Part 11- Irish Frost
[Version 1.5]

The passage between Chicago and Valdemar had been much the 
same as the trip from The Planet and Tokyo: They had traveled by 
a chauffeured car--a limousine this time--and traveled over flat, 
relatively uninteresting land (albeit to music, as the driver in 
question was fond of jazz, a most fitting genre to immerse oneself 
and one's passengers given their destination.)

And when they arrived, it was almost like culture shock, or it 
would have been had either of them never been there before. But 
both children had, and for Nagi, it was a relief. This, in his mind, 
was civilization--with its skyscrapers dotting the horizon, the wild 
mix of humanity, and all its inherent dangers. Not that Terra was 
without variety, for it was--but everyone was odd, and oddness was 
cherished, encouraged. No one fancied themselves "normal," for 
everyone knew that word had no meaning, was useless and 
impractical and dull. 

On Anti-Terra, no such beliefs were held. It was, of course, Terra's 
exact opposite. Nagi figured that there was the beauty of Terra, and 
there was the main reason why his guardian had jumped at the 
chance Savil had offered him: To go where there were no useless 
bounds on a person, save for the most sensible--in the minds of the 
creators, not in Brad's. Nagi had thought it strange that a man who 
loved to swindle, to destroy, to kill would want to reside in such a 
place, but he had. And now he did, and was a model citizen by 
those standards. 

Crawford, who had been anything but that on Anti-Terra. 

So went the course of Nagi's hidden thoughts during the trip, and 
so they flew away upon arriving at the French restaurant that he'd 
suggested. For little over an hour, they played at being grownups 
lovers, winked at and smiled upon by the older patrons. He had 
held out her chair, poured her tea. She had smiled so coquettishly 
and held his hand at intervals during dessert. 

And then, it was time to leave for home. Nagi had asked the driver 
to take the long way round, so to speak--go off the usual track. He 
wanted to take a look around before leaving, for he felt the urge to 
do it. Like he was looking for something, or perhaps someone, and 
the only way to find it was by such a search. 

He didn't have to search for long, though. 

It was a nondescript little shop, a piece of the genteel, old world in 
the middle of an ever-changing brash one. Nagi wasn't the sort to 
visit antique stores, but this one he couldn't resist. He signaled for 
the driver to pull over, bidding her to wait with the promise that it 
wouldn't be long. 

The pair wandered up to the picture windows, and peered at all the 
treasures on display behind them: old-fashioned dresses with 
drooping bits of lace; dolls with long, curling locks of human hair 
and gowns of satin; books, and cases to store them. Nagi only 
glanced at these and then forgot them altogether, for tucked in one 
corner amidst a huge spinning wheel and a pair of faded Victorian 
chairs, was a hookah--one that looked to be intact, albeit quite 
dusty. Nagi was intrigued. He caught his companion's hand and led 
her into the shop.

***

The hookah was not the only item within the shop which turned 
out to be dusty, for vapors of the all-embracing whiteness swirled 
around their feet like startled faeries when they passed the 
threshold, and the air was rife with their wandering children, who 
seemed to make the shafts of light there glint, rather than fade.  
Saffie had not needed to be led.  No, in fact, she had rather 
supposed it would be the other way around, and she would find 
herself carrying Nagi in after her to see what he so wished to see.  
The reckless little tug had occurred to him so suddenly, been 
simultaneous with the movement.  No fissure of cream 
contemplation there, such as white butterscotch waterfalls her 
companion had been all day- wondering over the art of wonder as 
it were. 


So there they stood, swathed in the aftertaste of mold which would 
not be fully driven away, and the smell of old velvet new to the 
afternoon brightness. The floor creaked and the ceiling sighed as if 
tired of hearing about its problems.  The taffeta of her shoes knew 
cobweb fragments as she crossed the bare planks
over to the other side of the window display- that which looked out 
hopefully, rather than in with only calculation.  

She stooped before the hookah, or rather, to the passerby, behind 
it, and ran her thumb over its throat which glowed with a sudden 
and faint iridescence.  It reminded her of an anemone flower close 
up, and she told her companion so, but with pictures of a fallen 
bough she had once seen in England, encrusted with

them, like the prison of an oyster is rampant with the unborn 
fragments of pearls.   

And then she offered with slow voice, "You like it, so I'll buy it for 
you if you want.  And I'll get myself a little chair so we can sit 
together while you play with it.  Just one thing..." Her finger fell 
against his nose then.  "We get to take another detour on the way 
home.  Somewhere I know you haven't been."

***

As it appeared they were alone, Nagi caught her hand and bowed 
over it as if they were at tea party, and not in a forgotten, dingy 
little shop. When he straightened up, he didn't let go of it right off. 

"You may buy the hookah for me, if you will let me buy you the 
chair. Any one of these you fancy. I'd like it if you sat with me, 
Savil, whilst I lose myself in my dreaming." 

/And I will go with you anywhere you wish./

It was then he released her, and left her to wander amongst the 
detritus of other people's lives. He strode away in search of a clerk, 
but instead of finding a living, breathing human behind the 
counter, one covered in dust and mold as his or her surroundings, 
he found only a large collection of wind chimes, of every size and 
shape, and all strangely free of grime.

"Hello?" 

No one answered. Nagi stood completely still to listen for sounds 
of movement, but heard none. He called again, and received only 
silence once more. 

/I don't think anyone is here./

Savil neither said nor sent anything back--indeed, Nagi wasn't sure 
she was still there at all, for it had grown uncomfortably silent in 
the close shop. He moved off in the direction in which he had 
come, for the moment forgetting the hookah and her chair. 

But he never reached the front of the store, for at that moment, it 
was then that he saw the cat. A massive feline with coal black fur 
and eyes like mist, it was perched upon a table laden with small 
onyx and mahogany figurines. It didn't move save for blinking, for 
breathing. 

Neither did Nagi--that is, until he heard a low, feminine voice, at 
which he started but only a little.  There was no one beside him. 

"Lay the money down upon the table, Terran, and you and the girl 
may claim your things." 

At last, Nagi did move, turning slowly around to see who it was 
who had spoken, but still, no feminine figure appeared to him save 
for Savil's--who had just flitted into his line of vision between two 
massive celadon urns. 

"What if someone comes in and steals it?" he asked, simply out of 
curiosity more than out of fear she'd be robbed. 

A flicker of movement caught his eye, and he looked back over at 
the ebon cat, and found it now on its haunches, and staring at him 
as if it were quite amused. It lifted one paw, and flexed its long, 
curving claws for Nagi to see. 

"They will regret it if they do." 

***

Saffie had, before the cat appeared, crept back behind the stairway 
which ran long one side of the shop- a most curious appurtenance, 
for it seemed to her, that if there was a stairway in such a crowded 
shop, there should be a second floor, as awfully clich‚, as 
doubtless this assumed itself to be.  But she could have sworn they 
were in a single-story shop.  It did not trouble her for long though, 
as she was surely most accustomed to more peculiar things, and the 
dust muffled her footsteps as she moved about the bare planks, 
seeking what the shop might hold, 
rather than the shop itself.   

By luck perhaps, she came across a particularly lovely little chair- 
a rather low Queen-Anne with swooping arms and a velvet cushion 
of faintly faded turquoise.  A quick glance about the cubby she had 
come to behind the steps found no such other chairs, though 
plainly it had once been part of a dining room suite.  And 
belonged, with it's brethren, to someone she would never taste.  
Flopping down a moment over the down of time on its dusty cover, 
it was easy to imagine two lovely rows of children and guests on 
either side of a grand, grand table, headed 
by sparkling, rather old fellow, and his snowdrop of a wife.

Then a voice which made her start, for she had felt no one in the 
chambers of the shop besides her escort.  Taking the sales tag of 
the chair along, she came back to where she had left him, and 
found him not alone.  She had returned just in time to see the cat 
bare its ivory claws from the midnight pads of its feet.

And they were truly lovely claws.  Her brother's voice in her head 
teased her a bit about finding beauty in odd places.

As if the feline had rather extended it's paw in greeting, she smiled 
upon it and took up it's toes as one who means to shake hands with 
someone.  But she only held it, and then, all smiles, stroked the cat 
behind the ears.  

"Oh! Such a lovely cat! As lovely as your wares! Thank you for 
letting us look through your things."

***  

The cat bared rows of shining white teeth in a grin, eyes slitted 
drowsily as it peered up at Savil.  "Thank you for coming to visit.  
It's always a pleasure to serve those who dwell in Terra."  

Nagi glanced at the tag Savil held, and then took out his wallet and 
counted out the correct change.  This he laid upon the table before 
the feline proprietress.  "I didn't see a price tag on the hookah you 
have in the window.  How much are you asking for it?"  

"The hookah?  Oh, yes.  I had forgotten I had one of those.  So 
many things..."  The cat paused, and fixed its pale eyes upon him 
as if it were searching for a glimpse of his soul.  

"I'll take...$50 for it.  It is an antique, and a rare one."  

"I have no arguments about that."  He extracted a $50 from the 
inner fold of his wallet, and laid it atop the other bills.  He then 
gave Savil a smile.  "You don't have to buy me things in order to 
get me to do your bidding, Savil-chan."  

"Now, tell me which chair is yours, and I will fetch it for you."  

***

When Nagi turned back to Savil, he found her flushing faintly.  
Just the barest tint of darker rose settled on her cheeks and the 
bridge of her tiny nose, like a half-veil of pale pink, or a puff of 
accidental rouge.  

Which would have been less remarkable on another girl perhaps, if 
it was not that neither of the Marlow children were inclined to 
wear such hints of color and heat about their faces.  She smiled 
though, and held herself no differently, took no demure tilt to her 
shoulders and would not cross her ankles.  She simply looked 
happy- pink camellia happy.  As if she was quite pleased that he 
would be willing to be with her sans the occasional bribe of the 
sweet among people.

And little else perhaps stood fit to be expected.

Though much to her own chagrin, Saffie was in fact flattered to 
death someone had played gentleman with her.  

Either way, she lead Nagi to the turquoise-fitted dining chair 
without a word and he arranged of it and the hookah to bind 
themselves with purple bubble wrap and follow him to the door 
where their chauffeur loaded them into the trunk in a much more 
mundane fashion.  He followed her into the back of the limo then, 
to find her shooing down the glass behind her and the driver, 
whispering an address, getting a funny look and then insisting.  
The driver laughed at last and started off.

They two children sat in the back, face to face, admiring one 
another.  She wasn't blushing anymore but she said, "We're going 
somewhere very, very special.  Somewhere not even Bradley's ever 
been."

And the blush returned for a single blink.

***

Savil blushing? Nagi couldn't help but be thoroughly charmed by 
the sight she made, and he told her as much in his head. Not one 
coy glance or coquettish titter did he receive, but the blush on her 
cheeks deepened a fraction, and lingered. He shyly extended one 
foot until it touched the toe of her own. 

"A place that's special to you and one which will now be our own--
free of any taint from Crawford, that is. I am honored, Savil-chan."

/Even though I think this whole trip has been very, very special 
from the start, simply because...you are here./ 

"Won't you give me a hint where we're going?"

***

It was a strange feeling knowing she could still have crimson on 
her cheeks like a regular girl, especially unbidden, at least at first.  
It was only thinking on his words that kept it, no will of her own, 
rather his as come into being through her concentration, like a 
wizard who works through the body of another to call of their most 
beautiful spells.  With a slide maybe another boy would have taken 
for timid she nudged her foot against his, letting just a bit of the 
sole come up over 
the rim of his.

"Alright, if you like.  Bradley didn't want to go there.  When he 
found us. He could have, and he could now, if he remembers 
where it is, but his own wishes will keep him away."

The inner curve between her heel and her toes slithered up and met 
against his, where they should have just fit together, even though 
they didn't quite.

"Not that he could get in either, but Bradley is best at keeping 
Bradley out of things."

Outside the scenery skidding past had risen onto the bypass, 
heading out of the ring of the city just to find another way to creep 
back in, the guardrails hissed around them and the sun came out 
from behind a cloud but still missed whatever lay below them on 
the ordinary streets.  Her eyes fell from his for but a second for 
else had been caught in them- the steeple of some semi-distant 
church.   It looked like a toy compared to home...

Dreamily then, merely an aftertaste of herself, like his thoughts in 
her own, offered to him.

::Doesn't it though? Where we're going- Schu-baby went there too, 
but I don't think he'll ever go back if he can help it. Some things 
you just don't remember the same way with everyone.  But the way 
you taste right now, the way you feel to me.  I think we'll 
remember this alike for a long, long time...::

***

The afternoon had descended upon them in a rush.  After Lord Vyx 
had departed, the shop was hit with a crush of people.  Ran, 
however, was kept in the back mostly by his new employer, 
cranking the vat, fetching ingredients and so on.  Never had he 
worked so hard (not that he was complaining)-the woman put

Omi to shame in terms of energy and nerve.

But now, it was all over until morning.  The door had been locked, 
the tables wiped down and the floor swept, all lingering 
perishables put back into cold storage, and now the fruits of 
Claire's labors were about to see the light of day.  Just as Ran was 
dumping out the last pan full of dirt into the trash can, the woman 
herself came out of her back room laboratory wheeling a cart, upon 
which stood two enormous white buckets of frozen delight.

"I've fooled around in the lab most of the day, but it was worth it."  
She patted the lid of one bucket, then waved Ran towards them.  
"Pick those up, and place them in the case right...there."

Two empty spaces stood at the back of the middle case, obviously 
cleared out especially for her new creations.  One was the color of 
a newborn variegated rose, all yellow cream and red ribbon.  At 
first, Ran thought it was some sort of strawberry, but a glance at 
the tag behind it read, "Auntie Agnes' Apple Pie."

The other one, though, possessed no tag, but it was very clear what 
it was.  Ran decided to inquire after it anyway.

"Claire?  What's--"

But she was there, hovering at his elbow as he found, beaming at 
the two new vats like they were her grand babies.

"I call that one 'Irish Frost.'"  She took out four white plastic 
spoons out of the cup on top of the case and handed one to him. 
"Have a taste," she urged, passing out the rest of them to her girls.  
"All of you, come on!"

She didn't have to ask Ran twice:  After all, he was on a mission, 
of sorts.  It was with no trepidation that he sank his spoon into the 
mixture, and drew it out again.

And quietly marveled at what he saw.

It wasn't the green of grass like grocery store brands, but one of the 
finest frosts, a watercolor green so fine that even the most jaded 
artist would be impressed.  One could only see the color when the 
ice cream was surrounded by true white; Claire had advised them 
to serve in the whitest bowls they possessed for best effect, should 
any of them ever choose to partake of it.

But the color was only secondary to the taste of it.  Ran had found 
it...incredible.  Flavored with pure, real peppermint (organically 
grown), it tingled when it met the tongue, and made him think his 
breath had turned to ice.  The chocolate appeared in the form of 
chips, large droplets a candy-making friend of Claire's made 
especially for her; milk chocolate so pure that even the slightest bit 
of heat would make it soften.

Ran just knew Ken would love it.

"Well?"

He shot her a glance, and nodded emphatically, still contending 
with the bite he'd taken.

"Would you like to have some to take home?"

"I'll take a pint of it," he said, coughing a bit from the residual cold 
of it.  "No, make that a quart."

"A quart?  I didn't peg you for an ice cream lover."

"I'm...not.  But I know someone who is."

"That boyfriend of yours?  Oh, don't give me that look," Claire 
chuckled.  "I figured you had one when you mentioned you didn't 
want to work nights."

"Uh...Yeah."

"What's his name?  What does he do?"

"Uh...Ken, and he owns his own business."  Ran thought his 
answer was explanatory enough.  However, Claire didn't.  She 
stopped what she was doing and regarded him in a "Do continue," 
sort of way.  For a second, it felt like deja vu, but Ran couldn't 
figure out why it did.

"He's going to open a flower shop."

"Ohhhh."  Claire looked towards the front windows, thoughtfully.  
Then she turned to shimmy the lid down on the container.  Packed 
the whole thing in a portable, mini cooler.

"Here you go, kid.  I hope that boy of yours likes this."

After digging into his pockets for his money, and handing over the 
correct amount to her, Ran bowed politely and took the container 
from her with both hands. 

"Domo, Claire-san," he replied, having had brushed her up on that 
much of his tongue earlier.

"Yeah, sure," she said, returning his bow with a nod of her head 
and a surprisingly fond smile.  The kind he'd caught her giving to 
the girls when they weren't looking.  "Go on, boy, before it melts.  
And don't forget to bring back my cooler!"

"I won't, Claire-san," he called back as he made his exit.  "I won't."

***

As for Elspeth, Ann and else who remained of Claire's almost all 
girl bevy, they all gaped after their one and only boy, chewing their 
lips or their spoons, as if seeking some portal he had vanished 
through, rather than what sanity he might have left behind for 
them, having stepped away in an all together pedestrian

fashion.  

"A... a... FLOWER SHOP! EWWWWE!" Genevieve finally 
blurted out.

"What's this place COMING to?" a girl who had been otherwise 
quiet during most of the day said to herself, though in the lack of 
conversation, everyone heard and made a point of nodding.

At least until their mistress clanged one of her tin pails for 
attention, in which case they all fell into each other, having been 
stunned by the first loud noise in a good five minutes.

"Don't any of you start with that hogwash now!" She insisted, 
shaking her finger at least once to every single member of the 
assembled.  "If the boy's boy wants to do silly stuff before his age 
beats some sense into his head, let 'im!"

"Aww!" Elspeth here, bouncing up and down as if doing so might 
accelerate her speech time and get her faster into the sticky, 
summer evening.  "Why are you always sticking up for him! He's 
such a fuddy-duddy!" Which let to a fluttering assent and a melee 
of other comments.

"Yeah!"

"Even if he doesn't cause trouble and he's better with the vats than 
we are!"

"You're scaring us! More so than usual!"

And then, all together, "HIDOI-NE!".  Which happened to be the 
only phrase of Japanese all of Claire's girls knew, and the one they 
used rather judiciously to annoyingly express being uncomfortable 
in some way or another, since after all, it annoyed Claire to no end 
that she had only just now begun to learn the once fashionable 
second tongue of Valdemar...

"Oh! Shush you! And you! And you over there too!"

"Umm... I'm sorry, I actually don't work here," the accosted 
woman began. "I came back in after my..."

"That doesn't mean you can make noise!"

At which she left, not to return until the desire for cinnamon icing 
twist had assailed her for so many nights it became unbearable and 
obsessive to the point of meriting either a return to the shop or 
many psychiatrist bills.  Such was the state 
of the balance between mental health and sweets in Valdemar.

"Anyway," Ann began in a much more controlled tone than before.  
"What's the deal? I think we oughtta know!"

Claire shook her head and turned away to the glossing late 
afternoon sheen of her back window, her hands balled into fists at 
her sides, cream dripping from one corner of her apron.

"For the same reason I opened this place." In a low and dreamy 
voice, seldom heard since the bondage club had been located.

"Because you like odd flavors?"

"Because you gots sick of bein' a herald?"

"Because you like lookin' at cute bishie butts all day?"

"Ah, no, my darlings."

The 'darlings' should have told them it was coming.

"BECAUSE I CAN!"

***

The drafts had gone warm around noon, and though the creeping 
warmth had not at first bothered them, within the hour it had 
become unbearable when accompanied with their stillness and the 
sunshine.  All the windows in the Hyacinth Villa stood open now, 
and the doors that ordinarily barred their sights of one another.  
Perhaps this was well, but Ken, starting up his own stairs to
change quickly, for he had grown to warm in a shirt which actually 
had sleeves, fancied that the twisted eddied of air had no sense to 
their movements, lest that sense be of another's body.  Even in 
broad light, he caught himself glancing over his shoulders now and 
again.

Rubbing his eyes for sleep and thoughts of coming blindness. 
Laughter again downstairs.  He threw his shirt on the floor and 
pulled on a thin tank top, which he stood before the mirror in, 
dusting himself with his fingertips.

At least innocent except for the part where he strayed to his nipples 
and tried to pinch them into shape.

Which didn't do well.

/Silly me./

But he could not help to notice his hair was a wreck.  Such was his 
punishment for being so long in the presence of Yuriko at her 
playful best.  Too much work for all of them.  He kept calling 
himself lazy, even as he drew up the brush and ripped out the 
knots.

Something below the handle though caught his eye, and not merely 
that the surface of the dresser had been varnished too quickly and 
so bore bubbles in it's grain.

A note there.

Fondly patting the one from his beloved, he tore the new one open 
and read, half between humming and half smiling, so he did both.

At first.

Somehow, he managed to replay the creases in Crawford's 
invitation and get the thing into his other pocket without tearing it.  
Then, stealthily, suddenly and flushed with anger did he descend 
the stairs.

Primera came upon him, smiling and bearing a note on familiar 
burgundy paper.

"Oh Ken! Carly just wrote, she says she'd love to come for supper 
I..." and then did she take stock of his crimson and hard 
expression.  "Umm... Ken?"

"That's... great.  Tell her eight o'clock.  I'm going out.  I'll be back 
then.  Sorry." His own curtness made his throat burn.

"Where are you going without us?" Yuriko teased from the other 
room.

"To return something."

"Oh... OK! Have fun."

"Sure."

/Yeah right./ But he marched out to the carriages and ordered on 
take him to the hotel before it came to him putting his fist into the 
plaster of the walls.

***

When Ran arrived, he was greeted by the sound of feminine voices 
and laughter from somewhere above him.  He lingered at the door, 
taking his time in toeing off his shoes to listen for Ken's singsong 
tenor.  Frowned a bit when he didn't hear it.

/Damn,/ he groused to himself on his way up the stairs, ice cream 
cradled in one arm.  /Where have you gone now?/

It wasn't any surprise to him that the center of activity was once 
more the kitchen/living room.  What did surprise him, however, 
was that Fiona was tearing up spinach leaves and throwing the bits 
into a vast blue ceramic bowl and Prim was checking on whatever 
it was she had in the oven.  So intent were they both, that neither of 
them looked around when he entered the kitchen. He stood there 
by the threshold for many moments, just watching them work, and 
wondering what it was they were fixing, for it smelled delicious.

"Tadaima," he said at last, quietly.

The oven door slammed shut, and Prim whirled around to goggle 
at him.  Then she smiled.  "Okaeri."

He quirked a pleased brow at that.  "Arigatou.  What are you 
cooking?"

"Oh, it's...Well, you'll see."

"Something special?"

"Hmm...You could say that.  We are going to have a guest tonight-
-Carly is coming over to dine with us."  Prim moved off to the 
refrigerator for a wedge of bleu cheese, which she took over to 
Fiona, and set down beside the chopping block.  The girl looked at 
it, then her, then turned away to slice up some tomatoes, 
muttering darkly all the while.

Ran went to the refrigerator in her wake, and put his bundle into 
the freezer, pack and all.  "Where's Ken?"

"Oh, he had to go out...Suddenly.  Something about...He had to 
give something back to someone."

The freezer door slurped shut.  "That's odd..."

"That's what I thought.  He looked quite put out earlier, too, just 
before he left."

"Did he say when he would return?"

"Mmm...before eight," Prim replied, once more hunched in front of 
the oven door, peering at whatever lay behind it.  "Which is when I 
plan to have dinner on the table, as he knows."

"Ah."  Ran lingered for a moment longer, then pushed away from 
the counter, and padded out of the kitchen.

On the next floor, Yuriko was wrapping up the day's auctioning.  
Ran continued on to the bedroom without a greeting, not wanting 
to disturb her.  Not just yet.  Hopefully, not at all.  Surely, he 
would be able to find all he needed on the premises--after all, it 
was once a brothel.

/I hope he doesn't get upset when he comes back up here, and sees 
what it is that I want to do tonight.../

Ran closed the door softly behind him, and turned to gaze upon 
their bed.  He'd already had an idea how he would like it to look:  
Pillar candles scattered around-- on the fireplace mantle...maybe he 
could find some tall holders to place
around the bed?; an assortment of oils on the table, as he didn't 
know what scent Ken would like the best.  Maybe some music, 
too, something...classical?  With violins.  Or a cello.

Or guitars.

/Or maybe you should stop planning and start doing, Ran./

With a sigh, he moved away from the door, to the wardrobe he had 
claimed as his, and took out his formal kimono.  He hadn't planned 
on wearing it so soon, but...It seemed the time for it.  A special 
occasion meant special garb.

And after all, he was going to be in the presence of a real 
noblewoman.  Ran draped the garments over his arm, and stole 
down to the bathroom to get ready.

***

They came at last to some faded white place, rather on the borders 
of the city, and rather not.  The urban nowhere where waterfalls of 
sunlight only dared trickle from the places beyond the distant sky 
scrapers.  Saffie told the driver to wait in 
some innocuous parking lot, buy whatever she wanted for what 
would have been tea if what she thought of had not turned out to be 
the typical burger with extra large fries and a shake with more kelp 
extracts than milk in it.  Savil and Nagi let her be and headed down 
the street- one puff of pink taffeta and a shadow of black cashmere, 
lost like long-lived soap bubbles in the middle-class maze of other 
people's ordinary lives.

They stopped at grocery store with toy piano music playing on the 
loud speakers and Savil convinced the cashier there that they were 
most certainly both allowed cigarettes with their flagons of 
sparkling water that smelled like cherries but tasted like 
strawberry.  Sniggering a bit, did they continue on their trek, the 
streets more often ribbed by cracks between the stones.  

::I think they'd be pretty if it got icy here, but then again, I've never 
been here in the winter.:: 

She proposed, skipping over one fissure which was dotted with 
dandelions, the fluff from which swirled up around her ankles, 
despite that no breeze fell through the gaps between the buildings.  
They all ran one long spiral around her and flew to the clouds, out 
of Nagi's hands then, and hopefully destined to land somewhere 
which would make something less vain of their lives amid the 
concrete.  She waved goodbye to them before doubling back to 
gather her companion up by the wrist and carrying him with her 
down one more flight of twists and turns
going nowhere especially different.  More coffee shops.  More 
markets.  More pancake flat townhouses.

They came at last though to a rather large but still quite 
nondescript apartment building.  The buzzer on the front had just 
been replaced, but no one had bothered to caulk around its edges.  
Saffie sighed to see this, but did not bother with the panel at all.

To the telekinetic's surprise, she drew out a key and set it to the 
lock.

Which hadn't been replaced it seemed.

They both giggled and scurried down a country-blue lobby and 
into an elevator.  One tap of her rose-clad foot and the doors to 
said elevator remained open a moment longer to admit a nicely 
plump woman with faded auburn hair.  She carried a basket of 
folded laundry and wore a nurse's uniform.  

"Say, do I know you two? You look familiar, but I can't quite place 
you..."

"Woul I'm Saffie Marlow," Savil explained with a titter.  "I used to 
live in across from the Clearwaters."

The woman blinked and shook her head, "You know, I seem to 
remember there was a little blond girl usedta live there, but now 
I'm sorry! It's all gone! All I can think about is..."

"What happened to Nancy?"

"Why yes! I suppose you must have lived here then.  Well, nice to 
see you!" And she got out on the fourth floor while Saffie had 
pushed the button for the fifth, and pouted once left alone with 
Nagi.

"She does SO remember me! She was always complaining Schu-
baby and I got the good washer on laundry day! Oh well."

Before she could even stamp her foot, they had arrived on the fifth 
floor, which really looked little different from the fourth.  The 
carpet had a rather gaudy blue and green pattern which looked like 
eyes from one vantage and the surface of
a mossy lake from another.  It was far too clean considering the 
walls had no end of scuff marks underneath the floral sconces 
which lined them.  The left room on the far wall with it's one plate 
glass window she chose to rap upon.  Some grumbling and a half-
clad blond man answered, swore, and reached back inside after his 
glasses.

"Who are you?" Quite acidly.  Once could easily imagine him 
about to declare his contempt for girl scout cookies on a moment's 
notice.

"No one you know, but I used to live here.  May I come in?"

"But of course, M'lady!" And he swept aside.

"Put some pants on, please."

"Why yes, M'lady."

"Lock yourself in the bathroom while you're at it."

"Righto."

A sigh.  She and Nagi stood overlooking the inside of the 
apartment.  Which was a wreck.  All papers and old pizza boxes, 
though underneath their glimmered hints, mere hints of white 
furniture.  Or at least, furniture which had once been white and 
rather fashionable.

"Well, the deck's still there at least."

And the door to the deck had not evidentially been opened for 
some time, for it squealing and cried at every shove she gave it.  
But out on the patio, nothing had changed.  It was no more and no 
less worn.  All the same hotels were the view or obscured the view.  
The central city stood as a shadow fire before the lolling sun.  Cars 
squealed before the stoplight and people talked loudly enough for 
they two to hear as high above as they might have stood.

And it smelled just a little bit like distant water.

***  

Nagi would have leaned upon the rail, and peered down at the 
streets below, looking upon more or less what Savil once saw. If 
the girl at his side did indeed go for such pastimes. He wasn't sure. 
Not once in four years did he ever catch her looking pensive. 

Crawford now, that was a different story. One that was too long to 
tell. Maybe after he found the key ingredient for his hookah... Of 
course, then he'd be too stoned to care. Savil might only laugh, if 
Savil stayed to listen to things of which she already knew. 

Down below them, Chicago screamed and cried. 

"You used to live here, with Schuldich. And he doesn't want to 
come here any more because Crawford's spoiled him. And 
Crawford doesn't want to come here anymore, because...it reminds 
him somehow of things he'd rather forget." 

/Talks in his sleep occasionally when he's had too many. You 
might know that, though.../ 

/But of course, I am guessing. As to whether or not I'm right about 
anything I said, only you know. I'm only going by what I know of 
them./

"But I can't imagine what reminds him, unless that atrocious carpet 
in the hallway was like the one in his old house." 

/...No, I guess I don't really care one way or the other.../

/But if there is something more to this...?/ 

He shifted his attention to Savil, who was looking around at the 
scene before her as if she wanted to commit it all to memory. As if 
she thought she'd never see it again. Maybe she wouldn't. Again, 
he didn't care one way or the other--it was entirely her decision. 

All he knew was that she looked like a dream. That, and she had 
just given him a bit of a gift. A bit of herself--her past. Nagi didn't 
miss the importance of her act. 

He caught her hand between his two own. A kiss descended upon 
her 
knuckles. 

"Arigatou, Savil."

***

Saffie nodded to him then, coaxing his fingers apart so she might 
let her own steal against his cheek, which she found a little cooler 
than she had imagined it would be.  Probably the wind from the 
lake and nothing more.  She supposed her hands were a bit chilly 
themselves, and so would do well to sink back into his,
which they did, just as an inopportune car horn met their ears.  And 
they smiled, letting their eyes go to the pavement to see what all 
the fuss was about.

"I don't really know why Bradley won't come.  I've never asked 
him to, and so that's probably the reason.  He just doesn't taste like 
he would, after all."

And then with a knock of her pink shoes against the concrete 
molding.  "I don't really want him to."

She sensed his faintly bemused look and faced him at the moment 
he cast it towards her.

::You... didn't expect me to say that? It's true though.::

"But Schu-baby won't come back because he's happy with it the 
way it is. Just in his mind- that's good enough for him.  That's all it 
needs to exist for him." Her foot she slid from her slipper and 
down against the bars between her and the dive down to the 
afternoon traffic.  ::But am I planning not to come back here 
myself? I don't know.  I don't really want to know.::

"But I..."

And here her gaze strayed back to the wasteland of the living room 
where stirred a single orange kitten among the refuse and the 
sticky notes and eviscerated computer hardware that stood 
decaying in the milky sunlight.  

"I'm not sure if I remember being here.  When I'm not here.  And 
maybe I could live with just those memories, but sometimes... I 
just don't want to... go on with only that.  It doesn't make me happy 
even though... you know I... I can't think of all that many times I 
was sad.  Really sad and hopeless like all the sweetest thoughts..."

::And maybe I feel a little of that being here, like I almost wish I 
did.::

She sighed then, and reached for the mineral water in her shopping 
bag, holding the first bottle she drew out to him.  "Gomen nasai, 
Nagi-chan.  I'm just feeling silly is all."

***

"There's nothing wrong with feeling silly."

With a squeal of metal on glass, the lid spun off the bottle's rim 
and fell, pinging daintily upon the cracked concrete and scraping 
as it rolled blithely towards the edge.  Nagi wondered if they were 
high enough up for the innocuous cap to be rendered harmful by 
gravity.  Of course, they weren't.  

It was a disappointment that they weren't.  

Savil produced a bottle of her own, and he performed the same 
procedure upon hers, twirling his finger this time through the air in 
mimicry of the cap's twisting.  It, too, pinged away, and over.  

He touched his bottle to hers, and took a sip.  Sharp it was and 
sparking, and it tasted oddly of berries--or so the label claimed.  

"There is beauty in sorrow--poets show us this.  One must suffer to 
create.  I can see why you would want to taste such bitterness, and 
foster it in yourself."  

"But...I am glad you've never fallen fully under its sway."

***

Saffie was silent at first, and smiled only, rubbing her lips against 
the throat of her bottle.  This way and that. Tasting the fizz 
between her lips and not tasting it.  

Her companion gave her a soft and distant look, searching as if he 
wished to read her mind as she traced his.  It occurred to her then 
she did rather wish he might; that if she might have had among her 
pearls and powers one which could bestow upon him that which 
she felt the flavors of- one by one.  The symphony and chiffon of 
lying and of dead desires. 

But would she teach a cat to speak?

Or a fish to fly?

A deaf man to hear?

For this was but a sense, but a manner of breathing something 
besides air. It had always been there.  Some people had purple 
eyes, some brown, and some such pretty, pretty blue green.  One or 
the other or not mattering.

But she wanted him to taste how she could taste, where she had 
never seriously wondered over such things before.  And she knew 
well he would have liked it...

(And here her musings drifted over to him and asked leave to be 
introduced to his consciousness.)

"...if I could Nagi-chan.  I would.  But I can not even make that out 
of nothing.  Only the wish I have power to give form.  If I 
sorrowed, I should be no different, for to fashion woes into words 
is a sense, not a gift.  A wear of hearing what is not meant to be 
spoken.  It is something I have not."

A few half-steps of her one shod and one bare foot so she came 
close enough to smell the berries on his lips.  "But I think you do.  
And that keeps my wishes I can feel happy wishes.  At least the 
one's about you.  I haven't many but for those."

***  

Her thoughts tasted like gingerbread, something he'd only sampled 
once in his life, but had never forgotten. The loose strands about 
her face danced about in a sprightly breeze, her skirt swaying in 
time with some unheard music. In Nagi's mind, they were not 
standing on a depressed porch above a exhaust-smothered, tired 
city street, but on some wild, foreign plane in the long ago. 

"You have wishes for me?" 

She said nothing, neither vocally or mentally, but there her answer 
hung in the cornflower fields of her eyes. It made him sad, 
yet...filled him with a curious hopefulness. Such as he had felt only 
once, and then, only briefly. 

Her lips were slightly damp, as if she'd sipped--though he knew 
she had not. Such sweetness lured him, true as any mermaid's song 
would a lonely, seafaring man. Nagi kissed her with none of the 
hunger that such a piteous human would show his ocean-dwelling 
love, but with gentleness. With a modicum of the feelings he knew 
she could taste. 

Nagi grazed her cheek with his lips in much the same fashion. 

"If I'm to be a poet, then you will be my muse."

***

Savil had been many things in what she recalled in life- the days 
when and since she had stood as lady of the washed out place in 
the world, the apartment over a city that was and that was not, even 
when all her senses made it real.

"But I have never been a muse," she rather blurted out- not 
worried, not spooked.  A sudden truth, and nothing more.

"I have..." she began then, her eyes facing what little revenant 
twirled there, the music box dancer of a second girl, neither her nor 
who the body had once held... dancing away, but always in place.  
Here, and with Nagi, and with whatever lay beyond the world 
beneath the sun and rain, if anything there was but
memories.

"...many a wish for you.  But they are wishes you have had 
yourself and maybe don't remember.  Mostly.  Like this one, that 
you would be that little word that makes other words dance.  And 
if a muse you should like."

One blink, two blinks, barely the sun upon a windshield passing on 
the road below.  And just like that, Tot was gone, from him with 
no persuasion, and from her for he no longer almost remembered.  
Saffie swirled away from him and gathered up her glass with a 
smile.

"Then a muse you shall have, but I would like a toast first."

So they toasted.

Only then did she kiss him back.  And not too much like a 
mermaid would have, she had to admit at least that.

For now.

***

Some half hour later, Ran had finished bathing, shaving and 
dressing, and now he stood in the full length mirror in the corner of 
the room gazing at himself.  A slim figure in crisp black and grey, 
save for the splashes of white at his feet. He hardly recognized 
himself, and yet he did.  It wasn't the first time he'd dressed that 
way, but it had been years since he had.

/Old news, Ran./

Abruptly he made his exit, leaving the room on a warm current of 
air.  Flipped out the light and stood there in the shadows, watching 
Yuriko part the mounds of printouts on the floor into two separate 
piles with her feet.  Clearing a path.

He knew in his heart of hearts that if anyone knew how to set up a 
surprise such as he wanted, she would.  She found the wine cellar, 
on a fluke. Perhaps luck was still with her?

Slowly, Ran stepped out of the gloom, and brushed across the 
threshold of the office, his zori sandals dangling from two fingers.  
He hung there just inside the door.

"Yuriko-san?  Can you keep a secret?"

***

Yuriko looked up from her blue shag road through the valley of her 
printouts and in doing so forfeited her joy about being able to play 
for a few minutes in the grounds of papers.  Or rather, handed over 
for something better.

Upon seeing her friend's lover poised just so in her doorway, she 
exclaimed, "For someone that handsome, you bet I could!" And 
popped her fingers in her mouth

for a whistle which from anyone else would have been flirty.

And to Ran, it apparently was.  

Since she had plainly abashed him, she obliged herself to quiet her 
aesthetic glee, and merely wide eyed and smiling invitingly did 
patter over to the threshold and usher him deeper into the room so 
she might close them in.  But when she did speak again, and in a 
heart-lock diary whisper, her enthusiasm might have
been subdued, though her happiness was not and she was mindful 
all the while to give her confidant his space.

/'Cause I sure didn't see you coming to me for help.  Wow! I'm 
even gladder Ken likes you now! You *ask*! Japanese boys don't 
ask anything!/

Plainly, she was the sort who thrilled over being told secrets.  

"Gomen ne, Ran-san.  I didn't mean anything, you know that, don't 
you?" She still gave him one more once over with her eyes.  "You 
do look smashing though! And even if I'm real loud about THAT 
I'll sure keep a secret for you. And no matter what!"

***

"Ah...Okay." 

Still a little flustered over her unexpectedly favorable reaction to 
his appearance, Ran began to fill her in on his secret. Of course, he 
did so whilst examining his palms, and the calloused patches just at 
the base of each finger where his katana had rubbed his skin during 
practice. 

"I want to do something special for Ken tonight. I have certain 
things I need to acquire--candles, candle sticks, some...er, 
appropriate music, and..."

"...oil..." 

Ran coughed a little. "But...I don't know where to look. Since you 
know this place far better than anyone, save for Carly, I thought 
you might be able to help me, if you want to help me. If you don't, 
that's fine." 

"And no," he said, looking up at her at last, his face and neck now 
broken out with blushes, "it isn't anything kinky."

***

Yuriko shook her head for him.  "I didn't think that at all! And 
even if I did... even if it WAS something kinky... that doesn't 
bother me at all!"

Plainly, the idea bothered her companion.

"Either way, of course I'll help you.  I'd love to in fact, and not just 
because Prim threw me out of the kitchen."

Here, no one spoke for a bit, for pouting had taken his lips and he 
was evidentially imagining just why Primera had seen fit to exile 
her from the land of culinary delights.  But that ended, and she 
hmmed and she drummed on her cheek with one finger for awhile, 
lips murmuring the nonsense directions of her own remembered 
cues which mapped the Villa.

And while the inspiration wasn't divine, it was the same sort of 
unexpected when it came.  She cracked a fist on her palm and 
triumphantly announced.  "I got it!" Then back to her more stealthy 
volume.  "We should get the candles first, I know right where 
those are, it's not far, near the wine cellar, and we can
smuggle them upstairs in baskets.  I know there's a check-out room 
for CDs around here somewhere, but I don't have an idea where.  
Shouldn't be too hard to find- that sort of place you'd put near the 
entrance.  As for oil... well, there are a few places we could try, 
each one of which will be more of an adventure than the next."

That said, they took another brief break to be disconcerted about 
what she had meant.  

"You know what, I think you'd better put your shoes on.  I'll go 
grab my sneakers, and we can start!"

Although she returned in barely a blink, just as Ran had finished 
easing his foot into the first of his unworn straps, mindful to find 
just the right place to nestle his instep, and only then testing his full 
weight on the sandal, and only one, for the ritual he repeated with 
the second, and then shifted back and forth against them both, once 
he was assured of their fitting.

Yuriko threw her Nikes down on the floor and stepped into them, 
smashing the heels down to make them into impromptu clogs.

But she waited patiently at least.  Doing their best to act natural, 
they swept down the stairs and out of the tower without attracting 
much more than a quick, cursory glance, confirmation that 
someone the onlooker knew was passing, and not a stranger who 
had found their way in.

Then it was into the halls of empty rooms, or what soon hoped to 
be empty rooms until they came to one door marked with amber 
glass rather than any more vivacious color, not to mention it had 
been left closed to the fresh air and the waning day.  The key, like 
the others, however, was left in the lock.  She turned it and swung 
the panel open revealing a short, white hall- not at all the sort of 
entrance one would expect to a basement in a mysterious house.  
Especially considering it was lit overhead with a string of crystals 
and small bulbs, operated with a pedestrian dimmer.  It seemed at 
first that it stopped of its own
accord, went neither up nor down nor anywhere along.  Yuriko 
pulled him all the way to the far end though, to stand beside her, 
rather closer than he seemed to like.  

But a quick tap to a sunken panel on the wall and they were carried 
down a floor to what looked almost exactly like a passage in a 
well-to-do hotel- with wall sconces of glass and a carpet bearing  a 
complicated pattern of feathers.

Once more did she lead him along, calling out the names on the 
brass plates which hung on the doors.  "Cuir, fouets, caoutchouc, 
chaines, bandages, uniformes de jouer, linge, vin, Ah! here we go! 
Bougies; candles!" 

(OOC: The doors are in French- leather, whips, rubber, chains, 
bandages, play uniforms, linen, wine, candles.)

***
   
/A room full of candles?/ 

Strangely enough, it made sense to him, given where he was at that 
moment.  The only problem was, the knob wouldn't turn, and there 
wasn't a keyhole. He started to mention that discrepancy to Yuriko, 
but before he could utter one syllable, she fondled the crystal knob 
like it was really a diamond and she lusted after
it, and the door gave way without a creak. 

His amazement didn't fade away too soon; rather it was stoked 
even higher when Yuriko clicked on the cast iron and crystal 
chandelier that hung in the middle of the room. It looked like a 
swathe of oak branches, with the crystal bulbs shaped like leaves 
and tiny acorns--far too pretty, he thought, to be shut away in 
basement. 

But then, that wasn't his business. The candles were, and there 
were scores of them in the room--cabinets after cabinets full, all 
wrapped in tissue paper and boxed. All drawers labeled. There 
were scented and unscented, colored and white and beeswax. 
Every fragrance and shade one could imagine. 

In the end, he decided on one called Nightspell, which was drip-
less, and heady like incense and spice, and as black as midnight. 
These he loaded his covered picnic basket up with (such as they 
found hanging inside the door), and added a few table top holders 
he'd found in a drawer in the last row of cabinets-- some that 
were of volcanic glass, and shaped like flat bottomed bowls--the 
only way he knew to best describe them. 

But no floor style, wrought iron candle holder. Still--they weren't 
quite through yet. 

The lights went out. Yuriko took out the candles she'd come across 
from her basket, and put it in Ran's at his offer, and left the candle 
room altogether. Yuriko began to talk about the CD checkout, what 
they had in the way of music--as she remembered. What did he 
want that night?

It was a good question for a man who never listened to music, 
except when his roommates had their radios/cd players blaring 
away in the shop, in their rooms.

"Oh, yeah. The music. Um...I was thinking about European 
classical-- something with violins, or a single cello."

/Because I don't know how Ken would feel about koto or shamisen 
music--never

heard any such noises coming from his player. /

/Of course, that would be nice too. Played softly, in the 
background. I always liked the sound of them.../

***

"That shouldn't he hard to find at all... at least, I don't think so," 
Yuriko said, pausing a moment to catch one of her wayward shoes 
which had started to slide off as she skipped on it funny. "The 
problem is turning up with the CDs in the first place!"

As if done personal injustice by the disks in question did she pause 
and stamp her re-shod foot against the floor, glancing this way and 
that about the hall. "Y'know, let's try down here before we head up 
again!"

Ran gave her an uncertain sort of look, one which bordered on 
worn out.

"C'mon! It'll be fun! And we've still got lots of time before Carly 
comes!"

Maybe she didn't tug on his kimono sleeve, but she pull him along, 
and only with her indigo irises, which seemed to have turned 
cornflower in the sunless light of the Villa basement. Which she 
and he quite sacked, along the way learning that whoever had 
stocked and labeled the doors had been in possession of a very 
crass sense of humor, as the dildos and the pocki (a real treat in 
Valdemar she assured him) were kept both in a room labeled 
"twigs of joy", the pillow books stored with the pillows, many of 
them in open positions, and the spare obscene renditions of 
classical Greek statues all given underwear before having been 
hidden. Lacey for the most part. 

There was, however, not a music disk in sight.

Only one downstairs door remained to them, this one unmarked. 
Not to mention that no amount of coaxing and caressing of the 
knob; not to mention an ample does of creative curses seemed did 
little to open it either. As she stood mumbling over what to do, 
Yuriko suddenly paused and drew out the path they had thus far 
taken with her toes, making over-generous loops for the staircases. 
Her invisible drawing seemed to please her to no end though, and 
lead her to conclude- "Hey! We're almost back were we started, 
only downstairs. You know what that means! We'll be down here 
ALLLLLL day tomorrow kickin' this  in! Whee!"

Satisfied she would be so entertained the next afternoon, she was 
more than content to leave it.  

Though she did not lead Ran back to the elevator. Rather, they 
took a detour through the wine cellar- a cool, stone forest of 
maenads and satyrs where the racks had been set deep into the wall 
as part of an endless frieze- claimed two bottles of ice wine for 
with supper, and walked smack though a bower of ecstatic boys 
with pan-pipes, taking herself and her companion up a narrow 
ramp and into the hall of gold and silver trees which lead to the 
alabaster room where the whores had gathered.  It was earlier now 
than when they had met them though, so the windows along the far 
wall were still rather dim, only winking a little with
sprays of color.  They didn't stay long enough to really watch 
them.

"Now don't ask me how THAT one works, I really don't know. 
Anyway... the music room has to be around here some place."

Saying so, they together crossed out of the passages which lines 
the villa- left the wainscoting and the notions of old castles who 
would claim their owners and the innocence of sleeping princesses 
by night, only to find that the cheery afternoon had not fled. And 
so, if anyone would have been roaming those cool, quiet places, 
from here, one could suspect nothing more than a kitten- perhaps 
one in blue tonsures, but a kitten nonetheless. Yuriko wondered if 
any of the chimneys had flues, or if Ran knew that story.

She turned to ask him and found his gaze lingering over the grand 
window of the lobby, whose clear pools between heaven and hell 
had gone a bursting gold which only brought out the aquamarine of 
the cobalt of the stains which the glass fragments had adopted. The 
bubbles of the corners all bloomed with spark flowers of the 
fading sun. The white burned, the black bore purple and oh, the 
eyes of the saints and the demons shone. Likewise their wings and 
swords.

It seemed only one host now.

Yuriko didn't have the heart to summon him away, even when she 
discovered the door to the CD rental shop just behind the desk of 
the check in counter's room. The place had been somewhat sacked 
by the departing whores, so the shelves stood less than half full.

And Ran was much more of a sight. Both of him, the centerpiece 
of 
the work from where he stood. In good and evil at once, both their 
beings and their spirits in the floor.

(OOC: Yuriko is of course referring to Tom Kitten, or one of the 
stories about him.)

***

Schuldich had actually meant to go back to the room once his 
adventure had come to it's logical conclusion.  Still imagining the 
taste of his ice cream... and several other things besides, all salty... 
he had peddled up to the front of the hotel, whose workers had not 
even considered asking to please not bring his bike inside.

He pulled it behind him all the way up the stairs.  One of the maids 
thought he looked like a boy with a wagon and he stopped to snog 
her.

"You know, it's just not true what they say about there not being 
any female pedophiles."

She stopped to slap him.

In fact, he had made it halfway back to the room door, only to find 
luck and he had still not reconciled.  A rather unshaven fellow with 
a clipboard waited for him in the shadows.

"Hey there! You Aubrey Crawford or Bradley Marlow?"

"Well gosh no!" He responded, smacking his own cheek, 
sarcastically as he could manage on short notice.  "I'm their son, 
Aubrey Marlow."

The man promptly scratched his head and started thumbing 
through his papers,

"Man, those people on The Planet! They didn't say nothin' about no 
son, I..."

Schuldich groaned and tore the clipboard out of his hands.  "They 
don't have a son! Somebody fucked up our names, but yes, this is 
our furniture inventory you've got here and YES we do have a 
place you can move it into which isn't this hotel room."

The mover, for that's what he was, snorted.  "No need to get snippy 
about it, Mr. Marlow Sir.  Especially after some nice man on the 
Kalm Inn staff paid to have your things send extra fast.  Some guy 
named Cait, I'm sure of it!"

It was fortunate for Schuldich lots of people screamed while 
visiting Ashkevron Plaza hotel, or else he would have made more 
of a scene than usual.

"In fact," for some reason, the moving mad was anything but 
phased as well- doubtless a bad sign in one entrusted with highly 
breakable valuables.  "He sent these for you."

The box of Cheez-its Aubrey Marlow took.  But he did not read the 
card, or do anything to silence the ill-shaven man after he'd tied the 
bow to his head.  He just grabbed Jasper and took him along to see 
to getting the furniture manually placed in the Church.

/And while I'm at it... damn Brad for not WARNING ME!/

/And if he hasn't seen me LEAVING well damn him even more!/

/In the mean time, where can I get some roadkill to send Cait as a 
thank you...?/

***

It was the profound silence that roused him from his contemplation 
of the window, and Ran turned to find his companion leaning on 
the check out counter, chin in hand watching him.  Behind her, the 
door to the cd room stood ajar.

"Is there a problem?"

She gave him a wistful little smile, and shook her head, beckoning 
to him before moving away towards the other room.  Ran followed 
her, dropping off his basket on the counter as he went so he might 
search unhindered.

And he found the selection to be as pitiful as she had.  The whores 
had been very thorough in exacting their revenge on the Villa, 
albeit in a rather subtle way.

"I suppose they felt the need to have a souvenir from the place," he 
muttered, a touch bitingly.  Yuriko set forth without comment, 
heading off towards the far end of the left hand set of shelves, 
where a promising looking pile of cds lay scattered.  Ran, after 
giving the tiny, eye-level heap he'd spotted a quick visual once 
over (and finding nothing but some boy band called Take That, a 
toothy, bronzed duo who went by the name of Wham!, and 
recordings of crane calls--which he had never found sexy), left off 
his search in order to sulk in the cream colored shadows between 
the door and one of the stacks.

Which he ended up doing for a many longish minutes before 
Yuriko even took notice of him.  By then, though, he had decided 
to take his leave.

"Come on, Yuriko-san," he droned plaintively.  "We aren't going to 
find anything down here."

***

"Ohhhhhhhhhh..." Yuriko fumed cutely, "Damn it! Just... damn! 
No fair!" But then with a much more serious sigh did she follow 
ran out into the entryway where the shadows had grown a touch 
longer thought the mirror below them had started to shine in 
patches with a brilliance seeped through the clear pains only to 
fall into their eyes as something truly as blinding and lovely as the 
sun itself.

Through ringed in clouds of blue forever bound between iron.

And the sight of them reminded her away form trying to discern 
what sort of underwear her companion was wearing based on his 
reflection.

"Wait! Ran! I've got an idea!" and she shooed him into a corner to 
tell him, back in her whispering mode.  "OK... two ideas! The first 
is kinda... kinda eccentric, and the second you can't tell anyone 
about if you wanna try it."

"First idea!" she popped her finger in the air to emphasize it.  "The 
Villa has a string quartet on call every day but Mondays, and since 
it isn't Monday, we could call 'em up! They're expensive and 
everything and they'd have to play in the bathroom I guess, since 
that's right below the bedroom.  Not to mention
hiding them would be a problem... but we could do it! And don't 
worry, they're all trained to play with their ears plugged so they 
don't overhear a thing!"

"Second idea!" Two fingers now, and she waved them, hoping to 
conjure peace in his eyes perhaps.  "You know it's illegal to record 
stuff here by electronic means... well... OK, I had a tape player 
recorder, a real good one! And I got a WHOLE MORNING of 
dragons singing off the coast.  I put it on CD too.  You can borrow 
that if you want.  It's got ocean noise in the background and a 
saxophone player who wandered past... and you can't play it too 
loudly or it hisses..."

It seemed then that her enthusiasm had gotten even the better of 
her, and she wilted a bit.  "Ah... don't mind me.  Whatever you 
want.  I *DO* however know where they keep the oil... I think."

***

"...I hope..." Ran murmured in her wake.  He had lagged behind to 
let her steps once more into the leader role she'd held since leaving 
the Tower.  He followed her out of the room without thinking--all 
on automatic, now, since he was more inclined to mull over her 
suggestions than pay close attention.  

The chamber orchestra, while certainly a lovely idea, wasn't a 
practical one.  For one thing, he didn't like the idea of strangers 
being in their home, much less in their bathroom.  Much less, 
whilst one or both of them were naked.  Nor did he want to have to 
leave bed in order to pay them and show them the door afterward.  
And he doubted they'd do it for $25, which was all he had on him--
nor he wasn't about to ask Ken for the money.  This was his 
surprise for his lover.

As for the other...The idea tickled that little boy side of him--the 
one his father had tried so hard to destroy; the one Ran had feared 
had died after all the hurt, and the wretchedness his life had 
descended into.  He was pleased to discover that battered and 
broken, it had survived.  

For secretly, Ran had always liked dragons.  

"There are dragons in Terra?  Dragons that...sing?"  

***

Yuriko, on hearing this surprisingly light ring in this comment, one 
which was nearly sad with anticipation expecting to be crushed, 
retraced her steps and came back to Ran, who she had honestly not 
meant to leave as far behind as she had.  

Oh, there was just a touch of credulousness to his guise, and just a 
thread of hope in the smile he was trying to hold at bay.  And she 
couldn't, in a million years have shooed this from him, even if 
there WEREN'T dragons on Terra.

Which there more or less were and she got to tell him about them!

Ken... well... there were lots of things Ran probably didn't know, 
and he had plenty left him himself.

So...

A huge grin spreading across her face she said.  "Yes, there are 
LOTS of dragons on Terra! Great big ones that sing like... like... 
like nothing else here or on Antiterra! In fact... you know, they 
don't *STOP* here often, but sometimes you can see 'em outside 
about this time! When the skies getting' kinda dark but it's not 
night yet.  Let's go! Just for a peek! I feel lucky!"

Saying so, she could not resist.  She snatched up Ran's hand and 
towed him along behind her as she dashed over the floor, sliding 
now and then as her feet protested her shoes.  The doors burst 
before her and still running did she carry Ran out onto the lawn, 
down the path of blue glass until the edges of it were just turning 
from meadow to tickle weeds.  She stopped there, still holding his 
hand, and pointed up to the clear space between two clouds of 
bluish marshmallow.

"They look kinda like shooting stars up there, or moving jet-streaks 
depending on how low they go! We're not real near the shore, so 
it's usually the star way that they show up.  Or if you think you 
hear the wind but it's still out, sometimes that's a dragon too.  Oh... 
damn, had to be all breezy today! Well... let me just run to my 
carriage and grab my disk!"

This said she patted his shoulders and took off sprinting through 
the grass towards Carly's house, a trip she often made, and in such 
a peculiar and impractical manner.  For some, the nodding tufts of 
leaves and fluff surly would have made them feet as if they raced 
rather through water, but she had grown used to them, 
and to making the trip through all the little dips and rises and rabbit 
holes that she only fell once.  

Luck was with her and she found not only her CD, but her discman 
in one of the compartments beneath the seats.  These retrieved, she 
sped back, watching the sky herself now between bumpy places.
And she didn't greet Ran again, who was still watching the 
heaven's.  She was too out of breath, and so simply put the 
headphones over his ears.

Pressed play.

Now if she remembered, there were thirty or so seconds of 
ordinary waves on her recording, for the dragons had gone silent, 
and for some moments she had feared they were mocking her, 
would not sing for her as if they knew she was breaking a rule.

And then... a little swell above the serenity of the ocean- not the 
movement of water or anything which to most would have 
resembled the sound of a creature.  It was, the voice of the first 
one, like a clarinet heard in a large, old chamber, and from far 
away- long, clear notes which would never have been repeated 
exactly so again, had she not caught them.  They had, all together, 
as one by one they joined in, a sound to their voices, nearly human 
and nearly synthesized.  Chiming or sliding with the harmony of a 
mind which knew something of music, even
though it could not render speech.  A sound like dawn over heaven, 
the music which the shadows of the living know deep in the woods 
and the jazz of the ordinary birds knew.  Sensual and sweet.  Kind 
and hopeless and glad all together.

***

Ran didn't look at Yuriko, merely stood there, hands tucked in his 
sleeves, and scanned the glazed bit of sky between the flowing 
yards of blue tulle clouds. Once, twice, he caught a glimmer of 
light, a pale streak that arced between the fluffy mounds, another 
that circled and swooped. He wished fervently with that bit of his 
heart that was still seven years old that one would dip down low 
enough for them to see what one looked like. Were they scaled? 
Were they wingless like the dragons on the scroll which hung on 
his grandfather's living room wall? Or did they have voluminous, 
leathery wings, breathe plumes of fire, and dwell in massive caves 
atop stolen riches like those he had read of in fairy tales as a boy? 

Or were they entirely different altogether? 

It didn't matter, not really, that he couldn't see them, for he had the 
proof of them there in his head. In his ears. 

Ran unhooked the headphones from their perch atop his head when 
the last trill died away, and handed them to Yuriko. Gave her the 
smile he'd been holding in reserve. 

"Arigatou, Yuriko-san. I would like to borrow this tonight. I think 
it will be perfect." 

She beamed. Fumbled a bit with the discman. Gave him a pat on 
the 
arm which he didn't recoil from, or even deem inappropriate, and, 
with one last glance at the clouding sky, beckoned him forward. 
She was quiet, pensive seeming, but for once Ran didn't want to be 
so. As they neared the wisteria gazebo where Ken and Carly had 
sipped alcoholic lemonade, he asked,

"Is the seashore very far away?"

***

"Hmm..." Yuriko began, perhaps not impressively, but she was all 
sincerity, even with her little airily given supposition.  "Well, it's 
kinda hard to say.  For here, sure, it takes awhile to get there, but 
that's only since we don't have cars.  It's two 
days by carriage though, in good weather.  And there's nothing 
between here and there but grass and patches of forest.  At least, 
that's to the nearest beach town.  It's not like it's the only one.  In 
fact, Rethwellan's pretty old.  Not much younger 
than here.  And ALLLLL the houses are like... conspicuous 
consumption high Victorian.  I mean you think this place is bad..."

A little laugh here, and she waved her arms to take in the whole 
supine body of the Villa, and the grounds, and perhaps iin her 
hyperbole, the glint of Valdemar nestled among the distant hills.

On sudden whim did she pull Ran up on the gazebo, stirring a 
handful of cream lassies, who batted their wings but would not 
take off, away from their viney perches. One stuck its feeler in 
Ran's ear.

She took the swing, and waited as if she wanted him to join her, 
though she didn't ask straight, out.  Didn't want to make him feel 
obliged.

The chain squeaked a little since she sat to one side, her weight 
uneven against the hooks.  

"There's been a rumor goin' around for awhile that there's some 
other town three or four days from here, but I've never been there 
and I don't know anyone who has.  Don't even know what it's 
called or why anyone would go there.  So if you want to go to the 
beach AND go exploring, you could look for it! I bet it'd be just as 
much fun as trying to get in the third tower.  Wow!"

And then a little sigh, for she could not help but think it would 
have been a lot easier to go on such an adventure if she had her 
bike, but no, it was still stranded in one of the storehouses just 
inside the Valdemar gate, and she could not tear up the virgin hills 
or ancient sand with it.  Not that she would ever take any of her 
mechanical babies through sand!  

Or remembered at the moment they were supposed to be talking 
about oil.  No, her eyes were swimming with burning and fanciful 
images of what might be just outside of her peripheral vision. 

"Of course, you know, most of this place is empty.  Demons just 
build towns where they end up when they fall in.  We don't even 
have maps of the whole world.  It's a little scary, knowing you can 
wander into nowhere, but I guess that's how people felt before they 
got to look down on themselves from space.  And maybe that's 
how we're meant to be, just a little uncertain and just a
little curious.  But that's just me.  Don't mind it."    

***

Ran, who had been lingering at one of the vine-screened windows, 
watching the moths bat their wings at one another, said, "I don't." 

He half-turned to gaze upon her, and found her misty lilac eyes 
pinned to the garden beyond them. But she clearly did not see 
patches of tansy, and lilies, and flax, but worlds she had only heard 
of. Adventures for which she longed. 

Those dreamy orbs lit upon him, and Ran dropped his eyes like a 
timid maid. With a flap of his hakama skirts, he moved over to the 
bench and sat down, hands in his sleeves. 

"I can see why Ken liked you, now. Why he was so crushed when 
you 
left." 

Silence. Ran sagged against the swing back, and, with a hard shove 
of his sandaled feet on the weathered wooden floor, sent the bench 
in motion. 

"You asked him to come with you then, I know. I overheard him 
tell...someone. I know he wanted to come. He wanted it so badly." 

He shifted in his seat so he could face her directly. Waved off 
another curious cream lassie, who dared to venture close to his 
nose. 

"So, Yuriko-san, since you didn't get to have your adventure 
together, why can't you have it now? Why can't we ALL go 
exploring?" 

Ran gave her a little smile. "Anyway, I should like to see your 
dragons."

***

Yuriko had not applauded that her best friend's lover had seen fit to 
speak to her of such matters as he had doubtless kept to himself.  
Did not applaud the fact he had felt the need to give their swing a 
delightful coaxing into motion.

She clapped now for one simple reason of her mirth.  "YAY! 
That'll be so much fun! We'll all go together, once the flower shop 
gets going! And it'll just be you, and me and Ken and Prim... do 
you mind if I bring Prim?"

He did not.  The cream lassie who had been convinced to land 
somewhere besides his nose had grown most irked and now circled 
like a languorous green cloud around their bench, keeping in time 
with the swings of it with little bats of her great, big wings.  

"And the sky and the moons and all the funky little bugs who live 
in the grass! WOW! I didn't know you LIKED adventures! I 
mean... no offense."

The fact he had evidentially been about that one topaz evening by 
the shore with Ken... that didn't offend her either.  Not as true hurt 
does, with tints of bitterness and momentary revenges planned.  
No, it only made her just the littlest bit sad.  Since the lover had 
known too of her plans to steal away the one who had cherished 
him, and even then, been cherished unawares.  Oh, would that she 
had gathered them both up! For not to Australia had she planned to 
spirit them but... here.  Wherever here was on Terra, besides being 
relatively near the Villa and the floor of the gazebo.

How would things have been... different? Would she be sitting on 
the swing now with the adorable and quiet redhead? Would Ken 
have been different had he not had time to grow fond of her? What 
would they have done with a Villa drenched still in money? With 
no Fiona and no Prim?

And somehow, none of this wanted to go together in her mind.  As 
if somehow... it hadn't simply NOT been, but COULDN'T have 
been.

That this was right.

And Ran's shyness was right.  And Ken's shivers.  For what other
insinuations of darkness might there have been? Much darker 
streaks across their view, something to keep them from the hills.  

Which were still quite bright themselves.

"And I can't wait to show those dragons to you! Oh! You'll be 
surprised, I just know you will... provided you aren't a naughty boy 
and go looking up how they look! I don't know if there ARE and 
pictures of dragons around.  They'd have to be sketches and all... 
since not everyone is as bad as I am!"

Then did she tilt forward and come quite close to him as the moth 
no longer dared to do.  "Or you! Naughty! Naughty! Naughty! I'd 
LOVE to know what you'll be up to, but I won't pry.  That's for 
when we DO go out and I have a chance to run away."

***  

"You think you can divine all my secrets, Yuriko-san? I should 
warn you, I am good at hiding my true intentions."

/I'm good at hiding, period. Very good./ 

/Just ask Ken./

It struck him then that a day had gone by and he hadn't thought 
about Aya. It wasn't that he didn't care, or no longer loved her or 
wished she'd awaken, for he did very much. Now, though, it was 
drifting to his subconscious, becoming an ever present wish that 
lingered in that part that lay closed to him, and would bubble up at 
the oddest moments. 

This caused him to feel guilty--a heavy and forlorn sort of remorse, 
and his mood would have been killed entirely if it weren't for the 
impish grin his companion wore. 

Ran sank like warm jam against the seat, and tilted his head to rest 
on the curved edge of it. "I won't look up any drawings. I can wait 
until then." 

/Besides, why have an imitation, when one could see the real 
thing?/

/I've found the real thing. The first of its kind ever./ 

/And speaking of whom.../ 

He lifted his wrist level with his eyes, and found it bare. His 
watch had been abandoned with the rest of his day's garb. Ran 
dropped his hand back to his lap with an irritated quiver of his 
fine, dark brows. 

"Do you think its close to eight?" he asked, peering off through the 
slender, green leafy ribbons at the vivid blue of the heavens.

***

Rather than remarking on how her reflective strain had crept from 
her mind into that of another, and how cute it was, that there they, 
two people from wholly different clusters of one man's (or boy's, 
she changed her mind with a faint inner titter) life would be sitting 
together, speaking of being together, without a tang of jealousy or 
simple social contempt such as nearly all of Valdemar's people 
knew, Yuriko reached into her shirt in a somewhat raunchy manner 
and came up with a heart-shaped pocket watch on a thread of 
ultramarine glitter.  Or at least, what rather resembled glitter.  A 
chain of metallic blue snibbles of stars, but with nothing clearly 
found to hold it together.  

"Prim gave it to me 'cause I kept breaking the one's on my wrist."

/And it was the only purely Terran thing I took with me to Japan./

A click of it's catch and it showed her its dial.

"Actually it's... oh crap! It's six thirty! I gotta go home and get 
dressed!"

The swing did a few interesting jerks which threatened to turn into 
flips.

"SORRRRY!" she, already on the path called out.  "You know 
what they say about girl's taking forever to get ready is true! The 
oil should be in the BIIIIIG fridge off the dining hall 'cause it's a 
perishable item.  I'll be baaaaaaaaaaack!"

At least, she hoped so.

The cream lassie who had tried Ran's nose contented itself with the 
last speckle of sunlight on his basket, which had warmed the 
candles beneath the lid and released enough of their aroma for it to 
be summoned to parts other than the redhead's body.

*** 

"Announce my intentions to the whole of the Villa, Yuriko-san," 
Ran murmured dryly. "I don't mind a bit."

The cream lassie on the side of the basket moved to the lid, and 
twitched her feelers as if she were scolding him. Ran only watched 
the graceful way they darted, the dainty way the insect picked a 
path across the tightly woven twigs. 

"I don't want to move, moth. I want to stay here, and watch the 
garden awaken again in the moonlight." 

The moth only waved at him again, and, as the last ray of sunlight 
disappeared over the mountains, so did she. 

"You're right. I can't. I have other things to do than just sit 
here."

/And daydream.../

So, with a soft grunt, Ran rose from the swinging bench, and set 
off for the rear entrance. 

The Villa wasn't quite the madhouse of activity it had been earlier.  
Most of the remaining workers were either retiring, or had left to 
explore the city proper, so he had a quiet stroll from the back 
garden to the kitchen (which he had had gotten directions to from 
one passing ex-whore.) 

And if ever there was a kitchen which could astound him, it was 
the Villa's. It was huge, lined with black tile flooring, and full of 
glittering formica counters and stainless steel appliances: Two 
dishwashers, two stoves, and a massive refrigerator with double 
doors. Two long tables made of wooden stood in the middle, their 
surfaces clean, but nicked and scratched in places, the resulting 
injuries of carelessly handled knives. Above one of them hung two 
racks laden with pots and pans. By one wall stood a bookshelf 
laden with cookbooks of all sorts. 

It was a kitchen meant to create banquets. Impersonal, built for 
function more than looks. Ran adored it. He approached the 
refrigerator with a sense of wonder, so illumined by his reflection 
in the cared-for steel. Both doors he heaved open, and then one he 
let go closed, for it led to the freezer. 

The refrigerator part was a mess. Scattered with leftover take out 
cartons, odd bottles of beer, of soda, the remains of someone's 
grocery shopping trip--Ran didn't know if he'd find what he wanted 
after all. Piece by piece it all went, shoved to the side, to the back, 
or relocated altogether. 

And then, behind a bowl of guacamole dip, he found that which he 
had sought. A half-full, red frosted glass bottle, upon which violets 
had been molded. Its front was covered with a gold and white foil 
label, and its deeply feminine script, Ran read aloud. 

"Miss Trixie's All Natural (Completely Edible!) Butterscotch Body 
Balm. Keep chilled when not in use. " 

He tapped the side of the bottle thoughtfully. Unscrewed the cap to 
sniff it, and found it pleasing enough. A moment's more 
consideration, and he slipped it into his basket. 

"I just hope I can warm it up enough so Ken won't freeze to death 
when I put it on him."

Ran made his way back to the tower without incident, without 
being noticed. Prim and Fiona were still in the kitchen, bickering 
now, and he, smiling to himself, traversed the last few flights 
leading to his bedroom. Entered, and quietly closed the door. 

It was as he had left it, sans Ken and now quite dark. The 
luminescence from the twin sisters hadn't yet touched their haven--
an atmosphere all the better to play with candles by, Ran thought. 
He set the basket down on the bed, and took the pillars and their 
holders out one by one, and then, one by one, he positioned them 
in small clusters around the darkest shadowed spaces. On the 
mantle, on the night stands, on the dresser, and around the hearth. 
The cd he put in the player Yuriko and Prim had come across when 
digging through the rooms for items to buy. It worked, so Ken had 
claimed it. 

A quick trip to the bathroom for towels, and he was done with the 
room. All that was needed now was Ken. 

Ran gave his setup one last critical going over, and then crept back 
downstairs with the wine-and-oil laden basket. Prim and Fiona had 
stopped their squabble, but animosity was thick in the room, more 
from the teenager's corner than from Prim's. 

Ran wasn't surprised at all, actually. He calmly crossed over to the 
refrigerator and had the oil safely tucked away behind a bowl of 
green bean salad before Primera even noticed he was there. She 
gave him a bright smile before turning back to her duties--which, 
at that moment involved the mincing of apples. Ran made no 
comment, just put the wine away, and placed the basket on the 
counter beside him. 

Then he padded back into the living room and stretched out on the 
couch to wait.

***

There was nothing like a little Schubert after a day of shopping, or 
so Crawford thought.  Upon returning, he had deposited his gifts 
for the children in their respective rooms, in plain sight.  The 
enameled box and his figurine he had placed in his suitcase for 
safekeeping.  What Schuldich would do about the former when he 
presented it to him, he couldn't say--again, multiple versions of the 
truth had bubbled up in his psychic eye.  Still, Crawford
would give it to him, even though it could mean...

The assassin pushed all those thoughts away, as they were 
unpleasant and he just wasn't in the mood right now.  No, he was 
more in the mood for a cocktail.  He heaved himself off the sofa 
where he'd been sprawled, smoking and daydreaming, and padded 
barefoot over to the bar in the corner.  To the hotel's credit,
it was a very well stocked one, and so he had no trouble fixing the 
very drink he wanted:  A Wild-eyed Rose.

/Hadn't had one of these since.../

Crawford held it up to the light, rotating the glass before the 
window and letting the twinkling, fruit-garnished, ruby liquid catch 
the light.

/...Since I left England that last time./

He took a contemplative sip, then meandered back over to the sofa.

/I'm so...sentimental today.  So lost in my memories,/ he thought as 
he sat back down, and drew his feet on the satiny cushions.  /But 
then, I suppose it happens to everyone sooner or later--even to a 
cynic like me./

He reached for the bag of soft mini pretzels he bought from a 
vendor on the way back to the hotel; settled the sack between his 
thighs and pulled one out and began to munch on it.

/Everything happens sooner or later./


(ooc:  Just for information's sake:

Wild-eyed Rose
2 ounces Irish whiskey
1/2 ounce grenadine
1 ounce lime juice.

Shake ingredients with cracked ice; strain into a chilled cocktail 
glass. Garnish with a squeeze of lime and cherry.

I didn't want to give him something like a martini or wine.)

***

Ken was halfway up the hotel walk before he realized he hadn't 
even remembered to put his shoes on.  He swore, not loudly 
enough to frighten the gathered doves, who took wing rather at his 
groan when he realized he had left a noticeable trail of blood, 
having stepped on an alabaster die someone had carelessly 
dropped,
going in or out themselves.  With not a twinkling of regard for how 
anyone on the staff might react to seeing the crimson on the path, 
especially so recently after a murder, he marched up to the doors, 
walking on his wound.

And found he had to part the doors on his own since the door boys 
were still gone.  Within, the floor had been swept bare and the 
herbs not yet replaced.  No one had lit the fire, but otherwise, all 
had an troubling air of normalcy.  At least until he strode in and 
slammed his palm on the service bell.

It was a herald that answered him.  She might have been from the 
old Villa staff, but he didn't recognize her, and if she knew him, 
she did nothing about it.  He asked where he was and she would 
not tell him at first.  He heard someone whispering and the lilt 
pattern of his own name crossed their lips.  It only
made his impatient drumming of his fingers faster.

Someone else did too, knew him, and lead him back himself to the 
suite where Schwartz had been last seen. Only in the most vague 
form, did it occur to him what he was about to do was beyond his 
hot-headed and impulsive self.

He was calling himself stupid about it years later.

Hidaka Ken who, with his foot bleeding, he skin sweaty... Hidaka 
Ken who wore only tight jeans and a thin blue tank top... Hidaka 
Ken who had armed himself with nothing but a love note, pounded 
on the door to the Amalthea Suite of the Ashkevron Plaza hotel.

***

Brad didn't even looked surprised--more bemused--and not just 
about the fact that a gorgeous, sexily clad young hothead was 
fuming on his doorstep. 

/Oh, will you complain about, liebe? You were the one so eager to 
get out of the hotel, and into that glorious sunny day. You should 
thank me! I merely prolonged your hours out in it./

/Well, I can't be as sweet as sugar all the damn time. Or half the 
time, even./ 

He laughed outright at the reply he received, then severed the link. 
An important confrontation was about to take place, one which he 
had been looking forward to all these many weeks, and he didn't 
want his attention to be engaged elsewhere. 

A glimpse in the mirror as he passed it, a quick finger comb of his 
hair, and Crawford opened the door. And grinned. 

/I thought Schuldich was the only one who could make sweat look 
sexy...Oh, I was SO wrong./ 

"Why, if it isn't the Hidaka-dono, a day early and dressed to kill."  
Crawford stepped to one side, and waved vaguely towards the 
living room with his cocktail. "Won't you come in, and join me in 
a drink?" 

***

Ken didn't say a word.

He simply thrust the envelope bearing the invitation towards 
Crawford, who smiled and contemplated the offer with all the zen 
detachment of a true master in the art of idleness.

The paper of it crunched between his fingers then as his grip 
tightened on it.  The popping crinkle he found satisfying in some 
perverse way.  His naked toes brushed the rim of the hotel room, 
but tied by what little remained of his sense he would not cross any 
further into the chamber.

Just held what he carried under the precognitive's nose.  Suddenly 
aware of the fact he had begun to shudder with rage, which he 
hope in turn would be taken as such.  And not some sign of 
weakness before what had once been his target.

/And don't think that's not true if that slut telepath of yours is 
telling you what I'm thinking! I would have flayed your skin off 
for him if I'd got the chance./

The image of Brad reduced to a snow white heap of goo and the 
jellies of two eyes flared like liquor in his mind and so heartened 
did he speak.

"Take it back, you sonnuvabitch!" 

***

But Crawford didn't move, other than to study Ken over the rim of 
his glass--which he promptly set aside on the narrow table that 
stood opposite him by the wall. 

"You came all the way over here to give me back my invitation, 
when you could have simply thrown it away. Or sent me a scathing 
reply in return. I find that very interesting, Ken. I have to wonder 
why you would make such an effort." 

No reply, but Ken didn't withdraw the scrap of paper, nor did his 
obvious rage falter at all. So, with a shrug, Crawford took the 
note, and as he pinched the edges of the invitation between thumb 
and forefinger, so he gripped Ken's wrist in his hand, and yanked 
the boy across the threshold. The door was slammed shut and 
locked, and Crawford positioned himself between it and him. 
Licked his lips as he looked him over. 

"And you know what I think?"

He took a step closer. 

"I think...You wanted to see me. You wanted to see what would 
happen."

Crawford stood perfectly still, and they stared at each other, sizing 
each other up, neither willing to back down. Then, Crawford 
lunged forward and grabbed Ken around the waist, and held him so 
close not a scrap of light could be seen between their bodies. One 
hand flew up to clamp down on the back of his neck. 

"So, I'll tell you what's going to happen: I'm going to fuck you, 
Ken-kun, and you can scream, and cry, and beg, and it won't 
matter.  I know the truth. I know..."

Crawford bent so his lips hovered just above Ken's ear. 

"Your little kitty can't satisfy you. He's inexperienced; all 
poetry, and 'I love you,' and none of that crap turns you on. You 
want it rough. You want to be used, and hurt, and tossed 
aside...Just like the whore you are." 

***

He could hear himself in the future somewhere- speaking, 
shouting.  He could detect the little inevitable curl of Crawford's 
lips as some vague and bored interest took him that his momentary 
prize dared speak with such disrespect, for 
he was the master here, that of the whole world in his mind.

But he couldn't speak.  

And the realization his tongue had gone quiet without his leave 
settled in him deeper and more violent than the mere idea he was 
wrapped in the arms of Bradley Crawford to begin with.  The very 
suggestion he might no longer have in him the will to struggle, the 
tincture of truth that he could speak on his own behalf- that was 
what rendered him defenseless.  As magic swords are made so
by the considerations of their bearers.

So he stood.  Stillness slid through his veins like setting ice and he 
could not move.  It was that or shivering.  Shivering would be 
begging and he had sworn not to beg.  Not in front of someone 
who got off on begging, someone who had been so cold as to 
calculate he would do such a thing.

Those as entwined they remained, he became aware, gradually at 
first, that the grip which sustained their embrace had only been 
truly tight for an instant, and then eased to the uncomplicated 
intimacy of real lovers, such as he disparaged.

Essentially, that he was free to go.  To punch the bastard in the 
face.  And true, to never see him again.

For he knew not why he had come.  Did he enjoy shouting? Enjoy 
getting his fists into the source of his rage? Or thinking maybe he 
could?  

And Brad's gaze had softened to a fleeting mock amusement.  As if 
he beheld rather a misbehaving puppy which was none of his own 
responsibility.   

Ken blushed.

And growled.

And would not move.

He did, however, manage to spit in Crawford's face.

***

Crawford went from shock, when he went positively rigid against 
Ken, to disgust, when he released his hold on his waist to wipe the 
thick glob of saliva from his cheek. And then, it was indignation, 
when he tightened his grip on the back of Ken's neck, making his 
shoulders hitch under the strain, then ache, but otherwise 
seemingly unaffecting him.

His lack of response only served to enrage him, and Crawford 
stepped back just far enough to deliver a hard right across Ken's 
jaw. 

"I wanted to do this nicely, but hey, have your way." 

Crawford hauled him over to the couch and wrestled him face 
down onto it, pinning him down with his weight. Holding Ken's 
hands down with his own. 

"It wouldn't take much, you know," Crawford whispered against 
his 
cheek. "I could strip those tight jeans off that pretty ass and I'd 
have you."

/And I know how easy that is to do./

"I'd have what Aya only dreams about." 

/I know.../

But Ken didn't speak, didn't move at all, save for breathing. Not 
even one flex of his fingers. It was as if he was waiting for him to 
get on with it, and go away, so he could go back home. But 
Crawford didn't make a move. Something had stopped him. A few 
somethings. 

His own memories of when he was a boy, now dredged up from 
the pit where he'd banished them, and...

His latent fear that he'd become like the one person he'd always 
hated the most, and...

The realization that no matter what he did to him, Ken wouldn't be 
affected. He couldn't hurt him. Couldn't ruin him, for he already 
had been, and, having been in the depths of abject misery, he could 
only find happiness now. Oh, yeah, he'd heard all about the 
notorious Kaze, and how he treated his lovers--how he had treated 
Ken, bits and snatches of the truth. There was nothing he could to 
do best that, save for one thing. 

Crawford scrambled off him, and onto his feet. "Get up," he 
snarled, grabbing Ken by the arm and yanking insistently until he 
complied. 

And then, faced with the pure loathing he saw in Ken's eyes, he 
struck him again, backhanded, then shoved him back against the 
sofa, and wrapped one hand around his throat. 

"I could kill you. I OUGHT to kill you. But I can't, not without 
being caught. But..." 

/But.../

/I could destroy you, nonetheless./

Some of the rage he wore faded in favor of a look of pure 
calculation. He'd had an idea, a possibility he hadn't even seen in 
his psychic eye. A nasty smirk curled his lip as he released him, 
and straightened up. 

"I've changed my mind. I wouldn't have you on a bet." Here, he 
chuckled. Crawford turned away from him, and calmly walked 
over to where he had left his drink, picked it up, and took another 
loving, final sip. 

Then he strolled off towards the bar for another, as if nothing had 
happened between them at all. 

"You've said your peace, and I've said mine. I'll thank you to get 
the hell out of my hotel room now."

***

Dazed, Ken started to comply. He had his hand on the doorknob 
and 
had made the hinges sing. Behind him glass clattered. The little 
pings were so familiar he could almost, almost name the drink.

And through dazes just as deep as the one he fell in and out of 
now.

Brushing his cheek with the back of his hand, he did speak them 
with the low syrup of the traveler of many bedrooms.

Even if there had been no one but him before Ran. Not... really. 
Not the way he thought of it.

"I wonder how Schuldich's gonna feel when he finds out he's the 
only whore you can perform with? I'd be happy if I was him, but I 
guess he'll be all put off his daddy-boy's got a sentimental streak. 
Y'know, he's not the only one who can read minds. I'm not the 
scared one here. It's you." He laughed then as a child who tears 
open his closet in the middle of the night to find the monsters are 
gone. "You're a fucking coward."

And then he did the first sensible thing he had done in almost an 
hour.

He ran.

All the way out to his carriage. To the driver's curious gaze he 
almost serenely suggested, "Umm... if anyone asks, I walked into 
the coach door, OK?" Which he pretended to do on the way in. Got 
a smile.

"Let's go drive around town for a bit. It's a nice evening, and I 
don't need to be back yet."

In the mean time. He stretched out sideways on one of the seats so 
she couldn't see him in her mirror and shivered as if left naked in a 
snowbank to freeze to death.

***

Crawford  had made no move to follow him.  Rather, he finished 
mixing his simple cocktail, shook it, poured it, and toted it over to 
the sofa.  He picked up the remote to the stereo, and with a tap of a 
button, got a bit of Beethoven.

Schubert was for dreaming.  Beethoven was for scheming, and 
Chopin...

He held the drink up in a toast to someone who wasn't there, but 
wasn't ever very far.

"So I'm a coward, am I?"

/We will see who is the coward, Ken-neko./

He took a sip of his drink.

"And as for Schuldich...No, he's not the only whore I can perform 
with.  He is the only whore who is worth having, though.  Better 
than you could ever hope to be, Ken-*san*.  Far better."

/Aya should feel honored that he's interested in him at all, even if 
it'll come to nothing./

/But the sentimental side of me?  Yes, I believe he would be put 
off.  It puts ME off, but...there you are.  And there's why I try not 
to let it show. Why I throw my shields up around him when I feel 
that damnable twinge come on./

"Because there are just some things I can not control, try as I 
might."

/And I do./

Another sip, and Crawford set his drink aside to let it warm up 
while he plotted and planned.  It tasted better that way.  Ice was 
entirely overrated.

Sometimes, so was the future.

***

"Nah, changed my mind.  A LITTLE to the left," Schuldich 
yawned as the movers, for at least the tenth time, set about trying 
to place the couch according to his ever changing whims.  They 
both grunted in a distinctively non-sexual way as they hoisted that 
particular piece of furniture into the air and carried it all of six 
inches down the silver velvet which now lined the path to the alter.  
"Hey! Hey! Watch you don't wrinkle that!"

"We're trying not to, sir!" The first panted.

"It would be a lot easier if you would please get off the couch, Mr. 
Marlow."

The remark, made of frustration distilled over the course of the 
past fifteen minutes as it had been, he did not take lightly, and it 
was his initial silence which altered the two mover's to the second 
faux pas.  A few more pews circled around behind them on their 
way out the back door and into storage.  Schuldich sat
up abruptly and nearly caused them to drop him and his lover's 
silver couch.  Jasper, who had been asleep on his shoulders, 
awakened with a frightened hoot and gaped about the room as if he 
had never seen it before.

"Get off the couch?" It almost sounded like he meant it the first 
time.

"GET OFF THE COUCH!?" That time it could not be anything but 
sarcastic.

"Are you fuckin' crazy!? This is the only place I can be sure you 
people won't drop anything heavy or breakable on me! So shut up 
and move me about an inch to the right before I call and have you 
both fired."

As impromptu emphasis, Jasper fluttered into the face of the 
younger worker, and  got feathers up his nose.

***  

::You are worse than an Archbishop's mistress.:: 

That thought, of course, came from the silvery wisp of ectoplasm 
in the shadows beside the largest of the two wood and stone 
lecterns.  Miranda had hidden there, not wishing to be seen by the 
delivery men, for she knew from past dealings with humans just 
how they would act. That Schuldich had not reacted in such a 
boring, predictable way, only made him that much more appealing. 

::And if that nasty owl messes on your sugar daddy's fancy 
furniture, I'm sure he will be considerably...miffed.::

::That is to say, pissed.::

She faded to near nothing, and glided slowly away from her perch 
for a closer look at the additions they'd made. She had been 
dubious when the boys had shown up to uproot and remove several 
of the pews, even though she had enjoyed watching him work. 

But now...

::I think it looks splendid, all this.:: Miranda thought, waving a 
hand only Schuldich could truly sense through the air. ::Even if 
your boyfriend has quite extravagant tastes in decor.::

That opinion imparted, the piano lid folded back unnoticed by the 
workmen, and the air was suddenly rent by "The Wassail Song."

***

::You think this is bad, you should see the bedroom.:: Schuldich 
thought, relocating Jasper to the floor as he rolled over onto his 
stomach so he could lounge and watch the piano play itself at the 
same time.  (Not to mention that Jasper could leave as many 
unpleasant gifts upon the rug as he liked, since it was already quite 
soiled with wax and had such a intricate pattern, such a spot would 
probably not be noticed.)  

A few telepathic nudges and none of the moving men, for quite a 
few still remained, got it into their heads to give the piano a second 
thought.  No, they all assumed it was of the player sort, and that he 
was just being more bizarre than the previous few hours by 
watching it go on all by itself, the same way it had doubtless done 
for many years before.

Ignorance really WAS cute on some people.

And he had to admit, ::You're not half bad for a petulant, old bitch 
of a geist.::

His pet tugged at his chain, trying to waddle over for a better look 
at Saint Miniver, who he seemed to have taken a liking to.  At least 
to his master, who  could not read owl thoughts, and so had no 
means of learning that a former sweetheart of Jasper stood outside 
the colored panes, snuggling beneath the wings of another, more 
dashing owl; one in the midst of hooting various offensives at his 
helpless rival.

::Brad'd kill you if he found out you'd touched his precious piano... 
well, if you were alive and could touch things, anyway.  Anyway, 
y'know he had a vision, a very interesting one.  He's convinced 
someone is going to give irrelevant commentary while I get 
dressed this evening.::

A yawn, and he sat up, cracking his back quite nosily and in a 
manner most dissonant when compared with the cheery folk song 
which scampered and sang in the sultry, summer air.  

::Which I'm going to do in a minute here since he told me he'd 
come around sometime after sunset.  Besides, you can poke that 
incorporeal head of yours through the boxes so I don't open the 
wrong one.  C'mon, I bet I got more kinky get-ups than you have 
sick stories about clerics.::

*** 

Miranda wheeled about, hands on hips, and scowled at him. ::You 
bossy, little brat! Giving ME orders. Hmph!:: 

But, at the last, she did as he bid, and drifted across the room to 
where the boxes of their belongings had been placed. She didn't 
bother to dodge one of the workmen when the hapless fellow 
crossed into her path and halted. She didn't flinch at all from the 
collision of her essence with that of his still bound own, but he was 
struck with a sudden bout of lightheadedness, and summarily 
collapsed to his hands and knees, much dazed. 

::What fools these mortals be!::

She slithered through the tallest of the boxes, one by one, taking 
her time to explore their contents. Made comments here and there. 

::You don't stint on that little girl, do you? Spoiled, spoiled, and 
you enjoy it, I daresay.::

And...

::So who's the S&M fanatic in the household? All those chains and 
leather doesn't seem to be your thing, or that man of yours' either. 
Don't tell me it belongs to that boy?!::

And then, finally...

::Oh, here are your clothes, brat. At last! I'd recognize your 
style in a heartbeat, and I've only known you for two days.::

The tape came away with a RIPPPPP! and fluttered to the floor. 
The flaps opened, and an ankle-length, indigo velvet coat with a 
peacock feathered collar and cuffs emerged from within. 

::Prince, anyone?:: 

***

Schuldich, at once quite pleased with the re-emergence of a coat 
which had been repeatedly stuffed into the back of the armoire or 
other less logical places the exact locations of which Brad had 
shielded at all times save during sex, when it was at best forgotten, 
ended up scowling and snatching said coat up from where it 
hovered in midair. 

::This is part of my pimp costume, thank you very much!:: He 
sassed, daintily skipping over the semi-conscious moving boy who 
remained halfway on and halfway off the rug.  

As for the telepath, he sighed audibly and waltzed with the beloved 
garment, making up for lost time and sparing no detail in flashing 
the disintegrated plumes about the room, which several of the less 
stable stems of fluff decided to redecorate.  ::I see Brad isn't the 
only one whose fashion sense is offended by mine.::

Miranda's silence and Jasper's frantic, tripping sprint were 
testament enough to that.

::Ah, I got this to wear to a costume party in New York.  The very 
first one he took me to...:: As nostalgic as this might have seemed 
when rendered as language, the mental version for a certain spiny 
chuckle to it.  The sort of nuance that just added "And the last one 
too!" A very proud last one indeed.  

Schuldich slung the offensive duster over his arm and backtracked 
to peer into the cardboard box from whence it had come, which 
was, contrary to what Brad might have snapped at that moment, 
not the depths of Bob Mackie's Personal Hell(tm).  

::Now where's the rest of it? Should be in here.  Crawford never 
hides the parts of my outfits alone and... hello!::

A great rustling of plastic then, and he emerged bearing with him 
quite a few garment bags, a hatbox and a small, plastic suitcase.  
All of which he tore open.  There were spoiled brats at the birthday 
parties of other spoiled brats who would have been put to shame by 
his zest.

Satisfied that his disemboweling of the arcane packages had 
produced the treasures he desired, Schuldich proceeded to strip, 
smack in the middle of the sanctuary, tossing his present clothing 
into the same disregarded heap as the mutilated plastic wrap.  The 
fallen lad gave up getting to his feet and admired the view, too 
speechless to summon over any other onlookers.  Not that such a 
call was needed, or that the show lasted long.  He got dressed in 
the middle of the sanctuary too.

The coat had many cohorts after all, which happened to include a 
gigantic feathered hat (such as Lord Vyx might have been tempted 
to steal from his adversary earlier, if he his adversary been wearing 
it), several pounds of multicolored titanium chains which had 
gotten packed with the oil-slick leather platforms, a paisley dress 
shirt and a pair of zebra-strip slacks. 

Schuldich, so clad, presented himself to the ghost, carrying the 
contents of one more of the garment bags over one arm.

::And I got more where this came from! But just so you know for 
bogarting purposes THESE..:: here he held up the chain he had 
used to fasten his lover to the hook over the deck.  ::...Are *my* 
handcuffs. And *this* is my dress.::

Although now that he stood garbed as a procurer, it was somewhat 
ironic the slinky black number with its glitter mesh overlay 
belonged to him, since it was doubtless appropriate for an 
expensive escort.

***

Miranda clapped a hand dramatically over her eyes in the manner 
of a long-suffering mother when faced with her unruly youngest 
son. ::If I had a head to ache, I would have a migraine now, just 
from the outlandish outfit you've clad yourself in.::

::And may I add, I've never seen anyone as brazen as you?:: 

The pose she dropped in a wink, and the dress she gathered in her 
insubstantial hands, and held it aloft. The fabric rippled in some 
otherworldly breeze. 

::My, this is nice! Your sugar daddy likes a bit of dress up? And 
bondage, too, I see.::

The dress floated back to Schuldich and seemingly draped itself 
over his outstretched arm. ::I suppose he sometimes plays the 
whore, and you play the pimp? No, wait, don't answer that...::

::...I'd like to be surprised...::

***

"Suit yourself," Schuldich grinned her and sidestepped a ghostly 
smack upside his head.  A few of the workers cursed beneath their 
breath at him, for he had nearly trodden on the boy Miranda had 
collided with, and because they seemingly hadn't been working too 
long in Terra, as they had never seen anyone conversing audibly 
with empty air.

Passing back to the crates of clothing, the telepath tinted their 
minds with images too grotesquely perverse to have been 
summoned into the thoughts of a sane person during a work day, 
and still, most of them did not realize it was he who was to blame, 
and so hurried about in finishing up their work- acts not in and of 
themselves bad things.  The sun had started to tumble into bed by 
then- he could see it in the purple bath around Saint Catherine even 
now.  No need for the door to come flying open in between their 
trips.  Most of his goodies Schuldich dragged along behind 
himself, figuring the bags would keep them from the floor as well 
as anything else.  

Jasper, left to his own devices, decided to eat one of the fallen 
peacock feathers, much to the amusement of the moving men, one 
of which he subsequently bit for trying to offer him a penny.

Miranda followed, and chuckled at him when he took several 
attempts to find the room which now served as master bedroom.  
One of the elder workers was just then grumbling over a set of 
instructions to make the bed with sheets which might have been in 
any number of boxes (for now hidden beneath a curtain from one
of the back rooms) when Schuldich entered and proceeded to act as 
if he saw no one in the mirror besides himself.

And his ghost, who hovered above the bed as if she sat on it 
instead.

The pimp costume he peeled off, hitting the make-due maid with 
the hat as he cast it away, and one of the garment bags he tore 
open, drawing the contents up and holding it aloft, turning it this 
way and that and finally sniffing a sleeve.

::This thing still smells like Japan.  Have a whiff.::

So he thrust his green trench over to Miranda and scratched the 
side of his nose, finding the misty edge of fog and must and car 
exhaust had rubbed off on his fingers.

But had anything else, it occurred to him then.  He dropped the 
coat and gave himself a sniffing once over.  And it wasn't that he 
found himself to stink- no, far from it! He found himself to have 
two many sorts of scents about his frame. Half-
naked once again, he marched up to the obscured crates, pulled out 
a flask of colorless cologne and did what he did most every 
morning.

He rubbed himself all over with the stuff as if it were body lotion, 
and with just as much stroking finesse.

The workman, leaving the bed semi-made, left in a hurry.

::I say Irish showers are a lost art, he says they're porno.  Typical.::

***

Miranda's laughter swelled through the room, low and throaty.  
::When you have one, they are, brat.::

The wraith reached out and smoothed her hand across the mattress, 
sending finger-sized streaks over its surface.  ::I miss beds.  And 
food.  I was quite the cook in my day, you know.::

A faint sigh sounded from her vicinity and Mme. Miranda rose 
from her perch, and glided over to examine the rest of Schuldich's 
belongings.

::Are you getting ready for that man of yours?:: she thought at him 
as she pawed through his shirts, plucking one of sateen cotton that 
melted from green to plum when the fabric moved.  ::Is he coming 
over to christen the bedroom?  Or is he taking you out 
somewhere?::

***

"Actually," and holding one hand which was still dripping with 
Pleasure to a cheek, Schuldich averted his eyes to the ceiling in a 
typically smart fashion, "Last time we moved, we 'christened' ever 
room in the place.  Maybe you should make yourself some 
spooooooooooky popcorn 'cause there are over four dozen rooms 
in this place, even if a lot of 'em are closets."

He concluded, as he considered the benefits of neon blue satin 
boxers as opposed to a pair of ladies' briefs from Bloomingdale's, 
"Closets count to Brad."

As neither suited his present mood, he tossed them both away and 
did without.  Because it was there and it wasn't red, the only color 
he didn't wear with his trench coat, he also took the shirt Miranda 
was holding, though she followed it, and did the buttons herself.

"So, I'd assume we're staying here, even if he probably made up his 
mind while he was out today so I wouldn't know."  

To prepare for stated eventuality, once he had gotten his tan cargo 
pants on, Schuldich threw on a pair of socks and donned the oil-
slick boots from the pimp costume once again before yanking the 
jacket over his shoulders and letting it hang open about his frame.

The rest of his bags he tossed after the disfavored underwear, and 
having slammed the armoire, returned to the sanctuary, which 
proved still peppered with moving men.

"OK! Somebody lug the boxes of clothes into one of the empty 
rooms and then get your asses out of here!"

The workers exchanged irate and curious glances among 
themselves before dutifully complying.

As they were on their respective ways out, Schuldich fished Jasper 
up from the floor and sat him instead atop the Madonna at the alter, 
wrapping his chain around her arm.  Then he went to the curio 
cabinet, which had been restored to almost exactly the state of 
same state of useless beauty it had known on The Planet, save for 
the bottle of currant wine the raven-haired doll now leaned against, 
which one of the boys had mistaken for a decoration.

He reclaimed it though, along with a pair of flutes made form 
Mount Saint Helens glass which had been finished so the patches 
of pearl and iridescence looked like scales.      

These he plopped down on the coffee table beside the bottle while 
he himself went to the alter and leaned on the lectern so he 
wouldn't wrinkle his coat. 

***

Minutes later, Crawford arrived dressed far more sedately than his 
lover, clad as he was in a plain black suit and white shirt, sans 
neckwear.  A tiny gold hoop dangled from his ear, a leftover from 
his college years, and one he rarely displayed.  The knuckles of his 
right hand bore faint stains of blue from the blows he'd dealt to 
Ken.  Mindful of the damage he might have caused to it, he had 
glossed the irritated skin with cream, and had iced and wrapped it 
securely.  Again, such things he wasn't in the habit of displaying, 
and he had kept his hand in his pocket as he made his way into the 
church.  

To his delight, the church now contained all their furniture, placed 
as he had wished it, with his beloved piano standing alone before 
the west-facing stations of the cross.  The sun dappled the 
instrument all manner of colors, brought out by its daily flirtation 
with the richly tinted stained glass.  Crawford paused to let his 
exposed hand drift across the key cover as he passed by it on his 
way to the altar.  

How could he linger there?  How could he stray off his course any 
longer than that?  He couldn't--not when such a tempting sight in 
the form of his redhead waited for him there, all knowing smiles 
and colorful garb.  Crawford went straight up the stairs to him, 
caught him in one arm, and licked him behind the ear before 
sliding his tongue between Schuldich's lips. His bruised hand he 
then slipped out of its hiding place and brought it around his waist 
to join the other.  

He pulled back to gaze upon the same pair of eyes he'd seen in 
visions when he was teenager, and hastily squelched all the 
repulsive sentiment that always accompanied such remembrances.  
It wouldn't do for Schuldich to pick up on that.  Not now, 
especially.  

"Well done, Aubrey."  

***

Schuldich, for the time, was persuaded to no physical or mental 
replies.  

At least until he noticed two most usual things about his situation- 
two momentary gleamings in the otherwise naked summer air.  
Both caught light on their own, but only one stood obvious to him.

Crawford with his often passing will-o'-the-wisp shades of 
melancholy- he had felt one summoned within his body but failed 
to use the cage of his shield upon in, so it's feathers flew from its 
nonexistent form, and it sang it's flavor unhindered for one split 
second, and the telepath knew a shiver of delight- violet brandy 
twittering bittersweet.

The second was far more novel and took his mind from the first: 
Brad was wearing an earring.

So their eyes only met for as long as he knew the damp liquor of 
the past, and then all of his attention went to the little gold hoop, 
which he did not take between his fingers, but rather tapped back 
and forth with one of his nails, almost as if he expected it to ring.

"Hmm..." he said then, leaning over to see if he might slide the tip 
of his tongue through its loop, "Likewise."

He couldn't do it very well, and so settled with the rest of 
Crawford's ear.

"The bottle of currant wine's still in one piece, just like you said it 
would be."

The heat phantom he had been on the other's arm took it's leave 
then, but rather than vanishing all together, left the later and 
apparated before one of the couches where it called away the wax 
and the cork which had sewn up the wine, and called the liquid into 
the two glasses.

Jasper hooted even though it wasn't dark.  Schuldich crossed his 
legs.  And knew more recent memories.  "Pravda! The Ken-Kitty's 
head is as hard as it looks.  At least tangibly."

(OOC: Pravda- Russian, It's true!)    

***

Crawford bestowed the blandest of looks upon his bandaged 
hand. "Hmm, yes," he murmured in assent, shrugging airily. "It 
was one of my better moves too. Pity he withstood it so well." 

Brad strolled off for their new living room then, intending to wash 
down the flavor of Schuldich's mouth with that of one of his most 
favorite aperitifs. He lifted the glass to the waning light, turning it 
this way and that before sipping it. The hint of a smile crossed his 
face as he lowered the glass, and shot his lover a look over his 
shoulder. "You did think of everything. I wasn't expecting you to 
have the wine already out." 

"And why are you laughing?" 

No answer save for another bout of cackling. Crawford had the 
oddest sense that someone was conversing with him mentally, 
simply from his reaction. But no, that was silly. Who would he be 
conversing with, save for Savil--and she was otherwise occupied. 

And...their little jokes at his expense Schuldich had no qualms 
about revealing. 

"Are you--" he began, cutting himself off upon the word 'drunk', 
for he was in no position to criticize. He wasn't exactly 100 percent 
sober himself. 

"Oh, never mind," he muttered, waving a hand at his giggling 
lover. Crawford sipped again, and walked over to his beloved 
piano, and raised the lid. The glass of wine ended up gracing one 
corner of its glossy black top. Crawford slipped out of his jacket, 
and sat down, draping the garment across his lap before stroking 
out a few testing chords with his uninjured hand. The stress of 
moving hadn't knocked it out of tune. 

Crawford untied and unwrapped the strips around his bruised 
knuckles. He flexed his fingers, curling them into a fist. They 
were stiff, yes, but the swelling and pain were minimal. A few 
days, and his hand would be good as new. 

But for now...

"Handel? Schubert? Mozart? Debussy? Why, of course. But 
first..." 

He waited for the strings' vibration to still, and then Crawford 
launched into the opening notes of Chopin's Etude in A flat Major, 
Opus 10, No. 10, as a warm-up. 

***

Schuldich, balancing his wine in the fingers of one hand and then 
the other, cast about on the couch for some dishabille manner for 
himself, finally finding a more or less pleasing one with his elbows 
resting on one sloping, silver arm, and the rest of him lounging like 
a mermaid on a rock against the cushions.

He sipped then, torn between watching the last jewels of light set 
in their windows wink out, or the way the dark silk of his lover's 
hair did tremble against his neck as he played. He had seen many 
such musicians, many such windows, but no one else who screwed 
pianos like Brad did.  Miranda laughed and called him randy and 
he shushed her, still leaving one chair free of his body- caught soul 
so she could sit and watch and see what he meant.  For as the light 
imprisoned in the colored glass began to wont so much for the 
morning true it perished in the eyes of Christ and his onlookers, the 
dying light between Dymphna and
Laurence had amberina become, hibiscus the wine, every brilliant 
black the figure of his lover, fighting so hard not to sway, not to 
betray the transport and the seductive, welcome nightmares that he 
knew lost in the lotuses of his notes.

For he was between the hoarfrost camellias of vapor his playing 
was meant to stand in for- that which is far too sublime to ruin with 
fingers.  The rain of sound, the fleeing sensation of stillness, 
anticipating the next key's dare to ring.  

Something no words Schuldich could come up with well matched, 
even as he drained his glass.

Although it simply wasn't as if he had given up on trying after all 
these years, or that he had ever dared speak between those spaces, 
tread on the blinking lives of each fragment of an opus.  

The goblet left his hand for the table and step by step without a 
sound of his own he crossed from his space into that still used for 
the waltzes of the sun's scatter of light, thrown all funny by their 
windows.  

::Hmm... let's see... you're thinking... well... no, I take that back.  
You're wondering about me and the music.  And then again you're 
not, assuming you can even feel me now wherever you are with it, 
the little hooker of it.  Because you're playing, and that's all that 
matters.  But you can't see me, not even before
I do anything, and even if you could, you don't know what I think 
about it.::

The strings inside stirred with one touch which was not Bradley's 
as Schuldich sat himself against the slippery lacquer, black as wet 
macadam outside the haunts of a nightclub singers, to let vibrations 
brushup against his thighs.

::I mean, just because I worship the ground Stevie Nicks walks on 
and belt out the good version of Layla in the car...::

The look he found was his, gift from those ice blue eyes- only 
present in the sanctuary for a moment before returning to the mists 
and moonlight from which arose the notes.  

::So you can hear me in there where there where no words are and 
you're nothing but foggy sherbet all ready to melt.  Just seeing 
what you do when you're like this.  Not just for the sound, but for 
the thousand nameless ways...::

***
  
/And I thought you never cared for such as this--the outpourings of 
another man's broken soul as conveyed by a series of ink dots on a 
page./

/It's funny. Five years, and you constantly surprise me./

And then Crawford thought no more, choosing instead to surrender 
himself to the last few bars as he oft did when he had the privilege 
of solitude. Caught in the music's swell, he was thrown into the 
long-dead past, playing by candlelight for a Schuldich in linen and 
silk. A man made for creation and not destruction--one who was in 
the thrall of something greater than himself, something for which 
he possessed an all-consuming passion. A something to which he 
had sold his soul and gladly. 

And then...it was over. Inevitably. Crawford's hands stilled on the 
keys, and the fantasy flew from him like feathers on a breeze. 

Now, he was just...himself. 

The glass he'd abandoned was taken in hand, and as he sipped, 
those frost-rimmed eyes tracked over the lounging figure of his 
lover. The dying rays of sunset had faded from the russet strands 
tumbling over his shoulders, no longer warmed the sensual curves 
of his face and form, or heightened the wicked fire in his eyes. 
Less godling now, and more mortal--with firm, warm flesh to 
touch and taste and a soundly beating heart whose rhythms had 
often pounded in his ears, beneath his lips.

Oh, yes, he wanted him, and he wasn't shy about letting him know. 

Schuldich chuckled, low and knowing, and turned to one side, 
letting his hand trail over his body suggestively. The glass was 
drained and set once more on the edge of the piano, and Crawford 
stood up, his jacket tumbling to the floor and forgotten. 

But he walked not to Schuldich, but to one of the rear pews, where 
upon a small, brown-paper wrapped box lay. This he gathered up 
and carried back over to the piano. He set it down on the bench, 
and proceeded to unwrap it, and when it all was on the floor 
around the bench, Crawford set the object it had contained onto the 
piano. 

"As you can see, I went shopping today." 

It was the enameled keepsake box. The two men stared at it, one in 
amusement, the other as if he wondered about his sanity. 

"I agree," Crawford said with a nod. "It does look atrocious." 

He tossed the remains of the thin, padded cardboard box which had 
held it over his shoulder, and regained his seat upon the piano 
bench. Once more, his fingers moved to the keys, and a pensive 
spill of notes hummed forth onto the air. Yet more Chopin--this his 
Nocturne in D flat Major, Opus 27, No. 2. Crawford's gaze held to 
the keys, even while he spoke. 

"It's for you." 

"Oh, I know it isn't your sort of thing, but I...was compelled to buy 
it. Compelled to make it a gift to you. You see, as hideous as it is, 
it is special--not for what it is, but what it holds. Problem is, what 
it holds is secret, and as with anything worth keeping safe, those 
secrets are hidden. You will have to root its treasure out." 

***

In the mildest of annoyances did Schuldich run the tip of his finger 
across the lid of the gaudy little box, seeing everything else before 
him rather than the slick enamel with its splotches of purple and 
yellow he took to be pansies in the failing light.  Even if he had 
believed pansies could bite, he would not have been quite so fussy 
about lifting the box as he was, surprised even by its ever so 
unfamiliar weight.  Too heavy, but he would have expected no less 
from such a toy of savvy ladies hiding their lovers from their 
husbands, as such the little case of porcelain and enamel evoked.

He could though, neither shake the sense he was somehow to be 
moved by the drizzling ultramarine notes which swayed like 
glowing smoke about Crawford's fingers, not the idea his lover had 
offered him the box and whatever lay within for some reason he 
had shut away for the time being in a place he had often
passed but had been closed out of for the time being.  But, oh well, 
he decided. No sentiment had ever been expected of him for such 
flocks of broken souls all floating amid the ethers, waiting to 
gather at just the right moment, in just the right piece when 
someone played it truly, played it well.  

And Bradley... well... /Anything worth keeping.  Is that so?/

And all his own hands did for the time being was sever the brazen 
clasp on the lid and part the lips of the box.  Which was, at first 
sight, quite empty but for a spectral jingle seeming to be heard far 
off in someone else's garden perhaps, and a single sheet of fine 
velvet cut to cover the bottom.  This he found peeled away quite 
easily, revealing a film of glass above a collection of most intricate 
brass weavings- spindles, dials, one drum and a comb.  A music 
box without a way to feel itself move and no way to reach it let he 
shatter the ceiling of it's
chamber and violate it with a key of his own make.  

Seeing such a thing amid his gift, which he still knew nothing of 
save that it rang, he felt a sort of grudging respect for the box.  
What spectacular hollowness! A song that no one would hear, shut 
up there with other such secrets as whoever owned it cared to 
bestow upon the miniature sanctum of utter self-indulgent 
uselessness.

His taps against the chilly shields he so often reveled beneath went 
unanswered, but he thought perhaps he found a twinge of a smile 
on Bradley's lips.  A little tease to forever go unheard.

Jasper hooted.  His owner shook his present rather roughly and 
then grinned himself.

It was not the body of the box which twinkled with sound.  But the 
lid, which he traced all over with his fingers, coming several times 
upon the teardrop loop which served as the movable part of the 
catch.  This he twisted however far as it might move, scraped with 
his nail and finally tugged upon.

Amid the retreating and the swirling sounds, he felt the click rather 
than hear it.  A sliver of shadow came between the underside of the 
lid and the rim which it used to steady itself on the rest of the box.  
As if he had a bag of nonpareils of which he could not reach the 
last dainty, he gave the case a firm shake against his hand.

And marveled, even in the last shower of light and of the nocturne, 
at what had fallen into his palm.

A heavy, glinting circlet of gold rested there, its shine fluxing with 
his heartbeat, darting back and forth between the swirls of empty 
air which had been sliced into it.

And then the ring was gone and so was Schuldich.  Only the box, 
her secrets revealed, remained sprawled and ravished on top of 
Crawford's piano. 

***

Crawford let him go with neither a word nor a bat of one blue eye. 
The strings' vibrato faded into nothingness, and still he sat, leaning 
over the keys and watching the last trickle of sunlight dissolve on 
the horizon. The darkness crept into the church after it like a 
spying lover. It would soon be too dark to see by, but he didn't 
want to bother with the electric recessed lamps that served as 
illumination. They were just too modern for his mood. 

Candles, however, were just right, and the ladies who'd come to 
clean for them had dragged out the everyday brass columned 
candlesticks and dainty, arching candlelabras the priests had kept 
about to decorate the altar area. Fresh white pillars shone elegantly 
in their recently polished holders, their wicks soon sparked to life 
by a flick of Crawford's lighter. He lit a cigarette from the flame of 
the last candlestick he'd lit, then took it in hand and walked back 
down to the living room. He set it amidst the scattered remains of 
the enamel box, and sat down again. 

He wanted to play more, and yet he didn't. His hand made a protest 
the moment he rested it upon the keyboard, giving him an excuse 
to beg off. Not that he needed one. Schuldich didn't care if he 
played or not. 

Schuldich. 

/At least he didn't fling it away and curse you./ 

/No, he didn't. He did, however, leave./

/Yes, but he went upstairs, and not out altogether. And he did look 
rather pleased by it./ 

/A pleased Schuldich could mean anything./

Crawford sighed a plume of bluish smoke and stubbed out the 
remains of his cigarette in the small crystal ashtray. He 
immediately lit another in its wake. 

/I am possibly quite screwed.../ 

***

::Oh? Well, if that's what you want, it's fine by me and all.::

Came the thought which all chocolate and Turkish delight, came 
and twiddled at the threshold of Crawford's mind, twirling about, 
just as a reminder of it's own transient existence before fading out 
into the mind silence most humans dared enjoy for all of their 
lives.  

Schuldich had not beckoned, had not called so much as with even 
the sound of his feet against the floor of the chapel.  Someone 
might as well have decided he should be there, and so summoned 
him- a thing otherwise no such lovely as the quiet mortals were.  
But something all together else.  What though? What could he be, 
especially now? 

Nothing but an especially lovely changing, barely a boy even, all 
sprite, with only vaguely human form.  His appearance was 
reduced to light and shadow by the swaying golden light and its 
one drop from the honey it had made about the alter.  Halfway 
between the two islands of illumination he stood, dusted with the 
cerulean pre-dark, and the moving shadows, indistinct as clouds 
too close to the stars.

His satin slippers had covered the sounds of his footfalls, but they 
bared little flashes of his ankles.  They and the khaki linen trousers 
he had never worn before.  The same went for the silk shirt with its 
faintest touch of antique lace culled from 
some poor, dead madam's gown.  Then again, that at least wasn't 
his, but rather one of Crawford's poet shirts, unlaced and halfway 
lost from one shoulder, making him look far too young to be 
wearing it.  He had tied his hair back with a single string of oval 
pearls that shone like dew as they batted about his henna locks.  In 
one hand the ring still rested.  The other held a shock of music- 
box keys he had taken from his sister's room.  

With not another thought to him, he came to the circlet of light the 
candelabra on the piano gave, and he sat beside it's heart, only 
stirring the flames as much as a passing wind might have, even as 
he laid down beside it, and looked out to his lover from under his 
bangs, his eyes without a glow beneath his own little shadows, 
where the ring and the keys both fell as well, the ring closer and 
the keys fallen as if dropped.

"Play for me a little more Bradley.  It feels good."

***

The ring and the keys struck him as a cryptic puzzle, and Crawford 
didn't know what to make of them, nor why he'd brought the keys 
down and laid them out with the ring as he had done. Nor did he 
exactly care right at that moment, for the candlelight was kissing 
Schuldich's bare shoulder, and sparking off the lighter strands of 
his hair. It was his mid nineteenth century fantasy come to life, and 
his redhead had made it so. 

His redhead, who wanted him to play after all. 

Crawford, choked by some unfamiliar emotion, swallowed hard 
and lay his hands once more upon the keys. The right mood needed 
to be set, and he combed the snippets of pieces that dwelt in his 
memory for just the right one. The Berceuse, another of Chopin's 
works, came to mind, but then...

It was quiet. Pensive and moody. A piece to be played on rainy 
days or in the solitude of midnight. It was a piece he would play if 
Schuldich wanted it, but...

He had a better idea. 

He played an E major chord, softly, by way of announcing. 

"Chopin's Etude in E major, Opus 10, no. 3." 

/I hope it is to your liking./

***

For the first few wandering bars Schuldich behaved in a manner 
seldom apropos to himself- he lay as if he gazed upon the heaven's 
on an early spring day, making elfin things of the skirts of the rain 
clouds who had just passed him by.  No, rather 
it was a stillness of the slowly rising tones, a sort of easy breeze he 
decided he would feel since it was sweeping past just this once.

But the notes began to plead so sweetly, then retreat, like the rim 
of Crawford's shields.  All in some delightful parfait of reluctance 
on certain fates decreed by all the right people.  The clouds had not 
simply retreated, but come and burst.  The piano rang all through 
him, stirred to an uncanny, living vibration by his lover's hands.

Like any good house cat beneath the sun of the candles and 
delirious in the catnip of his own cologne, stretched his back out 
against the slick, dark surface and he purred and he sighed and he 
took the keys back into his hands so they would not rattle against 
the varnish.

::Oh yes, I like this very much.  You dog.::

Somewhere between the downpour, and the prismatic shards of 
memory which would not and again spread out from Crawford, 
and what one could imagine in the mind which saw fit to pen such 
notes... he could not recall the piece, and so did not know if it was 
such a gift already written into the etude or rather
that Bradley saw fit to play it so, but those deep and dripping 
kisses of sound burst in pitch, lost all of the proscribed manners he 
had found before in pieces from their era.  They came and they, 
made culpable by the instrument he lay supine upon rose, and they 
knew him, and they were all sliding through him, in and out, 
against and just soft enough as to bewilder, just enough there to 
remind him of the physical caresses he was so used to from those 
same hands which sparked into existence the sounds which had 
him then.

It was him, and Brad, and the piano.

::But you don't usually think of those keys as me, do you?::

But it sure felt only just him and Brad.  Playing out some bit of 
erotic nonsense written by another.  Just for fun. It all made him 
want to laugh, but he didn't.  Just ran his hands over his stomach 
and spoke with Brad as the last tourbillions
of chords fell away to earth and went out.   

::It never really bothered me, When you played.::

::And I never really hated it.::

::Heh, I almost can't believe you ever thought that.  Well, you can 
stop now.::

::Not the song, I meant thinking that.::

::Oh, it's over then? Aw...::

A little jangling sigh and he rolled over to meet the blue topaz of 
Crawford's eyes.  And he frowned.  ::What? Don't you want to put 
my ring on for me?::

***

A bit more of the ice in his eyes melted then, Crawford scooted 
forward on the bench, and rested his arms on the edge of the piano 
top. "I was waiting for you to ask me to do it. And since you 
have..." 

He picked up the ring in one hand and slid the other under 
Schuldich's left to gently pinch the third finger between his own. 
The ring joined with that finger easily. Crawford rubbed it with his 
thumb, comparing the hard coolness of it against Schuldich's 
pliant, warmer skin. That he had agreed to wear it at all amazed 
him.  Delighted him. 

/As a matter of fact, I do think of you when I play, that I'm 
touching you and not a row of cold keys. But I only do so when I 
play Chopin./

He closed his hand around Schuldich's. 

/Because, Beethoven is for scheming, Schubert is for dreaming, 
and Chopin is for.../ 

Crawford rose to his feet, and, brushing his hair back from his 
face, bent to kiss him on the cheek. 

***
  
::Is that so?:: Thought with an all too impish grin spreading across 
his face.  His free hand stole up to brush the last place his lover had 
been against him, rubbing the after touch of his lips into his own 
skin before drawing the tips of his fingers 
into his mouth and licking away from them what cherry candy he 
imagined there.

The palm of his still caught against Bradley's he drew up so that 
the candle light might better come to know it; not freed himself 
from the lingering strokes, but rather took them with him into the 
glow of the tapers.  Their laced digits he turned this way and that 
as if going over some delicate work of porcelain he had
taken a fancy to, though plainly he sought only to see how the 
brazen bits of glow might catch on his pretty new toy, and how that 
toy was going to look against his slender bones.

And even though he decided he couldn't tell if it looked like him or 
not, ::I like it, too.::

To the perplexed flutters in the thoughts beside his own, ::What? 
You didn't seriously think I wouldn't? Oh... you did.  Interesting.::

A flirty bat of his lashes and with a laconic little sigh, Schuldich 
pulled himself up from the lip of the piano, sitting there with his 
legs folded beneath him, as a white cricket might do as it waits for 
night to fall.  But night already had come,
and no one could take him for being without color, not with his 
shock of henna hair, even if it did look closer to auburn at the 
moment.

::Now, if it was a wedding ring, then I woulda been pretty pissed.::

With a shake of his head, he combed his bangs back into his eyes 
and did much the same to Crawford, though lingering there, 
running the satin of his hair around his knuckles in.  

::Mon petit lapin, nervous just like a real rabbit.  And if you can 
call me Aubrey...::

The hand of his lover's which still cradled his own he brushed 
against the loose bow holding his shirt haphazardly together, tried 
to ask the fingertips to stray rather to the lace.

::But, since we're here and we've got this place all to ourselves, 
would you like to play me instead of the keys?::

***

Crawford's fingers did indeed hover about the lacy bow, and he did 
indeed pull it loose, contenting himself with the tempting sight of 
Schuldich's newly bared flesh as it looked in the glow of the 
candles. How it fell from light to shadow and back again with 
every breath he took. Looked like velvet. He already knew how it 
would feel, and yet he wanted to touch him again. Such was the 
hold the redhead had on him. 

And it was that hold that distracted him from the heart sinking 
disappointment he felt when Schuldich expressed his feeling about 
the ring. For it was a wedding band, and Crawford had given it to 
him in that spirit. Not because he owned him--no, but because...

Because... he had his heart. Because...he wanted him to know 
it. Crawford had wanted him to wear it as a promise that Schuldich 
felt the same way about him; that he could have lovers galore, but 
his heart belonged to only one other man. 

Him. 

He saw now that he was a fool. People made such promises all the 
time, before some deity or other and to each other, yet didn't keep 
them. Why'd he think Schuldich would be any different?

/Because we both are different. And we are alike./ 

He shook himself out of his reverie, and turned down the key cover 
over the board to protect it. Lifted Schuldich's be ringed hand to 
his lips to kiss it, and took the candelabra in the other hand. 

"Come on. Let's go to bed." 

/I can't think about that now. I won't think about that again. 
He'll find out if I do, and then.../

/The future will be changed./

/I can't let that happen.../

So he pushed it all away, to let it die in some recess of his mind.  It 
was all about Aubrey, then, as it usually was. 

Hand and hand they left the sanctuary. Arms about each other, they 
climbed the stairs to their bedroom. Crawford didn't bother to close 
the door behind them when they entered, merely set the candelabra 
on the floor and pulled Schuldich into his arms. The shirt fell open 
upon his hands' insistence, and Crawford bent his head to tongue 
one nipple before raising his head and laving his bared shoulder 
and neck with urgent kisses. 

/Will you be mine tonight, Aubrey? Be the lordling to my 
virtuoso? Let me play out a few fantasies of mine, and indulge a 
few of yours./ 

"I can never get enough of you..."

***

"Schuldich or Aubrey?" Schuldich asked in low and distant tone, 
elsewhere in the world beside their bedchamber, or even the halls 
with their caryatids of moonlight spilling from the windows to 
steal about the floorboards, slow like silver honey, as the two 
moons roamed and the stars tried to catch them.  Bradley's insistent 
little nips ceased for a moment, but his cheek remained pressed 
close as could be to his naked shoulder, and he persuaded him to 
keep it there by losing his fingers in his hair for the time being.  To 
his sad and empty gaze he smiled, as he did always simply as a 
sign of himself.

But... sad? That seemed somehow better placed in another's room, 
another's trysts in some place between the open planes of night and 
what the city of light the candles dared decree upon the undersides 
of the same glass panes they beheld the evening through.  A little 
skate across Bradley's mind found one crystal orb not split for him.  

And it was all he could do to wonder over it behind his smile, for 
time in bed between they two had almost always banished the 
shields all together.

It was golden though, the forbidden thought.  Like the light which 
swathed them both, or the chords of many harps.  Or the ring.

But the unusual, that which he could not know... he chuckles at a 
few of his own memories for once, for Brad had long, long ago 
been right.

They were... just so enticing.

Almost as enticing as Brad.

Who he bent his head to kiss about his lips, but not quite on.

"Soooo... would you like to call me Lord Aubrey tonight, Maestro 
Crawford? Would that make you happy?"

::I'm kidding, after all, my rabbit.  Aubrey and Schuldich were 
never apart.  It's just a matter of what I like to hear when people 
yell at me in bed or otherwise.::

And then he did kiss him.  So hard that Bradley murmured at his 
roughness and almost fought him away before finally submitting to 
their tongues' embrace.

"... like that does?"

***

Crawford had separated from him with a sharp intake of breath.  
Oh, it had hurt.  His mouth ached from the assault his lover had 
carried out, it was delicious.  Pain had its uses, after all.

"Forget it.  It was just a whim of mine, one of many I have..."

/You know me./

A stroke of his jaw, a kiss upon his mouth, and Crawford gathered 
the hem of Schuldich's shirt in both hands and drew it over his 
head, letting it fall to the floor.  His gaze tracked his hands 
movements as they slowly explored the redhead's body, skimming 
over planes and curves that he knew all too well.

His hands found his waist, and his lips once more found 
Schuldich's own.  Teasing flicks of his tongue into his lover's 
mouth, just touching.

"...What makes you happy, Aubrey?"

***

"You keep asking me that," Schuldich breathed, a ghost of a laugh 
knowing his words.  He might have been expected to finish his 
spoken thoughts just then, had he been another.  But he was 
Schuldich, and so considered that answer enough for the present 
moment.  His body crept further into Crawford's half-embrace, 
swaying just enough to call his hands to sit that much closer to his 
hips.  And he did hold him in a slow and stroking way.  They stood 
like that for a long while, content to be discontent with each other's 
clothes their fingers would steal beneath now and then.  He 
squeezed the breath from his own lungs and just
barely rubbed himself against Bradley, straying away when he 
dared sway any closer.

But the touches on his waist stilled then, and his lips were left to 
their own devices.  The gleaming in his eyes would not fade, but it 
met the eerily somber one in his lover's.  A shake of his head and 
he laid his palms beneath his shirt as he spoke.

"You really do want to hear it?  Well how about that? You want to 
know what makes demons glad."

As a demon, he paused to run his tongue down his lover's jaw.

"Pretty things that have no use make me happy." Saying so, he 
turned his fingers to Brad's stomach and smoothed the coolness of 
the ring against him.  "Futility makes me happy.  Rain makes me 
happy... bettcha didn't guess that one."

::Yeah, I'm not so much hellfire and brimstone as I am a little 
puddle duck. What a disappointment.:: 

"Irony and shameful joy.  But mostly irony.  And the things you 
can't expect and I can't tell you about because they don't live long 
enough."

A sigh then, and he shook his head, offering a few moments of 
incidental happiness which had passed him with no more purpose 
that clean, live leaves torn off by the wind simply to flutter about 
and fade away in a street somewhere.

"Oh, and your cock up my ass, and I'm not just saying that, you 
know."

***     

A tiny ripple of vague sorrow traversed his mind, trickling out to 
the telepath just barely before Crawford snuffed it altogether.  
Whether Schuldich caught it or not, he couldn't really say--his 
expression didn't change a millimeter from lazy tiger look he was 
giving him.  

"I should hope you aren't."  

/Though...I had thought,/ he mused to himself behind his half-
raised shield.  He hastily squelched that aberrant notion too, even 
though his shields were partly raised.  

Partly raised was all he would give him.  No mind games would 
Crawford allow tonight.  He wanted to feel what he felt strictly 
physically.  

Even though it wasn't as big of a rush as it was to have him in his 
mind.  Much too dangerous a thing that night--not with the 
way he was feeling.  

His hands busied themselves with exploring his lover's back.  /I 
shouldn't.../  

/No, I shouldn't.../

Crawford bent his head and swiped his tongue across Schuldich's 
collarbones.  "I can't give you rain, but I know I can give you 
irony.  Futility."  

/Oh, yes...Futility./

He rose to kiss him again, soundly, his tongue meeting the top row 
of his teeth but going no further.  "And I know I can give you my 
cock.  Which I will.  In time."  

Crawford drew Schuldich's hand from his stomach, and turned the 
palm to his lips.  Kissed it whilst staring down into those enigmatic 
eyes.  

"But first..."

One hand on Schuldich's forearm, and Crawford walked around 
him, his hand going up his arm to his shoulder, and then back 
down his chest to hook onto his waistband.  Crawford pressed 
against him, both thumbs teasing the taut flesh that lay just above 
it.  

"I think I'd like to play a little longer," he whispered in his ear.  
Biting its lobe smartly as his fingers found the snap of his trousers.  
The round bone button slipped free of its hole.  The zipper 
followed suit with much gentle petting of the flesh beneath it as it 
fell.  

Then it was only the cool air and Crawford's fingers that touched 
Schuldich there.  

***

The telepath just grinned and stretched for his lover in the 
candlelight.  

"I would too," he said, stroking the empty pillow at his side.  "You 
remember I rather like the idea of taking our time now that this is 
our house and we've got no one to interrupt us." And then, with a 
disappointed glance about the boxes which still cowered in their 
corners.  "I don't believe we've got anywhere to put that mirror of 
yours either.  But the plaster should take hooks." A smirk.  "Then 
we can play *that* all we want."

"So the mean time..." Schuldich leaned from his side of the bed 
and snatched up his pimp hat which had otherwise lain discarded 
among what other clothing had not fit his tastes for the evening.  
From it he quite unceremoniously tore one peacock feather, which 
he twiddled back and forth between his fingers before beckoning 
Brad onto the mattress with it.

***    

Crawford didn't hesitate, but neither did he rush--it was as 
Schuldich said. They had all night and forever and no one to 
disturb their play. His shirt he abandoned, trousers too, left in a 
puddle of white and black beside the ice cream shades of his 
lover's garb. 

He rolled onto the empty slice of the bed, and lounged upon the 
spare pillow like a banqueting Roman. Twice he tried to snatch the 
feather from Schuldich, and twice he failed. The redhead was just 
too quick. 

However, when he gave up and began to pet his uppermost thigh 
as a consolation of sorts, he lay very still indeed. 

"Oh, I will find a way to put up that mirror. As for our other 
decor, all that's going up tomorrow." Crawford grinned down at 
him, and scooted his hand a shade upward and to the left to 
squeeze one cheek. 

/But next time, it will be you who hangs and me who teases./ 

He seized his chin between forefinger and thumb and kissed him 
deeply. 

"Now, Aubrey, what game shall we play first?"

***

::Oh, I love it when you threaten me with that self-assured tone of 
voice.:: 

Schuldich grinned and purred into his lover's lips, nipping at them 
in insistence that they remain near his own.  When they darted 
away to speak, he let them, only to gather the bare shoulders in his 
arms.  Drew them to him once again and slid his finger tips over 
the web of glassy scars, just lightly enough to be suspected, not 
close enough to be felt.  

"I don't know what I want to play.  How am I supposed to pick 
with you? It's like... asking me if I'd rather have the sun and the 
moon, when I want both, damnit!"

The hand still wrapped around his chin half-pinched him.  Just the 
littlest bit before the long, thin digits of it creep up against his 
waiting lips. Brad's fingers were smooth and creamy as his tongue.  
Just a little salty, just a little more deft- 
perfumed with alcohol which must have run from his glass.

::Mmmmmmmm... well, if you're gonna be THAT way...::

As gently as if he plucked a cream lassie from the vines outside by 
way of her wings did Schuldich take one of his lover's knuckles 
between his teeth and hold it still.

As for the nearly forgotten feather, that found it's way up 
Crawford's hip, danced this way and that over his waist and finally 
in dramatic swirls did wind, by way of his underarms, onto his 
shoulders.  

::Coochie-coochie-coo!::

***

Crawford squirmed a bit, arching away from the maddening 
feather (and failing to escape it). He bit his lip to keep from 
laughing. 
Nibbled at Schuldich's and kissed them. His own fingers he flitted 
across his lover's lean form, across his chest and down his ribs; 
over his stomach. The feather left the hollow between his shoulder 
blades to the small of his back, and lower down. Fine filaments 
whisking between his cheeks en route to waltz upon his thighs. 

Brad mimicked the feathered brushes with his fingers upon 
Schuldich's inner thighs, covering the redhead's face and throat 
with quiet kisses as he played. 

/So beautiful...And you're mine./

/All mine. I don't care who you screw around with.../

***

Schuldich pulled his throat away from Brad's lips and hovered just 
before his soft focus, icy eyes.  The feather he reclaimed, crushing 
the very finest, half-formed down of it's base between his fingers.

And he smiled there, in what wasn't quiet candlelight, and what 
wasn't quite moonlight.  Smiled and teased those lips he had 
already made to bruise by licking his own and no more.  

The broken end of the feather shaft he pulled over his lover's neck, 
his finger tips holding the edge of it everything that wasn't quite 
close enough to slice.  And Crawford looked everything that wasn't 
quite frightened.  Just a little lost.

"But I'll come find you."

Just what of a million questions he had answered he probably 
didn't know himself.

But he ran a deep scratch across the swell of his lover's collarbone, 
cupped it with his hand and with one arm slung about his arms, 
took Bradley in his arms for one more kiss, spreading his thighs 
with his own as he did so.

***

The scrape tickled, and Crawford longed to scratch it, to smear the 
thin line of blood he felt seeping over the ragged edges of his torn 
skin. But Schuldich's hand held fast, his arm pinned him tight, and 
he could not move, save for nudging his hips against his lover's. 
Already his pulse was quickening, blood pooling in that 
particularly sensitive area. It was like being caressed by velvet, all 
hot and tender, and Crawford wanted to weep from it. 

He crushed his lips upon Schuldich's instead, seeking relief where 
he could find it, and denying he wanted it all the while. 

Drunkenly denying most everything, and to a telepath at that. 

/Save me? Why, Aubrey...What makes you think I'm lost, and need 
to be found?/

***

::Oh, this for one...:: Schuldich reached down and caught his 
lover's cock between his palms, still pulling his lips away and 
licking at their raw smoothness, the way they always felt after Brad 
had had them.  

Brad who, wrists now freed, snatched him up about his chest, 
ground his whole body close and with almost feverish designs to 
his stumbling motions.  His hands did not settle.  

The telepath caught the blood on his wound before it found its way 
onto their pillows, and with a little smirk, smeared it back into his 
skin so it might run again, to be caught, and rubbed, and breathed 
upon as if it might cool.  He paused then, looked upon his hand, for 
it was the left had crossed the crimson, and a
little had smeared upon the band he wore now.  So he lapped it up, 
for Crawford stir in the hand which still circled him.  

::Oh, but I can tell when you're lying.  You know that.  Don't be 
silly!::

::Or do, if that's what gets you going tonight.::

A little laugh, as one hand not his own strayed down his back and 
between his legs to brush him just behind his own sex, and linger 
there, rubbing as if Brad meant his fingers to pass the film of his 
flesh, take him there as he might have him elsewhere.   

"K'ch, cut that out."

But he didn't.

Of course.  

Unabashed but flushing still, did Schuldich softly moan, sink 
between the arms that didn't quite hold him and silence any cries 
he might have bothered the halls with when he set to sucking at 
Bradley's fresh wetness, skating his tongue down the underside of 
his shaft.

***

One hand in Schuldich's hair, one hand gripping one curvy spindle 
in the headboard, and Crawford couldn't move save in time with 
the workings of his lover's mouth. He had him thus trapped.

Which wouldn't have been so bad except Schuldich was only 
toying with him. First with purpose, then with laps of his tongue 
and lips so gentle Crawford wanted to weep from the frustration. 

He felt, as well as heard him chuckle. Felt him become more 
businesslike about his play afterward--now avidly seeking a 
positive outcome to his labors. 

Which he received a few mere minutes later. Schuldich kept at him 
until he was limp; licked the last drop away and peered up at him 
with a smirk.  Crawford, who had sagged on the pillows in the 
wake of his orgasm, peered down at him, and scrunched his hand 
harder in his hair. 

"Demon." 

Schuldich only grinned, and slid upwards until he was in Brad's 
arms again. Crawford kissed him and tasted bitterness and sex. He 
kissed him and kissed him. 

Then, in a blink, he'd flipped him onto his stomach, and had pinned 
him down with his weight. His legs spreading Schuldich's now. 
Crawford gloated mentally over his victory, even though the 
nagging voice in his mind--that of his own sense--advised him that 
Schuldich had only let him. 

He found he didn't care if Schuldich had, for he had the redhead 
where he wanted him. 

And then he had his mouth where he wanted it--on that same place 
as his finger had been previously.

***

"JESUS MOTHER-FUCKING CHRIST!" Schuldich gasped and 
squeezed 
feathers from their pillows, got the sheets wet when he clamped 
them in his teeth.  Came up for a breath and lost it with a cry as 
Brad nibbled him with his lips.  A shudder raced up his spine, 
washing out with a wanton heat through all of his nerves.  He 
swallowed hard, he arched against the mouth upon him, he shouted 
again, childish curses speared with sighs and moans until they 
became nothing but empty sound.  

For this was the same sadistically kind treatment, the lingering and 
vaporous way that passion braced with artlessness turned pleasures 
into the most exquisite of aches.

Though still not pieced by his lover, he felt himself flutter inside, 
right where he wanted to feel him.  And he got him there, just the 
tip of his tongue, and it made him grind himself on the covers as if 
they would crumple up and find a way to swallow his weeping 
body.

"You trying to- OH SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! 
AHHHHHHHHAHHHHHHH!- make 
me cum on the covers!?"

No answer, just a lick that ran the length of his crack.

"NOOOOO! You just wanna hear me scream, huh! Wanna hear me 
beg!?"

So he laughed at himself outright through his cries and the fluxing 
of his hips Brad's arms had stilled then.

"LEMME UP, YOU JERK! YOU'D BETTER HAVE A HARD 
ON WHEN I 
TURN AROUND OR I'LL TEASE YOU UNTIL THE SUN 
COMES UP OR 
YOUR BALLS BURST! WHATEVER COMES FIRST!!!"  

Crawford chuckled then, straight into Schuldich.  Who broke out 
giggling himself.  The image of his final thought had slipped 
between their minds, whatever shields there were.

They tumbled into each other's arms, tore at each other's necks 
with their tongues and got the top sheet onto the floor rather than 
around the tangle of their limbs, where they curled into each 
other's bedroom embraces until he was sure the cock he felt 
pressed to his stomach was stiff enough for his tastes.  Panting and 
laughing and straining, he laid there with his lover.

Whose laugh had sounded a little hollow.

Even though he had a hollow laugh to begin with.

"Well, I ruined the mood.  Still up for one of the positions I found 
in Takatori's mistress's pillow book?

***

Crawford dealt a hard slap to his lover's ass, and licked his 
smirking lips. Flopped back down on the mattress and rolled his 
hips against the redhead's. "Yes, I'm up, and *very* ready. But 
which position did you have in mind?"

His fingers stole down Schuldich's back to his ass, and he squeezed 
one cheek. 

"That one we did in the hat check of that swanky restaurant in 
Paris last Christmas?" 

He lapped at the fingers of the other, and let them fall to 
Schuldich's crack, but he only stroked him there, teasing. 

"That one we performed in that rowboat when we decided to sail 
upon the Avon at midnight?" 

/My back hurt for a week afterward, remember? But oh, hell! I 
loved every minute of it!/

Crawford grabbed him and spread him, and slipped one damp 
finger into Schuldich's body. Rocked it back and forth inside him. 

"Or did you have something else in mind?" 

Crawford rose up again, and covered Schuldich's lips with his own. 

/And you had better, or I'm going to flip you onto your stomach 
again and ravish you right now./

***

::Well, as tempting as that sounds...::

Schuldich collapsed upon the covers, limp against them at first, but 
leaning then, upside down against his shoulders so he could lift his 
hips from the sheets and work Bradley's finger just a little deeper, 
sway and track the deepening movements with all of his 
concentration.  Though it was with one arm flopped across
his stomach (rather as if he was but lounging in the afternoon of 
some innocuous weekend vacation) that he finally looked back up 
at his lover.  "Something else ENTIRELY!"

To the cocked eyebrow he had gotten himself, he grinned with his 
eyes closed and closed eased himself that much tighter around 
Brad.

"You know, it's funny you would mention the one out on Avon 
that messed up your back so bad, 'cause this one's gonna do a 
number on it too I think!"

A growl, and he groaned himself then, feeling his sweet spot so 
adroitly tweaked as it had been, and not simply long enough for 
one cry, but many, fading into purrs as Crawford retreated.

"What, don't you pout at me... mmm... you always have to stroke 
me in those circles like you're polishing silver.  Drives me crazy no 
one else... mmmmmnnnn... does it just like that."  He parted one 
eye to take in his reaction to that.  "I'll give you a back rub and sit 
on your shoulder blades till they pop."

Two fingers found their way back in the second time. 

"Stop workin' me already or you won't be getting any at all!"

Brad rolled away from him then, grumbling and trying to set his 
glasses to rights.  Schuldich thought of taking them off, if only 
because the just barely ruined the effect his oh-so-fair bed mate 
made, stretched across the candlelight and sheets, just waiting for 
some impressionist to set the luminescence of him to tempting and 
just rough enough splatters of paint.

The telepath, who had not been fond of any turn-of-the-century 
styles when he had bothered with the sarcasm and the shame that 
was art, felt a flicker in his brain, a wish unheard outside of his 
little drawing room.  (He gulped, just a touch, fearing it was some 
sort of unholy wonder, or worse, blessed wonder.) 

And that only made his absurd wish all the more tempting.

At least the same went for the flask of lube that invariably 
appeared in the night stand.

Trying to change the topic then, to something other than himself, 
he tossed his hair and remarked, "I thought of it the other night 
outside with those moths you're always so disgusted with.  Don't 
remember the Chinese name- yeah, it's Chinese -but something 
about butterflies..."

Bottle in hand, he sat back down, propped on one arm while his 
otherwise unoccupied hand stile below his navel, leaving a 
glistening, wet trail.  "Meant for  straight people, of course. But I 
don't see why two conniving bastards like us couldn't..."

The fingers he had doused rolled a figure eight upon his thigh 
before edging into his entrance his lover had already begun to coax 
open.  "... work around that."  A little sigh he gave as he pierced 
himself then, though slicking himself up was always more of a 
show.

Something to see.

Like a painting.

***

But for Crawford, Schuldich wasn't like a painting, but his model, 
and he, the thoroughly seduced artist. He watched him arch with 
every thrust of his fingers. Caught the maddening gleam of the 
lube on his skin, the bob of his throat with his breath and the way 
his nipples stood at perfect points upon his sleek chest. It was one 
of these upon which Crawford bestowed a long, suckling kiss, 
before sliding down the mattress to lick away the glistening stripe 
he'd painted upon his lower stomach. It tasted vaguely of 
peppermint, chilled his tongue briefly like ice and melted in a 
swallow. 

/Something new?/ 

His lover's sex, rosy and erect from all the stimulation he'd been 
given, was next. Crawford touched it first with his tongue, 
caressing all around its head only with the very tip. 

/Well, if the sex turns out to be as mind-blowing as that time in 
Stratford, I don't care if I end up in traction./ 

Schuldich moaned, and Crawford felt his fingers grab his hair, 
tugging him away. He arched back a little to gaze up into those 
wild, velvet eyes, his own brimming with lust. In a wink, he was 
face to face with him, and was kissing him passionately, as if he 
might devour him. 

/Tell me what you want me to do, Aubrey./

***

::Just tell you?:: Schuldich thought, tasting almost detached to 
himself.  How strange, he considered for an instant, for otherwise 
he seldom felt so awfully and ecstatically culpable as he did at the 
same instant.  His dry hand took Bradley by the scruff of his neck 
as he set his lips about his tongue, kissed him there and sighed a 
little to himself.  ::When I can show you?::

As if he had then snapped his fingers before be spelled toy of his 
own make and hold for many years, his lover's muscles loosened 
beneath his fingers.  Oh, but he wasn't limp, surely not, and he was 
not even soft as whipped cream under his skin.  But Schuldich 
knew he was willing then to be ensconced in the mussed sheets 
however his wills would have him.

The thought made him smile as he laid him down in the swirls of 
satin, all slow motion and soft focus there as if they had something 
more dramatic than sex between them that night.  One of the 
candles, not even halfway burnt, died in its own wax.  For an 
instant he lingered, cast over Crawford's body- lord and lady, 
maestro and princeling, or two phantom marble deities who might 
turn each other into the most transient of blooms.   

But he stole away then, popped both of his shoulders and slid his 
hands under Bradley's legs.  Perhaps he should ask once more if he 
was ready but... no. There didn't really seem to be the need.

Even after he had curled him into all but a fetal position.  
Schuldich laud his knees closer against his chest, stroked them 
underneath.  And wondered.

The pearls he drew from his ponytail he wound about his fingers, 
and his hair, of its own will, trickled over his shoulders.  The pearls 
ran themselves over his lover's ass, and the hair tickled against him 
as Schuldich took his ankles then.

Crossing them behind his own back as he settled on the underside 
of Crawford's thighs, just nudging the tip of his member against his 
own slick entrance.

***

All of Crawford's natural glibness left him at that moment, having 
his lover's weight settled upon his bent thighs.  His back felt like it 
was breaking into pieces.  He clawed at the fitted sheet, bucking 
against his lover and only succeeding in penetrating him.  

"Oh, shit!  Fucking...Christ!"  

This uttered because, while his back was aching, another more 
sensitive area of his anatomy was throbbing with pleasure.  
Schuldich was riding him slowly, and deeply.  He suddenly didn't 
care if he woke up crippled.      

/My...god...You feel so good./  

Schuldich let out a shivery laugh, head tilted back and eyes closed.  
One hand drifted down to his swollen sex, and he began to toy with 
it, giving Crawford even more of a show.  

One in which he quickly decided to participate in.  He brushed his 
lover's hand away, and replaced it with his own, pumping him in 
time with his rocking strokes.

***  

"Like fucking Christ?" Schuldich teased with an almost earthly 
laugh, one running a little old voice his voice, for it came blurted 
out between moans.  "I think I'll have to add that to my list of 
favorite blasphemous compliments."

Bradley rolled his eyes and writhed beneath him then, swaying 
almost as if he meant to cast him off, though the smirk said 
otherwise, the rivulets of something close to pleasure and just shy 
of true nerve-rending pain screamed otherwise, and they both 
screamed together, the telepath and he, and he took him tighter in 
his hands, squeezing just enough to let it show in his lover's 
exhalations.

It was body-wracking, sense crushing, the way they rested 
together.  He almost felt like he would fall and the covers would 
not be his resting place, but somewhere far, far beyond, as if he 
toppled from a cloud.  This even while the sense of his body 
latched onto Brad's came so clear to him, every minute tickle 
inside him as they twined together and apart, as much as they 
could.

His fingers, chased away from his shaft, had wound up on his 
nipples- one leaving slick traces, the other not.  He took them then, 
in each other, and pressed them together as if he prayed.

"God is great, god is good..."

Or meant to.

"Umm..."

He shrugged.  "You know, I coulda sworn I knew a buncha those! I 
bet I do but I'm just being too rational for my own good! Yeah, like 
if I needed saved a few words are gonna do any good with this." 
One more laugh, and he ground himself down on Crawford's cock, 
singing all around his wails of delight- 

Brad is great, but he's bad;
Sometimes Nagi calls him dad!
I do too, but just in bed-
When he's got it through his head
That I'm no good, but still in luck
'Cause Bradley Crawford's one great fuck!
Amen!

***  

Crawford writhed under Schuldich as he sang, arching his hips 
upwards to meet his thrusts as much as his position would allow 
him to. Which wasn't much, but thankfully, it was enough. 

"Thanking a god that doesn't exist for a lover like me? I don't know 
whether to be insulted or honored."

He tightened his hand on Schuldich's sex, and increased the speed 
of his strokes just a hair. His lover wriggled atop him, panting, and 
rode him that much harder, much to the older man's audible 
delight. Crawford saw stars when he came, his bracing hand flying 
up off the sheet to clutch at Schuldich's thigh, digging in as he 
sought to work him until he was completely drained. 

Then he fell limp like a dishrag on the mattress, feeling quite 
pleased. Unfortunately, it seemed he was the only one. Crawford 
dragged his eyelids open to peer at him in weary disbelief. 

/I came too early? Well, fucking hell--whose fault is that?/ 

And then, as he came down from the blinding crush of his orgasm, 
he realized Schuldich was still perched atop his thighs, and he 
scowled at him. 

/Get the fuck off me, demon./

Schuldich cackled madly, but did as he was told (after one last 
hard bounce of ass to hip). Crawford groaned at the burst of pain 
that coursed through him, rocking upwards from his tailbone into 
his head, and again, he saw stars. 

"Bastard," he said, though the word really carried no weight. He 
was too content, despite the ache in his back. And despite that 
nagging ache, he wasn't too moved to release his lover's sex. 
Crawford gave it another hard tug, sliding his hand from root to tip 
and back again. 

/Next time we play, I'll break out the blindfold and the riding crop 
and the manacles. You can be the enemy spy, and I'll be the 
general./

***

Schuldich didn't answer.  He just kneeled beside him, dreamy 
between his own lurking climax and the drift of emotions draped 
just so about Bradley's mind.  He sighed and made himself hold his 
eyes open while his lover worked him, licked at his own damp 
fingers to see him- cream on cream, shinier than silk with his 
sweat.  His glasses were crooked, and his hair had fallen from his 
brown.  All while he moved just the way a dancer playing an 
injured swan might have: jerky and graceful together.

But he was quiet when he came himself, though the rush of tension 
fleeing serenity seemed to last beneath his lover's hands, longer 
than mere seconds. He still ached inside, when it was over.  But the 
near faint of his release had driven his cares away further than 
champagne might have.

And was still almost blind with the little fishes of luminescence 
flipping over his gaze.

He still made out that Crawford was staring at him through those 
lopsided lenses, and he gave him a thumbs up, swaying with the 
deafening bead of the blood receding from his ears. 

And then he got up.

Brad heard the shower run, a few curses directed at the crystal 
knobs.  A few moments of the droplets meeting a body, then 
splashes of leftover suds on tile only.  Schuldich came out then, 
wet from the waist down and no more.  

Dripping did he cross the bedroom floor, his fingers in his mouth 
until they met the smoldering wicks of the candles.  He hovered 
then, behind the vines of the candelabra, playing with the spirals of 
smoke until they had gone to nothing.

By moonlight only he leaned over Crawford, folding both of his 
hands about his forearm so he could nurse a moment at his own 
cum where it stained his fingers.

Then he let him go, only to scratch his temple and frown.

Which went away the moment he had finished rolling the 
precognitive onto his stomach.  Pleased with himself and his 
haphazard designs at last, he climbed onto the bed from the 
opposite side, trying to reclaim their wound up covers one way or 
another.  He didn't take them all

Just enough to bare the snowflake lace of shiny skin upon his 
lover's shoulders, glinting now like dew, and then just like the stars 
he had imagined.  It seemed to him then, in the moonlight they 
reminded him of something, so a little grin he gave, when he drew 
the lost string of pearls from the tangle of their sheets and hooked 
it over Bradley's ear to watch it swaying with his breath.  

*** 

Crawford stretched one arm under the pillow, careful not to 
dislodge his lover's attempt at decorating him from its perch. With 
his free hand, he removed his glasses, and held them out to 
Schuldich, who folded them with an air of reverence and lay them 
upon the night stand. Who then shot him a devilish smirk. 

And who then lay back down beside him, and began to caress the 
fine tracery of scars between his shoulder blades. Crawford lay still 
beneath his hand, save for breathing, and watched the shadows 
shift and deepen across his lover's unclad body. 

"You always touch me there," he murmured. "I have to wonder 
why?"

/Is it because you want to remind me of how they came to be 
there? Do the thoughts born of memories taste sweeter than those 
formed from the here and now?/

***

Schuldich paused in his ministrations for a moment, stilling his 
fingertip against the center of one lacy snowflake.  Because his 
love could not see his smile any longer, he offered it to him as a 
sour little sweetness, felt like something physical between them in 
the dark frost of the evening.

::You sure are curious tonight.::

"And you read too much into stuff sometimes.  Heh, kinda makes 
me wish I was doing it just to taste you."

::Not to agree with you or anything.:: But he had already sipped at 
the curiosity over it all, and it didn't matter if he was going along 
with it, or had been, or ever would. A warm breeze breathed upon 
their cheeks, settling without a touch of air from the dead candles.  

"They're nice to touch." So he ran his palm over the scars once 
more before sweeping his hand into Bradley's hair instead, where 
he combed it from his throat.

::But I do remind you, and I can take it all in, 'cause you don't 
always take it from me first.::

::Memories just change.  They are the here and now, seen all 
different between places.  Sometimes they get bitter, or they grow 
sweeter than they would have been in real time.  They lead to 
places in your head you don't even remember- places that are all 
dim and watery 'cause you forget where they are.::

/And you're not all stale like other people get.  People like you at 
least who get to remember having the shit beat outta 'em as kids./

/Haven't even started to go that way./ 

/And I don't ever think you will./

/I don't know why, I just do./

***

"Is that the real attraction of reading people's thoughts--that you 
are offered a chance to gaze upon those hidden, dark places? 
Because memories can surface from the murk on a whim, with 
little 
provocation." 

/As you, of all people, would know./ 

Crawford's hand fell upon Schuldich's shoulder, crept spider-like 
along the hollow of his throat to the other. There he let it rest, 
losing his fingers within the thick red curtain which had spilled 
over his lover's chest. 

/What sorts of things rise from the depths of your memory, 
Aubrey?/

/Do those memories tend to delight you? Or do they chill you to 
the marrow?/

***

Schuldich shook his head, feeling his lover's fingers drift through 
his hair as he did, but not leave it.  And even if he had felt his 
reply, he still spoke to him, and was still petted by him.  "No, it's 
because those hidden, dark places taste so good."

::Well, can taste so good.::

::You know what I mean.::

He breathed then, deeply.  Settled against the covers as he was and 
unwilling to move much.  The caresses of his henna locks though 
continued, almost curious, tugging here and then.  With that alone 
he might have known he had left Bradley unsatisfied.  

"They don't do all that much for me, but if they did, it wouldn't be 
much different.  I don't taste myself real well."

/And she's just the same, Saffie./

He closed his eyes, as if perhaps he tried, though rather it was to 
rue for a moment that Brad was right, For unbidden had come a 
few raindrops he recalled and still didn't somehow, and to the 
backbeat of some Latin liturgy he fell all the way down the 
basement steps, and wept among the dust when he was still, 
scarcely understanding the blood that ran from the places on his 
body he could not see.  

Schuldich blinked and found himself back on some wet Chicago 
street corner, batting away real raindrops with a hand that had 
never been cracked upon concrete in the name of any lord.

He sent that over to his lover.  

***

It told him nothing, but yet it told him plenty, for he caught the 
faint trace of misery in Schuldich's transferred memory. Crawford 
knew he was looking out of his lover's eyes for that instant, and not 
at another from his point of view. 

And it was all because of the hand he'd seen. Long and thin and 
oddly elegant. A hand he had held, had kissed, had felt upon his 
skin. And because it was a snippet of a memory from his lover's 
own life that Schuldich had sent him, Crawford rose just a little, 
and inched himself over until his chest rested upon Schuldich's. 
Just that, and nothing more. 

And he kissed him, his hand still playing in Schuldich's hair. Open 
mouthed and soft and savoring and solely because he wanted to 
kiss him, and nothing more. Crawford thought at him as much, 
before audibly adding, 

"That wasn't out of pity, because I won't feel sorry for you, no 
matter what you tell me. I respect you more than that." 

/I did that because I wanted to./

Crawford bent and kissed him just under his chin, and then, with a 
groaned curse he slid away to his hollow, face cradled once more 
on his pillow. His hand still lingered upon the center of the 
redhead's chest, palm flat to feel his heart.

***

Schuldich folded his own hands over his chest, musing on his own 
sloppiness a moment, that he should have taken away already what 
joy there was for himself, as he lurked in Crawford.  The real him 
was so find of it, so close to taken but...

/Damn./

Maybe not everywhere.  It couldn't be helped now. He licked his 
lips.  ::Oh man, you taste sooooooooooooooooooooooo fine right 
now.::

::But that's not the only reason that...::

"You know, I don't pity you either." A little laugh, and he rolled 
the underside of his ring over Bradley's knuckles, not that it was 
easily felt.  The metal had grown warm with his own skin and 
could scarcely be told from it.  "So cut it out already," said with a 
joking jingle in his words, but just what he had wanted his lover to 
stop was added neither with words or anything more abstract.

He yawned then, and pulled the covers a little closer.  "Hmph, only 
problem now is figuring out how to kick the kids out of the house 
tomorrow.  Ah well, I plan to sleep in.  They can have the run of 
the place until then."

Another giggle, "And now you've got me doing that 'the kids' 
thing." And a shrug.

"G'night, mon petit lapin."

Without losing his hold on Brad's hand, Schuldich leaned over and 
had a kiss himself.  One which most curiously alighted on his 
lover's forehead.

***

Crawford lay awake in the ethereal darkness of their room, feeling 
the odd touches of warm air across his bared neck, his scarred 
shoulder blades.  But he didn't wonder upon what might be causing 
them for he was too intent on wondering over his lover.

The rise and fall of Schuldich's chest had slowed and deepened as 
he fell into slumber; the hand still grasped within his own now lax, 
fingers curled and twitching every now and then.  Crawford 
lowered his shields fully at last, knowing that whatever the telepath 
might pick up would only be absorbed into some dream or other--
or so he'd told him once.

Of course, he could have lied.  Brad didn't really care if he had.

/I guess that lukewarm kiss goodnight and embarrassed reply 
should be enough to answer my question./

/So...If I had hoped you loved me, those hopes would be 
completely dashed now./

/I guess it's good that I didn't hope for any such thing, isn't it, 
Aubrey?/

Crawford eased his hand out of Schuldich's grip, and rubbed the 
inside of the band he now wore.  Then he withdrew his hand 
completely, and burrowed it under his pillow, whispering,

"Good night, Aubrey."

***

The moons of Terra had reached their zenith by the time Nagi and 
Savil had returned to the hotel, their purchases trailing along 
before them as if carried in the arms of invisible porters. A wave of 
one finger and the tumblers fell and the door swept open upon a 
teal-glazed room--the moonlight from the naked windows being 
the only source of illumination. 

The hookah and chair glided on their ghostly way to their 
respective rooms, but they two hovered by the sofa, the door not 
yet closed behind them. Nagi thought it was improper, somehow, 
that he return that door to its previous state. 

And it was because they were alone, and he... didn't think it was 
right. Not now.  Not when they were officially no longer mere 
playmates, no longer simply siblings. 

And especially not when the turn of his thoughts of her had grown 
a touch less innocent. These he had squelched the moment they 
had popped into his head, lest she taste of them. He did not want to 
offend her in the least. Did not want to spoil things between them 
in any way. 

Did not want to spoil her. 

That much, Nagi had set out for his love to nibble upon. But still 
he did not advance any further past the sofa, even when Savil did. 
Her movements dreamlike and slow, like a memory, almost. 

"What," he began, voice as soft and light as cotton, lest the mood 
be broken, "do you want to do now? Would you like to stay here? 
Or do you want to go for a walk in the garden?"

***

Saffie turned then, not as swiftly as she might have liked to on 
another day perhaps, another night.  But because... it was just nice.  
It was just right somehow.  And Nagi had asked so little... just for 
things to remain suspended so, in the light that was, and yet quite 
wasn't.  So she spilled her shadows the other way between him and 
the indigo of the shadows that nodded around her.  

"I'd like to stay here."

::Because I like it.::

Her feet drew themselves from her shoes then, and she propped 
one against the other on the floor beneath the couch.

::I like the way you feel when you're taking something in and 
trying to find the words for... for just everything.  Like I would let 
drift from you to me without it ever seeing the read world.::

She toed her socks off then, can cast them beneath the arched legs 
of the armchair where they, half-twined together, remained as a 
small and watchful creature there in the dimness.  

::And I want to be a good muse.::

He was still when she drew near him, as if he did not expect her to 
touch him... that memory she had otherwise become in the tales of 
his mind, the myth that the world was, and not a glad one, but 
something where the points of light did swirl.  And rise.  And 
become the deeply blinking facets of a self-satisfying tragedy 
gladder then the smiles of all the innocents left in the world.  This, 
which remained her more than his stillness, or the hazy wonder 
between her and the stars, where the story almost wanted to live.  
Or so it seemed to her.

When her fingers fell upon his cheek.

"Whatever have I done to make you think that what you would say 
to yourself inside would ever frighten me? No matter what it was.  
You may sully me as I live in your mind, but it's not the same. It's 
only a thought, and it lives.  Just like you live, only shorter, unless 
someone finds it in my memory and keeps it just a 
little longer."

And she laughed, sweeping away from him with a toss of her 
skirts.  

"Be~sides! Aren't poets supposed to write the first thing that comes 
to them, no matter how strange it is?"

::Even if you think it may dishonor me.::

The stereo came on then with a slow graze of her hand.  And it was 
nothing but a music box with lights between the windows.  In the 
spotlight of one she stood, and she bowed, her petticoats swept 
between her fingers.  There was a consideration of her own 
offered, that perhaps he might like to sit.

While she danced for him, like a wind up doll perched on the edge 
of a music box filled with the sapphire swell of the evening.

*** 

Nagi did sit then, upon the first pirouette of his muse-darling, her 
skirts flaring and stilling through spin after pose. Perched himself 
on the floor at the chair's feet, and gazed upon her lovely, wave-
framed face in the vaporous, blue light from the windows. As Savil 
moved, her arms threw spindling, midnight shadows across the 
walls, the floor, his forlorn figure. 

And so softly, thus moved, he at last began to speak, 

"Unattainable/But yet, I hopelessly yearn./Will I find release?"

***

Without a pause to the curving sparkles of her steps did Saffie let 
her gaze drift down into the other sort of world that was the shades 
about the empty room.  Blue eyes met blue green for but the space 
of a heartbeat, if nothing more, and if nothing less.  All of her 
senses still so speaking and holding her close, she could have 
supposed by words alone, there among the cerulean and silver she 
might sense some being other than that she had grown up with, and 
had felt her fingers against as they stood on the stairs over the city 
by the land-bound sea.  And it was this start in her mind, this softly 
shattering wonder that imbued her with such tenderness as only 
dreams before had known.

/But I don't dream of course, except by day when I find pieces of 
other peoples'.  And I can choose my own./

/Not this one though.../

Yet she could find no way to tell him- she the engendered 
inspiration so inspired herself -that in the presence of his words, 
for one moment she had known innocence- the shining truth 
beyond matter.  The desire for that which can not be, seeming 
almost there fulfilled.

And neither cold she stop the dance...  

So there was only wordless gentleness spun on a tear of gossamer 
between then, and the steps which barely bidden did take her to the 
desk where the rose and the gentian had turned to fuzzy gleamings 
kissed by reflections from the silver on the ink below them.  The 
rose she took and the bottle of ink- it looked like will-o-the-wisp in 
the dark, for it had no body but the settled moonlight on it's rim.

The thorns came off one by one and she was not sure, as they fell 
about her naked feet, if she had drawn them off or if he had 
without his fingers.

::This then... if how people with only their own thoughts make 
things last.  And it is for you, so you can be certain... even before 
you fade away.::

Savil wrote her lover's words upon the glass with the stem of the 
flower, so doomed it to die, poisoned by ravens of unshed 
thoughts.

The bottle came to rest upon the desk with the clank of it's 
invisible body, and she stood then, rimmed by the half shades of 
his words, wrought upon her in filigree by the backwards 
moonglow.  

::I should be happy for you, that you wonder over such things, and 
might magic your questions for the world into such fragile 
loveliness.  For I am touched...::

And she descended like a sleepy cloud might tremble and sigh as it 
comes to rest upon bosom of the earth, and kneeled between Nagi's 
knees, her small hands catching on his hips (::And that's just the 
trouble, ange moy.::) as she kissed him.

***

Her kiss was as feather cushioned as her approach, the weight of 
her hands upon him the same. Nagi brought one hand up from the 
floor to cradle the back of her moonlight-radiant head, kissing her 
back as carefully as she, but with all of his heart. 

/Is it so bad to be moved, as you say you have been?/ 

She pulled back a bit, enough for them both to clearly see the 
other's eyes.  Savil was bathed in shadow more, haloed by the blue 
glowing windows. But no response filtered down to him through 
their link. He supposed she was considering it. Supposed she didn't 
care to reply at all, simply to leave him guessing. 

Like Schuldich. 

A tiny smile graced the cupid's bow of her mouth, and she moved 
in again to kiss him. Nagi let her. 

And, in the doing, in having her slim figure so close to his, the lily-
of-the-valley scent of her surrounding him, he lost a fraction of his 
control. The kiss they shared became somewhat less innocent, 
stirred him. Nagi was the first to break it, sending apology after 
stumbling apology down the link. His hand dropped down to her 
shoulder; slid down her arm and caught at one dainty hand, and 
lifted it to his lips. 

"Maybe we should just go to bed."

***

"If you like," came her whisper, surly heard and almost felt, though 
he had not caught the movement of her wet lips until she grinned.  
::You taste pretty sleepy.  And not just here.:: Whereupon her 
fingers brushed his forehead, curling the dark threads of his bangs 
from his eyes.  Before she had so much as moved within the dusk, 
or the dusk moved around her, she had her mouth near his again, 
and somehow he just knew it was his good-night kiss.

Though rather than sending him off to the starlight of happy 
nightmares... ::No, no.  It is not so bad to be moved.  Not bad at 
all.::

So she rose then, and let him keep her fingers wrapped in his until 
they had both stood.  Then silent but for the murmur of the carpet 
beneath her toes, she slid off up the stairs.  And it seemed the ink 
from the window followed her. 

::Thank you for going out with me to-day, Nagi-chan.::

A dog barked, a Cream Lassie flew into the darkened pane with a 
thump, and then there was silence. 

***

Time passed.  Schuldich wondered the reaches of his own mind, 
personified as he saw fit.  He had a grey trench to caress his calves 
here- grey of a million shades at once where no such velveteen had 
ever crossed into real being, nor could sustain itself long if it did.

He raised his hand to the sky and it tore open before him into a 
different color, did so without the slightest stirring of the air.  No 
cataclysm for everyone. Simply him, and the sky who had its death 
throes in silence.

It smelled as if it had never stopped raining, but it did not rain, 
never would, and there was no sun above what else his fancies 
wrought for him to wander in. But neither was it dark.  

He passed a spider's web and saw as if he was the spider for a 
moment, looking up at himself from his creation.  The liquid on it- 
blood or tears or rain in truth.  Cum even.  He could not and did 
not wish to tell.  But it flew onto his fingers and he drank down the 
man he had picked up on the street before sending the
traces of his thoughts elsewhere, to find the place he had carved 
out for them, where always they would be upon his call now.

A sip from a calyx in the thorn bushes and there Nagi in the 
morning, fingers outstretched like a child's and somehow like a 
power and still a quavering, almost a smile, destined to join the rest 
of Nagi  as Schuldich knew him.

Schuldich who paused and looked down to the hand he had in his 
mind at night, not as a dream, but just as how he crept through 
himself, amid the pearl blood of what had passed him in his 
waking hours.

The hand had no ring upon it that he saw, yet, for his body wore 
one, he felt it.  A breath of his own on his skin and it was his in the 
dreams too.  A nod and he had mirrors to see himself wearing it 
from every possible whirl of his body.  He laughed and he watched 
himself, cavorting before the nothing glass of his 
everything world.

Then stillness again.  His eyes fell upon something just past the 
rim of his endless looking glass, which he broke and it ran singing 
away with the voices of every female whore he'd known, for he 
found them shrill, like glass grating, and yet did not really hear 
them this time.

There was a willow tree perched not too far from him, and some 
image of Bradley five years younger than he was now lay beneath 
its bows.  Dressed in white. He was barefoot.  So was Schuldich 
whose naked toes brushed against his floating locks.

Brad had had short hair five years ago, but he didn't bother to make 
sense of it even later.

He saw himself as he lived outside the grey that could not be, 
shoeless and ringless.  He reached into a dish and took out a few 
slivers of almond which he fed to Bradley, his fingers straying to 
his lips, and his eyes upon himself in the distance.

Crawford kissed his palm- the left finger still exposed.  But he sat 
up, and he took a book from the roots, muttered some vague 
reprimand that ended with, "And I will finish, even if you don't 
want me to."

So he read:

And when like her, oh Saki, you shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scattered on the Grass
And in your joyous errand reach the spot
Where I made One- turn down an empty Glass!  

Schuldich sat up in bed, snatching blindly after his breath before he 
could see.  The air smelled like smoke and dawn though no dawn 
came, and grumbling, he was glad of it: passed his hand over his 
brow and fell back down.

Knowing dreams and nightmares both.  But none to call his own.  
Not even this one.

*****