“Uh, dishwasher under the sink?”
There was, indeed, a dishwasher under the sink, laminated in the same glossy white as the rest of the cupboards. It looked lonely with two plates and four pieces of cutlery, so Sigmund started stacking the mixing bowls and other hotcake preparation tools as well. Lain watched him in amusement for a while, then started to help. It was all very domestic.
The kitchen wasn’t what anyone would be calling large—just a few feet of wall and an island—and they kept brushing against each other as they stacked and scrubbed and put things back into cupboards. It was…sort of sexy, actually. Lain wasn’t intruding into his space, but he wasn’t avoiding it either. A calculated dance of light touches and near misses, and Sigmund’s heart began to keep time as he was caught up in the rhythm. He didn’t mind. It was nice. No one had ever bothered trying to seduce him before.
Maybe if more chores were like this, people wouldn’t complain about having to do them so much.
When he touched Lain’s arm, the skin beneath his fingers felt like linen, fresh from the drier: warm and soft, dusted in hair and freckles and textured by a latticework of scars.
“I had a really nice time, last night,” Sigmund said. “Right up until the part where we almost died.” Even that had been sort of fun, in a holy-shit-what-the-fuck sort of way. “And I don’t care if you’re really, like, some giant flaming monster thing. It’s kinda cool, actually.” Except for the wings, but Sigmund had always been a little scared of birds. The way they stared and all. He decided not to mention it.
Lain’s expression got weird, anyway, almost like he was about to cry. But what he actually did was bend down and part his lips. Sigmund wasn’t a bastion of knowledge on the subject, but he watched movies and knew the start of a kiss when he saw one. So he tilted his head, too, and closed his eyes, and hoped like hell he was doing it right.
A moment later, Lain’s lips, hot and smooth and scarred, closed the gap, one of his hands coming to rest against the curve of Sigmund’s spine. Sigmund was getting used to the lip part of kissing—and the feel of Lain’s tongue, brushing against them—but his hands were kind of flailing and there was just so much to keep track of and, Jesus, Lain was like a zillion years old and a god, and he probably thought Sigmund was such a loser and—
And one of Lain’s hands found one of Sigmund’s and placed it on his waist. “You can touch,” he said, breath ghosting across Sigmund’s cheek. “I like it when you touch.”
(oh)
Oh.
Lain’s waist was slender and firm under Sigmund’s fingers, and when his hands “accidentally” slid under the hem of Lain’s tank top, he got a breathy moan for his efforts. That seemed like a good sound, so Sigmund explored farther, Lain’s skin just as warm and just as scarred here as on his arms. Sigmund traced some of the jagged lines with his fingers, and about halfway up Lain’s waist encountered something odd. A sort of buzzing, electrical sensation. Like brushing the metal case of a running laptop. It was there in some places and not in others, and—somewhere in between the heat in Sigmund’s belly and the hand curling through his hair—he realized his fingers had found Lain’s tattoo.
He pulled back from the kiss just enough to ask, “Does it hurt?” His voice sounded deep and husky, sexy almost.
Lain’s eyes were very bright, his kiss-swollen lips emphasizing those scars, too. “Not exactly,” he said. “But I can feel it, like background noise. Never noticed it before.” He moved his hand to brush the side of Sigmund’s face. “I should probably take you home.” He didn’t sound happy about it.
Sigmund moved closer, head resting against Lain’s broad shoulder and enjoying the way Lain curled around him. Being together like that made Sigmund feel short—Lain had a good six inches on him, easy—but it was nice, too. Standing here in Travis Hale’s hotel room kitchen, holding and being held, feeling the small shifts of Lain’s muscles beneath his skin.
“Yeah,” Sigmund said eventually. “Dad might start wondering where I am.” Probably not, really, but it was possible. Maybe.
They pulled apart a few moments later, spurred by some kind of simultaneous reluctance. Sigmund almost wanted to ask to stay, but it had been a pretty weird night. He needed to go home and process for a bit. Work out what he was going to tell Em and Wayne. Or Dad.
That was a pretty good question, actually. “What should I tell people?” he asked as they waited for the elevator down to the parking garage “About you, I mean.”
Lain shrugged. “Whatever you want.” He sounded a bit guarded, despite the words, and Sigmund frowned.
“What, that you’re a seven-foot godmonster?”
That got him a startled bark of laughter. “Oh!” Lain said. The elevator pinged and they stepped in. “You mean about that. It doesn’t matter. It’s not a secret, people just don’t notice.”
“I noticed. So did Wayne.” Sort of.
This information didn’t seem to faze Lain. “Well, yeah,” he said. “But you’re…you know. And your friends used to be valkyrjur. Valkyries.”
That was just getting silly. Sigmund’s face must have shown it, because Lain continued, “It’s true! Hrist and Hlökk, the Shaker and the Screamer. You all have a little bit of Wyrd in you, hence with the noticing and stuff.”
“That all seems a bit coincidental…”
“That’s what the Wyrd is, Sig. Coincidence, fate. I’m not here accidentally. Mannheim is thin here, and the Wyrd is heavy. Fate, uh…It rolls down hills.” He was gesticulating again, obviously struggling for an explanation. “You know that thing with the rubber sheet and the lead ball that’s supposed to explain gravity?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, the Wyrd is like that. Pandemonium is the rubber sheet—thin and stretchy—and I’m the lead ball. One of them. Other places in Mannheim aren’t so elastic, so the Wyrd isn’t as”—another big hand motion—“sucky. Not so good for gods.”
The doors pinged again, and they stepped out into a part of the garage that Sigmund had never been to before. There weren’t many cars here, but the ones that were looked like their total worth was greater than the sum of all the cars in the other garages combined. Sigmund wondered why they were all here on a Saturday. Maybe they all belonged to Travis.
“So, what,” he said. “You’re saying Pandemonium is like some huge black hole for drunk Viking stories?”
“Short version? Yes.”
They were standing in front of Lain’s car, not looking any worse for wear despite last night’s violence. Sigmund wondered how it got back here, considering they’d left it at the mall. Then again, Lain had obviously been running errands in the night. Maybe he’d picked it up.
The top was down, and Lain leaped into the driver’s side, literally vaulting over the door. Sigmund had never seen anyone do that outside of movies.
“What’s wrong?” Lain asked when Sigmund didn’t join him.
“I’ve just remembered you drive like a maniac.”
“Oh.” Lain looked surprised at that, then thoughtful. He glanced at the steering wheel, then back at Sigmund. “You could drive,” he said. “Or I could try driving slower?”
Sigmund approached the passenger side and climbed in. Through the door, like a normal person. He was pretty sure trying to vault over the edge would just end in pain and humiliation. “I’ll take my chances with you trying out human driving,” he said. “I’m not convinced your ‘car’ runs on enough Really Real World logic for me to handle it.” As if to prove his point, the car rumbled to life as soon as he sat down. Today, the stereo was playing Electric Six. Out of curiosity, Sigmund pressed some of the buttons as Lain pulled (carefully!) out of the parking garage.
He spent most of the drive staring out the window, watching the city fly (carefully!) by. He’d never actually been in a convertible before. Well, last night, obviously, but then the top had been up and it hadn’t counted. Sigmund had never really been a car person, but he had to admit there was an appeal, sitting in the
pocket of stillness formed by the windscreen. Warm summer air roaring over the top, tousling his hair, but quiet and calm just below. He wanted to throw his arms up, into the wind, laughing and feeling the pressure of movement on his skin.
He didn’t. Safety first, and all that.
They’d been driving (carefully!) for about five minutes when it occurred to Sigmund they hadn’t had to stop in traffic. Not once. Not at stoplights, which were always green, and not at intersections, which were always clear. It was as if the city knew where Lain wanted to go and was pushing aside the traffic to help him get there. And when Sigmund thought about it like that, the maniac driving started to make sense. It was the sort of way anyone would drive if there was no one else in the entire world. No other cars, no pedestrians, no cops. Just the wheels and the road.
There was something important in that. Probably more than one thing, in fact, but it’d been a long few days and thinking wasn’t high up on Sigmund’s priority list.
The one thing it did mean, of course, was that they were pulling up outside his house in pretty short order. He tried not to feel disappointed.
Lain let out a heavy breath as soon as they’d stopped. It sounded like he’d just finished diffusing a bomb, not like he’d been driving a few suburbs across town. “There,” he said. “How was that?” He looked like a puppy who’d peed on the paper, not on the carpet.
Sigmund gave him a smile. “I didn’t feel like screaming once.” He ducked his head almost as soon as he’d said it, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Thanks, though. For, y’know. Taking me seriously.”
Something in Lain’s expression turned at the words, ancient and inscrutable and alien. “I’m a bit out of practice with mortals,” he said. “So you can tell me if I’m being…” He trailed off, waving his hand. It left sparks of flame in its wake.
“I don’t have a lot of practice with gods,” Sigmund said. “So you can tell me the same.”
That seemed to be the right thing to say, and when Sigmund blinked, Lain was just Lain again. All red haired and freckled, and, because he could, Sigmund leaned across the seat and gave Lain a brief, chaste kiss.
“I’ll see you Monday?” he said.
Lain’s grin was back. It really was quite sexy, with the protruding canines and faint scars. “I wouldn’t miss it for the end of the world,” he said, and Sigmund climbed out of the car hoping that wouldn’t prove to be prophetic. He waved as Lain pulled away (carefully!), still practicing his human driving, and Sigmund had to laugh.
It faded before he reached the door.
It took Sigmund three tries to get his key in the lock, then another two to turn it. The house was still and quiet, and his dad seemed to be out, so Sigmund retreated upstairs to his room. With Lain gone, the past twelve-odd hours were feeling further and further away, vanishing at some rate accelerated beyond one second per second. A strange memory from a stranger, something that had happened to someone else, and when Sigmund tried to push his mind back to those frantic minutes in the parking garage, they felt faded and third-hand.
He figured it was some kind of coping thing, then wondered if he was in shock. Again. That probably wasn’t good. Maybe he should ask Google.
He got as far as shaking his computer awake with the mouse. The desktop wallpaper was a picture of a mage. She was a woman, and dressed slightly inappropriately, but she had a fireball in one hand and…
(heat and smoke and the stink of burning plastic and holy shit what the fuck is happening that thing is that thing Lain what the hell is going on oh fuck oh fuck they’re fighting Lain Lain or whatever you are be careful please oh fuck fire again and blood and…)
Dad found him like that, just staring at the screen, mouse clenched in one hand, breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
“—gmund? Sigmund, son?”
His dad’s hand on his shoulder felt heavy and real, and Sigmund jerked when it descended.
“Hey, Dad,” he said, blinking too fast in the glow of his monitor. “You’re back.” His voice sounded strange, weak and thready and hollow. Maybe Dad wouldn’t notice.
“Sigmund. Are you all right?”
Guess not. His father was looking at him with wide eyes and a furrowed brow. He was holding a bag of groceries that he seemed to have forgotten about. Sigmund could see upstairs things, like toothpaste and tissues, poking out the top.
“Did something happen?”
Answers ranging from No, nothing to I nearly died, again flashed through Sigmund’s head. The first one was a lie and the second one might put his dad in the hospital, so he tried to come up with something in the middle.
And then someone, somewhere, said, “I’m dating Lain.” Which was funny, because that someone sounded an awful lot like it was using Sigmund’s voice.
Oh, shit.
David didn’t even blink. “He seems like a nice boy.” It was, Sigmund thought, almost a question. Almost a question with a teeny, tiny hint of violence behind it.
Sigmund had thought of his father as a lot of things—particularly during his brooding teenage years—but violent had never been one of them.
“Yeah,” Sigmund said, making his breath slow and his voice steady. Slower. Steadier. Maybe. “Yeah, Lain’s pretty cool.” That wasn’t even the half of it, but something in his expression must’ve been right, because, after a moment, his dad seemed to unwind.
“You took him on a date to DnD night, huh? How’d that work out for you?” David’s smile said things that Sigmund thought he had no business knowing about his dad. Nice things, though. Things that pulled against the edges of Sigmund’s lips as well.
“Good. I just…Yeah. Really, really good.” Sigmund pushed his glasses up his nose and tried hard not to blush.
His dad laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, then turned serious. “You know I love you, right, Sig? After your mum died…” He trailed off, tried again, “I know I haven’t always been the best father—”
“Dad, no—”
But David held up his hand, and Sigmund cut off what he’d been about to say. Whatever it had been.
“I just want you to know how proud I am of you, of what a smart, capable young man you’ve grown up to be. All I want for you—all any father should want for his son—is for you to be happy.”
“Dad…Thanks. I am. Happy. Things are kinda intense right now—”
“New relationships almost always are, in my experience.”
“Dad!” More things he didn’t want to know, and Sigmund found himself laughing. “So. Kinda intense. But…I think it’s gonna be cool.”
David nodded, lips thin and expression serious. “That’s good to hear. You should invite Lain around for dinner sometime. That’s usually how it’s done, right?”
“So says the TV.”
“Well, can’t argue with that.” David shifted the shopping bag against his hip, then glanced down as if he’d forgotten he’d been holding it. “Now how about you help your old man out with this stuff, huh? Some of us aren’t as young as we used to be.”
“Dad!” But he was grinning, and by the time the car was unloaded and the groceries put away, Friday night had started to feel like another country. One with closed borders and expired visas. And by Sunday, Sigmund had even almost stopped seeing milky green eyes and stitched-shut lips every time he closed his eyes.
Almost.
TWELVE
The world still hadn’t ended by Monday, which Sigmund decided to take as a good sign, even if it did mean that he had to get up for work. Sunday had been uneventful, minus a bit of ribbing from Em and Wayne about his date and the fact that their progression raid kept wiping on the last boss. But that was all regular, Really Real World stuff. No gods, no monsters—well, the ones on the computer, but pixels didn’t count—and, most important, no apocalypse. Sigmund had considered messaging Lain on Sunday evening, but had decided against it, and Lain, for his part, seemed to be respecting Sigmund’s tacit suggestion to leave him alone for the weekend. He did that
a lot, Sigmund realized. Respected boundaries, at least when Sigmund set them. It was nice.
Sigmund spent the rest of the weekend sorting out his thoughts via the medium of mind mapping. By Sunday evening, he had a huge chart full of colorful bubbles and lines that seemed to boil the situation down to a few salient points.
Point the First: Lain was probably right about Sigmund’s connection to Sigyn. It just felt true, for starters, and the fact that he could even sense that to begin with counted for something, even if only begging the question. Plus, he knew what Sigyn looked like and always had. He dreamed about her. He dreamed things that, in retrospect, must have been fragments of her memory. War and blood. Black feathers, and a taste of apples that lingered long into the day.
So, yeah. Probably Sigyn.
Point the Second: He really was okay with Lain being some kind of giant, feathered, anthropomorphic vulture thing. It was sexy, even, once he’d gotten over the weird. And it wasn’t that far removed from the folder of Twi’lek porn Sigmund totally didn’t have buried on his computer. Or that…other one with the—
Anyway. Giant monster, pretty sexy, what with the cut abs and smooth, burnt-dark skin. The stitches in the lips were a bit off-putting at first—the way they stretched when Lain spoke and stuff—but no scarier than an average lip ring, and Sigmund had seen way worse on 4chan (another one of those places he never went to ever and had absolutely no knowledge of).
Point the Third: He was mostly okay with Lain being Loki. Mostly. And, okay, he’d done some research, and Loki was apparently a bit of a jerk, but to be fair to the guy, that had seemed to be the Style at the Time. Also, he’d fucked a horse. Sigmund was kinda hoping that part of the story was allegorical, though he had a sinking feeling it totally wasn’t. He wondered whether it would be considered rude to ask.
Point the Fourth: Sigmund had definitely picked the Red Team. The sources were unambiguous: Baldr was the God of Lawful Good, while Loki was well into Chaotic Evil territory, having slipped down a few notches from Chaotic Neutral back in the old days. Meaning Lain’s assessment of the plot seemed to be the historically correct one.
Liesmith Page 11