by Alix Hadden
Kir swung the watering can, slopping water out of it in an arc towards the nearest reaching tentacle of the mud-creature. It had enough impetus to knock half the tip of it off. Where the fallen parts fell into water themselves, they dissolved into incoherence; but the drier parts were still twitching, still trying to pull back together.
Which meant they needed to keep on getting water onto it as fast as possible, and Kir had a sinking sensation that one lousy tiny watering can wasn't going to be quick enough. Maybe he should try slicing the pipes after all.
Zach was at his elbow again. "Here," he said. "Swap you."
Kir looked over. Zach was carrying the bathroom bin, full to the brim with water. It was a little awkward to swap, but once they had, Zach was off back already to refill the watering can, and Kir could heave the watery contents of the bin at the mud-thing. More water, going faster, with more mass -- a much bigger chunk of tentacle fell off this time, and the puddle on the floor was larger and dissolved more of the dislodged mud as it landed.
"Here!" Zach again, and again Kir grabbed the watering can from him.
He lost track of how many times they did it. But they were winning, they were definitely winning, although the streams of water were moving across the kitchen floor towards Kir's feet, and he had to climb up onto one of the kitchen chairs and warn Zach to keep his feet out of the water.
"It's not dangerous like the thing itself," he said, throwing more water, "or the chairs would dissolve too, but..."
"But I'm in no hurry to experiment," Zach said, and climbed onto another chair to pass him the bathroom bin again.
Finally, finally, nothing else was moving.
"I think it's gone," Kir said, exhaustion hitting him square in the small of the back, so that he wavered on the chair for a moment. "But -- shit. I'd better clear up."
Zach backed away from the puddle, and set the full watering can he was carrying down on the floor. "Um. Can I help at all?"
Kir shook his head. "I'll do it the -- well, it's not exactly the easy way, it's all got to come from somewhere, but right now it's likely to be easier than anything else I can think of."
He could feel the plants wavering a little -- he'd have to feed them tomorrow, the nitrogen-rich stuff, and probably talk to them a little, they liked that -- but there was enough there for him to slowly round up all the water and sludge that was spread across the kitchen floor and into the living room. He got it into one single puddle, sides quivering gently, beside the kitchen sink, then stopped to think. There was no way he could levitate it up and into the sink, not right now. It would have been a tall order at the best of times. But the bathroom bin was still there, he could sort of shove it into that. He tilted the bin on one side, but couldn't work out how to coordinate himself to move the puddle by magic. He sighed. He'd have to do it the hard way. He reached up for the mug he'd left on the kitchen counter, and started scooping the puddle into the bin.
"Look, are you sure I can't help?" Zach said again, after he'd done the first scoopful.
Kir would like to claim that he'd forgotten Zach was there, except he blatantly hadn't. His thoughts were jumbled, jumping between how on earth he was going to explain all of this, and the physical awareness of Zach, there in his living room, that hadn't wholly gone away even while they were fighting a mud-creature, for goodness' sake, rising out of his goddamn kitchen sink.
And now Zach wanted to help, which was another confusion again. Why wasn't Zach on his way down the stairs right now? Or, indeed, when the damn creature first showed up? Why was Zach staying in the middle of all this chaos?
Zach wanted to help.
"It would be great, actually," Kir admitted. "It's all perfectly safe now. Though try not to touch it more than you have to. But if you could..."
"Scoop it into the bin," Zach said. "I get it."
He grabbed another mug, knelt down beside Kir and began to scoop up the mess. Kir's shoulders were tense. Zach was surely just being polite. It was surprising enough that he hadn't run for it straight away, or immediately after they were out of danger. There was no way he'd want to stick around now beyond when everything was back in order. Kir kept his eyes in front of him, determinedly focussing on what he was doing, and not letting himself look over at Zach. Zach would be going, any moment, and he needed to remember that.
It just kind of sucked.
They might have managed to keep the mud-creature off them, but the bailing out was inevitably splashy, and by the time Kir had a couple of cloths and was mopping up the last of it, they were both filthy.
"Ugh," Kir said, sitting back and poking at his T-shirt, then looked over at Zach. "Look, I can't possibly send you home like that. Have a shower, and I can lend you a T-shirt or something."
There was something like hurt in Zach's eyes for just a moment, then he smiled, and nodded, but there was some indefinable coolness in his manner that hadn't been there before. "A shower would be lovely, thank you." His lips quirked. "I think I know where it is, now."
That surprised a real grin out of Kir, as he went to find a towel and T-shirt.
Of course, he had to explain, as well, which wasn't something he was particularly looking forward to right at this point in time. Unless Zach wanted him to call a taxi straight away, which Kir would absolutely insist on paying for, but he had to at least make sure that Zach understood the secrecy inherent here. Fuck.
He sat on the floor, staring at nothing in particular, watching thoughts going round inside his own head, until he heard the shower go off again, and a couple of minutes later Zach reappeared in the corridor, rubbing at his hair with a towel. He was wearing Kir's T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts that were presumably his own, and nothing else, and Kir's mouth went dry.
"Your turn," Zach said, smiling at him.
Surely -- surely -- Zach couldn't still be interested after this? Kir had expected -- he wasn't sure what he'd expected. Sure, Zach had stayed for a shower rather than going straight home, but then he was wet and covered in sludge and it made sense for him to want to clean off a bit before leaving. But -- he hadn't put his trousers back on. They hadn't been that dirty. Had they? Maybe that was the only reason. Zach didn't want to put them on until he was actually on his way out.
Slightly dazed, and aware that he wasn't entirely thinking straight, he pushed himself up off the floor and walked down towards the bathroom. He was aware of Zach watching him all the way.
By the time he was clean and dressed -- he didn't have the nerve to copy Zach, but found himself some clean trackie bottoms instead -- he felt very slightly more with it. Glancing at the clock and realising that it was already midnight wasn't particularly helpful to his state of mind, though.
When he got into the living room, Zach was sitting on the sofa with his bare feet tucked up underneath him, holding a whisky glass and reading a book.
"Hey there," he said, looking up, and raising the glass. "I helped myself. I figured you wouldn't mind. In the circumstances."
Kir winced slightly. "No. No, of course not."
"I poured one for you too," Zach continued, nodding at the coffee table. "I figured, it's in your house, chances are you must like it. The Caol Ila."
"Oh," Kir said, a little blankly. "Thank you. I -- yes, of course I like it."
Slowly, he sat down on the other end of the sofa, and picked up the glass. Zach put the book down on the coffee table, took another sip of his whisky, and looked at Kir.
"So," Zach said. "Any chance that you want to tell me what the sweet fuck was going on there?"
Kir took another sip of whisky, but instead of feeling soothing, this one sat like burning lead in his stomach.
"I'm a mage," he said, wearily. "Magic exists, weird shit exists, there are a very few other people like me who work with it, and I have absolutely no clue what that vile thing was and I really honestly wish I did."
He waited for Zach to -- he wasn't sure what reaction he expected. Shock, horror, interrogation...?
"
Well, I'd gotten as far as the magic," Zach said, looking -- surprisingly calm, in fact. "I won't say it wasn't a shock, but -- well, I guess it was less of a shock than the sludge-monster emerging from the kitchen sink was, so maybe I'm over that for now." He smiled at Kir. "You did really damn well, dealing with that."
Kir grimaced. "Didn't feel that way from where I was. And -- honestly, I would have been in serious shit without you. Thank you."
Zach seemed to relax just a little bit at that.
"We're both okay, aren't we?" he said. "Your flat isn't even totally wrecked. Nothing a landlord could even complain about, right?" He grinned. "That looks like dealing with it well, to me. So, next question: I'm guessing this is all a big terrible secret, right?"
"It's not exactly common knowledge, no," Kir agreed. "But you're not the only non-mage who knows, either." Though he was probably the one Kir had told who had taken it the most calmly, which was pretty weird. "I do need to ask you not to spread it around, though, and by 'spread it around' I mean talk to anyone else about it at all."
Zach nodded, slowly. "Are you going to," he made a wavy hand gesture, "insist?" He hunched his shoulders slightly, looking anxious for the first time.
"Magic on a person?" Kir said. "No. No way. We don't do that." Other than in very special circumstances, but he wasn't about to go into that right now.
"But how can you keep it secret, then?" Zach asked.
"People are mostly very resistant to believing anything like that," Kir said. "To be honest, if you started going round going on about how I can do magic, people would just think you were nuts, not that I was a mage. Occam's Razor and all that. And as a rule, I don't do magic out there in public, in front of people who don't know about it." Although, hey, that was three times in a fortnight that he'd done magic in semi-public, though annoyingly the only one that had been seen was the one that was in his sodding flat and thus technically private. Dammit. "It's not -- mostly magic is just, I dunno, it's a thing I do, a hobby. Like climbing or knitting or football or something." If anything, he probably expended more mental energy on climbing, but he wasn't wholly sure he wanted to admit to that, either.
Zach was laughing a bit. "Weird kind of a hobby, mate."
"Yeah, well, it's not exactly something you choose."
"What, you just -- you're just like that, like Harry Potter or something?"
"Rather less common," Kir said. "And no owls or wizard school or anything. But yes, I guess, in the sense that it's a thing you either can or can't do, not a thing you can learn to do whoever you are."
"Like being a Jedi," Zach said.
Kir laughed. "So, are you confessing that you're a bit of a geek, then?"
"Oh, come on, Harry Potter and Star Wars, they're pretty much cultural universals, aren't they?" Zach looked a bit self-conscious. "Maybe, though. A bit."
"Hey, it wasn't a criticism," Kir said.
The whisky was tasting better again. He still wasn't sure, though, what was happening here. Had this whole thing put Zach off? Surely it must have done. But he hadn't jumped straight into a taxi home, and he was sitting there in boxer shorts and Kir's T-shirt...at the other end of the sofa, well away from any physical contact. Mixed signals. Kir wasn't that good at mixed signals. He wasn't great at signals in general, in fact.
As if Zach had read his mind, he turned a little bit around on the sofa, and slid his bare feet towards Kir, tucking them under Kir's leg. He sipped at his whisky again, and held Kir's eye. Kir swallowed, and saw Zach track the motion; then Zach licked his lips, and Kir was already half-hard.
"So," Zach said, and put his whisky glass down beside the sofa without breaking eye contact. "We were -- kind of in the middle of something, before?"
"We were," Kir agreed, his breath coming a little short at the look in Zach's eyes.
Zach hooked his toes under Kir's leg, and pulled himself closer, and Kir leaned in towards him, and they were kissing again. The angle was awkward, but Kir couldn't bring himself to care; certainly couldn't bring himself to stop kissing Zach for long enough to fix it. Zach's lips were warm, and he tasted of whisky, and his hand was curling around Kir's neck, fingers reaching up underneath the back of his hair again, scraping against the point of his skull, the feeling going straight to Kir's dick.
Zach deepened the kiss for a moment, then made an annoyed noise, and pulled away just a little. Kir had just enough time to wonder if he'd done something wrong, then Zach had swung a leg across him, and was settling himself straddled on top of Kir, his legs warm against the outside of Kir's thighs. Kir's hands went to Zach's waist without any conscious thought, and he slid them around to the small of Zach's back, his fingers pushing in under the waistband of Zach's boxers. Zach made a noise deep in his throat and arched his back a little, pushing his pelvis forwards, and his hard dick brushed against Kir's.
"This okay then?" Zach asked breathlessly.
"God, yes," Kir said fervently, scraping fingernails along the top of Zach's arse.
Standing up, Zach was shorter than Kir, but sitting on top of him, his face was above Kir's, and when he bent down to kiss Kir again, Kir had to tilt his head back into the cradle of Zach's hand, with Zach pushing him back against the sofa. Zach had a tiny scraping of stubble, rubbing against Kir's cheek, and it felt incredible. Kir tried to move a little, and Zach pushed him back forcefully into the cushions, and Kir shuddered. Zach made a satisfied noise, and then he was kissing along Kir's jaw, down his neck, both hands now sliding up under Kir's T-shirt, and Zach was wriggling backwards and off Kir's lap.
Kir was briefly anxious, until Zach leant in and breathed on where his cock was doing its best to break out of his sweatpants. At that point he was quite happy for Zach to keep working with whatever ideas came into his head.
"Okay?" Zach said and yes, yes, that was very much more than okay.
Zach had his cock out by now, and was licking the very tip. Kir looked down just in time to see the head of his cock vanishing into Zach's mouth, and Zach looked up and caught his eye as he slid Kir's cock deeper into his mouth. Kir reached out for Zach's shoulders, and without looking, Zach caught his hands and pressed them back onto the sofa beside him. He slid his mouth back up to the top of Kir's cock and released it for just a moment, just long enough to murmur "you just hold still and let me..." before he swallowed Kir's cock again and Kir gave a juddering sigh and put his head back onto the sofa and gave into letting Zach do exactly what he wanted with Kir's cock.
Which turned out to have been an incredibly good decision, because what Zach wanted to do was to tease him right up to the edge, and then pull back just enough that he could start again, over and over again until Kir was barely even aware of the noises he was making. If he looked down he could see Zach's mouth red around his cock, and further down Zach's own hand clearly on his own cock, but by now he could barely focus.
"Oh god, Zach, please, please," and Zach pulled off and said, his own voice suddenly wrecked, "go on then, come for me" and slid his mouth back down Kir's cock, right the way down to where his hand was grasping it around the bottom, and Kir came so hard that his ears rang. He was only faintly aware of Zach's shudders as he came himself, his mouth still around Kir's cock.
"Jesus," Kir said, once Zach had climbed back up and they had both collapsed in a sweaty heap on the sofa. Zach's T-shirt -- Kir's T-shirt -- had been sacrificed to cleanup, so Zach was wearing only boxer shorts now, and Kir couldn't stop himself from stroking Zach's back.
Zach stretched out against him like a cat, and smiled. "Glad you enjoyed it."
"God yes," Kir said honestly. "I would -- I mean --"
"I'm good for now," Zach said, interpreting him correctly. "But -- perhaps, another time...?"
"Yes," Kir said fervently. "Absolutely."
CHAPTER SIX
When Kir woke up in bed the next morning, light was already coming through the gap in the curtains. Next to him, Zach was face down in the pillow, still fast asleep. Kir only vaguely remembered reloc
ating from the sofa the night before -- apparently, battling a mud-monster and then having a truly stellar blow-job was the sort of thing that would entirely knock him out.
The trouble was, now he had no idea how to play it. He hadn't really expected Zach to stay, but in the near-sleep haze, it had seemed like the easiest thing to manage. Zach had hardly been any more awake than he was. They'd said "another time", and Kir would certainly like that, but...In the cold light of morning, surely Zach would think better of the idea of getting involved with someone who had mud-monsters come up through their sink. Not to mention the fact that -- how much had Zach really gotten out of the sex? He'd seemed happy enough, but Kir couldn't shake the feeling that he'd been selfish, lying back and just letting Zach -- letting Zach do what he insisted he wanted to, his subconscious reminded him, which was all very well, but that didn't mean it wasn't selfish too.
He should offer breakfast. Did he even have anything for breakfast? He couldn't remember the state of the kitchen, and he could hardly sneak out to the shop and leave Zach alone here, could he? What time even was it, anyway?
He leant over to the bedside table to snag his watch.
"Bloody hell." Half past eight, which was later than he ever normally slept.
The exclamation woke Zach up, who stretched slowly, his face still in the pillow. Kir admired the clean long line of his back, the sharp black patterns of the tattoo across it, down to the swell of his arse, before Zach rolled over and blinked at Kir.
"Hey there," Kir said, feeling like he was not really up to the task of conversation just yet.
"Hey there yourself," Zach said, and blinked at him. "What was that you were saying?"
"It's half past eight," Kir said, waving the watch at him. "I never sleep..."
"Shit," Zach said, and was out of bed in an instant, shoving his fingers through his hair. "Half past eight? Really? Shit, I have to be at work at nine, and, god, my trousers, where are my trousers?" He was already out of the bedroom door and into the bathroom, from where Kir heard more, heartfelt, swearing.
