by R. Cooper
“Almost every part of that is offensive,” Piotr said, although he honestly didn’t care.
It must have shown on his face, or perhaps he couldn’t stop staring at the picture Bartleby made, even with the nose, because Bartleby smiled.
“Says the stereotype with thirteen black cats on his porch,” he argued. Piotr wondered how long he’d been out there to count them, then peeked outside to make sure Bartleby hadn’t chased these ones away.
Thirteen pairs of golden eyes watched him knowingly. Piotr defended them anyway. “They aren’t safe anywhere else tonight.”
Bartleby gave him an arch look. “And the rest of the time?”
He knew perfectly well why so many animals followed Piotr around, and why they all ran away when Bartleby had begun to visit. He also knew they would start to return if Bartleby left, and never stop until Piotr admitted what Bartleby already had.
For all the cider he’d consumed, Piotr’s mouth was remarkably dry. He swept another look over Bartleby’s outfit. “Why aren’t you at the Samhain celebration?”
“I thought I was.” Bartleby could answer like the sphinx when he wanted. He lowered his gaze to the bottle in Piotr’s hand. “Is that cider?” he wondered, as if it could be anything else. “Do I say ‘trick or treat’ or a will a ‘please’ suffice?”
Piotr simply handed him the bottle, not wanting to imagine what kind of trick Bartleby would come up with if denied. Then he stepped aside and Bartleby swept past him into the house.
Bartleby closed the door for a frozen Piotr, and placed his broom against the wall, where it stayed, perfectly upright. Piotr had seen Bartleby’s broom decorated with sprigs of holly and ivy, and the first primroses of the year, but never used for magic as it was now. Bartleby had tied hazel twigs and sprigs of rosemary to it, and bound them with a red ribbon. It didn’t match the orange and black of his dress, but it seemed equally deliberate.
“What are you wearing?” Piotr struggled to speak as Bartleby slowly unwound the scarf from his neck.
Bartleby slid a glance his way that would have shamed the cats on the porch. “I thought a costume was traditional.”
Piotr’s tongue tripped him up as Bartleby slipped out of his cute buckled shoes. “Yes, but—”
Bartleby clucked his tongue, but his gaze was forgiving. “I told you I wasn’t subtle. You’re the only one pretending I was. Hold on.” He moved his ridiculous fake nose to the side to finish off the cider, then set the bottle down on the floor. He licked his lips as he stood back up. “Ah. Your cider is half the reason I love going to the Samhain revels.”
“What’s the other half?” Piotr couldn’t have stopped staring at him if he’d wanted to.
“The chance I’ll see you.” Bartleby’s softness would have worn through any barriers even on any other night of the year, but he’d timed this well. “You fuss over the tables, and wear those sweaters that always look like comfort itself, and you mind what people tell you, and you watch me until my stomach is a bundle of nerves and need. The revels aren’t the same without you.”
Piotr shook his head, and felt strangled. He couldn’t breathe with the weight on his chest. “You’re… you’re part of the reason I stopped going. So I wouldn’t see you.” He croaked the words.
Bartleby seemed a statue. “That would hurt if I didn’t know what you meant,” he whispered, then lowered his head. “No, it still hurts.”
The doorbell rang several times, the button pushed by impatient children. Piotr stormed around Bartleby to pour handfuls of mini candy bars into the plastic buckets of children.
A tiny archer with a long, dark braid froze in the middle of accepting her candy to wave at Bartleby. But she listed in Piotr’s direction, and touched his hand for his attention, ignoring the exclamation from her parent to not do that.
“Who is that?” she asked, in a fairly loud whisper. She lived on his delivery route, several blocks away. She’d never spoken to him before.
Piotr knelt down and answered her seriously despite that. “That is Bartleby. He’s a witch’s assistant, and incredibly powerful.”
“He is?” she asked, and then giggled.
“I am?” Bartleby gave a start Piotr could feel.
Piotr gave the archer another piece of candy. “Yes. He is more powerful than the strongest of witches. But his nose is fake,” he confided.
The archer gave Bartleby a contemplative look. So did the other children. Then, apparently approving, they moved on.
Bartleby waved at them, confused, and then perhaps pleased at the childish acceptance, so Piotr aimed a glare at the parents who seemed shocked at the sight of Bartleby in a dress near their children.
When they were gone, Piotr put the candy bowl on the rocking chair, closed the door, and extinguished the candles in the pumpkins outside. The next group of kids would probably empty the bowl of all the candy. But most of the children were already done for the night anyway.
Bartleby watched that without comment, only removing his nose and his hat. He abandoned them on the floor with the cider bottle. “I thought your Hallow’s Eve was everything to you,” he remarked at last.
“When I see you….” Piotr shook his head. “You didn’t get much of this version of the day. You missed most of the kids, but it’s all about like that. Sometimes Elysia teases them and they scream, but more in delight than terror.” He probably sounded like an idiot. “I know it’s a silly waste of time. It’s not magic. It’s just tricks and candy.”
“It’s magic,” Bartleby disagreed, ever so gently. “It’s a place for you to be a witch, but not one to be feared, or avoided. A place for you to be Piotr, but not Piotr Russell. You couldn’t see how you softened for those children, but I could. Even if you never have your own, the coven children could learn a lot from you, if you let them.”
Piotr ducked his head. People, other witches, complimented his strength, nothing more. After a moment, he peered over at Bartleby.
“When it gets really dark, the teenagers are going to dare each other to sneak into my garden and steal apples.” Piotr lowered his voice. “There are rumors that this house is haunted, you know. And that a witch used to live here.”
Bartleby grinned. “Magic indeed, to make teenagers believe anything.” He hummed a bit, thoughtfully. “And you let them?”
Piotr would allow a lot to remind the world of the existence of magic. “They peel the apples they take,” he admitted, although he wasn’t certain the storm had left any on the trees this year. “Well, the girls do, to tell them the name of their future love.”
“Your apples would really tell them, even the humans with no trace of magic in them.” Bartleby flicked his gaze up, briefly, in an almost flirtatious manner, as if Piotr was a bored clerk in a pumpkin patch who needed to be beguiled.
Piotr nodded, because the apples from the six trees outside were as bewitched as the rest of the house after decades of proximity to witches.
“Tsk.” Bartleby seemed to chide him for playing coy with the subject. “On this night of all nights.” He went one step further. Piotr nodded again, and Bartleby studied him. “The tradition of peeling an apple to find out the identity of one’s future husband is an old one. One even a stubborn Russell couldn’t deny.”
Before Piotr could manage a reply to that, Bartleby slid his hands under his skirts and wriggled out of his stockings. They fell lightly to the floor at his feet, and he stepped delicately out of them. He was bare of feet and bare of leg, and probably cold, but it didn’t stop him from turning and heading toward the kitchen.
He returned before Piotr could find his legs to follow him. In his hands were an apple and a knife. He came forward and held them out, until Piotr had no choice but to take them.
Bartleby’s gaze was steady, and kinder than Piotr’s would have been.
“Piotr.” Bartleby was so close, and he smelled like cider and rosemary. “When we were kids, had you already done this before the girls tried to make you?”
It took effort to swallow, to nod and wait for the next question.
Bartleby frowned as if he didn’t understand. “So you knew what the apple peel would tell you. That’s why you hid the apple.” His frown deepened. “And your tea leaves the other night? The ones you wouldn’t let me see? What did they show?”
The dregs had shown him a heart near the rim, love imminent, and the ears and whiskers of a cat in the center of the cup. Bartleby was often a cat in Piotr’s visions. Often, but not always.
“Love,” Piotr explained shortly. “You.”
Bartleby’s mouth fell open. “And every other time you’ve done it?” He pressed closer without waiting for an answer, and stared at him with wounded eyes. “And you were afraid it wasn’t real?”
Piotr drew in as deep a breath as he could, and then released it. “I knew it was real,” he confessed. “I knew. But I was afraid it wasn’t the same for you.” Bartleby’s pain made him want to lash out, but he was the one who had created it. “I knew you would be my familiar. That you could be, that you should be, but not… this.” He looked at the apple in his hand. “I didn’t think you wanted the longing I felt for you, and I couldn’t ask you to give up your future for the sake of pleasing your witch.”
“So you didn’t even try.” Bartleby lifted his chin. But where there should have been anger or hurt, there was a glow Piotr didn’t understand. “Ah.” For a few moments, Bartleby tilted his head back even farther to contemplate the air. The line of his throat beckoned, and then he was studying Piotr once more. He spoke in a voice husky with emotion. “I see, now, why you were blessed with me for your familiar, Piotr Russell. At last I understand how I’m to help you.”
He took the apple and knife from Piotr’s hands and turned his back on him. His witch’s costume had orange stays to match the tight corseted bodice. He peeled the apple in smooth motions, the kind one got with lots of practice and perhaps a hint of magic. Piotr stared at the curve of his neck and the top of his spine, and waited. The hallway grew hotter, and brighter, although the light hadn’t changed. Elysia, if there, was silent, her parlor dark.
“I know what it’s going to say,” Piotr managed a sentence. His voice was as rough and dry as his throat.
“Do you?” Bartleby wondered, and tossed the peel over his shoulder. He turned around almost blithely and didn’t glance down to where the butter yellow apple peel curled into a looping, old-fashioned, cursive “P.” He slid the knife easily through the apple in his hand and cut a slice, which he held out. “Where is your deck? Or a bowl of water and some candle wax?” he asked, while Piotr wet his mouth with a crunchy slice of apple. “What did the seeds show you the other night?”
“That you are to be married.” Piotr took the knife from Bartleby’s still, shocked hands and let it fall somewhere harmless.
“Married?” Bartleby repeated faintly. “Married!” Then he sucked in a breath and focused back on Piotr. “I’ve never seen that. I thought it would show you. It always shows you when I ask.”
Piotr took the rest of the apple from him too, but that was also abandoned in the face of more pressing matters. “As your witch?”
He shivered when Bartleby shook his head.
“You were that already. You’ve always been that, at least, to me.” Bartleby exhaled softly. “But when I asked about the rest, about a lover, then it would give me you. Always. I could have had you sooner, if you had let me. You are too grounded, Piotr. You should have considered the idea I would want you back. Of course I would, you fool.”
Something eased, or disappeared. Piotr thought he saw a glimmer between them, there and gone. He had apple juice on his fingers, but he carefully rested his hands on Bartleby’s arms. “I asked if I would have a future love, and who it was. But future love doesn’t always mean love returned, or future husband. I couldn’t ask. If you were meant to be my familiar, but not my Bartleby… I didn’t want that. But I knew if I was near you, I would love you, and then you would love someone else and want to leave. This house is already too empty, Bartleby. One spirit, however friendly, is enough.”
“Do you?” Bartleby considered him in apparent shock, and asked him hushed questions. “Do you love me already?”
Piotr sighed it. “Yes.” A crown on his head to signal his beauty, company on a dark night, food prepared by his own hands to nourish them both, passion to make the rain fall. Of course he loved Bartleby. “Yes.”
“So quickly?” Bartleby demanded, as if he genuinely didn’t see how that was possible.
Piotr kissed his mouth, a kiss as light and warm as everything Bartleby could be.
The startled, dazed sound from Bartleby was too quiet to carry through the whole house, and yet Piotr was pleased that it did.
“And your familiar?” Bartleby buried his hands into Piotr’s sweater. “Speak the words and make them true. Name me for what I am to you.”
“You are Bartleby. My familiar, and my love, if you will have me,” Piotr answered, because no barriers could exist on this night. All the same his stomach clenched and fear made him cold. “If you will stay.”
As if in response to that need, Bartleby curled against him. He hid his face in Piotr’s sweater, and held him with both hands, and breathed, in and out. “You had only to ask.”
Piotr rested one hand at his back and shook his head. “I should have done more than ask. You deserve more than that. You deserve….” He tried to think of the words, something poetic and true. “My house, my garden, if you want them. My power entrusted to you. I don’t know how to plead for you, or how I should have tried. If you decide later that I am only good for you as a witch, I will… I will try to understand.”
Bartleby raised his head. He reached around for Piotr’s hand and brought it to his neck. His eyelids fluttered shut when Piotr lightly traced the flowers there, and soothed the remnants of beard burn and love bites from the night before.
Bartleby made a noise like a purr. “I didn’t even want to leave your bed this morning, but I was late for work.”
Piotr stopped. Perhaps he was too obvious in his relief, because Bartleby clucked his tongue. “Do you know how it felt to leave you there, and then go to work with my parents barely restraining themselves from asking questions?” Bartleby spoke as if confiding a secret. “They’d never ask you anything, not you, not the great witch, even though they like you. But there I was, late and flustered after my final date with you, missing you, and their curiosity and concern was overwhelming. All I wanted all day was to find you and hide behind you, and maybe ask you the things they were trying to find out from me.”
“You didn’t want to go?” Piotr was no great witch. His attention was scattered, his thinking slow.
“I left you the flower.” Bartleby stared at him with pity before burrowing against him once more. Maybe he guessed Piotr had thought Pallas had been responsible for the daisy he’d woken up to. “Why would I have wanted to leave? I was snug and warm with you.” he remarked quietly. “My skin buzzing with what we’d done? Our legs tangled? Sneaking out was awful.”
Piotr bent down and kissed him. Bartleby instantly slid a hand into his hair to kiss him back. Piotr went weak-kneed and stumbled, but swept Bartleby up before either of them fell. Bartleby responded by twining his arms around his neck.
Piotr stumbled again, legs shaky, his mind empty of thought, and crashed into the parlor doorway without grace. Bartleby pulled him down like a natural force, and wrapped his legs around him. He grunted when Piotr curled his hands under his thighs to hold him, then shifted forward until Piotr’s palms cupped his ass.
He had nothing on beneath his skirts.
Piotr was dizzy and fell into something, probably the armchair in the parlor. The moment Piotr no longer needed to worry about keeping them up, Bartleby grabbed his hands and pulled them to his back, and the stays of his corseted bodice. Piotr took the hint and tugged the ribbons free. Bartleby licked at his mouth and pulled Piotr’s hands to his skirts next.
There
wasn’t enough light to see his eyes, but his whisper was hot. “No more boundaries, Piotr?”
Piotr pushed his hands up Bartleby’s thighs. He had barely done anything, and already Bartleby was rocking toward his fingers and gasping impatiently.
“My great aunt is in the room,” Piotr commented, although he saw no shadows.
“Does she mind?” Bartleby sounded idly curious, but his cheeks were warm when Piotr bussed his lips across them.
There was, perhaps, an envious sigh on the breeze, so Piotr shook his head. “She doesn’t.” Bartleby made a pleased, hitching sound for Piotr’s firm grip and pressing fingertips, then groaned when Piotr pulled his hands away from his skin. Piotr had to kiss him again, in apology, and because Bartleby’s mouth was intoxicating. “I mind, however.”
Elysia knew it all, had heard it all, already. But that didn’t mean Piotr was willing to fuck in front of her.
Bartleby leaned away enough to study him, then came back in to pet Piotr’s beard and rub his face with his cheek. “Then take me upstairs,” he suggested breathlessly. His tone implied Piotr could have done so at any time. Considering the amount of his clothing already on the floor, this was likely true.
“You make things sound simple,” Piotr remarked, or complained, or praised, he no longer knew. He needed to touch Bartleby again, and couldn’t believe it was permitted.
“This is simple.” Bartleby’s voice held the same thick note of urgency it had last night before he’d slid from the counter onto his knees to get Piotr’s cock in his mouth. Afterward he’d been tired and happy, and filthy in way that seemed to please him. It had seemed right to take him upstairs, and clean him, and tuck him in at Piotr’s side.
This time Bartleby slid backwards onto his feet, and wobbled for a moment as his skirts fell around him to conceal his body. He extended a hand, but Piotr was up and looming over him in seconds.
Bartleby melted against him. “Isn’t it easier with me here to help you? My lonely Piotr. Can’t you feel the strength I’ve already given you?”