Sumage Solution GL Carriger

by G. L. Carriger

  There, you see? The universe sucks. Max became exponentially more morose.

  Gladdy rolled her eyes as he slumped forward. “Fine. Why don’t I cheer you up with my drama?”

  “What, more?”

  Gladiola fluttered ridiculously long lashes at him.

  Max said, rather injudiciously, “Look, I’m not up for another blast. If you’re going to go all quintessence-overwrought again, could you wait until after work, when it’s not my problem to clean up?”

  “Poor Placer, did it hurt?”

  “Of course it hurt. It always hurts.”

  She grabbed his wrist, pushing his sleeve back. “They’re all over your body, then, the tracers?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sucks.”

  “You said it.”

  “So, about my drama?”

  Max pulled his arm back and returned to choking down his disappointing hummus. “Lemme guess, the boyfriend again?”

  “Oh my goodness, Maximillian, you’d think we hadn’t been together for decades! I don’t know what’s come over the boy.”

  “Name?”

  “Chrysanthemum.”

  “Of course it is. Do go on. What has Chrysanthemum done now?” Max figured he might as well ask, she was going to tell him anyway, and anything to stop thinking about Muscles. And the silent phone in his pocket.

  Gladiola used a great many words to say not very much at all, but enough for him to know that her love life was even more complicated than her boyfriend’s. The number of secondaries and partners and switches and play toys and so forth she dated over the course of one weekend would give most party planners heart palpitations.

  “Don’t you find it exhausting?” he asked, after she finished giving him detailed insight into the kinks of one of her so called mashie niblicks.

  “We all must entertain ourselves somehow. When you’ve been around for ninety years, gotta spice things up a bit. Did you know shifters have spicy jizz?”

  Max arched his eyebrows. “Did you know mages have fizzy jizz?”

  “No, really? Can I try sometime?” She gave him a big-eyed, flirtatious look.

  “Are you legit trying to pick me up? ’Cause I gotta admit, babe, your lifestyle is kinda freaking me out.”

  “Spoilsport. I’ve never banged a sumage before.”

  “Plenty around here.”

  “Yeah, but you’re the only Placer. There’s something erotic about a man who can kinda cancel me out like that.”

  “Ew, just stop. I don’t swing your way by size or inclination.”

  “Humans, so one-diminutional.”

  “Don’t you mean one-dimensional?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Besides, we got plenty of poly humans. Check out the East Bay.”

  “Oh, I know.” She gave another shiny feral smile.

  They finished their respective lunches and reached that awkward point where one or the other needed to leave. Max had been told to take a long lunch, but he supposed he might walk outside and glare at some geese in the park or something.

  “Have I not cheered you up at all with my ridiculousness?” asked the fox shifter.

  “Oh. Is that what you’re trying to do?”

  “Well, you did take a pretty big hit for me. I do appreciate that. Though don’t you dare tell anyone. Wouldn’t want to lower my standing by owing a sumage a favor.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  Another expressive look from the kitsune.

  “Okay, you’re right, they’re never sealed.” He copped to the truth.

  Gladiola stood and tossed her empty carton into the trash, scoring a perfect three-pointer. Quintessence assist, no doubt.

  “I’d say you should go out for the basketball team but…” quipped Max.

  “Haw haw. Very funny. Look, Maximillian, I think you should call him.”

  “Call who?”

  “The young man you’re trying not to think about. The one on the phone.” She nodded to where Max had his dead phone out and was spinning it on the tabletop.

  Shit. I didn’t even realize I was doing that.

  “You look like a drowned trout, all sad and puffy-lipped.” Gladdy leaned forward.

  “Thanks so much.”

  “Either you missed a major shoe sale, or you’re in a tiff with your boyfriend. Call him, or I’ll kick your ass again.”

  “Not sure I like you thinking about my ass.”

  “Any man who can mess with your cocky attitude this much deserves a second chance. He can’t have done anything that bad.”

  “Mind your own business, fox.”

  “I never pegged you for a coward.”

  “You aren’t lucky enough to peg me, period. Besides, you barely know me – we met, like, less than a week ago.”

  “Everyone knows you, sumage. Placer. Smart mouth. Always the prettiest. I even know your dad was something famous and you got a chip on your shoulder wider than Mount Tam.”

  “Stalker much?”

  “Call the boy, Maximillian. Trust me, honey. Love’s kinda one of the things I do well. Dramatic, but well.”

  She drifted away then, hovering only slightly as she walked, probably to give her a little more height and dignity on the exit.

  “Fucking kitsune.”

  That night, however, when Max got home, he turned on his phone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Animal Instinct

  Max stared down at the last in that string of text messages.

  Muscles: I didn’t mean to hurt you.

  They were all still there, waiting for him.

  He reread the whole stream.

  He tossed his phone from hand to hand. His ears got hot.

  Finally, unable to resist, he typed back, fingers shaking slightly – defensive and childish.

  Max: I can’t help the way they look.

  Immediate response.

  Muscles: Who cares how they look? Do they hurt?

  Max stared at that line for a long while. What’s going on?

  Max’s phone rang.

  “Fuckin’ A, Bryan, you actually want to talk?”

  “Max.” Bryan’s voice was gruff, raw. Apparently, he didn’t want to talk that much, because silence immediately descended.

  Max thought about hanging up. Except that he did want to talk. He always wanted to talk. “Look, you idiot. It happens when you hit puberty and can’t control quintessence. All us sumages get them. Mine are so extensive because I handle so much power. Or that’s what they tell me. It’s just the way it is. Did you miss the part where I’m broken? A failed mage. Screwing up quintessence always has consequences.”

  “Do they hurt, Max?”

  Why was he so obsessed with that? “Only when I’m Placing a Surge, then, yeah. They hurt.”

  “Please let me see you again.”

  “Bryan. They aren’t going anywhere. They won’t heal. It’s how I am. Trace lines will always be there. I can’t be with someone who’s disgusted by the way I look naked.” Max’s breath hitched. “You have to know that.”

  “What?!” The wolf sounded genuinely shocked.

  “I saw you. I saw your face. That morning, when you woke up and looked at me.”

  “That wasn’t you! That was me.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “No. Max. No! I thought, that night, when I touched you all over, not knowing they were there, that it caused you pain. I thought…they looked so raw. They looked like they hurt. I thought I hurt you!” His voice had risen. He sounded a little hysterical.

  Max’s own memory of that morning hitched and shifted. “You were disgusted with yourself?” He whispered it.

  “I thought I hurt you!”

  The werewolf repeated it like this should make perfect sense. Max frowned. “Well, you didn’t. Not until you looked at me with that face.”

  “Only face I got.”

  “You know what I mean.” Max was too wound up to be pert with him.

  The
werewolf’s voice went slightly huskier. “Max, you’re the hottest man I’ve ever seen. I don’t care about your scars so long as you don’t suffer when I touch them. I can’t…”

  A stutter while his kindhearted beastie tried to find the right words.

  “I can’t stand the idea that I’d hurt you.”

  “I don’t get it. Why so upset about them, then?”

  Bryan sighed on the other end of the phone. “I’m a Beta. It’s… Damn it Max, why is this so difficult? I don’t know enough about you. Why didn’t you tell me about the scars? Why didn’t you tell me it was a sumage thing?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this was a Beta reaction? Why didn’t you give me insight into all the stuff I don’t know about werewolves? I can’t predict this kind of thing any more than you can. I don’t know what you don’t know, Bryan. I don’t know how you’ll react. Frankly, you behaved like all the others. Except, it seems, not for quite the same reason. Can you tell me now what to expect next?”

  “You’ll let there be a next?”

  Max considered. “I need to see your face to know whether to believe you.”

  “You’ll let me in?”

  Silence.

  “I’m coming over right now. I’ll stand naked in your driveway if that’s what you want.” Bryan hung up.

  Max cleaned his apartment. And looked up some online articles on Beta werewolves. And cleaned his apartment some more. And didn’t put on deodorant. He thought about it. But he didn’t.

  * * *

  Biff should have gotten a speeding ticket, that’s how fast he rode.

  “You got here quick.” Max opened the door for him. “Where are you staying, anyway?”

  “Outer Richmond. Friend of a friend’s place.” Drag queen. Ghost.

  Max nodded and gestured for him to sit.

  Biff didn’t want to sit, but he did it to make Max feel better. He examined his sumage from under his lashes. Taking in all the parts of this man that he’d let himself not see. Or perhaps he’d been blinded by his nose, and then he’d been blinded by….well….a blindfold.

  Now Biff realized that Max’s jerky movements, the angles of him, that awkward shell, wasn’t a front. It was a defense. Max’s fast verbal volleys were flinches in disguise. The harsh beat of his flirtation, that was shame. He was ashamed of himself. This magnificent man.

  “I wasn’t rejecting you, Max. I swear I wasn’t. I was just so frightened. We had this glorious thing—”

  Max arched a demanding eyebrow.

  Biff looked at his own hands, because they made no demands, and forced himself to continue. Max’s scars needed his words to heal. He had to try.

  “Well, glorious for me, and then to realize I’d been in it alone. You’d let me do this to you rather than with you.”

  A puff of a sigh and Max folded himself down into the small chair opposite. Close enough that the smell of him, the warmth, was like a benediction. But not close enough for forgiveness.

  “Silly wolf. You know I enjoyed myself – you kind of swallowed that fact.”

  Biff wouldn’t allow this to be made light of. Not yet. “Yeah, but the rest of the time, I was all about my need to mark you. I thought every touch or lick or…you know…” Words fled him, so he pushed back the side of his upper lip with one finger, to show the canine there. “…caused you pain.”

  “No, Muscles. I liked it. I liked it all. It didn’t hurt. Quite the opposite. Okay?”

  Biff risked a glance up, caught the truth in those blue eyes. Believed it because he wanted to so badly. He let relief flood his body, his blood injected with light. His eyes prickled and he was grateful Max wasn’t a werewolf, to smell the tears that lurked there.

  “I take it BDSM is not in our future?”

  Biff smiled, looking back at his hands. “You could wail on me if you liked. Might help me feel better. You had the blindfold. You into that?”

  Max gave a dry chuckle. “No, not really. Not from either side. I don’t mind you taking control a bit, though. I’m not into those muscles purely for decoration.”

  Biff was overwhelmed with the idea of holding Max down by the wrists, or with one arm across that smooth chest while he took whatever he liked. Tasted where he would.

  He looked up, forgetting some of his guilt. “Yeah?” It was odd how much Max took up of Biff’s reality. Like he was more in focus than any other person.

  Max laughed fully this time. “Whoa there! We can’t go spinning back into that again so quick.”

  Biff glanced at the man’s lap. “You sure?”

  “Won’t solve anything. And I need to know more. I need to know that won’t happen again.”

  Biff nodded. A fair request. “Okay.”

  Max reached across the miles that separated them and took his hand.

  Biff inhaled. He’d been not scent-hounding out of respect. But touch was permission.

  “You took a shower,” he said, sounding pathetic.

  “I went for a run. And it’s been three days. I could hardly go to work smelling like spunk.”

  “You run? Of course you do, that body.”

  Max squeezed Biff’s hands, both of them in both of his.

  Biff focused on the way Max’s tan fingers interlaced with his own larger, blunter, whiter ones. He noticed how the sleeves of Max’s shirt were long enough to cover his wrist bones completely. Biff moved his thumb to push the cuff back. The first of the scars started there, just after the carpal bone. Hesitantly, glancing between his thumb and Max’s face, he brushed over one angry pink line.

  No flinch of pain met that. Max’s blue eyes stayed wide, intent, focused on Biff.

  “Is it a Beta thing?” Max asked. “This need not to hurt?”

  “Maybe. Maybe just me.”

  “Yet you said you used to fight for your Alpha?”

  “Still would, though now we have Judd and Kev. I don’t enjoy it. Never did. Not the way they do. It was mostly when we were kids.”

  “What is it you do, Biff? I mean in society.”

  Biff was oddly delighted by the banality of the question. “Medic. EMS. At least I was. I’ll need to get recertified for California.”

  “Of course you’re a medic. Can you guide a healing shift?

  “Yeah. For encouragement. Can’t force the shift, though.”

  Max nodded. “How are you with non-pack shifters?”

  Biff let him divert the conversation for now. “I’ve not much experience, but I’m trained for it.”

  “Can you do a savage healing assist?”

  “Yep.”

  “Cool. I’ve never seen one done.”

  “Still interested in quintessence, even though you can’t access it properly?”

  “Well, yeah. Quintessence is kinda cool. It’s not to blame for my scars. Not really.”

  “Would you tell me about them?” Biff tried not to sound too hopeful in his need to understand.

  Max sighed but kept hold of Biff’s hands.

  Biff carefully, cautiously ran his thumb under Max’s sleeve again, to the place behind the wrist bones where those scars began. It was a small victory that Max didn’t tug down his sleeve. He let Biff’s thumb continued its lazy exploration. He allowed a touch that started out as a question to become a caress. It doesn’t hurt him, it really doesn’t. And a reassurance.

  Biff waited and hoped. He wasn’t afraid of silence and he wasn’t compelled to fill it. That was Max. Part of this contorted, fragile Max, part of what made him wonderful, and frenetic, and alive.

  “Mages aren’t like werewolves. We aren’t made, we’re born. And I come from a long and pretty inglorious line of major asshole Surges.”

  Biff waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, Biff felt compelled to make a correction, to ensure understanding went both ways. “We’re both.”

  “Both what?”

  “Werewolves are born and made. You need the gene for it, but you also need the bite. Something in the saliva, doctors say, will activate late
nt savage abilities and allow first shift. It’s dangerous. Not everyone survives. If you don’t have the werewolf gene, you certainly won’t, but even with it, some of us are – I don’t know – weak, I guess. No one thought Alec would make it. Not even Alec. And we have another one, Colin. Delicate. But they both survived.”

  “Does it hurt, to be made wolf?”

  “Every time.” Biff wanted to share this with Max. Max who claimed that his scars didn’t hurt. What had the internet called them? Trace lines.

  “Every single shift?” Max cocked his head, showing the fine curve of his neck. No trace lines there.

  “Yeah. All the bones in our bodies break and reform. It hurts. It’s also our survival.”

  “Savage healing.”

  “Exactly. We use it every time we shift.”

  “Useful. Odd choice, though, to become a medic.”

  Biff shrugged and tried to explain the complexity of his nature in one short sentence. “I like helping people.”

  “I’d love to see what you look like as a wolf.”

  Biff hung his head. He wasn’t a particularly handsome wolf. Just like he wasn’t a particularly handsome man. “You should see Alec, he’s beautiful. Or Judd. Or Lovejoy.”

  “I’d rather see you. The tracers hurt me as well. But only when there’s a Surge about. I get a little twinge if there’s a Siphon or Sluice in action. Too much quintessence in the air. It’s like an ache and an itch rolled in one and crawling over and under my skin. But I’m made to Surge, so that’s what my trace lines respond to most.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “About the pain?”

  “I’d rather not think about that.” Biff shuddered. His own skin prickled at the idea of Max hurting in a way Biff couldn’t stop, couldn’t repel, and couldn’t take on in his stead.

  “Me neither. So, more about the way it works?”

  “You’re born to it?”

  “I was born to be a Surge and then I failed.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Puberty hit, my voice dropped, and I told my dad I was gay. Then he basically blasted me with quintessence.”

  Biff held his breath. He knew homophobia. He’d fought for Alec and closeted himself because of it. But what father tried to kill his son just for being gay? Okay, right, my father tried to kill Alec. But Butch is an asshole idiot.