by AM Riley
They lay there, breathing. Lyre’s face resting on Joseph’s chest. After a very long time he raised himself on one elbow and looked down at Jose…no…Seamus. Of course, Seamus. Who lay there staring up at him in shock.
“What the fuck just happened?”
“I’m terribly sorry,” said Lyre immediately, scrambling to his feet. He was pantsless and his hand was covered with human semen. He raised a finger to his mouth and licked without thinking.
“Oh.” He turned away, shivering.
“What the?” A scrabble of movement and Lyre looked back at Seamus. The man was standing in the center of the room, completely naked. Lyre had time to see the muscled, slender body with its constellation of freckles across the chest, downy blond curls down the legs and swirling around the spent cock, before Seamus had gathered up a wad of clothing and held it in front of himself, staring across the room at Lyre.
“I’m terribly sorry…” began Lyre.
There was a solid hollow otherworldly thump on the door. Lyre jumped almost out of his enchanted skin.
“Lyre of the Gianes!” THUMP
Oh, by the Saints.
“What is that?” asked Seamus, hopping around on one leg, pulling on his slacks. His eyes were wide and vulnerable. An incongruous look on the face of such an apparently cynical man.
“I believe that would be your clan Banshee,” said Lyre. Oh, Maab help him. What had he done?
“Open this door!” THUMP
Seamus pulled those questioning eyes long enough from Lyre to look at the door. “He sounds a little pissed off.”
THUMP
“Yes,” said Lyre, feeling much calmer than he ought. Seamus was pulling his shirt on now. By Maab, he was lovely. “Yes, I’m sure he is upset.”
“By the rights of the clan I DEMAND YOU GRANT ME ENTRY!” THUMP THUMP
Seamus stared. “Is he gonna break down the door?”
“He cannot,” said Lyre. “The room is enchanted.” He walked to the window, gazed out thoughtfully. “Who is Riley?”
THUMP THUMP THUMP
Seamus jumped. “What? Where’d you get that name?”
“You shouted it when…” Lyre gestured with a shoulder.
Seamus held his head in both hands. “Fuck.”
THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP
“Good thing I’m still drunk,” said Seamus, still holding his head. “That racket’d fucking kill me if I was sober.”
“You should go with him. He only wants to protect you.”
“Protect me?”
“From me.” Lyre’s back was still to him. A fucking gorgeous big muscled back it was, too.
“S’posing I don’t want protectin’?”
“LYRE OF THE GIANES, I, O’GRADY OF THE CLAN O’GRADY DEMAND YOU RELEASE MY CLANSMAN.”
“You must go,” said Lyre.
The guy wouldn’t even turn to look at him and it was beginning to make Seamus feel shitty. Sort of like he’d always felt after Riley’d come and just sat up and pushed him away.
Seamus bit his lip and grabbed up his jacket where it had been flung across a table. “Sure.” As he pulled the jacket away, a book fell to the floor and he leaned, wobbling still with drink, to pick it up.
“Hey,” he said, squinting and weaving as he tried to make out the lettering. “I know this guy.”
Lyre turned now. “What?”
There was a blast of some sort, the doorway swelled and glowed with white light. Like feathers, bits of door floated in the air around them and O’Grady stood in the doorway.
He was taller, bigger, his raggedy coat billowed around him like a torn sail in a storm at sea. He pointed his finger at Lyre and the Fey backed a few steps toward the window.
“Hey,” said Seamus. “Big Fella! Great to see you!” He wobbled across the floor, putting his body between O’Grady and Lyre. “Ready to walk me home?”
O’Grady’s black orbs roiled. They really did. “Has he harmed you…” he said his voice more a howl than a voice really.
Seamus held out his hands to show his completeness. “All good. No harm. Ready for home.”
O’Grady calmed a bit, settled. “Oh,” he said. “Very well then.”
“Good.” Seamus picked his way over bits of door and didn’t turn to look at Lyre when he reached the doorway. “Later,” he said over his shoulder.
Lyre watched him go. “Goodbye,” he said.
***
Seamus teetered across a narrow wooden floor and fell on his couch with the expertise of much practice. Before O’Grady had swung the door shut behind himself and Maeebsef, the drunken human was snoring face down into the cushions.
They’d followed him as he staggered down the street and through the subway system. Talking loudly enough to himself to keep other humans distant. He seemed satisfied to have O’Grady and Maeebsef with him. Flinging his arms about both of them and half clinging, half dragging them back to his apartment.
Maeebsef looked around the place with that discerning eye of his. “Not bad. Clean.”
“Suspiciously so,” said O’Grady, stepping past a DVD rack and peering down into the narrow crevice between the shelf backs and the wall. “Hello.”
Maeebsef looked curiously over O’Grady’s shoulder. The little brownie hunched over, back to them, tiny fists firmly covering his eyes.
“There’s no use in pretending,” said O’Grady kindly.
“You do quite a nice job keeping his house,” Maeebsef chimed in.
A pair of bulbous brown eyes blinked up at them, the nostrils flaring wide in the tiny nose. He dipped his head in a nod of thanks.
O’Grady crouched down to his level. Maeebsef noted that his boyfriend actually diminished slightly to lessen the intimidation of the small brownie.
“Is he a good housemate?”
Long dark lashes blinked shyly. The knobby little head nodded once and his fist opened to stroke the front of the red velvet vest he wore.
“He leaves you presents?” O’Grady looked up at Maeebsef whose eyebrows rose in surprise as well.
The brownie rolled those enormous eyes in exasperation, and, suddenly bold, scooted around them and pattered toward the kitchen.
“Ah, I see,” said Maeebsef, scanning the kitchen. Pizza boxes were carefully stacked by the waste bin. Paper grocery bags folded in a neat pile on the counter. Fruit lined up on the table in organized rows. “He leaves his food out for you to sort and put away.”
The Brownie nodded happily, once more stroking his plump belly. Obviously, he took payment in food and felt appreciated and fully compensated.
“He is my kin, I thank you for caring for him,” said O’Grady, straightening and giving Maeebsef a meaningful look.
They left the proudly beaming Brownie to lock the door behind them.
“Strange,” said O’Grady as they descended the stairs to the street.
“I haven’t met many Brownies, but he seemed average enough.”
“Strange that my clansman is surrounded by so many Sidhe.”
“Is it? Aren’t most humans?”
“No. There are too many coincidental meetings here. And he senses us too easily. I smell magic.”
Maeebsef rubbed his forehead. “What sort of magic?”
“I don’t know.” O’Grady watched Maeebsef rubbing now at his arm muscle. “Are you feeling … ill again?” They’d stopped in an alleyway while hunting Seamus’ whereabouts. O’Grady unable to do naught but suck Maeebsef’s need out of him temporarily.
“Still… tired.” Maeebsef clenched and unclenched his fingers as he walked.
“Tired?”
“Hungry.”
“Ah.”
O’Grady spread his big arm across Maeebsef’s shoulders. He could feel the Fey vibrating against his side. Feel the measured breaths Maeebsef took, trying to control his ‘hunger’.
“Not yet,” he said, quelling his own panic. He didn’t think he could do anything else so soon. He guided his Fey to the street and joined the
throng of humans as they trod methodically to and fro. Moving easily through the mass, paying them no heed. Except Maeebsef was paying heed, O’Grady noted unhappily. Not for the first time, but with greater interest than ever before, those eyes followed young men as they passed. Flicking from mouth to groin to firm behind like a hungry human would peruse a buffet. One such young man, more blatant than most, blue and white striped shirt encircling a broad chest, tight, thin jeans and a wide laughing smile seemed to catch at Maeebsef, like an angler’s lure. O’Grady heard Maeebsef take a quick breath.
The man in question veered from the sidewalk and into a bar. Maeebsef looked away from him, ostensibly studying a light pole with great interest, but his eyes were hot. “Let’s go there,” he said to O’Grady, jerking one shoulder toward the club’s entrance.
Feeling more grim and fatalistic than he had ever in his long existence, the Banshee O’Grady walked his lover into the club.
O’Grady didn’t know what he was expecting next, but it felt like a reprieve of sorts that Maeebsef found his way to a booth in a dark corner and only sat.
O’Grady reached into his coat and withdrew his flask. No human bar could provide what he needed at the moment. Maeebsef huddled in his seat. Elbows on the damp tabletop, head bowed, strong shoulders curved over. His hands spread across the reflective surface, the tips pressed hard as if they could dig in.
O’Grady decided that dispassionate discussion was called for. “You’re unhappy,” he stated, keeping his voice level.
Maeebsef didn’t deny it. His fingertips pressed into the table.
O’Grady longed to reach across the table and take those slender fingers in his hands. He restrained himself. “I can’t… You aren’t getting what you need from me. You need… more. And you don’t want to return to the Grove. I understand that, Maeebsef.” Why did his breath feel like fire in his lungs when he spoke the words? He tipped his flask and drank deep to quell the burn.
Maeebsef turned his head toward the human-thick room. Through the weave of moving bodies, the striped blue and white shirt of the man from the street could be seen. O’Grady saw Maeebsef’s glance catch, then his eyelids close, as if to cut off the sight. “I love you,” whispered Maeebsef.
A spasm closed O’Grady’s throat. Maeebsef had never actually spoken those words to him. That he should do so now was almost too painful. “And I, you,” he said, hoarsely. “Always.”
Maeebsef looked up at him then, his eyes bright and wet. And then he was gone. A slide across the leatherette seat of the booth, a duck and step into the milling crowd. Hands clenched tightly around the flask, O’Grady forced it to his mouth and drank.
He schooled himself to only see the empty seat across from him. Not following Maeebsef’s progress through the crowd, not seeing him approach the young man, engage him in conversation, perhaps, make a suggestion. He did not see the two leave the bar, nor the caress of one hand down another’s back as they stepped through the doors. He didn’t see it but he felt it.
***
Buzzimess was busy doing what theater gnomes do. Scurrying about behind stage, checking the rigging, fixing a faulty solder in an electrical cable, pulling boxes out of the path of a young excited ingénue before she stumbled and broke those pretty legs.
Replacing face powder with talc in the dressing room of a particularly pretentious actor.
The lights had tripped on, their hum like life to him, the first lines of the play drifting out over the front rows, when he heard a scuffle in the shadows behind him and a hoarse, gruff voice, with a distinctly drunken slur pronounce, “The beauty of the world hath made me sad, this beauty that will pass.”
“O’Grady!” Buzzimess stomped toward the voice, three feet of ruffled indignation. There were no O’Grady’s in his troupe, none of the blood. This was Buzzimess’ domain and harbingers of doom had no place in the superstitious circle of theater.
The Banshee was folded over into a complicated knot of wrinkled black duster, disheveled hair, and dirty boots. He gave Buzzimess a crooked grin as he approached.
“My friend,” said O’Grady. And he rubbed his hand over his face. “By the Saints,” he said. “It’s all dross.”
“O’Grady you don’t belong here.”
“I don’t belong anywhere,” said O’Grady wisely, touching his nose. “’S the point isn’t it?”
“Oh, for…” Buzzimess looked around the narrow space. “Where’s Maeebsef? You should go home, sleep this off.”
O’Grady was laughing seemingly. Silently, and to himself. Great heaves of his shoulder and a wide laughing mouth. It gave Buzzimess chills.
“O’Grady, where is Maeebsef?”
O’Grady shook his head, pulled his hand away from a wet face. “Wasn’t gonna last, of course. Nothing does. I knew that. I knew. But….” he covered his face with his hands.
Maab knows, no creature could grieve like a Banshee. Buzzimess sighed wearily. “You had a fight?”
O’Grady shook his head heavily side to side. Like a bear. “No.”
“I don’t understand, O’Grady.” Buzzimess saw the flask shakily making its way to O’Grady’s lips and he leapt forward and snatched it away. O’Grady blinked at him. Gnomes might be solid and weighty but they could move quickly when needed.
Buzzimess held the flask out. “No more until you tell me what happened.”
O’Grady’s eyes filled dramatically with tears, mournful and black. “He said he loves me.”
Buzzimess hid his soft heart well, but this was too sweet. “O’Grady, let me take you home. This is as it should be.”
“As it should be,” said O’Grady in the Voice of Doom.
“Yes.” Buzzimess levered his thick shoulder under one of O’Grady’s lanky arms and heaved upwards, getting the Banshee to his feet. “I’ll see you home and then…” he sighed. “You’ll leave me in peace, by the Saints.”
He endured more quotes of dead Irish poets during the long walk to O’Grady’s apartment, and the clinging weeping apologetic phase when he finally got him there. He loosed those big white fingers from his jacket, finally though and let himself out.
It wasn’t until later, as he sat in a bar with his troupe celebrating the evening’s success that he understood what had happened.
***
“Hey there.” The man leaned against the wall next to Maeebsef, folding his arms and giving him an appraising look. Maeebsef wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist and reflected that human men had a very minimal grasp of their own language. His eyes wandered from the big arms, encased in crisp white shirtsleeves, down the simple silk tie to the bulge in the gray wool pants. Well. He guessed vocabulary was over-rated.
“Hi,” he said. He mirrored the man’s posture, aware that this highlighted the difference in their heights and weights. Aware that his slimmer, more fragile appearance was appealing.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” said the man. “I’m Hank.” He held out a well-manicured hand with a light dust of dark hair on the knuckles and a shining gold band on the left fourth finger.
Maeebsef shook hands. He didn’t give his name. He couldn’t lie, but he’d found if he didn’t offer a name no one asked. The man’s eyes wandered up and down Maeebsef again. It was the signal they all used. Maeebsef inclined his head toward a back hallway and slid off the wall, letting his gait roll in a manner that showed off his ass, not looking back, sure of being followed.
Hank didn’t want to kiss, which was just as well. Maeebsef could still taste the last man’s come in his mouth. He unbuttoned the bottom of the cotton shirt, unzipped the trousers, sliding to his knees and drawing out the man’s already hardening organ with a practiced movement.
There was always a moment before he did this. An aching horrible precipice where he hung with only one Banshee’s face in his mind, only one pair of hands holding his head, one voice moaning his name.
And then his need pushed him over it.
“Yeah,” said the man now. He couldn’t
say Maeebsef’s name, of course, since he didn’t know it and never would. “Suck it, that’s it.”
This one was thick, and had a clean minty smell, like the man showered every morning and wore boxers laundered with fabric softener. His pubic hair was thick and curly and tickled Maeebsef’s nose as he swallowed the head. The man made some appreciative noise and Maeebsef tasted his essence against his tongue.
He’d had all types today. It was odd how much you could know about a human just by pulling down his shorts. Some were conservative and plain on the outside, but revealed waxed groins and bizarre tattoos beneath their clothes. Some were big men with small organs. Some were wiry, eager and big but went off like a shot, full of excuses and apologies. Maeebsef didn’t care, the faster the better as far as he was concerned.