by Amy Lane
The warmth in Harry’s chest grew painful, hot, and it spilled over from his eyes. “In this family, you have no idea how long that’ll be,” he said, trying to hold his voice firm. Suriel must have seen right through him, though, because in a breath, he looped an arm around Harry’s shoulders and pulled him tight against his chest.
And Harry wept for the two of them together, and the hope, and the joy of what could be.
In the Time It Takes to Blossom
THE CABIN windows were closed, and the cabin grew warm and stuffy in the afternoon heat. Harry awoke from a dream in which he was stifled against a silken pillow only to find himself sweating and sticking to Suriel, skin on skin.
Harry peeled himself away carefully and opened all the windows, moving like a shadow. With the first waft of sea-scented breeze, some of the tension in his shoulders eased.
He opened the front door and let the breeze hit his bare body without impediment, raising his arms and turning his face toward the late-afternoon sun.
He felt Suriel’s heat before he heard any moving about, but still, he was not surprised at the hands spanning his midriff and pulling him back into his lover’s chest.
“Mm….”
Suriel nuzzled the hollow of his neck, and Harry hummed, clasping the arms under his ribs and abandoning himself to the touch.
“Regrets?” Suriel asked.
“I should ask you,” Harry said. “You’re the one who lost his virginity.”
Suriel’s filthy chuckle warmed him. “Well, yes, I suppose in a way.”
“If you want to lose it in the other way, let me know,” Harry said playfully. Then he paused. “Unless that’s… I don’t know. Forbidden angel sex or something.”
Suriel laughed louder this time, whole body vibrating. “No, not that I know of. As far as I know, all forms of consensual intercourse constitute the loss of one’s virginity.”
Harry frowned. “Not nonconsensual?”
“No,” Suriel said softly. “Sex is a gift—not a requirement. If the gift doesn’t appeal to you, it becomes a burden. If it’s forced upon you, it’s a violation.”
Oh. How, in all their midnight talks, had that never come up?
“You’re thinking about your childhood, aren’t you?” Suriel asked into the suddenly uncomfortable silence.
“A brothel, Suriel.”
“My brave boy, protecting his brothers.”
Harry did an amazing thing then, his lover holding him, naked to the sun and the sky and the green meadow and the running spring. He let it go.
“I was a virgin, then. The farrier’s boy who seduced me, maybe five years after moving here—he was my first.”
“Was he kind?”
Harry laughed. “Enthusiastic. But fair-handed.” Mostly the fair-handed had been his trick, stroking them both off at once.
Suriel’s laugh was unfettered. “Sounds lovely. The lovers you chose on your own, Harry—those lovers are yours to keep in your heart. Does that bother you?”
Harry didn’t even have to think. “No,” he said, closing his eyes. “All I learned from them, I brought here, for today. It was my best time.”
Suriel held him tighter. “I would like more.”
Harry turned his head and smiled shyly. “Yes, but not just yet.” He sniffed the breeze, full of game and wind and promise. “Suriel, would you like to hunt with me?”
Suriel’s “Oooh….” of gratification was all he needed. Harry shifted and took a few delicate, questioning steps out of the cabin. He felt the rush of displaced air and smelled the giant hunting cat and turned his head to see Suriel in his furry form.
Would you like to hunt or play? The question was serious. They could bring down game in these forms, but the fridge was also fully stocked with steaks, mushrooms, and potatoes.
Play, Suriel said promptly.
And Harry took off running, heading for the nearest tree to climb, Suriel at his heels.
There are no rules to cat play. They climbed the tree and chased one another, the chaser changing to the chased on the turn of the breeze. Suriel, true to his Maine coon roots, leaped into the slow-moving stream, probably intending to frolic for a bit. Only his yowl revealed that he wasn’t prepared for the thrill of the cold water, and Harry stayed up in his tree and laughed madly—until Suriel glared at the limb he was on and it broke, sending Harry into the water in a mad flurry of hissing.
He flailed for a moment, trying the time-honored cat method of walking on top of the stuff before conceding that he would have to swim it after all.
He paddled a bit, irritated and spoiling for a fight, until he realized that Suriel, grown used to the temperature by now, was actually enjoying himself, swimming to the narrow part of the stream and letting the current carry him down, diving under the water, and at one point fishing good-naturedly for minnows.
Harry gave up on his cat prejudices and found the shallows, sitting on his haunches and splashing experimentally while Suriel did the more advanced cat-swimming maneuvers in the deeper end.
Eventually Suriel joined him just as Harry pulled out a minnow, wiggling on his claw.
Suriel meowed questioningly and opened his mouth.
Harry put his paw in Suriel’s mouth and let him eat the minnow, which he did with a flourish.
All we need now are the loaves, Suriel said smugly, and Harry rolled his mental eyes at the awfulness of the joke.
Seriously—we need to either bring down a rabbit or go cook a steak, Harry told him.
Suriel bopped him on the nose with a wet paw, and Harry jumped on top of him. They rolled and tussled for a moment until Suriel had Harry on his back, glaring, because submission was something Harry had only done in bed, once, not hours before.
Harry panted and opened his teeth in a feline grin before shifting forms. As a naked man on his back, he wrapped his arms around the great big cat on his chest and squeezed affectionately. “Now, I love you, but I’m getting hungry. I get foul when I get hungry, and you shouldn’t be made to see that.”
Suriel licked his chin, rough tongue rasping against whiskers Harry hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. “You like this form, do you?” Harry asked.
Suriel purred.
“Well then, back to the house, and you can play with the dust bunnies while I cook.” Harry changed and prowled through the long meadow grass back to the cabin, Suriel swatting at butterflies behind him. The long shadows of summer evening stretched over them from the direction of the ocean, and Harry’s whiskers twitched in the breeze. Hearing the unrepentant stalking sounds, the joyful leaps and rolls Suriel made behind him, filled him with a boundless satisfaction and a deep joy.
Once inside the cabin, he found some clothes and started in the kitchen, preparing the steaks to broil and chopping vegetables for a salad.
Suriel hopped on the counter, taking over most of its surface, and pawed at the bread hopefully.
“Carbs aren’t good for you, you know,” Harry said, chucking him under the chin. Suriel stuck out his barbed tongue and dragged it across Harry’s jaw, then his nose, then his cheekbones, until Harry laughed. “Fine, fine—we’ll have bread and butter with our steak and salad. You win.”
Suriel sat back on his haunches and started cleaning a massive paw in satisfaction, while Harry kept working.
“I know what you’re doing, you know.” He reached into the tiny refrigerator and pulled out a butter cube, then cut it in half on the cutting board.
Suriel continued to lick his paw blandly while Harry put the other half back.
“You think if you just sit there and be you, but something that can’t actually talk back to me, I’ll open my heart and sing like a canary. I’m not stupid, you know.”
Harry unwrapped the butter cube and started mashing it in a bowl.
Suriel switched to his other paw.
“I just don’t know what else you think I have to talk about that you can’t contribute to. Books, music, philosophy—we do pretty good at that. But I c
an’t go on and on about the corruption of civil government or the political misinformation made possible by a ceaselessly changing language when you’re a cat.”
Suriel shot his back leg up and proceeded to lick his genitals, looking up at Harry hopefully while Harry peeled the garlic to go into the butter.
“Put those things away. The cat isn’t sexual, mine or yours. It does nothing for me.”
Suriel put his leg down and gathered his limbs underneath him, glaring at Harry somewhat indignantly.
“I didn’t say you weren’t sexy,” Harry soothed. “I just said….” He puffed out a breath and opened the bag of sourdough bread to pull out a couple of slices each. “See, when we were first turned into cats, it was summat—fuck—somewhat of a shock. But that first trip with Emma, where we weren’t allowed to change? We all sort of started to realize the freedom we had. Nobody after us, nobody going ‘Hello, boy, can you do a thing for me?’ And it didn’t matter what the thing was either. It could have been suck a cock, it could have been chop wood, or sometimes it was go to school or church and get religion. Fact was, we didn’t care. ‘Hello, boy!’ was always something that made the three of us feel like shit and hate the world. So being cats, there was none of that.”
Harry sighed and pulled out the cookie sheet from under the stove, then ranged the buttered bread on it to go into the oven when the steaks were done broiling.
Then, everything done and waiting for the meat to finish, he washed his hands and leaned against the counter, arms folded thoughtfully.
“And Leonard and Emma, they knew better. They didn’t make us do anything, but Edward and I were raised by mothers who taught manners, and we would turn to help them, and Francis hated to be left out, so he’d turn and help too. And we didn’t have to turn to learn lessons and spells. We could stay safe and do that, and Emma let us. The cats were safe. All we ever got as cats were pets and mice. All anybody asked of us was affection and to go use the sandbox outside. So sex isn’t that. Sex is human. It’s what your body does as a human. It means you have to use your hands and your heart and engage them in all sorts of suspicious activities that could get you hurt. So no. I’ll fondle your ears and scratch your ass all you want as a cat, but I’m not going to have sex as one.”
He started scratching Suriel right behind the ears to punctuate that last thought, and Suriel responded with a purr that rattled the countertop.
“And besides,” he added consideringly, “you can’t use lubricant if you don’t have any thumbs, and do you know what your penis does in that form? It’s nasty. I don’t know how lady cats stand it. It’s like God tried to punish cats for not giving a shit, it really is.”
Suriel turned human and fell off the counter laughing.
“Augh!” Harry’s surprise was unfeigned. “There’s a naked lunatic laughing on my floor!”
“Oh dear heavens!” Suriel whooped. “Oh my giddy aunt! Harry!” He pulled his long legs up to his chin and tried to control himself, and Harry nudged him out of the way.
“Do you mind, Suriel? The meat’s ready to turn, and then we can eat in about three minutes.”
Suriel rolled to his side and finished his laugh, picking himself up and wiping under his eyes. He stood back while Harry turned and seasoned the steaks, and as soon as the oven was closed, moved forward, wrapping his arms around Harry’s waist.
“That was lovely,” he purred, nuzzling Harry’s ear. “I’ve not had a laugh like that in millennia of living.”
Harry let some of the resentment that had been building ease out of his spine and let his head drift back onto Suriel’s shoulder. “What was so funny?” he asked, Suriel’s touch making it clear that he was not the butt of a joke.
“That you opened your heart—and it was lovely. It was honest and real, and it gave me a lot of insight into you, Harry. I won’t prevaricate. But that look into your deep and beautiful soul was tempered by something very… animal. It’s the contrast between the two, you understand? It’s made angels laugh for millennia.”
Harry laughed softly to himself and turned to take Suriel’s mouth. “Laugh all you want,” he said between kisses. “Just don’t ever leave me out of the joke.”
Suriel’s mouth on his was heaven, and only the timer, beeping rudely, kept them from burning the steaks.
But Suriel broke off and went to dress while Harry finished with the meal. He came back to eat at the small kitchen table after it had been set. Harry, in a burst of whimsy, lit a single candle and turned off the lights.
Suriel smiled almost shyly as he sat down. “This is marvelous, Harry. What’s the occasion?”
Harry turned away and started dishing up salad before passing the bowl. “We are,” he mumbled. “Do you think I make love to an angel every day?”
“No.” Suriel served himself food and grew suddenly sober. “And I am still dizzy from making love to anyone at all. A celebration is a nice idea.”
“It’s just….” Harry felt compelled to go on. “It’s just that I’m grateful,” he said, sawing at his steak. “You… I don’t know how it will work exactly. You’ll disappear on me one day, leave me alone. But whether I see you or not after that, you’re going to go through an ordeal—don’t think I don’t know that. And I’ll be stuck here, waiting, wondering, and you will be in pain. Just so you can see me again.” Tears. Not painful, just… falling. He could either hide them against his shoulder, or he could look at Suriel with tears in his eyes and acknowledge the hurt between them.
He looked up, met Suriel’s warm brown eyes under bright red-gold brows, and smiled. “Would be gentlemanly of me to say thank you. That’s all.”
Suriel grabbed his hand and kissed it—but he didn’t cry. “You’re welcome, Harry. I don’t know how it will happen either. I was given a finite time down by your side. At the end I could either choose to go back to stay—or to go plead my case.” He looked away. “My mind was made up by the first kiss in the swimming hole.”
Harry’s heart twisted. “It was a very good kiss,” he admitted, hoping for Suriel to look back. “I just wish I knew how to help you.”
“You helped me make up my mind,” Suriel said, granting his wish and looking at him fondly. “But that is all I know, my lover. That no matter what the trial, no matter what the tribulation, it will all be worth it for me to come back.” He grimaced. “But you need to promise to be here, Harry. Your past is still out there, and just because you’ve told me why it scares you doesn’t mean it’s going away.”
Harry cupped his cheek and smiled slightly. “You come back to me, angel, and I’ll be waiting for you. Don’t worry. It’s a promise.”
Suriel grinned at him and released his hand so they could go back to eating.
“Harry?” he said with his mouth full.
“Yeah?”
“Do you have any other insights to being cats that I might find amusing?”
Harry grinned and swallowed his steak. “Sure. Rodents. I get that they’re a perfect source of protein, and that cats are apex predators to keep the vermin down, but seriously. Has God not heard of legumes? Because sometimes I would just rather not. They crunch. The bones stick in my throat. And when I’m a human, thinking back to what they taste like as a cat, I’d just really rather have Brussels sprouts and broccoli and call it a day.”
Suriel guffawed, and the meal—which had grown grave and quiet—finished on a lovely high note.
That evening, after Suriel cleaned up, Harry left the front door open and blew out the candle, and the two of them lay on the bed, side by side, hands burrowing under shirts and shorts as they spoke quietly of people they had known and things they’d like to do someday, in the future, when forever stretched before them like a carpet of clover.
Harry couldn’t have said why silence fell or who kissed whom. All he knew was that Suriel rolled him over to his back again, and they wrestled out of their clothes in short order. Suriel’s hands, his lips, his skin, all of it slid against Harry’s naked body, and he f
elt protected and real, in a way he didn’t think clothes could do.
Suriel kissed down his chin, down his throat, the centerline of his chest. His mouth on Harry’s cock was secondary to the heat of his body, the tenderness of his touch. He played until Harry was sobbing for breath, tugging fingers through that glorious satin fall of hair, and then he pulled up and positioned his slickened erection at Harry’s opening.
“You like this, Suriel?” Harry taunted softly. “It’s a human, animal… ahhhh….”
“I like being a human animal,” Suriel whispered in his ear. He pushed slowly, and again, and again, until the rocking, the ebb and thrust of their bodies felt as massive and terrible as waves upon a beach.
Harry’s orgasm crested, slow and huge. He dug his heels into Suriel’s thighs and clenched his fingers in the muscles of his back. The little groan of completion Suriel made exploded like fireworks in Harry’s heart, but it didn’t even ripple the sacred hush of the night.
Suriel collapsed to the side, pulling Harry into his embrace, and they caught their breath in the dark while moonlight flooded in through the open door.
“Why don’t we make love outside, under the stars?” Suriel asked, tracing runes in the sweat of Harry’s chest.
“Because we haven’t found a spell yet that will keep the mosquitos away,” Harry told him. “Edward spent an entire year trying. All we did was make the marsh flies extra bloodthirsty. It was embarrassing.”
“Why aren’t they coming in through the door?”
“Emma has a geas on all our thresholds. Nothing that will draw blood or means us harm can pass.” Harry yawned. “What are you doing on my chest—and don’t say nothing because I can feel the magic burn.”
“Protection,” Suriel murmured. “I’ve seen entirely too much of your blood, Harry. I have no idea how long I’ll be gone. If I can’t come back and fix you, you’d better be damned invincible.”
“I’ll take the invincible, thank you very much.” Harry pulled Suriel’s hair back from his eyes so he could see them gleam in the moonlight. “But I’ll be plenty damned when you leave, and I shall live there until you come back. Perhaps we can leave that out of the invincibility spell, okay?”
