Hushed Willows east of the sun

The other man's poor mimicry of him broke through some of his nerves. He laughed, a little more freely than he had thus far in Alejandro's presence. "That's not what I said," he argued, but did not seem terribly bothered at being misquoted. He could acknowledge that it amounted nearly to the same thing, even if he maintained that he hadn't sounded quite so sappy.

Alejandro's next argument was a little harder for him to accept. It sounded a little as if the faerie was suggesting he had a tendancy toward liking other men — which was absolutely not the case! Even thinking it took him back and made him feel oddly defensive. This wasn't about him, after all, it was about Alejandro and his allure.

"It does matter," he said, sounding as though this was just the beginning of his rejoinder. After a moment, however, it was clear he had no follow-up. "It does where I'm from, anyway," he ammended, his tone a little less firm. "But maybe — I mean — " my grandfather married a river. He realized that voicing such a thing would absolutely make him a romantic, and with a rueful smile, he decided he was not quite ready to concede this victory to his new friend.

"I guess where I'm from doesn't matter much, these days," he admitted instead. This place was obviously done, and he didn't want to go back to Easy or Sunspot empty-handed. Or maybe he did. Maybe he wouldn't mind living at White Spine forever, and helping Easy raise a million dumb little pipsqueaks. Or maybe he wanted to go back to Round Valley and marry his cousins after all, or maybe —

He wasn't sure. What he wanted was tied inexorably with what he thought others wanted, and with what he thought others thought. Sometimes he wasn't sure if he really wanted to find his father, or if he just wanted to want to. It made the way he wanted Alejandro so much more strange and disconcerting; wanting things just for himself was too guilt-enducing to contemplate, never mind the implications of the creature his adolescent mind had chosen to fixate on.

But being in Alejandro's presence made it easy to push such worries away. The other kept pushing for eye contact, which felt almost as equally unnatural as eyeing the other man's junk, but Valiant hadn't averted his gaze then, either.