by K. Z. Snow
When it sprang free, Will made a throaty sound very much like a growl.
Fanule tensed further. A flush spread from his belly to his neck. He glanced down, wanting to see Will’s supple lips encircle his dense, long cock. When they closed over it and drew him in, when the first curl of wet tongue led to the first firm suck, some invisible hand squeezed Fanule’s lungs like bellows and forced out three harsh, clipped breaths that ended in a quavering moan. His excited nerves quivered from groin to stomach and thighs.
More deftly than Fanule could’ve dreamed, Will began to work him. Again, Fanule’s head lolled backward. Again, his eyelids lowered. Will’s tongue swirled. As one hand gripped and pumped, the other crept back to Fanule’s cobs, fingering then squeezing then tugging them. Fanule clutched Will’s hair. The sound that undulated up from his throat was a cry of acute pleasure more than pain, but pain was a component of the pleasure.
Reflexively, he thrust into Will’s mouth. The stimulation was too much to withstand. “No,” he gasped, abruptly withdrawing.
Will turned his dusky blue eyes up to Fanule’s face. His lips were slack and full.
“I’m too close to shooting,” Fanule said. “Please, let me fuck you.”
Will nodded eagerly. “Yes.”
They finished undressing, neither urgently nor lazily but at a pace that allowed their arousal to level a bit. Holding Will in his arms, caressing the smooth sleekness of his body, Fanule gently lowered him to the bed and lay half on top of him.
“You’re beautiful, William.”
A demure smile whispered across Will’s mouth. The sight of him, from tousled hair to toes, sultry eyes to shins, clutched at Fanule. He pressed slow kisses around the topography of Will’s upper body as Will squirmed beneath him, mewling with excitement. A flush spread over the low mounds of his chest.
“So tender,” Fanule said after he’d laved and plucked at Will’s peaked nipples.
Grasping the back of Fanule’s head, Will arched up to him. “More, Fan.”
Fanule gave him more, would give him whatever he wanted. His hands began a slow descent down Will’s lean body. Like a collector stroking a rare sculpture, he savored its details: the long, clean line from shoulder to wrist with its subtle rises of muscle; the silken eddy of forearm hair; the tapering plane between chest and crotch, barely disrupted by the ribs’ buried ridges. Will was so firm. Everywhere, so firm and smooth.
Moving downward, curling his body to keep it on the bed, Fanule brushed his lips along the silken flow of hair from Will’s navel to crotch, where the hair spread and coarsened and that fresh scent of juniper became darkened by the heady smell of man. There was no concealing that scent, thank the gods. Fan wouldn’t want it washed or perfumed away.
He skimmed his fingertips and tongue up the pole of Will’s cock, its fine skin stretched taut. He slid the fingers of one hand down the gully between hip and thigh while the fingers of his other hand fondled the tender eggs within Will’s tight sac. Will kept making small, helpless sounds that drove Fanule mad. He cautioned himself against getting too rough. This young man could easily, without trying, strip away all his restraint.
“Turn over,” he said. “Put the pillows beneath your belly.”
Will stared at Fanule’s rampant cock for a moment. “I’ll need a towel.” He stepped over to the nightstand to fetch one. After heaping the pillows, he spread the towel over the topmost and then lay down as he was told to do, slipping a hand beneath his body to position his own wood. After Fanule grabbed his vial of olive oil, he straddled Will’s legs.
The sight of his pale, prominently rounded ass rising from the sea of bedclothes sent sparks through Fanule’s groin. He’d never seen such a perfect bottom. A strange sound came from his own throat as he cupped and massaged those globes, digging into soft flesh to feel the defining muscle beneath. He folded himself over and worshipped Will’s ass with his mouth as well as his hands, kissing and sucking and biting, trailing his tongue along the cleft.
Lifting himself from this gift, even briefly, was difficult. Fanule opened the vial and drizzled oil onto his cock. After slicking its length, he let his glistening fingers return to the fissure between those round cheeks. Carefully, he probed it. He slid his fingers from tailbone to balls. Then he slid them inside the hidden entrance. Writhing, Will’s body rose up slightly, certainly to give him access to his hard jack, and the thought of it made Fanule ease apart those creamy cheeks and plunge his fingers as well as tongue into that tight, pink hole.
Thin cries came out of Will’s mouth with each breath. “Fuck me,” he soon said, his narrow hips bucking against his gripping hand and the pile of pillows beneath it. “Hurry, Fan.”
Bracing his arms and legs on either side of Will’s sweat-misted body, Fanule buried his cock by careful inches. Will let out a wavering cry of pleasure. Fanule drew back and reentered, again and again, going a shade deeper each time… until Will gasped, “There.”
And the rhythmic thrusting began.
Fanule’s eyes rolled up behind his lids. Gods, how the snug heat destroyed him. Fucking always felt that way. His muscle fibers unwound and his bones disintegrated and every organ burst into sparks. It was exquisite. Excitement showered through him, hips to balls to legs. Heat rose through his ribcage.
Will shuddered as he sounded a kind of sighing wail. Fanule was ready to explode. He pulled his cock back and let the spasms of that entrance ring throttle it just below the head. And he shot.
The tide of pleasure, a forceful ebb and flow, made him shudder. His cock kept throbbing out milt. Vaguely, he heard Will catching his breath.
When the destruction was complete, Fanule’s body began to rebuild itself again. Still feeling half-formless, he lifted himself off Will and fell onto his back. Will pulled the towel from beneath his hips, set the pillows back at the headboard, and got off the bed. With a dozy smile, Fanule watched him clean himself at the washstand.
“I hope this made up for your earlier disappointment.”
“More than made up for it. Much more. You astonished me, Fan.”
“How?”
“I thought… forgive me, but I’d always thought any Mongrel would be a beast in bed, quick and brutal and selfish.”
“Why would you think that?”
Will shook his head as a look of contrition came over his features. “I don’t know.” He got back into bed and lay on his side, facing his lover.
Fanule rolled to face Will. He drew a hand down the side of Will’s face, then kissed him.
“That other man I was waiting for…,” Will said. “He’s human. Yet he never treated me the way you have.” He lowered his eyes. “I’ve been a fool.”
“Perhaps. But you’re certainly not alone in that.”
Will’s gaze moved over Fanule’s face, searching beneath it. “You’re a very kind man.”
“Not always.”
“Still, I like you.”
Fanule smiled. “I like you too, William.” Very much. Maybe too much, damn me.
Will lightly swept Fanule’s curling hair away from his temple, exposing his left ear. “Tell me what happened to you.”
“It isn’t a pleasant story.”
“That doesn’t matter. I’m tired of my ignorance. All that stupid fear that leads to stupid judgments.”
Fanule supposed there was no better argument than that. And so he told Sweet William about that bitter day, over a decade earlier, when he and eight other Taintwellian youths had been taken to the sub-basement of the Truth and Justice Building and caged there, caged by the Monkey’s Claw like so many soft-bellied, exotic insects.
“We all knew,” he said, “that Purinton law required the typing and branding of us before we turned twenty. But some of us resisted, or our parents resisted, and when we didn’t report on the assigned day, a special unit of the Strongarm Force searched us out and took us in.”
“What do you mean by ‘typing’?” Will asked, his expression grimly attentive.
“The AIA?”
“Alien Identification Agency. But I’ve no doubt the ratios they come up with are often arbitrary. Few of us have any clear notion of our lineages, and I can’t imagine Purinton squandering its resources on determining exactly what races we are.”
Fanule went on to tell Will about Marrowbone’s threat, and the resulting change from branding to inking, and how the shy eighteen-year-old named Ansoria had suffered a torn artery at the hands of an AIA employee who was too disgruntled with his job or too contemptuous of Mongrels or simply too inept in handling the crude needles to mark the young woman without causing undue harm.
And then Fanule had to pause. Giving voice to his sordid memories made them too vivid. As if sensing his pain, Will soothingly touched Fanule’s face. He said nothing. He didn’t have to say anything. His fingertips were eloquent enough.
“I went a little mad,” Fanule said in a monotone. “There was nothing the rest of us could do but watch her lie there. Maybe they’d put the gurney in the hall so we could watch her—the sick, vicious bastards. So I looked through the bars of my cage and sucked the light from the hallway. I focused on each glowing carbon rod and each pair of electrodes and drew in the light, drew it in so hard I shattered the bulbs.”
He could still hear the popping of one after another; hear the hail of broken glass on walls and floors as the long, bleak corridor was steeped, segment by segment, in absolute darkness. The guards shouted and cursed and shuffled blindly. Some fell. And finally, with the arrival of men bearing lanterns, a voice boomed, “It must be Perfidor’s doing. Look! Look at his eyes glow!”
“You’re a light sucker,” Will whispered.
Fanule didn’t respond. The answer was obvious enough. “And so they kept me in that barren cage in the sub-basement much longer than I needed to be there. It was only the beginning of my punishment. I remember my stomach cramping from hunger, my bones aching from the cold, damp hardness of the floor. When they finally brought me into the inking room, they at first took great care in marking me. But then the blindfold came, and the manacles and gag, and I knew I was in for much worse.”
“They cut off the tops of your ears.” Will’s voice sounded fuzzy and distant.
“Yes.” Fanule let the memory dissolve. He didn’t want to recount the act and its aftermath. He wanted to be back in this moment.
Will lifted himself on his arms. After gazing into Fanule’s face for a moment, he dipped to one side and pressed a lingering kiss to the cruelly angled top of Fanule’s left ear. He kissed Fanule on the lips, then coaxed his head to one side and delivered the same kind of kiss to Fanule’s right ear.
Tears welled in Fanule’s eyes. He squeezed them shut. No one, anywhere, had ever done that.
“I think you’re the most remarkable man I’ve ever met,” Will said softly.
And with those gestures and words, he entered Fanule’s heart.
Outside, thunder cracked, then fell away with a grumble.
“A storm,” Will said excitedly. He scrambled up from the bed and pulled aside the room’s yellowing lace curtains. “Do you like storms, Fan?”
Fanule smiled dreamily from his pillow. “Yes, I do.” He decided he liked the movements of his naked lover much more. The elongation of his back as he lifted his arms. The shift of his smooth, lusciously rounded buttocks as he walked.
“So do I,” said Will. He stood before the window for a moment. He must’ve known his lover was admiring the view.
“Are you teasing me with that pretty ass, William? Because it’s doing the trick.”
Will was grinning when he turned. He came back to the bed and slipped under the quilt with a series of wiggles. He resumed his previous position: head on Fanule’s shoulder, left arm draped over Fanule’s chest, left leg bent over Fanule’s legs.
The rain came as Will drifted off to sleep. Fanule stared at the window. A big, puff-cheeked wind blew pellets of water diagonally from the northwest. The wind skipped around, spitting drops from every direction. They pattered against the panes and wept down the glass.
The downpour would make for a nasty ride home in the morning. Rivulets bearing flotillas of rubbish would run sluggishly down gutters and carve trenches into dirt roads. The city’s antiquated sewers were bound to choke on the flow and vomit up a good deal of the swill that had poured into them. Fanule wouldn’t be near the effluent pipes at the shore, but he knew they’d spread murky patches over the gray-green sea, along with the flotsam of civilized life.
He turned his face to the top of Will’s head and kissed it. This was civilized life. Come morning, it would be difficult to leave it behind.
Chapter Six
THEY arose at dawn so Will could begin his trek back to Hunzinger’s Mechanical Circus, a good distance to the east of City Center. The day threatened more rain.
A cab wasn’t an option. Cabbies were rarely out this early and rarely appeared, regardless of the time, in Purinton’s most crime-ridden district. There’d recently been a collapse in one of the main Slipe tunnels, so shooting underground in a Slither Pod wasn’t an option either. Will would have to take two trolleys, transferring from one line to the other at Bur Commons, and any cars overflowing with riders would pass him by. Small wonder he wanted to get an early start.
Fanule gave Will his address in Taintwell as well as his voxbox number, for they’d both expressed a strong interest in seeing each other again. Will didn’t have a personal voxbox, he said, but he had access to the one provided for Gutter residents in the dining tent. He also had a cubbyhole in the mail bank, a tiered honeycomb of slots set up in a lean-to at the Gutter’s western edge, not far from the railroad tracks.
“I don’t expect you to venture into Taintwell,” Fanule said, “considering your schedule and the problem with transportation. But you would be more than welcome there.”
They stood facing one another as they awaited the Green Line trolley. Will was close to six feet tall, so he only needed to turn up his eyes a bit to speak with Fanule.
“May I come visit you at your wagon?” Fanule asked. “It seems the fences along the western and southern sides of the Gutter could easily be breached. And I swear I’d move like a phantom.”
Will smiled, but his expression quickly sobered. He didn’t directly answer Fanule’s question. “I want to help you, Fan. Whatever it is you’re trying to learn about the Circus, I’ll help you however I can.”
The declaration stunned Fanule. “Thank you.”
Will’s mouth jumped into a smile. “You’re welcome.” Self-consciously, he lowered his eyes.
Fanule curled a hand over Will’s upper arm. “But please understand that I wouldn’t want you doing anything that could jeopardize your welfare. Anything. I mean that. Now, may I call on you?”
Will swallowed. “There’s something I didn’t tell you last night. Hunzinger found out you got into the Circus. Two visitors were talking about you at Timothy Painter’s oyster bar. They’d seen you on the boardwalk. Painter overheard them and told the boss, and the boss made it clear that any worker who sees you is to alert the Strongarm Force.” Finally, Will looked up. “So you might want to reconsider visiting me at my wagon.”
“Shit.” Fanule scratched at an eyebrow and considered. “I’ll stay away if you want me to. I won’t be offended, William.”
“I don’t want you to stay away. I just want you to stay out of trouble.”
As they looked at each other, Fanule sensed the strands of connection between them weaving tighter, strengthening.
The trolley came clanging up the street.
Fanule gave Will a light kiss. Smiling, he fondly touched Will’s mouth. “Leave it up to me.”
Will trotted up the trolley’s steps. He swung around to face Fanule and kept watching him as they receded from each
other. He lifted a hand in farewell just before the trolley turned a corner.
Fanule walked back to the Dandelion, before which he’d parked his OMT last night while Will waited on the hotel’s front steps. He got it fired up without much problem. Intending to retrace his route, he circled into the alley behind Skipskin. The same beggar he’d earlier encountered was sitting inside a crate like a battered statue recovered from the ocean floor, hugging himself against the damp chill of early morning. Newspaper edges stuck out from his collar and shirtsleeves. His threadbare clothing was wet.
Overcome with pity for him, Fanule stopped and got out of his vehicle.
The man’s rheumy eyes rounded. Then his whole face lit up, a dirty sun in a solar system of trash. “Angel!”
“Here, take this.” Fanule removed his cloak and draped it over the man’s shoulders. “You need it more than I.”
“And you need your second wing.”
Fanule timorously touched the hair over one of his ears. “I need them both.”
“No. Just the one. The other is merely injured. Having the second will help it heal.”
“What about my faces?” asked Fanule, wondering why he was humoring this delusional creature.
“They join and part,” said the sage in rags and newsprint. He shrugged. “It’s your lot. But we see what lies beneath them.”
“We?”
The man backed away as he bowed, his arms extended. “Thank ’e. Much obliged. Don't worry. We see; we see….”
THE Circus was particularly hectic this Saturday. The clearer the skies became, the more visitors swarmed the bathing beach, boardwalk, and ground-level attractions. By mid-morning, Hunzinger’s amusement park was a hive of activity.
From a dirigible that passed back and forth over the calm sea, acrobats posed and swung on dangling ropes. A wagon carrying the recently repaired calliope was stationed near the Glass Palace. When the small band within the gazebo wasn’t playing, the calliope was. A juggler on a unicycle made his way up and down the boardwalk. Visitors of all ages queued up outside exhibits as they munched cheese, sweet biscuits, and candied fruit. People even roamed the waves of scrubby dunes that undulated toward the outskirts of the city.
