did when they were scared. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, his cheeks reddening again, keeping his eyes on his eggs.  Billy sat up and faced him, flattening his hands on the table.  

“What,” he asked, levelly.

“Are you okay,” Steve mumbled stubbornly, hunching his shoulders.  “Y-you looked—okay.  H-happy.”

“...you followed me,” Billy whispered, his fingers clenching into fists.  “Shit.  Uh, darn. ...it.”  

“I won’t tell,” Steve said, shrugging awkwardly, and wishing he hadn’t been worried enough to see where Billy was going, because now he was more worried.  “If—if you’re okay.”

“...I’m fine,” Billy said, which was what he’d said when Steve’s dad had threatened to fire him, and Steve wasn’t sure he believed it.  

He forced himself to look up at Billy, surveying his just-washed face, and how pale he’d gotten since Steve opened his dumb mouth.  “I’m not mad,” he said, which was weird to say to a grownup, but Billy looked like he might want to know.  

“Just disappointed?” Billy asked, laughing, and grimacing.

“No,” Steve said quickly.  “I-I’m not.”  He’d been thinking about Tommy’s elder sister, and how she’d gotten in big trouble when their parents found condoms in her room—and how he and Tommy had hidden at the top of the stairs, listening to Tommy’s parents yell.  “Um are you u-using condoms,” he asked as fast as he could, and Billy choked on the water he was sipping, coughing and thumping himself in the chest.  

“Kid,” he spluttered, and Steve made a face at him.

“Are you?” he hissed.  “You have to be safe.  I love you.”

Billy stared at him for a long second, until Steve started feeling embarrassed, even though it was just what he said every night, as Billy put him to bed.  “...love you too, brat,” he finally muttered back, leaning his face in his arms on the table with a deep sigh.  “I’m...fine.”

“I don’t believe you,” Steve said, his cheeks heating further, because he’d found Billy that very morning trying to fill a sandwich with chunky soup.  “We should—we should talk to—to my mom, or a teacher.  So—so you can be safe—”

“Oh my god,” Billy mumbled, folding his arms over his head.  His ears were very red.  “I can’t catch anything from a human, okay, I’m not gonna get syphilis.”

Steve had no idea what that was, but it didn’t make him any less worried.  He took a bite of egg as the server came over and asked how his breakfast was, and he nodded to her, smiling, even though he was so worried the egg tasted like nothing.  “Wh-what about saying no,” he whispered to Billy, as soon as she was gone.  “You, um, you can say no to—to uh, things, right?”

“I can and I do, kiddo,” Billy laughed, sliding his hand over to link their pinkies, his face still hidden in his other arm.  “I’m okay, Stevie, I swear.  You made sure I could say no, remember?”

“You’re still bad at it,” Steve said, because usually Billy scooped him up and put him in the bath, or in bed, even if Steve was laughing and yelling ‘Nope!  No!  You jerk, I’m still eating!’, but sometimes Steve would forget, and tell Billy to do something, and Billy would take a deep breath and hold very still until Steve remembered.

“Sure, with you,” Billy said, raising his head enough to grin lazily at Steve, and Steve couldn’t help smiling back.

“We should talk to—to somebody,” he said, stubbornly.  “A—a real grownup.”

“I’m real,” Billy huffed.

“Somebody older,” Steve hissed, and Billy made a face.  

“I’m older than your dad,” he muttered, crossing his arms.

“But you—you’re not human,” Steve reminded him.  “You—you’re like a teenager.  You said.”

“Nooo, come on, kiddo, lemme alone,” Billy groaned.  “I’m old enough.” 

Steve narrowed his eyes and grabbed Billy’s phone, and typed s-a-f-e into the search bar, and then braced himself, and tapped s-e-x.  He hunched his shoulders, his face burning, and hit search.  He found a lot of...things, and squeaked in a kind of dying way through his hand.

Billy snatched the phone back, looked at it, and said “Oh my god.  Stevie.  Stop.  I will research it myself, and I—I will be careful.  Okay?” 

Steve buried his hot face in his hands, nodding, and trying to suppress horrified giggles.  He kinda wanted to turtle into his jacket, or crawl away under the tables, but he just pulled his knees up on the seat, and tried not to whine like a tea kettle.  

Billy grimaced, scrolling through his phone, and Steve realized—while his ears probably smoked with the imagery he’d seen about things in butts—that Billy’s shoulders were up, and he had his arms crossed in front of himself too.

“Sorry,” Steve wheezed, through his fingers.  “Y-you aren’t—you aren’t gross!  Sorry!  I just—I just love you and—I have to keep you safe—”

“I have to keep you safe,” Billy told him, grinning, and shaking his head.  “I’m more grown up than you, fetus.”  His cheeks were pink, and Steve scowled at him, then kicked at his knees under the table.

“You’re bad at some things!” he hissed, as Billy yelped, swinging his legs away.  “I have to help, I have to help you—”

Billy shushed him, laughing, and then opened his mouth, and closed it, as Steve sipped at his hot chocolate.  Billy waved at it, and suddenly it was hot again like it had just come from the kitchen, and had rainbow sprinkles, and Steve sighed, wanting to—hug him, or something, and feeling the same annoying worry he always felt when he wasn’t doing enough.  He knew Billy’d stay, he told himself, as long as he could.  

As long as Steve could keep him wanting to.

“Finish your pancakes,” Billy told him, grinning.  “Gonna take you to the park.”

Steve liked the park okay, mostly because it was where they went when somebody was happy with him, but it was also worrying, because it was where they went when his parents wanted him to shut up and go play.  He was pretty sure this time was both, but when they got out to the parking lot, Billy grabbed him and spun him around so his legs swung around in the air, and hugged him the whole way to the car, and when they got there, he didn’t send Steve off to play while Billy talked on his phone, so it was Good Park Reasons.

“You’re not...mad,” Steve asked, cautiously, and Billy laughed, squeezing him tighter.

“Nah,” he said.  “You?”

“Naaaah,” Steve giggled back, drawing out the syllable.  

 There was a pattern to Billy being a slut, Steve noticed, because if it was Billy, it couldn’t be a bad word.  They’d be out, and somebody would see Billy, or Billy’d see them, and Steve would see them staring at each other.  “I’m going to go listen to storytime,” he’d announce, or “Look, there’s a play area here, I’m gonna go ride the bouncy horse.”

“Me too,” Billy said once, cheerfully, grinning at him, and Steve shook his head.  

“They don’t allow grownups on the bouncy horse,” he said slowly, wishing he didn’t have to tell Billy sad things when he was grinning, but Billy just laughed, hugged Steve’s head—messing up his hair—and walked off.

 When Steve had to start first grade, he clung to Billy the night before, and Billy carried him around for two hours, making him giggle as they made popcorn and watched cartoons on Netflix, and then pulled a big wrapped present out of nowhere.  It was a new LEGO set, one Steve had never even heard of, a dragon that could transform into a pirate ship.  

“Is it that weird?” Billy asked, grimacing at it, while Steve stared, and Steve threw his arms around Billy’s neck, shaking his head.  

“I don’t want to go to school.  I want to stay home with you,” Steve said into Billy’s shoulder, and sighed.  

“Maybe I should put it away, then,” Billy said, raising his eyebrows.  “I was saving it for when you had to go back to school, but if you don’t want it—”

“I want it!” Steve yelped, scrambling back out of Billy’s lap to huddle around it.  “I want it, I want it!”

“Okay,” Billy told him, ruffling his hair.  “We probably won’t finish it tonight, but once you make a ton of friends, I’ll need something super cool to get you to hang out with me, right?”

“No,” Steve told him, laughing.  “You’re my best friend.”

Billy laughed, but he didn’t look convinced, so when he got the fruit snacks out after dinner, Steve gave him all the blue ones—they tasted best—and the trucks, which were biggest.

“Ah,” said Billy, biting his lips together.  “They’re very...warm,” because they’d gotten a little sticky as Steve waited for him to finish the dishes, but he crouched and pulled Steve into a tight hug.  

 Steve fell asleep curled up against Billy’s shoulder, and woke up in his bed, with his mom shaking him awake.  

“I told Billy we don’t need him during the school year,” she said, frowning at her phone.  “During the day, anyway.  He’ll still come by and feed you, and put you to bed.”

She wandered off, and Steve wondered, clutching his blankets, whether anyone would make him breakfast.  He climbed out of his bed feeling kind of...bad, like he’d had a nightmare, and might cry.  He sniffled, and rubbed his face, and stayed in his pajamas until after breakfast, trying not to think about his usual mornings, with Billy pretending he was an out-of-control backhoe and scooping him out of bed, or Billy humming at the stove as he made Steve eggs and toast.  

Steve’s eyes leaked a little, and he stomped to the bathroom and blew his nose, feeling like a big baby for missing Billy so much.  He got himself cereal, and remembered shopping for it—Billy’d slowly taken over all the things Steve’s mom and dad used to do, like buying him new school clothes, and taking him to the doctor—and Billy had let him pick out things his mom never would have, weird fruits they didn’t know how to eat, and once, because Steve had liked it, a set of footie pajamas with rainbows and unicorns that was definitely for girls.  

He’d warned Steve, once they were back in the car, that sometimes people were mean to boys who wore unicorns, and Steve had held up his middle fingers, the way he was allowed to do when their downstairs neighbor called Billy mean names.

“You tell ‘em, tiger,” Billy had said, laughing.  

 The day school started, Steve hugged himself in the soft unicorn pajamas, and pulled the hood over his head.  He tried to stop crying so he could go finish breakfast, but he kept thinking of awful things, like what if Billy didn’t come on weekends anymore, and it was just Steve all alone in the house, and what if nobody bought food at all, and what if Billy was taking care of some new kid he liked better.  His mom found him bawling on the toilet, and groaned.

“You have to go to school even if you cry,” she said flatly, and Steve nodded, sniffling.  

“C-can I call Billy,” he whispered, his voice sounding kind of funny, like he was sick.

She rolled her eyes, sighing, but handed him her phone, and he fiddled with it until she yanked it back, clicked around, and handed it back, ringing.

“Yes ma’am?” came Billy’s voice, and Steve stood up.

“BILLY!” he yelled, and Billy laughed.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, “—did you need something?  You know I’ll see you after school, right?”

“I miss you,” Steve told him, with another sniffle, and Billy started making all these shushing, calming noises, like the time Steve had fallen down the outside stairs of the apartment building, and Billy’d been more freaked out than Steve was.  

Steve giggled, wetly.  “Um,” he asked, clearing his throat, “—are—are you with a...different kid?”

“No!” Billy laughed.  “No way, short stuff, I’m just at the laundromat, okay?”

“If you get a different kid,” Steve said, stubbornly, around the hard lump in his throat, “—they have to let you say no.  They have to tell you you can say no, you have to—”

“I’m okay, Stevie,” Billy said, sounding a little teary himself.  “I’m gonna see you today, and we’re both okay, okay?  We’re gonna both be fine.  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I wouldn’t be there this morning, I didn’t know either, okay?”

“...okay,” Steve mumbled, glaring up at his mom, who was inspecting the edges of her false nails.

“I’ll talk to you later, all right, my man?” Billy asked, and Steve nodded, swallowing.

“Later,” he managed.

“So dramatic,” his mom said, grabbing her phone back, and hanging up.  

 Steve waited for the school bus with four older kids who kept screaming and pretending to shove each other into traffic.  He rubbed his nails up and down his backpack straps, making a wsht wsht wsht noise, and worried about Billy.  It was hot already in the sun, and he squinted watching for the bus.

The teachers met them by the bus, and they did a roll call, different loud voices yelling out their names.  Right after Steve’s name was called was Billy Hargrove, by the same teacher, and that was Billy’s name, his whole name that Steve’s parents used.  Steve spun, huge-eyed, to see a kid run up, his age, but definitely Billy, and Steve threw both arms around him, trying not to cry.  

“Is this okay?” Billy asked, stiff and nervous, and Steve squeezed him tighter, feeling how small he was, Steve’s size or even littler, but still with his pretty hair, and his earring.  

“You two are friends, huh?  That’s nice,” the teacher told them, smiling, and Steve nodded at her.  

“He’s my Billy,” he said, unable to stop smiling, or let go of Billy.  Billy looked kind of startled, and proud of himself, the way he did when he cooked something right the first time, or found the boy’s shoe section.

“Are you gonna come all the time?!” Steve whispered, and Billy shrugged, raising his eyebrows.  

“Maaaaybe,” he whispered back, but he was smiling as huge and goofily as Steve, and Steve missed paying attention to half the first day of class, he was so excited.  Once he got Billy alone, at recess, around the side of the gym, he hugged him again, and Billy laughed.

“Are you a genie,” Steve asked, half serious, and Billy stilled again.

“...what d’you mean,” he asked, cautiously, and Steve laughed.  

“You keep giving me wishes,” he said.  “You gave me a best friend.  And I’m not lonesome at school.  And the LEGO dragon,” he told Billy, holding both his hands.  “That’s three wishes.”

Billy was watching him uncertainly, and Steve was happy, not mad, so he leaned in and kissed the end of Billy’s nose.  Billy squirmed away, laughing.

“That’s not all, though,” Steve told him, grabbing his hands again.  “You got me Honey Nut Cheerios yesterday.  I know we were out of them, Billy.  You got my mom the job she wanted...I think,” he said, because he’d had suspicions, but Billy grimaced guiltily, and then he was sure.  

“I got a best friend out of it too,” he muttered, glaring at Steve.  Steve grinned at him, and Billy sighed.  “Don’t worry, you’re not gonna run out of wishes, I’m not the guy from Aladdin.”

“You’re a genie?” Steve whispered, bouncing a little on his toes, and leaning in too close, probably, his weight squishing Billy’s shoulder blades against the cement wall of the gym, but then he remembered that Billy was bad at saying no.  He stepped back.  “Um, do you—do you need help?”

“I’m okay,” Billy said, laughing again.  As a kid, his cheeks were kind of pink and round, and Steve clenched his fists so he wouldn’t get grabby.  

“Could—could people make you do things?” Steve asked, biting his lip.

“You could,” Billy said, smiling, and turning even pinker.  “But you don’t.”

“I won’t,” Steve nodded.  “Is there—is there something people could—could someone steal you,” he asked, his voice cracking as the horrible thought occurred to him, and Billy shook his head, laughing.  

“It’s not exactly like that, there’s no lamp, or anything,” he said, glancing at Steve, and then frowning at the ground.  “I-I’m not exactly a genie.  I’m—I’m just yours, as long as you want me.”

“Oh,” Steve said, in a small voice, wondering how he’d gotten so lucky, and also feeling like this was an even bigger responsibility than a puppy.  “Um.”  

“Or you can send me away,” Billy said, smiling, a little.  “If you get bored.”

“I wouldn’t ever,” Steve said, pulling him into a hug again, and sighing into his smaller, softer shoulder.  “Um, unless—unless you want me to.”

Billy shook his head, hugging Steve back.  

 He knew even less about first grade than Steve did, which was kind of weird, but fun, because Steve got to show him how to sharpen pencils, and clean the whiteboard, and Billy listened to books like he had no idea what was gonna happen, even books Steve had heard over and over before.  

“Your new friend’s kinda dumb,” Tommy Hagen said, glaring at Billy, and Steve scowled.

“He’s smart!  And he’s pretty, and he’s nice,” Steve hissed, and stomped away, and Tommy knocked into him every chance he got after that, spilling Steve’s paint and his glitter and his cheerios, but the teacher was a fairy, and she waved everything tidy, hovering about three inches off the floor in annoyance.

“Read me the next one,” Billy whispered, when Steve went to find out what he was doing by the bookshelf.

“...you can read, though,” Steve said, and Billy nodded, sitting next to him, and leaning his head on Steve’s shoulder.  

“I was up early,” he mumbled, and Steve put an arm around him, and read him the story.  

 He turned back into himself—the Billy Steve was used to—after school, and Steve watched him, fascinated.  

“What do you really look like?” he asked, and Billy shot him a frown, clenching his hands around the steering wheel.

“Uh, what does that...mean,” he asked, and Steve watched him, wondering if Billy’s shoulders hunched up when he was nervous because that’s what humans did, and Billy was copying, or whether that was what genies did, too.  

“I just wondered,” Steve said, shrugging, and he looked away, trying to look uninterested.  “You don’t have to tell me.  Uh, recess is uh, fun, huh?  Um, I like the tire swing.  We should, uh, we should...make a snack.  At home.  Later.”

Billy laughed.  “You’re such a good kid,” he said, grinning over, and Steve’s whole face reddened.  

He nearly swallowed his tongue.  “I—I’m normal,” he said, and Billy reached over and ruffled his hair.  

“I dunno, kiddo, you seem pretty great to me.”  Steve groaned, hiding his bewildered grin in his arms, and Billy was quiet for a long second, before saying “...it’s not like here, where I’m from.  I can’t...be like I am there.”

“Oh,” said Steve, nodding a lot, because he had no idea what that meant.  

“This is how I look here,” Billy said, smiling over.  “There’s no big secret.”

“Ohhhh,” Steve said, nodding again, kind of disappointed, but considering the genie from Aladdin—the only genie he knew of.  “It’s probably easier, having feet,” he offered, and Billy snickered.  

“Yeah, yeah, it is.”

The real thing Steve wanted to ask seemed kind of...big, bigger than whether Billy was secretly blue.  “Um,” he said, frowning down at his hands.

“...what’s up, bud?” Billy asked, raising his eyebrows, and Steve made a face.

“Uh, where did you...go?  When my mom said you had to leave.  Do you…”

“I told you, I took everything to the laundromat,” Billy said quickly, and Steve shook his head.  

“No, I mean...where do you...live,” he whispered.  “I thought...I thought you lived at my house.  You never left before.” 

“I’m okay, I’m fine,” Billy said quickly, and Steve bit his lips together, kind of hating his mom.  “I just, y’know.  I don’t sleep, exactly, I found a cafe—”

“That won’t work,” Steve said, feeling the weight of Billy being his, and setting his jaw.  “I’ll...I’ll tell her I need you to make breakfast.  I’ll make a big mess of the kitchen—”

“Don’t worry about me, kiddo,” Billy said, laughing.  “It’s not like she made me go home.”

“It’d be nice if you did have a lamp,” Steve sighed.  “With little stuff in it, you know, like Polly Pocket.  You could go in there when you wanted to.”  Billy started laughing, cackling so hard he pulled over and folded his arms on the steering wheel, and when he looked over, finally, Steve stuck his tongue out.  “It’s not that funny,” he huffed.

Billy beamed at him, and ruffled his hair again, roughly, like he was trying to mess Steve’s hair up, and wiped his eyes.  “You know what I can do,” he said, softly, leaning close, and Steve leaned towards him.  The vinyl of his seat creaked.

“Why are we whispering?” he asked.

“I can change size,” Billy told him, grinning.  “You want to build me somewhere to live, Stevie?  With your LEGOs?”

“Ohhhh,” Steve gasped, staring at him.  “Let’s go home right now,” he whispered back.  “Do—do you want a castle?  Or a—a death star,” he whispered through his fingers, his voice squeaking.  “A ship?!”

“We can look at all the options,” Billy said seriously, and Steve stomped his feet on the floor of the car like drum beats, he was so excited.  

 He had homework when they got home, writing about his summer, and he groaned.  

“You can do that while I fix dinner,” Billy said, like it didn’t even matter that Billy could be the right size to open the doors in Steve’s LEGO haunted mansion.  It was hard to focus on his math worksheet for that and a lot of other reasons, like Steve got addition, it made sense, he didn’t need to think to remember what 2+3 was, and also Billy was cooking, and that was hard to ignore.  

He was making mashed potatoes, and Steve was girding himself to eat them, watching Billy frown around the kitchen and then shove the potatoes in the blender, click it to make it go, and listen to it struggle.  Billy turned it off again and glanced worriedly back at Steve, who pretended to be working very hard on his worksheet.

The fridge door opened, and Steve tried to watch surreptitiously—and sure enough, Billy had figured out that the blender needed liquid, and he was pouring Steve’s dad’s kombucha-cola into the blender with the potatoes.  

Steve tried not to grimace, but then Billy sniffed it, made a face, and pushed two pickles into the mess, and he couldn’t help asking “Um, what do you eat?”

“What,” Billy hissed, turning to hide the blender from Steve with his body.  “I eat—food.  You’ve seen me!”

“You, uh, I think maybe you didn’t used to,” said Steve, watching the greyish-greenish color the mashed potatoes were turning with fascination.  “So, um…”

“I’m not hurting anybody,” Billy said, hunching his shoulders like Steve might think maybe he did, and Steve scoffed, turning to a worksheet page on using ‘a’ or ‘an’ in sentences, which was even worse.

“I know you aren’t,” he told Billy, rolling his eyes, and Billy laughed, relaxing a little.  “What d’you eat, though?”

“...I don’t…” Billy trailed off, grimacing.  “I don’t eat like you do.”

“Oh,” Steve nodded, watching his face hopefully, and then frowning at the worksheet.  “Are you like a tree?”

“...sort...of,” Billy muttered, rubbing his face, and Steve realized Billy was turning red.  “When I...make people...happy, it’s like...sun.  For a...tree.  In a...way.”

“You make me happy all the time,” Steve told him, and Billy made a face, turning redder, and Steve let himself look away from the worksheet, trying to remember whether ‘y’ was a vowel.  He watched the wet, brownish-greeny-grey potatoes whirling soupily around in the blender.  “I mean, except for sometimes when you won’t look up recipes online.”

“They’re impossible to fuck up,” Billy moaned, grabbing his phone, and frantically typing.  “I can’t mess up mashed potatoes, Billy, nobody can mess up mashed potatoes—”

“Whoever said that didn’t know you’re not human,” Steve told him, “—because that’s, uh.”  

Billy switched the blender off, sighing heavily as he stared at the slow bubbles rising through the muck.  “...cereal?” he offered, defeatedly.

“Cereal is good,” Steve said, guessing that ‘an’ was correct and writing it in, and Billy groaned.

“How about I have Mr. Johnstone remember you when he’s taking his cookies out of the oven, and bring you some?” Billy asked, and Steve brightened.  

“How come you can’t make me want to do my homework,” he huffed, and Billy paused, frowning over at him.  

“Is that what you...want?” he asked.  

“....no,” Steve said, because Billy’s eyes were smoking, a little, for the first time in months, and also it did sound kind of weird.  “...have you...ever?”

“Ever what,” Billy said, staring at him, and starting to pour Steve’s milk on the counter, instead of into a bowl.

“Billy!  Bowl!” Steve yelped, pointing, and Billy grabbed a bowl, fumbled it, and then dropped it, so it smashed all over the kitchen floor.  

“Fuck,” he hissed, waving his hand, and the glass pieces all flew up to be a bowl again.  Billy leaned back against the counter, his shoulders slumped, rubbing his face.

“...wow,” Steve whispered, because Billy rarely did anything obvious, it was always ‘Oh, no, Steve, you didn’t leave your new baseball cap at the zoo, I have it right here,’ or ‘Of course your dad will come out for dinner with you, kiddo,’ and then the wi-fi failed, and he did.  “I just mean, um.”

“What,” Billy sighed.

“When I had the flu, did, uh, did you...make me sleep?” Steve asked, because he’d wondered about that one, waking up to his parent’s panicked faces in the hospital.  “Until I felt better?”

“You told me to,” Billy said, watching his face.  “You said.”

“...only if I asked,” Steve said, nodding slowly, and Billy nodded a couple times, faster.

“Only if you tell me to,” Billy nodded.  “Mr. Johnstone always means to bring you cookies anyway, I’m just reminding him, is all—”

“How come you don’t use it to do the laundry, and...things,” Steve asked, since Billy was answering, and Billy laughed.  

“I could,” he said, shrugging.  “You need to know how to do it too, though, right?  This way, we can do it together.”  

“...did my mom…” Steve began, remembering the long-ago commercial, and making a face as he imagined Billy ordered to pour something over his own head.  “...does my mom...have your...lamp?  Is that...is that why you have to listen to me?”  Billy opened his mouth, frowning, and Steve shook his head.  “I-I know you said it’s not a lamp, but—”

“...I don’t have to do what your mom says,” Billy told him, cocking his head.  

“...just me?” Steve asked, and Billy leaned back against the cupboards, crossing his arms.

“...yeeeah,” he said, warily, and Steve breathed a sigh of relief, nodding, and kicking his feet under his chair as he thought.

“Do…” he began, and trailed off, and Billy came over and sat down at the table, raising his eyebrows.  

“Spit it out, kiddo.”

“...my magical people encyclopedia,” Steve started, then paused, trying to figure out how to continue.  “...it, uh, it says to...it says not to..ask for things.”

“What did you want to ask for, Stevie?” Billy asked, with a long, contented sigh, folding his arms behind his head as he leaned back in his chair.  He sat his feet on the chair next to Steve, grinning.

“No, no, I don’t—I don’t...want anything,” Steve said, and Billy sat his boots on the ground again.  

“What’s wrong, buddy,” he asked, sitting up to reach across, and squeeze Steve’s hands.  Billy’s hands were twice as big as Steve’s, and Steve always felt safe, when Billy held him, but he shut his eyes.  “It—it says if you ask for things, there’s always a...price.  It says—not money, but—it—it can go wrong, I might—forget someone, or they might...forget me, uh,” Steve paused, swallowing, as Billy’s hands on his went still.  “Somebody wished for their dead son back, and he came back but he wasn’t alive, or...or she wished for treasure, but then she got arrested for stealing it…”

Billy smiled, a little, but not like anything was funny.  “...oh,” he said, finally.

“It—the book said not to just...wish for things, if you didn’t know how you were...paying,” Steve mumbled.

“I’m not a monkey’s paw,” Billy growled, “—or a like, a fae lord, I’m not tricking you out of things you want, I’m not going to steal your memories, or your name, or anything—”

“Tommy doesn’t wanna be my friend anymore,” Steve said, his voice wobbling a little, because he hadn’t had a lot of people who really liked him, until Billy.

“Tommy’s a little shithead,” Billy muttered, but Steve talked over him.

“...if I have to...pay something to be friends with you,” Steve said, thinking about how his parents barely knew he was there, and whether they ever had, or whether he only remembered them that way, “—is—is that—”

“Shit, no,” Billy breathed, shoving away from the table and stomping over to lean against the sink again.  “I didn’t—fuck, there’s nothing I can say, is there, I could have done anything, you can’t believe me—”

Steve blinked wide eyes at the words Billy was using, glancing up the hallway in case his mom or dad came around the corner.  “Ssssh,” he whispered.  “Sshh, I believe you!  Don’t say the f-word, you’ll get in trouble!”

“Who cares, right,” Billy hissed.  “I can just make them forget it, right?!”  He looked really upset, Steve registered, kind of relieved, even though he’d known Billy was his friend, really.  Billy looked like he might cry, and Steve got up from the table, and went over to hug him around the waist.  

Even if Billy had taken his friendship with Tommy in trade for wishes, or something worse, Steve thought, it’d probably be worth it.  “...I didn’t mean…” he sighed.  “I know you wouldn’t...on purpose.”

“What’s that mean, on purpose,” Billy asked, disentangling himself from Steve’s hug, but just to pick him up.  Steve hugged him again, around the neck, and messed Billy’s hair up the way Billy always did Steve’s.  Billy laughed softly.

“...you’d make sure I wanted to pay for the wish.  You wouldn’t do anything that made me sad on purpose,” Steve said, sighing.  “I know you wouldn’t.”

“...sad, no,” Billy told him, squeezing him harder.  “Mad, maybe.  You aren’t paying for wishes, kiddo.  If you want Honey Grahams because I’m a shitty cook and I ruined lunch, I’m not going to steal your memories.”

“You wouldn’t take away somebody liking me,” Steve whispered, and Billy rocked him a little, sighing.

“Nope.”

“Mom and Dad never liked me, it wasn’t you,” Steve mumbled, and Billy froze.  “You didn’t take that.”

“Oh, jesus, kidlet,” he said softly.  “Of course they...do,” he said unconvincingly.

“They don’t,” Steve sighed.  “But you do.”

“Yeah,” Billy told him, swaying Steve a little, and rubbing his back.  “You’re my favorite.”

“Favorite what?” Steve asked, giggling, and Billy hrrrm’d.

“Favorite everything,” he whispered, lifting Steve way high up so he could put his hands on the ceiling, and swinging him around while Steve laughed.

Next Chapter!

[tripstations]

Following Greta: joining the Swedes on their no-fly holidays | Travel

At Hamburg central station it felt like the whole of Sweden was taking the train to somewhere else in Europe. You could hear snatches of Swedish everywhere. When we queued up to buy water, both couples ahead of us were Swedes. An entire handball team from Gothenburg was going by rail to a tournament in Austria.

“Sweden is trend-oriented: if there’s a new trend, everyone will follow it,” said Anna Maria Hilborn, an art teacher I met when my five-year-old son started spinning around a signpost on the platform with hers.

Sweden’s flygskam, or flight shame, movement first came to notice in the summer of 2017 when the singer-songwriter Staffan Lindberg wrote an article co-signed by five of his famous friends, in which they announced their decision to give up flying. Among them were the popular ski commentator Björn Ferry, opera-singer Malena Ernman (the mother of climate activist Greta Thunberg), and Heidi Andersson, the eleven-times world champion arm-wrestler.

Concourse, Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. Photograph: imageBROKER/Alamy Stock Photo

However, it was last summer that flygskam really gained momentum. Passenger numbers at Sweden’s 10 busiest airports fell 8% from January to April this year, following a 3% fall in 2018, according to Swedavia, which operates them. The number of journeys on Sweden’s national rail network increased by 5% last year and 8% in the first quarter of this year, according to Swedish Railways. Meanwhile, sales of Interrail tickets to Swedes increased by 45% in 2018 – and are expected to rise again this year.

“The big thing, of course, was the very warm summer last year,” Hilborn told me once we were on the train to the Rhineland city of Duisberg, the German countryside rattling by outside. “I think it affected people because it usually isn’t that hot in Sweden. It had an impact on farmers: they had to slaughter some of their animals early. And people felt it, too, of course.”

Seeing the effects of climate change in the here and now made Hilborn decide that next time she took her annual trip to visit her brother in Innsbruck, Austria, she would go by train.

“My personal impact won’t change a lot,” she said. “But when a percentage of people start doing something it creates a new norm. So, just by being a part of that movement and sharing it, I’m doing something.”

After nearly eight years living in Malmö, I’m perhaps Swedish enough to start following national trends such as flygskam, which made the official list of new Swedish words for 2018. I signed up to the country’s Flygfritt 2019 (Flight Free 2019) campaign in February – even though, strictly speaking, I had already failed, as I’d flown to the UK at the start of January.

Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg speaks at Extinction Rebellion’s environmental protest camp, London, April 2019. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

Using the calculator on the International Railways Union’s EcoPassenger site, I realised that by taking the train, rather than flying, on my four annual visits back to the UK would cut my annual CO2 emissions by about 1.8 tonnes, if you adjust for the impact of emitting at height. That is close to half the total annual carbon emissions, excluding flights, of the average person living in Sweden. To me it seemed crazy to pass up that kind of reduction to save a few days and a few hundred pounds.

“Your poor children,” my stepmother said after I announced my plan to travel overland from Malmö to my parents’ home in Surrey. My wife, while supportive, had nightmare visions of me and the children stranded on a cold station platform for the night. Though the truth is that seven-year-old Eira and five-year-old Finn loved it. In each direction, they got more than 24 hours of nearly non-stop parental attention, unlimited screen time, and Lego sets and craft equipment bought by their Swedish mum.

There was the excitement of passing through five countries – Denmark, Germany, Belgium and France on the way out, plus the Netherlands on the way back – and the thrill of racing through the French countryside at 186 mph on Eurostar. At the good-value A&O hostel we stayed at in Hamburg, Eira was inexplicably reduced to hysterical laughter by the large selection of goodies you could sprinkle on top of your yoghurt at the breakfast buffet.

On the train to Duisberg, at 3½ hours the longest single leg of the journey, I also met Elin Persson and her husband Morgon, on their way to Málaga with their four children. Like Hilborn, Morgon is an artist: a glass-blower who transforms used wine and beer bottles into vases. Elin Persson conceded that many of the Swedes she had seen travelling fitted a particular demographic. And it is true that the success of the flygskam movement has generated a backlash, with politicians and columnists in Sweden attacking it as a form of one-upmanship: one where middle-class Swedes sneer at their working-class compatriots for taking charter flights to Thailand or the Canary Islands.

Duisburg harbour, Germany. Photograph: Getty Images

“Mostly, it is now middle-class, but hopefully it will spread,” said Susanna Elfors, co-founder of the Tågsemester (Train Holiday) Facebook group which over the last year has gained 90,000 members.

I’d been thrown together with the Perssons by a 20-minute signalling delay that meant we all risked the same domino-chain of missed connections.

“You are the group leader,” the conductor informed me with mock formality as he shared my route, which had slightly better connections, with other Brussels-bound passengers. In the end, we had just four minutes to rush down the underpass and up to the right platform in Duisberg – with Finn on my shoulders, my wheeled suitcase trundling behind and Eira gamely struggling to keep up.

We made it, but the experience underlines the risk of international train journeys in a system not yet designed for them. Instead of buying a ticket all the way to your final destination – as was the case before budget flights replaced international rail travel – a sequence of shorter journeys is now purchased. With the ticket I bought online from Loco2, we had reserved seats on specific Eurostar and German Intercity-Express (ICE) trains. If we missed a connection, we would have no right to take a later one.

In the days before I left Malmö, I’d regretted not making more of a holiday of it. Aside from an hour and a bit in Brussels, our only stop longer than 20 minutes was the hour and a half we had in Ösnabrück on the return leg. We did manage to entertain ourselves, however.

Although no one said anything, German travellers seemed less indulgent of small children than those back home in Sweden. But the comfortable table seats we had booked on the German ICE trains were perfect for drawing, playing Lego and making wool pom-poms. The short trips we had on standing-only overcrowded local trains in Germany and the Netherlands were more difficult.

Hook of Holland terminal, the Netherlands. Photograph: Alamy

We stayed away from the decent-looking ICE restaurant cars selling German food, such as currywurst and beef gulasch, but indulged ourselves whenever the trolley selling drinks and pretzel breads passed by (although coming from cash-free Sweden, I was astonished they didn’t take cards).

In Brussels, we visited an overpriced restaurant outside the station to try the national dish – some of the worst mussels I have ever eaten. I made up for the disappointment on the return leg, by gorging on deep-fried mussels from Hoekse Vishandel outside the Hook of Holland ferry terminal.

“Are there places like this all over the Netherlands?” I asked the owner. “There are,” he said. “But we’re the best.”

In Ösnabrück, a city in north-west Germany, we missed the medieval centre and renowned zoo but met an engineering student in Burger King who kept the children spellbound as he explained the workings of his self-built electric skateboard.

Osnabrück, Germany Photograph: Getty Images

On the 45-minute ferry from Germany to the Danish island of Lolland, the children threw themselves around in the wind so wildly on deck that they fell asleep as soon as we got onto the rail replacement bus to Copenhagen. Indeed, Finn was so exhausted that when, an hour later, he threw up half-digested spaghetti bolognese over his sister, he didn’t even wake up. By that time all we had left was a hop over the Öresund Straits, and a short cycle home to our apartment where, at well past midnight, the children were greeted by their relieved mother.

The trip took two more days than it would have if we’d flown, but they weren’t days wasted. They might even be the best I’ve spent with Eira and Finn all year.

Journey times from Malmo to London By train: from 18hrs 52minutes with four changes (source Loco2) – but factor in more time if you want a less tiring journey. For example Richard and family spent a night in Hamburg. By air: from 4hrs 25 minutes, with one stop (SAS).

Carbon emissions from Malmo to London By train: 53.9kg. By air: 269.8kg (source: ecopassenger.org)

• Tickets booked online at Loco2. Outbound journey: depart Malmö 3pm, travelling via Copenhagen to Hamburg (accommodation at the A&O Hostel); then to London St Pancras via Duisberg, Aachen (Eurostar from Brussels). Return journey: Stena Line night ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland, and then to Malmö via Schiedam, The Hague, Hengelo, Osnabrück, Hamburg and Copenhagen. Trip cost: £710, for one adult and two children.

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