For Kit.
Warning: Sex with a minor. Consent issues.
*
We all have our idiosyncrasies.
When lighting the candles for spells, Ethan always circles the lit match first. Three times widdershins, once clockwise. Only then, finally, does he touch the flame to the wick.
His fingers are as long as a pianist's, heartbreakingly delicate, palely pink at the tips. Rupert fancies (privately, of course; he is not *quite* a thoroughly lovestruck fool) that Ethan charms the air with this gesture, caresses it to pliant obedience.
Rupert did not notice this habit for a bit. Since he did notice, however, he is fascinated.
He cannot look away. For many reasons, but this is among the first.
*
The first time they met, Rupert was so pissed, it's a miracle he stayed upright. Never mind noticing very much at all.
On Christmas hols, he fled down to London, determined to forget the previous term just as quickly as possible.
Which was how he found himself in the flat of someone he had yet to meet, weaving through a crowd of strangers and wreaths of smoke. His eyes burned as he searched the crowd for a familiar face, any familiar face. The room thumped and wiggled under the bass lines of Procol Harum, the Stones, a T.Rex song he'd not heard before.
His feet throbbed, very far away, and his eyes stung.
He found no faces he knew, but at the last window, draped over the sill, he saw Ethan. Slim-hipped, dark-haired boy, all rangy limbs and pale skin gone pink in the heat of the room and eyes that burned. Three cats climbed over his chest, arranged like a matron's showy stole. From above the ginger tabby's tail, Ethan smiled at him. His lips curved more gracefully than the tail.
The magic came later - in another flat, the fourth or fifth of the night, well past dawn - and for the moment, they simply regarded each other.
Of course, there wasn't anything simple about that stare. At least on Rupert's part, that is. A flush crept up his body that had nothing whatsoever to do with the lager in his system. It prickled and twanged over his skin, sent sweat up along his hairline and across his palm. Ethan's smile was wide and knowing, far more knowing than his skinniness and disordered hair suggested of his age. In one fluid motion, he dislodged the tabbies and tilted his head, sitting up, making room for Rupert on the sill.
As he sat, Rupert's mouth was terribly, shamefully dry and he clenched his hands into fists, knowing that if he spoke, he would stammer.
Ethan kissed him instead - the first real kiss from a man that Rupert had ever experienced. (Urgent grasps and averted eyes in the smoker with Colin MacNichol did not count, not any longer.) Wide lips, slick and warm, pressing against his, and white hands touching his neck, his eyelids, at once soothing and coaxing. He fell forward into the kiss, gasping, mashing his specs against Ethan's face, sucking air like a beached fish.
Only that never happened. When Rupert opened his eyes, his lips were still dry and untouched.
Ethan's smile had contracted. It seemed gentler now, more private, and he said, "Long night, mate?"
"Y-yes," Rupert said. He squinted at the boy, less and less certain of the phantasmic kiss. It faded slowly, patchily, but inexorably. "It would seem so."
Ethan unfolded himself, standing as gracefully as light moves, and took Rupert's hand. Led him through the crowd, parting it like water, nudging bodies aside like clouds, and out the door, down the stairs. To another party, and then another. Rupert grew so disoriented that if, the next morning, he woke and found himself in Shanghai, he would not have been surprised.
Dawn found them in yet another flat, shabbier than all the rest, reclining on a mattress, bolstered with pillows, that badly masqueraded as a davenport. Rupert had stopped drinking several stops ago, yet his mind refused to clear. He was sodden, flushed and overheated, unable to stop looking at the elven boy beside him.
He was more aware than ever of his inexperience, of the disproportion of longing to knowledge.
Ethan arranged three strands of yarn, yanked from an abandoned sweater, on the lumpy duvet. Murmuring something Rupert did not recognize, he cocked his head, glancing at Rupert, and when Rupert looked back down, the yarn was standing on end, wavering for a moment, then dancing.
Really dancing, small curls of wool acting as pseudopods that curled *en pointe*, bending at the waist as they bowed to each other, then picked through a minuet.
Ethan grinned at him and slid his hand up the inside of Rupert's thigh.
"H-how -?" Rupert asked. Ethan's palm burned on his leg, scorched through his trousers and sank into his skin, his muscle. "How did you do that?"
Of course, he had seen magic before. Much magic, muttered by his father, his granny, even his mother on infrequent occasion. Their magic, however, was ritualized, conducted in darkened rooms hushed like churches, and defensive, whispered against malicious fairies, or vampires, threats and assorted dangers.
This was casual magic. Entertaining, and purposeless beyond amusement. This was magic as flirtation, light and lovely magic, whirling yarn moving like Astaire and Rogers.
"Oh," Ethan replied several moments later, the sound at once dismissive and proud. He pushed back his black hair with his free hand. "I can do lots."
He smiled over at Rupert, pink tip of his tongue caught in the corner of his lips, tanuki and tempter at once.
Rupert kissed him then. He kept his eyes open throughout, memorizing the pale wrinkles of Ethan's eyelids, the delicate bridge of his nose; he wanted to be certain that this kiss, at least, was real.
And it was. Real, and intense, Ethan's intelligent tongue twining around Rupert's, tracing the points of his teeth, as Ethan's hands slid farther up Rupert's legs and Rupert wrapped his arms around that narrow waist, just birdbones slung in heated skin like silk.
*
Ethan is eighteen, Rupert an underdeveloped twenty. Ethan works odd jobs and floats between several flats in London, while Rupert studies at Oxford. Ethan is an adult, independent and self-sufficient, Rupert still a child in many senses, subsisting on an allowance from his granny's trust. Ethan darkens his eyes with kohl sometimes, Rupert is considering growing out his hair.
A broken leg the summer after his A-levels delayed Rupert's entrance to university by a year. Ethan left school at thirteen - perhaps fourteen; his accounts are as malleable and shifting as his expressions.
They have nothing in common, and Rupert cannot leave off thinking about Ethan. This seems logical to him - Ethan is astonishing, alien, beautiful as a Flemish Madonna, changeable as magic.
Ethan seems to return his affection, if not his fascination. This makes much less sense to Rupert. Why should he be interesting to someone like Ethan? He is stolid, stammering, still regaining his former athleticism after those four months in hospital. And he is certainly nothing special to look at. He knows this because he has taken to studying his face in the mirror, in passing windows, even in puddles, scrying his own features, unable to comprehend what Ethan could possibly see in them.
He misses tutorials, invests in a monthly return ticket, travels to London every week. Sometimes twice.
Ethan tastes like tobacco and herbs, savory pungent things, and his fingers twine in Rupert's growing hair, and he is nearly as hungry for touch as Rupert himself.
It can't be real, none of it.
*
Ethan is an enigma. He does not tell Rupert very much about his past or even his present circumstances. He'll meet Rupert at King's Cross and walk him to his current squat, which seems to change month to month, sometimes weekly. When Rupert inquires about the previous flatmates, Ethan waves his hand, gives that elegant single-shouldered shrug, and changes the subject.
Rupert has always excelled at puzzles. Logic, translations, the assembly of historical evidence are his forte. Ethan is something altogether different - illogical, fantastic, creative.
In a word, he stumps Rupert. Like his clothes and living arrangements, even the smallest detail - where did you grow up? - changes from visit to visit.
At least Ethan seems to be as inexperienced as he. A quick study, to be sure, and inventive; he takes to Rupert's body, learns it with nimble fingers and quicksilver tongue. But he is patient with Rupert's hesitations, capturing his wrists and guiding them into place with that secretive smile.
Have you done this before? is a question like any other, licked and grinned away, quickly forgotten in the soft fall of hair.
The strange thing is that Rupert only notices the differences once he is back in his lodgings, alone with his books, his body cold and pinched with longing. While he is with Ethan, the fluid, directionless present moment absorbs all of his attention, swamps his critical faculties, prevents any second-guessing.
So it is with that curious circling of the fingers before lighting any candle. Rupert sees it many times, but the detail, like all the others, floats into him with all the rest, bypassing all his questions. It is only when he is home for Easter that the gesture's import occurs to him.
He is in the library with his father. After the evening meal, after hours spent his justifying his falling marks, the subject turns to his other education. His Council-approved independent curriculum, that is, not the erotic, sensuous one carried out with Ethan. Indeed, he is finding it difficult to concentrate on much of anything; the ghosts of Ethan's touch seem to move along his skin, constantly prickling, pinching, and teasing, reminding him of where he would rather be.
"Your first priority ought to be shield spells," Dad says, closing the library door. "Prevention and blocking of various dangers."
"Yes, of course." Rupert has found it is best to agree. Even though he longs to learn the kind of magic Ethan does - charms and innocent hexes - his duty lies elsewhere. "I've been having trouble with that fog charm you did in Glasgow."
He has accompanied his father on various Council missions since he was fourteen. They went to Glasgow when Rupert was seventeen, arriving as back-up and clean-up after a brood of immature wyverns had been dispatched. A survivor huddled in the wreckage of the car park, its scales flame-darkened and blistered, hobbled by a broken wing. When it turned its great golden eyes on them, pulling back its lips to shriek, Dad had dropped to one knee, yanking Rupert down with him, shouting out a charm.
Fog rolled around them instantly, obscuring the monster, clinging damply to their skin. The wyvern charged through it, then stopped, turning confusedly around, its breath whinnying as it scented for its prey.
Dad smiles now, taking down two candles from the shelf and setting them on the side-table. "That one, ah. I like to think of it as the tibia-shattering spell."
Rupert ducks his head. He got in the creature's way, he could not see for the fog, and when he tripped over a pile of debris, he heard his leg snap in four places.
Dad squeezes Rupert's shoulder briefly. "No matter," he says. "Let's start with something a little more simple, shall we? A local cloud."
From his pocket, he produces his heavy brass lighter, engraved with the Council's best wishes after ten years of service. Rupert has never seen him use anything else. Dad closes his eyes for a moment, depresses the lighter with a click, then opens his eyes.
Around the wick, the lighter moves slowly counter-clockwise three times, then once the right way around. The flame touches the wick at last, catching immediately, burning bright and tall.
Rupert sucks in his breath. That is no ghost, no memory of Ethan's slim fingers, that is running down the nape of his neck, bringing up the hairs, sending shivers throughout his body.
"Do that again," he whispers before he can catch himself.
Dad eyes him curiously, briefly, before turning to the next candle and repeating the gesture.
In a rush, Rupert's throat dries and he blinks several times. He has seen Ethan do exactly that. It must be a coincidence. It has to be. He closes his eyes, trying desperately to think through this.
He himself makes precisely that gesture, doesn't he? Thrice widdershins, once clockwise, light. It's simply what one does when lighting a candle.
No, he thinks, no, it is not. Simple.
His father is talking about water and air elementals. How to coax them to intermingle, how to encourage their natural tendency to pull together, how to.... Rupert blinks again. He swallows a yelp when Fortinbras, his mother's massive black moggie, jumps onto his lap, digging in his claws and butting his head against his hand.
"Damned cat," Dad says, breaking off the lecture, and scowls. "Get it out of here, Rupert."
That night, Rupert lies in bed, hours passing as he fails to sleep. His hands perform the gesture, his mind recalls Ethan doing it, he gets hard thinking of Ethan, wondering where he is, what he's doing right now. He masturbates quickly, roughly, eyes screwed shut and free hand in his mouth, biting back the cry that tries to scratch free of his throat when he comes, arching into Ethan's imagined touch, his skin twisted into a candle, his heart the wick.
Ethan the flame.
*
"Why do you do that?" he asks on his next visit. Mid-afternoon, but Rupert is in bed, the sheets twisted around his hip, while Ethan pads around the bedsit, naked, finally squatting just out of reach to light a fat beeswax candle. The rain outside crawls in silver streaks over the walls, over the curve of Ethan's spine and flare of his buttocks.
He glances over his bony shoulder, brows knitting together. "Do what?"
Rupert circles his fingers. Three times, once, light. "That. You always do that."
Ethan sucks in his cheeks, arches one eyebrow, and turns back to his task. There is a long red scratch down one flank, already fading. I did that, Rupert realizes, shocked and impressed in equal measure. "Just lighting the candle, *Ru*pert."
He never uses Rupert's real name, not if he can avoid it. When he does, it means that he is annoyed.
Rupert struggles upright and strokes his fingers down the scratch. Ethan shivers once, the tendons in his neck going tense.
"I'm sorry," Rupert murmurs. He has no idea why he is apologizing, nor for what, but the apology is sincere.
The candle lit, Ethan sits back on his heels, bracing one hand on the floor and breathing the incantation. Vines appear along the molding, bare of leaves, then budding as they multiply. Smiling, Ethan tips back his head, black curls falling from his face, and reaches for Rupert.
*
Ethan is mysterious. Mysterious and charming, and the more time Rupert spends with him, the more baffled he becomes. Baffled and entranced in equal measure.
Three times backwards, once forward.
Ethan is everything Rupert's home is not. Rupert finds that his capacity for love is far more elastic than he ever suspected; it is not a matter of choosing one over the other. Rather, the warm, solid comforts of home - his mother's roasts, his father's library - become warmer, heavier, more comforting now that he knows Ethan.
Each is a secret from the other, and Rupert believes that he can keep the balance. Ethan is mercury, sliding, dispersing, casting his own moonish light, while home is the thick glass, leaded and solid, that contains and displays.
*
That June, Rupert accompanies his father and a few other Council officials to Cardiff to investigate a warlock brotherhood. He tells Ethan that he is vacationing with his mother; secrets around secrets, and he has to believe that he's protecting both.
In the suburban safe house, he watches a factotum, Robson, light the candles for a summoning charm. He isn't surprised when the man's hand circles three times-once over each wick. He thinks he ought to be surprised, but his reaction is closer to acceptance, almost understanding.
The gesture is more than idiosyncratic. It is learned.
Over tea the next morning - as the most junior member of staff (and that designation is only temporary), Rupert is responsible for meals and beverages, forbidden since his accident to do any sort of magic - he watches his father closely. Dad has never aged, not that Rupert has noticed, but suddenly there are threads of silver in his thin hair, smudges on his spectacles, loose skin on his throat.
"Dad? Why do you -" he starts, stopping when his father glances sharply at him.
Pryce, the head of the expedition, several years his father's junior, clears his throat and rattles his cup against the saucer. He is an elegant man, monogrammed and carefully groomed; Rupert hates him for surpassing Dad, for looking more comfortable in a brokerage office in the City than out here in the Welsh wastes, leading a troop of magicians. He pours the last of the tea, stewed and bitter now, into Pryce's cup and withdraws.
Rupert bides his time. Watches the councillors, makes note of their accents when they speak Latin, studies their gestures and habits. Every one of them lights candles alike, softens the V in the Latin, whistles Sumerian through his nose.
The warlocks have gone to ground, so the councillors' expedition stretches into a second week. They travel the countryside in a Volkswagen bus, driven by Rupert, knocking and bouncing and casting locator spells, before returning each night to the safe house.
Cardiff is not nearly as boring as Rupert had expected. He takes the bus out several nights in a row, long after Pryce and the others have gone to bed, and finds rock clubs, pubs, even a party or two. While he is relieved to have escaped the faintly oppressive atmosphere of scholarly magic, the crowds and music to which he escapes simply increase his loneliness. He thinks of Ethan, wonders what he's doing back in London, drinks too much ale and stumbles back to the van.
"Everything all right, lad?" his fathers asks one morning. Rupert has slept for three hours, but rises now, swallowing the hangover as he splashes his face with water. "You seem...elsewhere."
"Fine," Rupert replies. Some nights, he thinks he sees Ethan in the crowds. Always across the room, always with his back turned, and by the time Rupert makes his way over, the phantom with silvery skin and black hair is long gone. Last night, however, he did not even see a phantom. Bereft, he drank more than usual, earning a terrifying ride back through the suburbs. He blinks now, then knuckles his eyes, and meets his father's gaze. "Lumpy bed, that's all."
Since meeting Ethan, Rupert has slept on much worse - floors, sofas, a pallet of pillows on the roof of one of Ethan's squats - but his father doesn't know that.
"Dad?" They are dressed, treading softly down the stairs to the kitchen. His father always rises with him and helps with the breakfast things until the others appear. Now is as good a time as any to ask after the candle-lighting. "Why do you all -?"
His father squeezes his arm and Rupert goes silent. Below them, Pryce is crossing quickly through the front room, shoes in his hand, tie wrenched out of his collar. Rupert and his father flatten themselves against the wall of the stairwell, grinning at each other almost guiltily, reminding Rupert of pranks he used to play with his cousin Sarah. Pryce enters the makeshift study and closes the door with a decisive click.
Over breakfast, Pryce says nothing of his errand. He looks slightly more drawn than usual, but perhaps only Rupert notices. He has changed his clothes, yet another crisp blue shirt with its monogrammed pocket. The others treat him with their customary deference. Even Dad makes his usual conversation, arguing with young Robson over the best translation for 'axe' in the Akkadian.
Restless, almost fretful, Rupert invents an excuse to drive into Cardiff that afternoon. His father, distracted by a missing volume of Bollandist chronicles, waves him off. Rupert cannot sit still, cannot concentrate, and heads for a pub he has only passed, never entered. Even the drive seems to be longer, filled with potholes and obstinate pedestrians, than usual.
But the pub is quiet, only a few patrons scattered around the long, narrow room, and there is rock music playing, a pretty middle-aged woman pouring drinks, and Rupert starts to breathe a little easier. He savors his pint, stretching it out, refusing to let himself gulp it as he has been doing the past several nights.
When it is nearly empty, Rupert returns to the bar. He has a crossword puzzle in his jacket pocket and begs a pencil stub from the woman.
"Back through there," she says without looking up, jerking her hand to the left.
"P-pardon?" He looks in the direction she indicated. Perhaps there's an office back there where he may find a pencil. All he sees, however, is a narrow passage opening onto a dark back room. There is a patch of white hair in the shadows, gesturing hands, and then the door closes.
"Sorry," the woman says, pushing back her hair with the back of her hand. "Thought you wanted the restrooms. Pencil?" She plucks a pen from her plait and hands it to him.
"Thank you," Rupert says vaguely, pocketing the pen and moving down the passage.
The door is not fully closed. As he draws nearer, the small visible stripe resolves into white hair and reveals low, muttering voices. Remembering the lessons in stealth he picked up from American westerns, Rupert walks slowly on the outsides of the soles of his feet, rolling and tip-toeing.
He does not recognize the language being spoken. It seems to be some variety of Celtic - not Welsh, and not Gaelic, but a cousin - and he realizes in a rush that he may have found the warlocks. Absurd, really, but as he pauses just outside the door, his heart hammers and he imagines how well this discovery could reflect on his father's career. On his *own*, for that matter.
Another man speaks, and Rupert strains to hear. Still in that unfamiliar, almost lilting language, but the voice is Pryce's.
It can't be - Roger Wyndam-Pryce, consorting with warlocks? Rupert is still swallowing his shock, reminding himself that he has no way of knowing whether the other man *is* a warlock, when someone, a third voice, laughs.
And that is a voice Rupert knows almost as well as his own. Ethan.
Gravity burps, Rupert sways. He clutches at the doorjamb, exhilaration and shock coursing through him, his head shivering like a poached egg beneath the spoon, his feet seeming to fall away from him.
Distantly, he hears chairs scraping back, a fist thumping a table, then sees a smear of white beard-dark eyes hurry past him. All the while, a Beatles song plays out front. The harmonic vocals and innocent lyrics already make Rupert feel nostalgic, though it's only been a few years since their last album and he is far too young to know what nostalgia *is*. A white-and-black cat winds around his feet, miaowing silently and showing its pink tongue, white fangs, before giving up on him and pacing with great dignity into the back room.
"And?" he hears Ethan ask within the room.
There is a long pause, then Pryce clears his throat. No one clears his throat like that, peremptory and officious and intangibly rude all at once. Rupert unlatches his fingers from the molding; they've gone numb and he works his fist closed, then open, as he listens.
"Interesting," Pryce says at last. "Yet another of your filthy hippie acquaintances, I suppose?"
"He's a Druid," Ethan says, and Rupert cannot quite believe the sweetness in Ethan's tone, not after Pryce's toneless, insulting question. "He'll find the men you're after." A scrape of chair, the sound of fabric on flesh, settling. "Or he would have, if you'd just *relax* -"
His throat acidically dry, his fists gone numb again, Rupert moves to the opposite wall and peers through the crack. It *is* Ethan there, long limbs and pale skin, sitting in Pryce's lap. Like a puppy, like a small boy, head tilted against Pryce's shoulder, long-lashed eyes gazing up at him.
Bile and the morning's tea swirl sickeningly in Rupert's stomach at the sight, then shoot up his throat and fill his mouth.
He cannot seem to move. He cannot even close his eyes.
So he sees Pryce's elegant hand cup Ethan's - *Ethan's* - cheek, slide into that dark smoke hair, and he hears, despite himself, wanting to flee or storm in or, somehow, make a scene that will equal the torrent and tornado of emotion *within* him, Pryce as he says, "Get off me, you pathetic fairy."
Sound and vision fragment then. Rupert reels within his skin, breath coming ragged. There is a thump, body on floor, and Pryce striding past him, shouldering him aside, and then, nothing.
A Byrds song plays now, tinkling and cloying, as Rupert's nails scrape at plaster and his heart pounds out of rhythm.
"You might as well step inside, Giles," Ethan calls. "Latch the door behind you, will you?"
How did Ethan know he was here? How is Ethan here in the first place? Why is he addressing Rupert as if they're at school? Giles? How and what and why and where?
Ethan lies where he dropped. He is sprawled on the floor, legs under the table, head pillowed on his folded arms. Dim firelight plays over his sharp features. He wears the plainest clothes Rupert has ever seen him in, a schoolboy's dress shirt and cotton trousers, bare feet hidden in the table's shadow.
"Hullo," Ethan says, smiling up at him. He extends one arm and pats the floorplanks. Without quite knowing why, Rupert drops down beside him, crossing his legs and hunching his back, squinting at Ethan, longing to look away.
He cannot. His body is useless, uncooperative, and though he'd like to hit something, or perhaps be sick, he is frozen here, charmed and entranced.
*
"I was thirteen," Ethan says. His finger is circling Rupert's bare calf, twirling the hairs there, tangling them, then soothing them straight. They have retired upstairs, to the room Ethan is renting by the week with Pryce's money. "Maybe fourteen. It doesn't matter."
Rupert swallows against the burn of old bile and fresher kisses. "Y-you don't -" He swallows again, gnaws the inside of his cheek until his mouth fills with spittle. Ethan blinks up at him as slowly as a cat. "You don't have to explain."
Ethan smiles at that, lips curving, eyes narrowing. "I bloody well do."
"No," Rupert says, much more loudly. His eyelids are coated with afterimages, of Ethan moments ago, flushed and lovely, and Pryce, and Ethan and Pryce, and he cannot be sick, cannot rise, cannot fucking *escape*.
Everything is falling apart. Not with a bang, he thinks absurdly and shakes his head, nor with a whimper. He never liked poetry, earned three demerits for arguing that Bob Dylan was a better poet than Tennyson, but here he is, squatting in a narrow room in Cardiff, poems for thoughts, a changeling draped across his lap. There is no balance to be had; perhaps there never was.
"Yes, precisely," Ethan says in a plummy accent. Posh, like Pryce's, and then he smirks. Dropping the accent, exchanging it for his slightly more familiar South London one, he adds, "I was thirteen and you *do* need to hear this. Listen."
Ethan touches his index finger to his own lip, then to Rupert's, nudging it inside. Close to, the skin smells of sex, oil and dirt and spunk, but it tastes like flowers and Rupert is suckling the pad and nail before he's quite aware of it.
"Thirteen, and I was skiving around the lots where new council houses were going up. Been going up for years, since I was at the creche, it seemed like. Bouncing the ball with some mates, kicking dirt, doing some charms."
Rupert raises his brows. With Ethan's finger stoppering his mouth, he cannot speak, but Ethan nods at the expression.
"My mother's a princess of her people, you know, wheaten and powerful. Gypsy, that is, exiled when she got pregnant with me."
Rupert closes his eyes, tries to shake his head. All Ethan's stories are crap, cheap serials and smudged newsprint, unbelievable. He sees that now, sees their shoddy construction and ridiculous illogic.
Ethan clucks his tongue and Rupert opens his eyes. "She is. My father is never spoken of, of course. So there I was, kneeling in the mud, charming up a few stones and dirt to entertain my mates. Elemental magic, really, nothing to it." He laughs. "Elemental is elementary."
That's a lie as well, Rupert knows that. Earth magic like that requires a great deal of power and even greater sensitivity.
Yet he has seen Ethan charm vines into flowering in the dead of winter, watching bits of yarn dance, seen candles twine together pornographically.
"And then, just like that, my mates scatter. Like little mice, scampering off." Ethan closes his eyes for a moment, lashes brushing his cheeks, and Rupert is rapt all over again. Ethan's weight, the pressure of his finger crooked against Rupert's teeth, it's all too little, too light, yet overwhelming at the same time.
Rupert played football at school, knelt in the scrum, hooked it up and crashed down when he was tackled. He could shove Ethan off him in an instant. He could shove Ethan hard enough to dent the plaster wall opposite.
"Parlor tricks and street shams," Ethan says in Pryce's posh accent. "That's what he said, and I look up, and I see - well. You know what I saw." His voice drops and he looks away. Unaccountably shy, nearly coy, and Rupert realizes he is twining his fingers in Ethan's waving hair, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the hollow of Ethan's temple. "Offers to teach me magic, real magic. Takes me back to his London flat - there's a house in the country, I've never seen it, but this is where he stays during the week. Shows me more tricks. Better ones."
Greedy, Rupert thinks, greedy hungry boy, you poor sod. He can picture Ethan at that age, skinnier and smaller than he is now, all knobbly joints and smooth skin and squeaking voice. Ethan's eyes are shining darkly, regarding Rupert with an unearthly calm, as if he's waiting for Rupert to stop thinking before he resumes his story.
Ethan must have been beautiful then. Rupert has never looked at a boy like that. Never that young; even when he *was* that age, he looked to the older boys, fifth- and sixth-formers, desperate to gain their bulk and confidence, wanting their muscles and hair with a desire that wasn't, not wholly, for himself. But Ethan at fourteen would have been *Ethan*, only - newer. Brighter, perhaps, less guarded, less prone to bullshit and lies, long black hair and sharp eyes.
Rupert looks away. He knows what's coming, knows where this story must be heading - a one-way street and highway and toll road all together, straight on to despoilment and ravishing - but this is an unexpected obstacle. The longer Ethan speaks, the longer he draws out the story and leaves long pauses in which Rupert can think, and imagine, and picture, the hungrier Rupert becomes.
That, at least, ought to sicken him.
He tightens his hold in Ethan's hair, tipping back his head, exposing his throat. Across his lap, Ethan wriggles and grins. "It was hot that summer. Weeks without rain. He went slowly, all Pimm's? and why don't you remove your shirt? and look what you do to me, filthy boy and it was *awful*. Horrid, impossible to endure, until finally -"
Rupert is breathless. Gravid, sunk into the mattress, immobile. He sees Ethan in rugger's shorts, bare legs and bare, narrow chest, long monkey toes and always those eyes, turned on *Pryce*, avidly listening. Pink tongue caught in his teeth, artist's fingers mimicking his every gesture. He feels Pryce's hands on his own skin as he slips from watching Ethan to *being* him, feels the coaxing pressure, the open-mouthed kiss on the back of his neck, starts to writhe when the touch vanishes.
"Yes," Ethan says, "just like that."
"He -" Rupert cannot breathe. He can't speak, can't *see* anything save the skinny boy gasping and arching, white-knuckled fists and wet, red mouth opening wider and wider. "But -. You - and -. He must've -"
"No." Ethan shakes his head. "No, Rupert."
Ethan can make sense from the merest fragments, scraps and left-overs, threads and bobbins dancing, quilts bowing, paint chips spinning. Ethan understands what Rupert wants to believe.
He taps Rupert's palate with his finger and says again, "No. Nothing so revolting and squalid as *rape*. Silly boy. No, it was marvellous, you have to see that. Like a fairy tale. He was *rescuing* me, showing me the world in the crystal glass, teaching me everything he knew."
Ethan, smaller and fresher, hopeful and eager, and Rupert's heart bumps and drops at the thought of him, so *young* then. He'd thought that he'd been the first to touch Ethan, that their mutual touch had changed them both, simultaneously, marked them in...what was it? Thoughts of love and devotion are ridiculous, stupid, absurd, dangerous here. Not here, not with Ethan wriggling against him and stroking Rupert's tongue, breathing in his ear, telling him a filthy fairy tale gone rotten along the seams, in the heart.
"What you do to me," Ethan whispers, and Rupert feels those ghostly hands, Pryce's hands, on his skin again, then sees Ethan again, mottled-pink with excitement, eyes screwed up. He slides between several states, seeing-feeling Ethan then, hearing-feeling Ethan now, between revulsion and fascination, worry and avidity. He is hard. He's always been hard. "Feel that? Feel what you do to me? Touch me, make it better."
Ethan's voice, Pryce's voice, it doesn't seem to matter. Ethan's free hand squirms between them, grasps Rupert's cock diffidently, then squeezes it. Stroking it inexpertly, wiggling again, breathing rough and fast.
"Like that, yes," Rupert says thickly, Ethan's finger sliding free from his lips with a low pop. "Yes."
Arching one eyebrow, Ethan straddles Rupert's thigh and speeds his hand. Breathily: "Does that help? Does that feel good?"
"Yes," Rupert says, closing his eyes, sinking ever deeper. He thrusts into Ethan's hand, hips snapping as the bed creaks. "More."
"Mmmm." Ethan squirms again, releasing Rupert's cock, sliding down to his belly. Serpentine and knowing, eyes slitted and mouth wide open, he swallows down half of Rupert's cock, humming around it.
And Rupert sees the past, sees Ethan gone shy, drunkenly eager, suckling Pryce and pulling at his own small prick, bony wrist angling sharply as he jerks himself and works the swelling cock in his mouth. Rupert sees it, feels Ethan's fear fizzling away, evaporating in desire's heat, and he feels Pryce roaring as he grips Ethan's delicate skull, pushes deeper, lets loose a terrible stream of curses and epithets. Filthy boy, terrible boy, pansyfairyhorrid, and Ethan's cheeks burn with the strain as he swallows and Pryce pulls free, sprays his throat and chest, licks it clean.
Everything is going wrong. Rupert knows that, somewhere deep in his hindbrain where the shreds of morality have retreated, but knowledge is nothing, paler than vellum, wispier than smoke. All he knows, is what he feels, and Ethan is here, is his, and Rupert makes that more and more true with each thrust, deep into the tight heat of Ethan's mouth.
Ethan is staring up at him, dark eyes rolling, and Rupert pulls him up to his knees, crushes him in an embrace that could crack several ribs, and kisses him as hard as possible, thrusting against Ethan's prick and sweaty concave belly.
He tangles his hand in Ethan's hair, bares that long neck, and scrapes his teeth down its expanse, licking up another blush as he tightens his hold, gnaws-bites-worries and starts to come, pushing harder and farther. So much pale, delicate skin, silky hair, and Rupert's teeth and prick push and push, desperate to break, snap, mar.
Ethan's head falls all the way back, face raised to the ceiling, ecstasy-agony painting his expression, eyes blank and wide as a saint under the arrows' volley.
There is no balance, no home and parents and intransigent duty. Pryce spoiled all that, ruined its mysteries and security. There is only Ethan, rocking against him, whispering inaudible charms and curses to the sky, and Ethan is more than enough.
Rupert loves him. And this love, it seems, only grows. Widens and spreads, swamping and drowning them both, dragging them down and raising them up simultaneously, and when he comes, he is empty, a kite tangled in bare branches, weightless and hopeless.
"Just like that," Ethan whispers against Rupert's throat, and he is the vampire, or Rupert is, or they both are, sired and transformed. "Oh, *yes*."
Rupert goggles at him, breathless and streaked with sweat's salt, pulse pounding faintly. Distantly.
"Mine," Ethan says, more gently, stroking Rupert's cheek, loosening the hair plastered there.
"Mine," Rupert repeats. Someone else now, speaking a new language, kissing Ethan with bruised lips. Fury paces in the cage formed by his ribs, circles and growls, gnashes its fangs. It is held for now, restrained, but everything spills, sooner or later. "Yours."