Idlewild
As long as he is stuck here, Ethan will make the best of things.
Such a pretty boy. Ethan catches himself looking even more often than he thinks proper, and his definition of proper is continental in scope.
Lingers on small, fluttering hands. Cheeks that flush half a moment before a correction is ever uttered. Hips narrower than any girl's, shock of golden hair falling over darting pansy-blue eyes.
Pansy? Good one.
Ethan knows he is fabulous, always has been, always will be. This boy, stuttering and dim-headed glances at Ethan with undisguised awe and reverence, which is, naturally, flattering.
He is sweet, delicate, frangible. Distinctly non-fabulous. Pretty as a woodland flower, and just as common.
"When you do magic, is it all silver and green flashes?"
Ethan drains his sherry. He's taken to drinking it from half-pint glasses during these lessons. Reminding himself he was being paid wore out its utility a while back, and only sherry helps him through. "No, Andrew."
"But your eyes glow and your hair blows back? Like Firestarter? Right?"
"No, Andrew." Ethan sighs and refills the glass with a quick charm. "Why don't you parse that mole glamour again?"
The anxiety of unasked questions roils through Andrew. The boy cannot sit still. His hands twist around each other, he sniffles air in through his nose, and bites his lips till they glow like black cherries. Fastening his eyes on Ethan's, he swallows once -- sweet bob of little lump in parchment-pale throat -- and asks, "Do you get hard?"
Ethan grins lazily and reclines in his chair, running a hand up and down his chest, hypnotizing the boy. "When I do magic? Or do you mean as a general principle?"
Andrew blushes. Whatever courage it took to ask that question is now long-drained away. Ethan turns the glass in his hand, murmuring, until a Greek koine appears within it, dancing slowly, dragging a scarf behind him, through his legs, across his face.
The scarf twines as the youth fades, then splits down the middle. Moebius was a wizard; one only needs to glance at his strip to see that. Andrew leans forward, sighing and squinting into the glass, as Ethan murmurs again, and the infinite loop glimmers into two faces, two ethereal women arranged head to toe, tongues lapping at dark, fragrant holes. Ethan nudges the image brighter, brings out the scimitar-bounce of breasts and taut stretch of tendons in ecstasy.
"Yes, of course I do. What would be the point otherwise?"
Andrew ducks his head but Ethan tips it back up with a finger on his chin. "Answer me, child."
Andrew blinks, wetting his lips. "I-I don't know."
Ethan nods, tracing the soft swell of the boy's lips with the pad of his thumb. "Much to learn, so much to learn."
"I want--" Andrew begins to drop his gaze, but holds it up as Ethan presses his lower lip roughly against his teeth, rubbing back and forth until a line of blood wells up. He swallows once more and blinks, dark lashes brushing his cheeks. "I want to learn. Want to be a wizard. Like you."
This grimy motel room in the thick of depressed Californian exurbia is only a way station for Ethan. Its pallor and generally threadbare mien suit him in ways he cannot quite name. Certainly a step up from the truckstops in the Nevada desert, but not a very high step.
The usual slow orbit of dear Ripper's passage through his life needs to be accelerated. Prison and torture give a man time to think, and he has thought this through.
Ethan knows beauty flashes intermittently, that the trick is only to keep looking. Still he doubts very much that he will find any here.
He can create his own beauty; there's a reason glamours have that name.
He supports himself with the odd mundane scam and the lessons he gives to the locals. He can always find willing pupils, and around here, they are legion. Quite talented, too, as it turns out. He suspects this is due to the proximity of a hellmouth -- he refuses to dignify it with a specific article and capital letters, for to do so would be so, well, tweedy.
There are hellmouths everywhere. Every mouth is a hell. Or a heaven.
Andrew's mouth is a small heaven. He still fumbles the most basic of charms and summonings, bringing forth limp, bald dandelions when Ethan requested dewy violets, naked mole rats in place of silken cats. But he has learned some of fellatio's intricacies almost as quickly as Ethan did, once.
Of course, he has a much better teacher than Blind Joe. When he is hit, Andrew arches into the touch and mewls gratefully, never sobs as Ethan used to.
He stares at Ethan openly now, rushing through the assignments, muttering curses with a confidence he cannot possess, but which he apes skillfully.
Ethan admires the boy's intense capacity for adaptation and mimicry. He has himself always been too much of an individual to be truly content. Given the correct guidance, he is certain this boy will go far. Despite his ordinary mind, he is obedient, lovely, and wonderfully selfish. There is potential here in his shadowed heart.
Andrew adores Ethan.
He pays his wizard with a wet mouth. With pale skin that holds the marks of a belt far longer than any Ethan's ever known. He blushes prettily, and keeps his hands folded in the small of his back as he leans in and worships Ethan's cock: a cat's rough pink tongue lapping lightly, a tight throat, and a melodic panting that Ethan reminds himself not to grow to attached to.
Ethan cradles the golden head in one hand, thrusting with the long sinuous motion of hips he learned from Ripper himself, until the white light and heat gathering around his belly and crawling down his spine grow unbearable.
He wonders if Rupert enjoys his blonde pupil this much.
Staring into wide pansy eyes, tearing hair out by the root, Ethan shoots down the throat and across that angelic face until his child coughs and sputters, begging to be released.
Chaos glimmers, weaving drunkenly between the light and the dark men like Rupert work so hard to separate. Ethan has never known why they bother, when the interstices are so much more entrancing.
Andrew is stupid enough to believe that there are two sides.
"I love you," he says into the pillow as Ethan smacks his tiny ass purple, thrusting in deeper each time he raises his arms. "Oh--"
When he screams and contorts around Ethan's dick, pain leaking from his mouth as beautifully as the cum streaming down his balls, Ethan rakes fingernails down his spine and tells him how much he hates him.
Carnal parodies delight Janus, and Ethan is happy to oblige.
He will invert anything, but prefers a virgin's hole and golden hair too long for any self-respecting boy. There is no love, nor is there hate, only passion and desire. Andrew is not a good boy, nor is he bad. He just is, is a boy, is pretty enough to fuck repeatedly.
Pretty enough to make Ethan forget momentarily the strictures and constraints of an absurdly binary world. Until he opens his mouth.
"I do, you know," Andrew says when he wakes up. Ethan has dressed the worst of his cuts and smoothed sweaty hair out of his face with the back of his hand. He is a father as well as a lover, and cannot bear to see his boy scarred. "Love you. I've never loved anything so much in my life."
Ethan suckles at the boy's dick, blushing it rose, then carnation, with a practiced tongue. Andrew used to taste like sugar. These days, he tastes like tears. Ethan prefers it.
"I'll show you how much." Andrew gasps as Ethan crooks his fingers and shakes his hand. Blue velvet cords knit the boy's mouth shut.
This is growing tiresome.
Too late, again, he discovers when he knocks on Ripper's door and it is answered by a nerve-wracked Filipino woman. She shoves a card with an address in Bath into his hand and slams the door.
Ethan extricates himself from the motel easily. The looping orbits they make through each other's lives often veer unexpectedly like this. Flexibility is essential.
He pauses in New York to change flights. They ought never have changed the name from Idlewild. Two of his favorite qualities in life, melted together into a single glorious sound.
He loves the city nearly as much as he does Nagasaki; both pulse with fear and passion, and always manage to snag him when he passes through.
A rollicking subway car brings him from the airport into midtown. The day is breezy and gray, and he inhales great lungfuls of passion, ataxia, and doubt as he strides alongside the park, heading for the Museum of Natural History.
Must always visit the behemoths, remind himself that monsters have existed outside even his power: He is nothing if not a dutiful and humble servant.
He drifts through the crowds of school-children ogling the sharks, cracking gratuitous jokes about penises and Megalodon.
Draws up short behind an unusually sedate group, listens as a crippled queen in a wheelchair informs them quietly that a squad of flying monkeys has attacked a small Californian high school.
Stupid boy. Ethan is a wizard, not a witch. How can he muddle a tribute so terribly?
He worries briefly about having allowed such knowledge to fall into the hands of someone so obviously dense. He cannot help but laugh at the inadvertent parody.
A girl turns, hearing his rueful chuckle. She tucks a streak of white hair behind her ear with gloved fingers and smiles shyly.
Lovely. Strong and beautiful.
Some peroxide and dye, and she will be his next blonde pupil. Far better than the last.