HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 60

Chapter Sixty

Woody was gone, Kat was gone, Erika was gone, and Echo was poking me. 

Yes. Poking me.

Repeatedly.

It wasn't really obnoxious, just a little prod here and a tap there, an attempt to draw my eyes away from my phone screen without actually saying anything to do so. His laptop lay on the blankets covering his legs, opened up to a teen dating website obviously geared towards young girls. At first, I'd been a little amused and even kinda happy when I'd noticed it, but then I'd seen the other fifty open tabs, all with information about dating, and my face had gone blank. His seriousness on the subject surpassed any sort of normalcy but I'd purposely avoided bringing it up and just made myself comfortable.

It was too soon to have that talk again.

Instead, I scanned the selfies I'd taken with the deer. There were a lot of good ones that made me grin, and after a time, Echo noticed my smile and peered  at the screen, long black ears fluttering as he eyed the animals in my pictures.

He blinked.

"Are those beasts of the cervine variety?" he curiously asked, and I gave him a weird look. "They normally shy away from creatures outside of their species, hence my sudden inquisition."

"Yeah," I said after a second. "They're deer. Wild ones." 

"Curious... when did this happen?"

"Today. Right outside the apartment," I chuckled, and he stared at me. "I was relaxing and listening to music when, boom, out of nowhere this big whitetail buck shows up and starts sniffing at my legs. More of them came out after, even a cute little baby one, and they all just flopped down around me like it was nothing! Honestly, it was awesome!"

"This would imply that wild animals feel safe enough to completely relax around you," he murmured. "Hm... do you happen to know why they do?"

Concern prickled through me. "Uh... no? Should I?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not... not even I am certain," Echo clinically informed me, "but I hypothesize that it is because you are either secreting pheromones that draw them in and soothe them, or you have what can only be called magic."

My brows shot up. "Magic?"

"Yes. Magic."

"Uh...  dude, you're kinda pushing it." 

Echo looked down at himself in blatant puzzlement, eyes rippling from ruby to rust. He wiggled his furry fingers and held them before his round red eyes, then looked past the laptop at the lumps of his feet, ears bobbing as he cocked his head.

"I am not pushing anything," he said blankly. "Aside from, perhaps, you... but those were pokes from a finger, not shoves from a full hand, and I have not done that once during the conversation. I do not understand what you mean."

I stared at him with my mouth agape until the absurdity of his response hit me, and then I burst into laughter.

"Echo, it's an expression!" I cackled, letting my head thump back against the headboard as I cracked up, cheeks burning. "Oh, oh man, can't breathe, haha! Its another way of saying something can't be true or that it doesn't make sense! I didn't mean it literally, yeah? Hehe!"

"Ah, a colloquialism," the vampire hummed, understanding crossing his face before it went blank again; his eyes brightened back up to their normal ruby and he turned his eyes back on his computer, scrolling through the website he was reading. "Some satyrs have genetic supernatural abilities so I do not understand why the thought surprises you."