Those Words I Dread (Tales of the Tuath Dé #1)

3

To avoid checking on Ciaran in the morning, Trent took a long shower and surfed the internet while eating his breakfast, then packed his laptop back into his messenger bag and set it on the sofa, ready for his commute to university. He wasn’t looking forward to leaving the stranger alone in his apartment, but if the worst he did was leave food on the pantry floor, he supposed it wasn’t so bad. He replaced the bottle of orange juice and shut the refrigerator door, sucking in a sharp gasp as Ciaran’s face appeared behind it.

“You need to stop doing that,” he growled, scooping up his glass of juice on his way by the other man. Sometime in the night, the fairy had apparently made himself comfortable, as he now stood in Trent’s kitchen barefoot and naked from the waist up. A gold amulet hung around his neck by a simple leather thong, the coin-sized circle stamped with a swirling, knotted cross. The wound on his stomach had closed, but it still looked tender and black, and Ciaran idly prodded it with his fingers as he watched Trent move to the sofa.

“Did you eat breakfast without me?” he asked.

“What do you think this is?” Trent countered without looking up from his phone. He scrolled through the news headlines as he sipped his juice. “It’s not a B go and get me something.”

“Eat what’s here if you have to. I’m not your servant. And if you call me boy one more time, you can forget this whole stupid arrangement.”

Ciaran let out a dramatic groan. “But I’ll waste away on the food you have here,” he complained.

“What’s wrong with it?” He looked up at the man at his shoulder, tensing slightly at the proximity of their faces. At this distance, he could count the dark freckles dusting the fairy’s nose and cheeks. He thought for just a moment that Ciaran paused too, but then the fairy pushed up onto his hands and huffed out a sigh.

“All you’ve got here are vegetables. Dry bread, water, skim milk, sour fruit. You haven’t even got any maple syrup, you failure of a Canadian. How do you live like this?”

“With low cholesterol.”

“I need better food than this. Look,” he added, “I’ll give you some money, right? You’ll just be out a quick jaunt to the grocer.”

“What is it you want that’s so much better than the food I have?”

“Does that mean you’ll go then?”

Trent frowned, then drained his glass of juice and stood. “I need to go to class. If you want food, go get it yourself.”

Ciaran folded his arms and stared after Trent like a child denied a cookie while the younger man picked up his school bag and slung it over his shoulder. “You’ll change your mind,” the fairy muttered. “Mí-ádh.”

Trent paused as he felt a cold prickling at the back of his neck, and he turned to glare across the room at Ciaran, but the other man had already contented himself with the last stale blueberry muffin.

“Have a good time at school, a chara,” he said cheerfully. Trent eyed him warily for a moment, but then frowned and stepped toward the front door, deciding he was being paranoid.

When he arrived at the elevator, he saw a sign taped to the doors informing him that it was out of order. With a sigh, he pushed open the door to the stairwell and began his trip down the nineteen flights of stairs. It wasn’t as difficult as going up, but he was still irritated by the time he got to the lobby. He walked the four blocks to his bus stop, scowling at the other pedestrians who bumped his shoulder on their way by, and stood to wait with his eyes on his phone screen. It was easier to avoid talking with people than it was to get the image of Ciaran’s smirking lips out of his head. He imagined they were sweet.

He let out a scoffing sigh and put his phone in his pocket, unable to focus on the words on the screen. Trent wasn’t interested in a boyfriend, especially one who could apparently do magic and was being hunted by some kind of fairy-killer, which sounded ridiculous even in his head. He liked being alone just fine—it was the appeasing alternative he had settled on after his mother had cried when she discovered him with his high school boyfriend. He could take care of himself, and a boyfriend wasn’t worth the lecture from his father he would have to sit through on the off chance he ever met anyone worth bringing home.

He took off his glasses to clean them with the bottom of his shirt as the bus pulled up to the stop, slipping them back onto his nose before he climbed aboard. He took his place near the back exit and sat with his head turned to the window. He had spent the great majority of his time alone for as long as he could remember, and he was in no great hurry to change that now, regardless of freckles on noses.

A woman smiled at him when she sat beside him a few stops later, but he ignored her. He rode along in silence, silently scolding himself whenever he pictured the smooth taper of Ciaran’s hips disappearing beneath the frayed waistband of his worn blue jeans. He would be a bad decision, even if it was unattached. Better to pay him as little attention as possible until he could heal up and leave, then forget the entire thing had ever happened.

Before the bus reached his stop, it shuddered to a halt with a black smoke billowing up from under the hood. They were all herded off of the bus with apologies and promises of refunds, but Trent only clicked his tongue in irritation and checked his watch. He was going to be late. With no other choice, he set off at a brisk pace down the street, keeping his eyes open for any taxis that might get him to campus faster. There wasn’t a single yellow car to be seen; the entire industry seemed to have taken the day off. Trent swore under his breath and sped up to a light jog, holding his messenger bag against his side to avoid jostling his laptop too much.

He arrived at his lecture hall panting and red-faced, with a film of sweat that made his shirt stick uncomfortably to his back. He tried to slip into the room quietly, since he knew he was late, but the door swung open faster than he anticipated and hit him square in the nose. He put a hand to his face and cursed as he stepped inside, glowering at anyone who dared turn to look at him. He took a seat the back of the room to avoid making more of a disturbance than he already had. He opened his laptop with a huff as he caught his breath, but the battery was dead. He frowned down at it. He was sure he had charged it overnight. He took a quick glance around him, but there were no outlets to be found, so he shoved the laptop back into his bag and took out a notebook and pen instead.

He acknowledged Hannah, the girl who always sat beside him, when she turned to look back at him. He was almost glad that he was late, so that he wouldn’t have to listen to her idle chit-chat before class started. He had had enough social interaction. Hannah was pleasant enough in general, quiet and focused, and he had known her since high school. Sometimes they ate lunch together after class let out, but today he couldn’t bring himself to pretend to care about her. He could barely care about the lecture, as irritated as he was.

The entire class, his arm hung awkwardly over the edge of the desk while he attempted to keep up with the professor’s lecture, as the desk was meant for the right-handed majority and he wrote with his left. He continually hit his elbow on the sharp corner of the wall, since the desk he had been forced into was in an awkward spot at the edge of the classroom. He would set down his pen to check his previous page of notes, and it would roll off of the desk as though it had a mind of his own. When he bent to pick it up, he cracked his head on the bottom of the desk despite the fact that the thing was only about a foot across. The professor scolded him for being disruptive, which only made him angrier, but he scowled down at his notebook rather than argue.

As soon as the lecture was over, he gathered up his things and attempted to leave the room quickly, but he stumbled on the top step of the lecture hall and had to catch himself on an unsuspecting classmate’s shoulder. She flinched away from him out of reflex and laughed as he straightened himself. He refused to look at her or apologize; he only left the room as fast as he could without hitting himself in the face again. He didn’t believe for a second that Ciaran’s spite had nothing to do with his sudden, inexplicable clumsiness. He had been too friendly just before Trent left. Who knew what kind of magic the fairy was capable of, and he used it to make Trent drop his pen during a lecture? Irresponsible and childish.

Hannah caught up to him outside as he huffed in frustration, and she hid a smile as she shifted her backpack on her shoulders. “You okay?” she asked with a tilt of her head. “You don’t seem to be having a very good time today.”

“I’m fine,” he said, looking across the courtyard rather than at her face.

“You sure? You’re very frowny and distracted. Something on your mind, or are you trying to turn me on?”

“What—” His gaze snapped back to her, but he snorted out a sigh when he saw the small, teasing smile on her face. “It’s nothing important. Just some…company from out of town that I wasn’t expecting.”

“Company? As in, somebody’s staying at your place?” She let out a soft chuckle. “And they’re still alive?”

He grunted in response. “I’m not that bad.”

“Trent, I’ve known you for three years, and I’ve never even been inside your building.”

“Why would you?”

She smiled at him. “Exactly.”

Trent glanced down at his watch with a quick sigh, not really listening to Hannah anymore. She liked to tell him about various happenings in her life that she imagined were interesting, such as which of her cats was the bigger jerk, or the new tea infuser she just got that looks like a sloth. She was usually satisfied with his noncommittal answers and half-hearted agreements. She just liked to have someone to talk at, he imagined. He didn’t mind; he could mostly tune her out by now. By the time he started listening again, she was telling him goodbye, so he answered in kind. She gave him a brief wave and moved on to her next class, while he had little choice but to return to his apartment.

He felt a strange, unwelcome anxiety in his chest as he walked back toward the bus stop, despite how flustered his trip so far had made him. He knew Ciaran would be at the apartment waiting for him when he returned. Well, probably not actually waiting for him—but he would be there. Trent wasn’t sure he liked the feeling of coming home to an apartment that had someone in it already. It was a reminder of the times his parents came back, only ever long enough to maintain their citizenship. Ciaran wouldn’t be waiting with a lecture or with pressing questions about his GPA, but it would doubtless be just as uncomfortable.

He managed to make it back to his building without his bus breaking down, though the car was much more crowded than usual, so he found himself pressed between a sweaty man’s back and a woman with a low-cut shirt who seemed to be trying to make a career out of pressing her breasts into his chest and smiling up at him. He kept his eyes facing staunchly forward for the entire ride home and eagerly pushed by her when the bus reached his stop.

Trent acknowledged the doorman, who apologized for the elevator still being out, and let out a resigned sigh as he started the slow climb back to his floor. When he finally reached his door, his legs heavy from exertion, he stopped in the hall with his hand on the door knob. Inside, there would be a man—a fairy—who was handsome enough to trouble him and almost troublesome enough to negate the handsomeness. Not almost, he told himself. Definitely. He gave a brief sigh and turned the knob, letting himself into the apartment.

The kitchen had been torn apart. Everywhere, torn plastic wrappers sat abandoned on countertops or on the floor, muffins were half devoured and left in their paper cups, and his bottle of orange juice, now empty, had been upended and left to drip its remnants on the marble counter. Ciaran was asleep on the sofa with the television on, his arm dangling over the edge of the cushion.

“I was gone for three hours,” Trent muttered, and he noisily banged cabinets in the kitchen as he picked up after his guest. Nothing seemed to wake him, so he finished bagging up the garbage and dropped down onto the sofa beside him, knocking the fairy’s arm out of the way as he went by .

Finally, Ciaran snorted himself awake. He sat up too quickly and put a hand to his sore stomach, hissing through his teeth.

“Enjoy yourself?” Trent asked, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. He still hadn’t put a shirt on.

“Aye, a bit,” Ciaran chuckled. He leaned forward to give the younger man a sly smirk. “How was your class? Everything go well, did it?”

“Ugh,” Trent scoffed. “I knew it was you. Whatever you did, just undo it already.”

“Will you go to the store and fetch me something real to eat?”

Trent glared at him, but the fairy only smiled, his smug expression putting a slight, wrinkle at the corners of his eyes. “Fine. I’ll go. If you stop complaining, and if you give me money.”

“Good.”

“And you have to undo whatever it is you did.”

“Of course, a chara,” Ciaran purred, and he let his fingertips brush down the other man’s cheek, causing him to freeze under the gentle touch. “Tá tú sábháilte,” he whispered, and Trent thought for a moment that it almost sounded like a promise. He took a purposeful step backward to pull himself out of the fairy’s reach.

Ciaran wrote a list on a scrap of paper and gave Trent a bit of money, as agreed, so the younger man went on his way with only a little grumbling. Miraculously, the elevator seemed to be working again. Trent spared a glare back at his front door as he mashed the down button.

The list the fairy had written made him sick to his stomach to imagine, but he walked the couple of blocks to the grocery store and gathered the requested items. It was a wonder Ciaran wasn’t the size of a house, eating like this. More fairy magic, he supposed. When he reached into his pocket for the money Ciaran had given him, he found only a handful of leaves and let out a curse. He almost went back empty-handed just to spite him, but he didn’t trust Ciaran not to retaliate—or the state he’d find his apartment in if he forced the man to dig through the pantry again.

At the door to the apartment building, Julien stood waiting and watching, a half-smoked cigarette in his fingers. He hadn’t yet been able to make his way past the doorman, but he had seen his compass flicker green as Trent had passed him on the way out. The fairy couldn’t hide his true form—not from him—but this person had had a recent brush with magic.

Julien saw the young man approach, arms laden with plastic bags, and he put a hand on his arm to stop him, leaning in to take a long, slow breath despite Trent’s recoiling sneer. He had his trinkets, his makeshift devices, and his talismans, but nothing told a story better than the simple smell of magic. Julien knew this scent by now, musky and grey like a storm. He had smelled it on every corpse the fairy had left behind, and he had smelled it on Vivian Holk just three months ago, before the creature’s poison finally took her.

“How was your evening, mon chum?” he asked the stranger, watching him for any sign of alarm. The fairy had chosen this building for a reason, he knew. An accomplice was good enough. But was the boy a witting one?

“Get your hand off me,” Trent said instead of an answer. It had been too long a day for him to be willing to deal with street people.

“That’s quite a load you have there,” Julien said, tilting his head to get a look at the contents of the grocery bags. He knew almost before he looked what he would find. Fairies were notoriously finicky about their food. “Heavy cream, sweet breads, honey, cakes, ice cream...you’re either having a party or you’ve had a very messy breakup.”

“Get your hand off me,” Trent said again, slower this time and threateningly low.

“I’m here to help you. Do you know why I stopped you?”

“I don’t care.” Trent jerked his arm free of Julien’s grip, jostling his grocery bags, and started up the front steps of his building.

“That creature is a killer,” Julien called, hardly feeling he was taking a risk by exposing his true purpose. Trent paused at the top step and glanced over his shoulder. “If you help it, you’re putting more people at risk,” he went on.

“Creature?”

“Ben là! You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You have a guest.”

Trent frowned at him. “You’re the one he’s hiding from?”

Julien offered him a friendly smile. “That’s right. ”

“And if I help you? You’ll kill him, right?”

“Ouais, I will,” Julien answered honestly.

Trent stood still a moment, looking down at the grocery bags in his hand. He glanced back at Julien and shrugged one shoulder. “Then I guess you’re shit out of luck.”

Julien swore as Trent pushed open the front door and disappeared inside. At least now he knew that the fairy had a friend.