Cupidity - chapter seventeen

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Previous chapters here.


They had bread and butter and coffee and oranges for breakfast. Angel made himself concentrate on eating instead of looking over his shoulder every two seconds.

"She really won't come back?"

"She will. Eventually. There's not very much we can do to stop her, apart from killing her."

Angel looked around. The cafe wasn't busy, but maybe people could hear.

"I know you're fucking joking," he said, and Robin just nodded. "So what are we gonna do?"

Robin finished his coffee before he answered, and he leveled a look at Angel that was as intense as a physical touch. "I thought I wasn't meant to tell you what to do anymore."

"Oh." Angel blinked. "But that doesn't work, does it. Not now. 'Cause, you know, I wanna live."

"You do have other people you could ask for help."

"I do?"

Robin pulled Angel's coffee towards him and looked into it. He ran his finger around the rim three times, touched the surface, and mumbled a word under his breath. Jenny's face, serious and still, appeared, with a blurred flash of her surroundings. And then she was gone again.

"You were spying on me?"

"I was trying to find you. Brief glimpses. That's all I ever get."

"In coffee?"

"In any liquid. She could help you. Perhaps."

"Perhaps?"

"Perhaps is as good as I can do myself. I don't wish to keep you with me out of fear. Or. I do. But I won't." He smiled tightly and pushed Angel's coffee back across the table. It sloshed over the rim. "I tried that. It didn't work."

Angel dug in his pocket for the rune tile with Jenny's number on the back. It was still there. Well, yeah. She'd only given it to him yesterday, even if it seemed like a couple years ago now. He let it go and rubbed his hands along his thighs.

"You still want me around after all this?" he asked. "Seems like a lot of trouble for one lousy human."

"People go to endless trouble for love. I've seen movies."

Angel looked up at the blue, blue sky and wondered if this were a good time to have hysterics. "You don't love me. Don't be stupid."

"How do you know?"

"'Cause you don't, shut up."

Robin did, shockingly.

"She read my fortune," Angel said. "She told me I'd be all right."

"Good."

He couldn't make himself ask whether Robin actually believed that. The whole exchange left him fidgety and uncomfortable through the rest of his bread and coffee. When he was done, he wanted to ask again what they were supposed to do now, but not if Robin was going to keep up--whatever he was doing.

"Are you trying to get rid of me?" he said, and then shut his mouth very fast, like that could suck the words back in. He knew that was stupid. He did.

Robin stared at him a second and then stepped around the table and settled himself in Angel's lap, straddling him. "No. I am not."

Robin kissed him, hands cupping his face, and Angel let him. He licked slowly into Angel's mouth, tongue sliding across his teeth and the roof of his mouth, lips pressing and molding against his. He kissed Angel like he never planned to stop. Angel closed his eyes.

It seemed like a long time later that Robin let Angel's lower lip slip from between his teeth and smoothed Angel's hair back from his face. His cheek pressed to Angel's temple and he breathed in deep like he was scenting him.

"I think I've upset the waiter," Robin said in his ear.

There was a distinct low muttering somewhere nearby, but Angel couldn't make himself let go of Robin's shirt. "Uh huh."

Robin's lips brushed his forehead. "Would you like to go sightseeing today?"

Angel straightened up to stare at him. "Sightseeing? Your mom wants to kill us, and you want to play tourist?"

"I asked if you wanted to, actually. And I did say I think we're safe for today. Relatively safe. There are some things I could show you, quite nearby."

"Okay. Sure." Angel spared a glance for the waiter. "Yeah, maybe now would be a good time."

They drove out of town and into the hills, winding up and up until the road was walled on one side with dark rust red stone. The other side was steep thorny scrub. There was a castle perched at the top of the mountain, looking like it'd grown out of the rock, except for the ticket booth and a small cafe tacked onto the side. They wandered around and drank coffee, looking over the steep battlements to the hazy drop below, as sheer as a cliff. Angel lurched back, and pulled Robin away.

"Monks were slaughtered here," Robin said, as they wandered through empty courtyards and across neat mown lawns.

"You really know how to show your dates a good time," Angel said, trailing after him. He smiled to himself, despite everything. Robin looked like a kid against the huge walls, looking up at them with his head tipped back.

"There's something else I have to show you," Robin said, and took his hand.

Angel stared down at them, and then looked at Robin. "Um. Is it going to try and kill me?"

"Aha. I hope not. Alberich wasn't the violent type, at least when I knew him."

Robin drove them out of town and took a turn onto a rutted dirt road with no apparent concern for the mud spattering up the sides of his car, or for its axles. The road petered out, but he kept driving around the next bend before he pulled over.

There was nothing in sight but a long, low hill, a few twisted trees, and a lone black goat. The grass was tall and golden. Robin got out and nodded to the hill.

"They call them fairy mounds in England and Ireland. They seem to go mostly unnoticed in the rest of the world."

"Those're real?"

"They're empty now, of course."

"But haven't people dug into them and stuff?"

"Yes. And found nothing. They're not readily accessible from either world now. Or maybe they're stuck halfway between. Like me. I think Alberich did something to them."

He started briskly towards it, and Angel had to hurry to catch up. The hill was a sort of long green slug that stood about 15 feet high. Robin set off walking round it, stopping here and there as if he were looking for something, but carrying on each time. Angel followed, feeling wary. The goat paused in its chewing and raised its head to stare at him. The bell around its neck gave a sad clonk.

They walked all the way round, at least twice, maybe more. The goat wandered off, apparently to a safe distance, and stared at them. The sides were just grass.

"How do we get in?"

"Here," Robin said, some way in front of him. There was a dark rectangle cut into the side. It was lined with tall smooth stones. Angel trotted over.

"That wasn't there," he said, feeling like he was pointing out the very, very obvious.

"It was. We just couldn't see it," Robin said. He glanced at Angel. "It takes practice, and some things simply don't want to be seen."

Sweat prickled down Angel's back. Icy dank air seeped out, smelling of earth and long buried things. "Is this place like-- " He hardly even wanted to mention her, even in a roundabout way, "--like her woods?"

Robin touched his hand and Angel shivered, he couldn't help it. "No. It's as safe as anywhere else."

"Oh. Well, that's so reassuring."

Robin led him inside, ducking low to get in. A corridor led away, into the darkness. The walls were narrow and lined with more tall flat stones. They pressed against his sides, almost warningly, as if they could close up and crush him like a bug if they chose. Angel looked over his shoulder, but he couldn't see the door anymore. Thin shafts of light trickled down through small holes in the roof.

Just when Angel thought he was going to have to turn back or freak out, the walls opened out into a room. It had a window that looked out on the meadows and the hills beyond. Angel could see the goat in the distance, nosing about.

A soot-blackened fireplace stood against one wall. There was a neat pile of logs sitting in it, as if someone was planning to light a fire anytime now. There was a basket of wood shavings close by. Benches lined the sides of the room, and shelves on the walls held rows of jars and bottles and books, all dusty. Robin was looking at them, running his fingers along the spines. There was a simple wooden table in the middle, with a wooden chair. More books were spread out on it, with flasks and glass jars and small heaps of powders. In a basket near the fire were some bones. They gleamed a dull off-white in the gloom.

"This isn't in the normal world, is it?" Angel said, trying not to notice the large fragment of human skull mixed in with them. "Are we even in Spain, still?"

"In a manner of speaking." Robin turned to face him. "You wouldn't have to be in Spain to get here, let's put it that way."

Angel went over to him and stood close, looking over his shoulder as Robin drew out each book. Angel peered at the titles, all stamped in faded gold. The Six Keys of Eudoxus had yellowed pages that slipped out onto the floor. The Book of Lambspring was bound in dark red leather like dried blood. When Robin opened it, the pages smelled like his parents' attic, acrid and dusty and full of abandoned things. The air was too cold.

"What the fuck is this place?"

"My mother used to be very keen on science," Robin said, flipping pages. "Alberich still is. Her husband. The king."

"Oh," said, Angel, remembering his scowl.

"Don't touch that."

Angel almost dropped the bottle he'd picked up. It was full of something sludgy and murky, like pond water with added pureed frog. He put it back onto the wooden surface with shaking hands.

"No need to shout," he said, with a thumping heart.

"I don't want you to accidentally be turned into-- something. He tried to remove my human half, once, and the potion looks disconcertingly similar."

He said it like it was nothing, like some small operation, for tonsils or something. Angel swallowed. In the gloom, Robin looked almost bloodless, like he was becoming part of the room. His lips were pale and pinched.

"Oh," was all Angel could manage.

"I think he thought he was doing me a favor."

"Yeah. Uh. Good." Angel was still shaking. The walls seemed to be getting smaller, and it was entirely possible that was true. Robin went on reading, head bent low so that his hair fell over his eyes.

"He used to be human once, hundreds of years ago. I don't think any of that's left in him now. Fascinating really, how he's changed."

Angel looked around at the room and tried not to think about what it would be like to be an ex-human. Robin didn't seem to have a problem with any of this. Just how much of him was human, anyway? It was an uncomfortable thought, especially now he was buried with him under tons of earth and stone.

"Robin?"

"Yes?" He was still pouring over the books.

"Can we, like, just go and stay in a really expensive hotel and drink champagne and forget about this? I mean, just for a few hours?"

Robin blinked at him, then straightened up. He opened his mouth, and then paused. "All right," he said. "We can do anything you want."

Angel wasn't sure he liked how easily Robin said that, like he'd agree no matter what, even if it got them both in trouble. He frowned. "Is that okay? You don't think she's going to find us?"

"Oh, she will. At some point."

"How are you so fucking calm about all this?"

Robin looked up from packing books into a leather bag. "This is my life, Angel."

Comments

[magicmelodyx.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to comment here for so long, but I can't seem to find anything to say that conveys the level of amazing that is this work. The characters are so real it's almost scary, and very few horror sequences really work to bother me, but something about your descriptions and Robin's cold acceptance of them make the hairs on my neck stand up.

Thank you so much for writing and sharing, and so quickly, too! You guys are making my week before finals a little less stressful, and I'm so very grateful for that.