Sweet Romance10 min read
Did the Little Fox Just Steal My Lollipop?
ButterPicks14 views
I walked out of the police station like someone had pinned a sour note to my chest.
"Next time, don't kidnap children," Director Ambrosio Leone told me with a stare like a cooling iron.
"Kidnap? Me?" I wanted to spit back a dozen clever insults, but Director Leone slid a paper across the desk before I could open my mouth.
"I signed nothing," I said. "Who gave you permission to make me sign?"
"An agreement with the Spirit Affairs Bureau," he answered. "You must obey certain restrictions now."
I looked at the scrawl, the fine print, and then at my reflected face in the window. I am Khloe Schulz. I am a thousand-year candy spirit. My skin tastes faintly of strawberry. My true form fits on the head of a pin and also on the end of a gold lollipop. Bureau rules, signatures, and the idea of being "registered" made me a coward for once: I ran.
"Don't run forever," Director Leone called after me. "Some things you cannot avoid."
I thought about arguing. Instead I vanished into motion and turned my invisibility on, riding a giant golden lollipop back to my little house hidden under the hollow root of an old oak.
On the way, a sharp metallic scent cut through the summer heat. It smelled wrong for this time of year—blood, but not wholly human. I followed the spoor into a small clearing and found him: a man, collapsed, a thin sheen of blood across his temple.
He was not human. I knew the scent of妖—of spirits—and under the coppered smell of injury there was a silver tang of fox-blood. I turned him over and caught my breath. He was very handsome.
"Well," I muttered, "you are trouble."
"Don't be dramatic," the blond in me said. "Bring him home."
I carried him back on the golden stick and washed the gross away with a charm. He healed faster than a human should, but not fast enough to wake. I made a bed of cushions and cartoons, left the TV on, and sat to watch as the sun burned out.
A creak later, lids fluttered open. He blinked, looked at me like a lost pup, and said, "Sister?"
"Sister?" I snorted. "I am not your sister. Who do you think I am, your aunt?"
He frowned, confusion furrowing his brow. He tried to speak. Nothing came.
"You have amnesia," I diagnosed, because of course I would be the kind to diagnose everything.
"I don't even remember my name," he confessed after a long slow pause.
I had an idea. I liked names like cakes and leaves and small things. "You will be Baxter," I decided. "Baxter Dominguez."
"Baxter," he echoed, and the name settled in his face like a soft promise. He smiled, slightly embarrassed, and asked, "Sister, can I have some candy?"
"Of course." I produced a strawberry lollipop with a swish of sugar-light. He sniffed it as if it were ceremony and devoured it like it might run away.
"You're sweet," he said after the third stick, voice small.
"Naturally." I did not hide my妖气 in my own home. Only a fool hides what they are in a house of one.
Days passed in soft domesticity. Baxter made quiet mistakes—dropping dishes, knocking a shelf over—and then, in a blink, he changed. He curled by my side and asked, "What am I?"
I couldn't tell him. He was pricey, by the cost of his clothes alone. He would make a delightful debt.
"You are Baxter," I said. "Until you remember your own name."
He liked that. He grew used to this life: cartoons in the daytime, a stack of lollipops in his pockets, kitchen disasters that were mostly cute. He began to follow me around like a worried moon.
Until, one day, the world popped.
On TV, a fuzzy, pixelated article scrolled by: "Candy Devil? Ancient Spirit Accused of Kidnapping Idol." The picture was grainy but too familiar. I reached for the remote and froze.
"Baxter," I hissed, "what did you do?"
He blinked. "That face looks like me," he said, and the room tilted. "Is that me?"
"It looks nothing like me," I said fiercely. "And nothing like you, either."
The caption below the plastered image said his true name: Caspian Bowman. The star was a top idol. The comments below were a howl: "Kidnapper! Witch! Protect our idol!" The internet likes a new monster.
"My manager will arrive," the man on television—Beckett Cameron—said on autoplay. Then the phone rang in my quiet house.
"Hello?" I answered with a guard up.
"Khloe Schulz? I'm Beckett Cameron." The voice came from behind a professional filter. "You have Caspian."
"I—" I bit my lip. "He is a guest."
"Bring him back," Beckett said, and then he pushed a card across the coffee table when he came later. He opened the wallet and slid a glossy black card into my hand: ten million. "Take this. You can let him go."
"You're offering money to steal back your star," I said.
"We're offering relief," Beckett said, folding his hands. "He left and vanished. We sought him for days. Please. For his safety."
"He was sleeping in my doorway," I told him. "I pulled thorns from his fur."
"Take the money," Beckett said. "Two million? Ten? Twenty if that's what it takes."
Someone thought money solved everything. I knew enough about human greed. I knew even more about how the Bureau would react to headlines. I took the card, angry and thrilled at the same time; two million would look lovely on a new dress. But taking Beckett's money would be admitting guilt. I could not do that.
"It's his home," I whispered when he was back to the couch and watching cartoons. "You ought to know."
Caspian—Baxter—tilted his head and said, "I like this. Staying. You cook nice."
"You're a diva," I said bluntingly. "You have contracts. You have fans. Do you understand the word 'agent'?"
"Agent?" He chewed a lollipop and made a face. "Is it a job? Can I be an agent too?"
Beckett made faster plans than I did; in the end he pushed me into a corner I didn't like: "Take the assistant job," he proposed. "She can keep him here, keep him out of risky shoots. If you won't accept the money, be his assistant formally."
"Assistant," I repeated. The image was like a new costume. I had no idea how to sign a contract, but I signed. I would be his assistant if that kept him in my house where he belonged.
"Thank you, Khloe," Beckett said, smiling a smile that made his eyes small and hard. "We will make it work."
We moved to the city. The set smelled like stage glue and hot lights and people hoping to be seen. Beckett hovered like a neat cloud. Caspian—my fox in human shape—sat by my side like a small, dangerous animal and dozed with a sugar-sparkle of breath whenever the day let him.
"You're an idol?" I asked once, while he held a script and chewed the corner like a child.
He looked up in surprise. "You didn't know? I'm Caspian Bowman."
"I didn't watch those things," I confessed. "I watch cartoons."
"That explains it," he said, amused. "You are very old."
"Very," I agreed. "And very sweet." I meant the second in both ways.
The crew were an orchestra of scents—Emmett Khalil was an ice-faced actor who carried a breeze colder than midnight, Vittoria Bonnet was a dog-spirit who loved snuggling and adoration, and Anibal Laurent prowled like a snake on days when he did not want to talk.
"Don't get close to Emmett," Beckett warned me low one afternoon. "He's... not friendly."
"Is he dangerous?" I asked, because I was always curious.
"Cold," Beckett amended. "Emotionally and otherwise. Caspian doesn't like him."
"All right," I agreed, mostly because Caspian had asked me to.
Over time, Caspian settled in as if he had always lived in my house. He learned my stubborn habits and made a habit of hiding my shoes. He turned into a fox whenever the curtain of privacy allowed, curling a silver tail over his paws and bristling like a waking moon.
"Only my tail," he told me once, voice small and fierce. "Only you can touch my tail."
"Only my tail?" I teased. "Is that a rule?"
"It is my rule," he said, cheeks pink, and he sat in my lap like he belonged there by default.
I was not prepared for how fond I would be. He would nudge my hand with his head when nervous, and he would bake imaginary offerings in his mind and hand me the result on platters of intention. He would watch me with the soft concentration of starlight, and I found myself leaning toward him the way a sugar cube leans into tea.
"Do you like me?" I asked him one late night, once the house had emptied and the moon had put its hand on the world.
He looked at me with simple fear and simple longing. "Yes," he said. "I like you like sunshine."
"Do you want to go back to your life?" I asked, testing the fracture at the heart of us.
He paled, a human worry in fox form. "I thought of leaving you. But I don't want to."
Then the world honed itself: paparazzi flashes, a screaming crowd, and a dozen phones pointed like teeth.
"Why does everyone care so much?" I asked him, and he clung to my sleeve like a child who had swallowed a secret.
"It's because he is famous," Beckett murmured later. "Because people want a story. Because the internet is a pack."
The pack snapped. Comments tore into me with an appetite. I handed Caspian a sugar-laden stick and watched him smile despite a darkening sky. He kissed my hand once, brief, shy; the cameras captured it and built it into legend. The story grew: "Candy Spirit Steals Boy." Photos of us spread. Some were kind. More were cruel.
"This is why I don't like going out," I confessed one evening over the sink. "People look for monsters now."
"You are not a monster," he said softly, wiping a plate. "You are mine."
It was the first time he said that in a way that made my chest ache like a bad candy.
We adapted. Beckett taught me how to be an assistant—water, scripts, costumes, emergency lollipops—and I learned what the chest of fandom looked like. Caspian, in turn, learned to be a fox in public when it served the story. He learned to shield me from the worst of the glare by standing too close and smiling.
"You're jealous of Emmett," I teased, once during a break.
"He stands near you," Caspian said, voice tiny and unmasked. "His cold shadows frighten me."
"Only mine can touch your tail," I repeated, and he colored in a way that had nothing to do with camera work. When he changed into fox-form and pushed his head into my palm like it belonged there, I knew the pack outside could try to name us whatever they wished; inside the walls we were simple and true.
The set opened its doors one afternoon, and a fan—an excitable durian spirit, public and unapologetic—came skeetering toward Caspian. She cried too loudly, her scent filling the air with a wild sweetness that made my nose burn.
"She loves Caspian," Beckett hissed, cornered by desperation.
I moved without thinking. I took her paper and asked Caspian for a quick signature. He smiled at me with the ease of someone who had been born to smiling, and when he looked at me later the way the sun looks at the sea, I nearly melted.
"You are mine in the best way," he said, unexpectedly.
"Don't make vows you can't keep," I teased. "The internet will auction them tomorrow."
"I will quit," he said one evening as we lay with tails entwined and the city hummed far below. "If it's too loud, I'll be with you. If it's harder, I'll be with you."
"You sure?" I asked.
"I am sure," he breathed. He turned fox and nosed my collarbone. "Will you... will you keep me?"
"Until sugar melts the world," I said.
His grin was a dangerous thing. It spread like honey.
We found small routines: he would hide my shoes, I would hide his phone, he would bring me flowers people gave him and we would laugh about the hesitance of gifts. The people around us adapted. Beckett softened and learned how to ask instead of demand. Emmett kept his cold distance but once flinched when Caspian's tail brushed his sleeve and an almost-smile crossed his face. Anibal and Vittoria became the sort of neighbors that knocked on your door with cake and then left.
There was a night when the world found us in bed—the paparazzi flashed, the window eyed us, and the tabloid headlines shrieked—but there was also a thousand small quiet mornings: foxes tucked under my chin, a lollipop stuck to the couch cushion, the soft hum of "you are mine" and "I am yours" said in private.
One day we had to go home to the foxlands. Caspian was nervous, and so was I. "Do they like you?" he asked with the earnestness of a creature who only wanted to be accepted.
"They will," I said, because I meant it. I had stolen him into my world and he had stolen me back.
"Hold still," he said suddenly, and kissed me—soft, surprised, and warm.
We fell into a flower field, laughing like two children crashing a secret party. The sun leaned over us, petals dusting our hair. He whispered, "Take me."
"I always have," I answered, and the words landed like a caramel drop.
In front of his tribe we were ridiculous and tender. They poked and prodded and laughed, and his father shoved a heavy book into Caspian's hands like a blessing and a warning.
"Read this," his father said. "And keep her."
"Keep me?" I repeated in surprise.
"He taught me the tricks that make a house a home," Caspian said, jammed between grins. "He says the best magic is the ordinary."
We learned to live ordinary alongside the extraordinary. We had our fights—tabs, contracts, fans, and the Bureau's sighs—but the sweet moments stacked up like candy wrappers: his hand in mine under the table, his tail draped across my knee when I was cold, the sugar-ghost taste of his lips in the night.
When I told Director Ambrosio Leone I would be taking extra care with my registration, he laughed and said, "You and your candy trouble." The Bureau closed one eye and left well enough alone, perhaps because the world had already decided what to do: some would love us, some would shout, and others would find a way to make us famous.
"I'll stay," I told Caspian one night when the city hummed like a sleeping beast outside our small house. "I'll stay and be your assistant and maybe your terrible boss sometimes."
"Good," he said, curling closer. "I like it when you're strict."
"I like it when you call me 'Sister' when you mean it as a joke and 'lover' when you mean it as a promise," I teased.
He yawned, silver fur soft against my palm. "Then promise you'll never sell me to a producer."
"I promise," I said, and the promise tasted like a strawberry lollipop.
We are not a perfect fairy tale. We are small bright things in a big loud city. We ride waves of gossip and spray glitter at morose mornings. People will always have opinions. They will write and shout and sometimes apologize. But when the noise fades, he will be here, a warm shape in my arms, a tail that belongs only to me, and a mouth that tastes of candy.
Once, when the cameras were gone and the fans had stopped talking, I wrapped my hand around a gold lollipop—the very one I used to fly—and I tightened my fingers so that the metal whispered. Caspian leaned in and pressed his forehead to mine.
"Do you remember how I felt the first time I tasted you?" he asked, smiling through sleep.
"It was like candy," I said, "like summer on the tongue."
He laughed tiredly. "Then don't ever leave me."
"I won't," I promised, and kissed the top of his head.
Outside, the world spun with its own stories. Inside, my lollipop hummed with ordinary magic. We ate candy and watched cartoons and learned the difficult work of being together while the cameras watched from a safe distance. I had found him, and he had found me, and neither of us wanted to go back to the lonely way we used to live.
I am Khloe Schulz, a thousand-year candy spirit, and Caspian Bowman—the little fox who thought he was Baxter for a while—snores into my shoulder as the page glows. If anyone asks, I will tell them a simple truth: I kept him, and he kept me, and the jar of strawberry lollipops on the kitchen counter is our small treaty.
The End
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