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“You bought what?” Michael said. The entire flat smelled of nutmeg and brown sugar and cozy spice; when he’d gotten home from lunch with Sir Ridley Scott he’d thought James must’ve been baking. He’d been looking forward to this, despite being hideously full of decadent Italian pasta, because James’s cinnamon-sugar biscuits beat out restaurant-produced tiramisu any day.
James looked a little sheepish. “They’re candles. Sorry.”
“How many did you buy?”
“Four? I’ll whip up molasses gingerbread if you want, just give me a sec—”
“Weren’t you reading a script? Don’t get up.” He bent over the back of the sofa to kiss his boyfriend—boyfriend! repeated that delighted voice in his head, permanently giddy—properly. James hadn’t admitted aloud that his knee’d been aching after film stunts and finally-wrapped footage the week before. “Four candles.”
“I like them.” James waved a hand, presumably somehow indicating the scent; Michael loved that James used gestures for explanations of the invisible, and sat down beside him. James added, “I like fall. Spice and scarves and hot cocoa and pumpkins and—”
“And candles. Where’d you get candles?”
“The bookshop?”
“Hmm,” Michael said, and stuck cold hands under the blanket to find cheerful Scottish warmth. James yelped, swore at him happily, took Michael’s hands and put them under his layers of jumper and shirt, on bare skin. Michael said, “Books and candles. I live with a witch, then, you’re saying,” and James laughed, and Michael wanted to buy him all the autumn-scented decorations in the world, but settled for kissing him senseless on the sofa on a grey-hued chilly London afternoon.
Two days later, James came home with three pumpkin-spice candles, a paperback copy of a tattered fifty-pence used Star Trek novel, a zucchini, and a loaf of raspberry wheat bread. None of these had been on the shopping list tacked to the fridge, except James’s zucchini, which had a muffin-related destiny. Michael considered this. “I’m not sure you’re allowed to go to the market without me.”
James gave him a sorrowful-kitten look. James was far too good at that.
“Is this what living with you is like? It is, isn’t it? Not,” he added hastily, “that I mind.” Those big blue eyes could effortlessly run with jokes and innuendo in celebrity interviews, but they could also flinch at non-humorous intimations of another person walking out a door with no intention of ever coming home. These days Michael’s old accordion and Metallica band memorabilia and bartending equipment lived alongside James’s library in three-week-old newborn harmony. These days his world was wondrous. “More candles?”
“Handmade,” James protested. “They smell like pumpkins. And autumn grass. And bonfire smoke. Here—”
“Yes, thank you,” Michael said, now juggling two candles and bread, trailing James into the kitchen. “You want pumpkins and bonfires in our flat.”
“I’ll make cream cakes with pumpkin filling.” James was evidently only half paying attention, entranced by autumnal temptation. “Anyway you like pumpkin.”
“I’m not sure I want to, you know, breathe and eat pumpkin…” He did love James, though. And he loved that sneaky sparkle in sapphire eyes, the light of James plotting recipes with full-on enthusiasm. “I can build a fire. I’m very manly like that. Fire in our fireplace. For you.”
James set down the third candle. Smiled. “Come on, baby, light my fire.”
“Quoting The Doors at me,” Michael informed him, “is absolutely guaranteed seduction,” and then nuzzled in closer, pressing James up against a countertop, keeping sturdy Scottish mirth pinned between his own lean muscle and smooth pale granite. James kissed him back, put a hand into Michael’s hair, tugged Michael’s head down to meet his.
They never made it to the bed. James’s pumpkin-spice candles, smug on the countertop, approved.
The week after that, shopping for gifts to send to Michael’s niece, James got distracted. “Oh, brilliant, look at these—”
“They’re candles shaped like ghosts.”
“Halloween!”
“You don’t actually need more things to light on fire around the flat.”
“But they’re fuckin’ ghosts, that’s marvelous, and they smell like, oh, marshmallows and sugared candy and linen pillowcases—”
“When you light them they’ll only melt,” Michael said, a bit desperately.
James’s shoulders drooped. James put the ghosts back, and said, “No, yeah, you’re right, we should focus on her birthday, maybe jewelry, then, she likes blue, but more light blue, lavender blue, the color that’s almost sort of violet, y’know?”
Michael looked at the man he adored, who knew his niece’s favorite color when Michael himself had forgotten. James did not look up, only wandered deeper into the artsy craft-stuffed shop, fingers trailing absentmindedly over shelves.
He eyed the ghosts. Ridiculous kitschy molded whiteness with wicks sticking out of their heads. Holiday-themed and overpriced. They smirked at him, not unkindly.
He cleared his throat. “If you, y’know…think about it…if they melt when you light them…”
James turned back. Surprise in expressive eyebrows, in the tilt of his head.
“…they’re kind of ghosts anyway? So it’s like, um, living—not living—up to their potential? Going all insubstantial, sort of?”
“This fourth one smells like candy corn,” James said, cautious, a question, bright with love.
Michael bought six flowing wax Halloween-scented ghosts. They had different scents and different faces, so he had to find them all.
The week after the ghosts and subsequent slightly eerie candlelit sex, a package turned up. It was battered and coming apart and rain-soaked after having been left on the flat’s front step, so Michael opened it.
“James?”
“Hmm?” The love of his life stuck a head out of the bedroom, half-dressed post-shower; the shower had been post-morning sex, enthusiastically. His hair was growing back in after the superhero-film shearing-off, and had reached the dandelion-fuzz stage. James had decided not to give a damn about it; Michael wanted to pet him at every opportunity, and did. “Say somethin’?”
“Why did you order…a salted caramel, a whiskey-glazed pecan praline, and a…toasty fireside, what does that even mean…scented candle from the internet?”
“I like candles?”
“James,” Michael said, waving a hand around. They shared that: gesturing to explain. They shared most things. “Candles.” True. The flat, not large, overflowed with seasonal trappings. Cream and gold placemats. Pinecones in a rustic dish. Crimson and russet leaves along the fireplace mantel. And, yes, everywhere, candles.
“They were on sale…”
“You’re going to have autumn candles year-round!”
“I…” James hesitated. Rain pattered down outside, not hard, desultory and damp. “I like them. I said.”
“Yes, you said, but—”
“We didn’t have a lot,” James said, not quite looking at him, still shirtless, “growing up, but—Gran had a friend who made candles, I mean, she made lots of shit, soap and herbal tea and whatever fuckin’ else, but around the holidays, fall and winter, she always made candles and then she gave the extras to Gran for free and we lit up the place with them. So I just, y’know. Think about home.”
Michael couldn’t inhale for a second, breath stunned in lungs; and then he put down the opened package and came over and pressed the candle he happened to be holding, one that called itself spiced apple cider, into broad freckled beloved hands.
“Those are good memories,” James said. “Don’t feel fuckin’ sorry for me.”
“I’m not.” He held James’s hands around the candle, the big extravagant multi-wick glory that James could afford now, the kind Michael’s own parents might’ve bought to scatter around their sprawling County Kerry bed-and-awardwinning-breakfast. “I’m not. You’ve been trying to tell me. Home.”
The familiar smile came back into those eyes, sketched in blue and hope. “Guess I was.”
“Our home,” Michael said.
“Our home that’ll smell like spiced cider and apple pie year-round.”
“I can live with that. All the years. Forever.”
“Then I guess,” James murmured, teasing, drawing out the words, eyes kindling like candle-glow, “I can live all those years, forever, with you.”