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"Not that I expect anyone to care," said Jamie, putting down the phone, "but my boyfriend just canceled our Christmas-date."
"Potential boyfriend," Mae corrected him, not looking up from her book.
"We were dating. We've had dinner. We've kissed."
"Really?" Nick asked. Unlike Mae, he seemed willing to grace Jamie with his full attention. Unfortunately, as he'd been cleaning Alan's guns, the effect was somewhat unsettling.
"Well, maybe not quite kissed, but we were getting there. Are getting there. My point is: he was my boyfriend. Is my boyfriend."
"Before someone gets to be your boyfriend they have to have been approved by Nick, Alan and me," Mae said. "Is this that guy you brought over last week?"
"Brandon, yes." Jamie didn't dare hope Brandon'd made much of a favorable impression.
"He told me pink hair didn't suit me and that I should wear less jewelry." Mae grimaced.
"So has he kissed you, or hasn't he?" Nick pressed. "Do you have his address?"
In some ways, Jamie reflected, it was nice that Nick actually seemed to care about him nowadays. In other ways, it was rather terrifying.
"He hasn't and I haven't." Both were lies - although Jamie thought of it as him and Brandon kissing, not just Brandon kissing him. It took two to kiss, or sometimes, like with Mae, Alan and Nick, three.
"You're going somewhere with a person and you don't even know where he lives?"
"Alan can probably find out," Mae said. "Does either of you speak Aramaic, by any chance?"
"I don't think anybody does anymore," Jamie said. "It being a dead language and all."
"Well, I thought Nick might." Alan had been helping Nick to try and remember things from his past, from the time before he'd been Nick. From what Jamie'd gathered, not all the memories were pleasant ones.
"Not my region, sorry. You'll have to wait for Alan to come home from his lecture."
"Demons have regions?" Jamie asked.
"Naturally," Nick replied. "And periods." Mae made a noise. "Not like that."
"Periods of time when magicians summoned them and gave them names," Jamie clarified aloud.
Nick nodded.
"Do they also have periods of time when they're not being over-protective?"
"Ha!" Mae said.
Nick frowned. "I'm not over-protective."
"I want to go Christmas-shopping tomorrow," Mae said. "Either of you want to come along?"
"Sure, I'll come," Nick said.
"Thank you both for caring I'm going to spend another lonely Christmas."
"Any time."
"Oh, would you stop with the dramatics already? You're not going to be lonely; you're just going to spend Christmas with Nick and Alan and me. That's not lonely," Mae pointed out. "Any other Near-Eastern language then? It'll be at least another hour before Alan gets back and this text is driving me crazy."
"Don't look at me. I just speak English and a bit of French." Jamie tried his best not to feel under-educated, but it was hard sometimes - not to mention unfair.
"I was looking at Nick. And since when do you speak French?"
"But I kind of like driving you crazy."
"Only a bit," Jamie told Mae. "And I did not need to hear that."
Nick looked smug.
"What happened to the days when you were the dark, dangerous and silent type?" Not to say that Jamie exactly missed those days. He much prefered not being in any danger of being possessed, killed or scarred for life. Of course, that last was still a good option, considering.
"He's still dangerous," Mae said.
"Yes, especially to people I'm trying to convince we're a perfectly ordinary household."
"We're not," Nick pointed out.
"You could try harder to pretend."
"If you brought home any people who would actually make decent boyfriends, maybe we would."
*
After a good night's sleep, Jamie found his life hadn't significantly improved. Still, he reasoned, maybe Mae'd had a point about Brandon. He hadn't been perfect. More: he hadn't been perfect for Jamie.
"You're smart, intelligent and good-looking. You're going to get a new boyfriend before Christmas," Jamie told his reflection in the mirror.
"You're also talking to yourself in the mirror." Of course, this had to be the one morning when other people were up early, too. "Plus, I think 'smart' and 'intelligent' may mean the same thing."
"Not entirely."
Alan smiled. "No, not entirely. So, you've broken up with Brandon?"
"Mae's pink hair was too much for him."
"Guy's a total wuss," Nick commented, reaching for his toothbrush.
"I like Mae's pink hair." Alan looked pensive.
"She's painted it electric blue once, too. And orange. And green. The green looked kind of funny."
"Of course, I also like her as a person in general, regardless of hair colour."
"Yes, yes, you're a real gentleman." Nick rolled his eyes and grabbed the tube of toothpaste.
"Who, Jamie?" Mae asked. "Of course he is. After all, I've raised him myself."
"Could you maybe not barge in here wearing just a towel?" Jamie complained.
"Hey, it's my bathroom, too. Besides, what's wrong with wearing just a towel?"
"The towel-part?" Nick suggested.
"Not funny."
"I was referring to Alan, by the way."
"Oh, Alan's a gentleman, too. Absolutely." Mae grinned.
Jamie decided he didn't really want to know what that grin meant. "So, are all three of you going to go Christmas-shopping today?"
"No, you doofus. All four of us are."
"You're welcome to come along, if you want," Alan said.
"Or you can stay home and mope."
"That's really tempting, too, you know."
"I worry about you sometimes," Mae said.
"Only sometimes? I worry about him all the time."
"I am being smothered by all this love." Jamie sighed.
*
"I wonder if any of these shops are selling mistletoe," Mae said.
Nick snorted. "Since when do you need an excuse?"
"If you want some, we could probably harvest it ourselves," Alan put in. "There's several locations not too far from London where it grows in fairly large amounts. I've got a map at home."
"Going to some place where there aren't quite this many people around sounds rather appealing right now, I must confess," Jamie said.
"Is anyone bothering you in particular?" Nick stepped in a bit closer.
"Why doesn't he ever do this with you or Mae?" Jamie asked Alan, a plaintive note in his voice. "No, nobody in particular is bothering me. I'm just not wild about crowds, is all. No need to kill anyone."
"He knows I can defend myself," Alan said. "As to Mae ... "
"He knows I'd kick him where it really hurts if he'd dare imply I can't."
"I'm just humoring her," Nick said. "And I haven't killed anyone in a really long time."
"That's what worries me. You're way overdue."
"Nick only kills magicians."
"Somehow, I'm less than reassured."
"Evil magicians."
"Oh, that's all right then," Jamie said. "I mean, you don't think I'm evil, do you?"
"Not most of the time."
"I don't think any of my boyfriends were evil magicians either, though. Unless I missed something - which is, of course, very well possible."
"Well, I wouldn't have killed them," Nick said pleasantly.
"Really? Because I sort of got the impression you were threatening them with bodily harm."
"I might have made them wish I had killed them."
"Right. Glad we got that cleared up."
At least, Jamie comforted himself, the topic of mistletoe had been dropped.
*
Alan and Mae had been both easy and hard to shop for - easy because there never seemed to be a shortage of topics they were interested in during any given week, but hard because they seemed to accumulate books the way Jamie seemed to collect the phone-numbers of people who'd prefer not to be called by him anymore, times fifty or so.
It was probably a good thing the house had a lot of space to put bookshelves, given that Jamie still hadn't quite gotten the hang of bending time and space to his will. At the rate he was going, he rather doubted if he ever would, which he was about as comfortable with as he'd always expected, which was to say: quite.
"Thank you, Jamie, for this ... really complicated looking projectile weapon?"
"It's not a weapon, it's a tool. To help you put up bookshelves."
"We could use some more bookshelves," Mae said.
"We can always use some more bookshelves." Alan smiled.
"What's wrong with the way I put up bookshelves now?"
"Don't mind him, he's just cranky."
"I'm not going to spend the holidays putting up bookshelves!"
"Only a part of the holidays," Alan said.
"A small part, thanks to Jamie's present."
"Cranky means hungry, right?" Jamie held out the platter of cookies Mae had baked.
"Sometimes, cranky just means cranky," Nick said, ignoring the platter. "And I'm not cranky."
"Moody," Alan suggested.
"Ill-tempered."
"Disappointed I haven't yet found another boyfriend for him to scare off."
"Maybe I'm a little cranky," Nick admitted, grabbing a cookie.
Mae beamed at him. "Nick doesn't scare off your boyfriends, Jamie."
"The last one got scared off by Mae," Nick said. "I hardly even met him."
"He was only a potential boyfriend anyway. And completely not your type."
"I thought he was my type. Doesn't that count?"
"You're my idiot kid brother." Mae leaned over and ruffled his hair.
"That's a 'no', I guess?"
*
It was hard to keep track of time sometimes - Jamie'd go through some of his papers and be surprised at how many years had gone by since they'd moved here from Exeter, since Alan had graduated college, since he'd gotten a nice, ordinary job.
It wasn't at all hard to imagine things would never change.
"Which means I can forget about ever getting a boyfriend, I suppose."
"Do Mae and Nick really bother you that much?" Alan still had the ability to sneak up on him - as did Nick, although with Nick, you sort of expected it. "You could tell them off, you know."
"You could, maybe," Jamie said, without bitterness.
Alan smiled and shrugged, not denying it.
"They mean well, I know. They do it because they care."
"That doesn't make it all right if it also makes you miserable."
"I guess they're right, most of the time. I mean, if Brandon couldn't handle Mae having pink hair, then he definitely couldn't have handled the truth about me."
"You could have lied - or just not tell him about that part of your life."
"No, I couldn't. Being a magician - like it or not, it's what I am."
"Do you like it?" Alan sounded genuinely curious.
"Sometimes."
"Well, if you do ever meet that perfect person who will accept you fully for who you are, I can promise you neither Mae nor Nick will be able to scare him off."
"Yeah. I know."
"Good," Alan said, smiling. "Merry Christmas, Jamie."
"Merry Christmas."