Original Fiction
Distraction
Miguel brings his lover home after fundamentalist protestors try to drive Nikolai off campus. He's worried about Nikolai's life, but Nikolai is not worried much at all.
Miguel was almost shaking before they got into the apartment. The runes painted onto the walls and the pile of pillows were waiting as if the rest of the world hadn't just gone completely insane. Miguel stepped into the apartment and just stopped.
Nikolai breezed past and headed for the kitchen. "I wonder if it would be disrespectful to pray to the universe for some pierogi. Some days, a man just wants fried onions and fat."
"Pirogi?"
"Pierogi," Nikolai corrected him, emphasizing the 'o' while still having his head in the refrigerator. "Dumplings. Very fattening and very salty dumpling that use sheep milk cheese. Although Mrs. Elchik makes hers with mozzarella," he finished. He came out with a dish. "However, the universe has provided shrimp soup, which is just as good."
"Sopa de Camarones," Miguel corrected him. He got an odd satisfaction in knowing something Nikolia didn't, probably because Nikolai was acting a little too damn smug for his own good lately. If he didn't start taking these death threats seriously, Miguel was going to murder him just to prove a point.
Nikolai didn't answer. He brought the bowl of soup and two spoons over to the pile of pillows and sat. For several seconds, Miguel stood, one hand still clutching the front door's doorknob as he tried to convince himself to not strangle Nikolai. Just because he loved the man did not mean he didn't foster a few murderous thoughts.
"We need to talk," Miguel said slowly and carefully. Nikolai looked up at him, his dark eyes focusing on Miguel with all this innocence. "And do not give me that look," Miguel warned him. Maybe that look would have worked at one point, but not now. Nikolai gave him a sly smile and a half-hearted shrug before he started to eat his soup.
"You have to take these threats seriously."
That seemed to make Nikolai stop and think for a whole two seconds. "No, I really don't."
"You could end up dead!"
"Uf." Nikolai set the bowl carefully onto the floor and held a hand out toward Miguel. "Come and sit."
"Why? So you can run your hand up my thigh and make me forget that I'm pissed as hell?" Miguel crossed his arms to keep himself from reaching out to take Nikolai's hand. Some days he suspected that one shamanic power was mentally pushing people into agreeing, and right now, he wanted to be disagreeable.
"Maybe," Nikolai admitted. "You would protect me from dying, Miguel. Do you not see the irony in that?"
"You think it's ironic that I don't want the man I love to get shot in the head by some right-wing asshole? These nutcases want you dead. Do you get that? Dead."
"Alts drait zich arum broit un toit." Nikolai plucked a shrimp from the soup; after popping it in his mouth, he sucked the thick soup off his fingers.
"Have I mentioned how much I really hate it when you channel your Yiddish grandmother?"
Nikolai laughed. "You had not said as much, but I think I knew anyway. I said that bread and death are the center of all things. You're trying to keep me alive, but I am 100% sure that I will die."
Miguel could feel something in his chest grow hot and tight at the very thought. He'd seen death—too much of it—and the thought of Nikolai dying was enough to rip his heart out.
"Oy gevalt." Nikolai got up, and all of Miguel's anger evaporated as Nikolai wrapped his arms around Miguel's waist and held him tight. Miguel sucked in a breath, feeling the pain in his chest ease because Nikolai wasn't dead; he was here and safe. He wrapped his arms around Nikolai and clung to him. They stood leaning into each other so long that Nikolai's heat seemed to soak into Miguel, warming even the cold center where all Miguel's fears lived.
"They want you dead," Miguel whispered.
"So very many do. Some professors—they would happily serve my intestines up for Passover. One day, if they live healthy and pray, they will get their wish."
Miguel pulled back, jerking his body away from Nikolai when all he wanted to do was cling to him like a drowning man. However, he wouldn't do that—he wouldn't lose himself to his own fears when he had a job to do and a lover to protect, even if his lover was a stubborn son-of-a-bitch. "Listen to me." Miguel barked the words out. Nikolai had been reaching out, trying to hold on to him even as Miguel struggled to escape, but now he grew still and let his hands fall to his side. "These crackpots want you dead. But they aren't going to wait for you to die of old age. They're going to take a shot at you. They see you as the devil incarnate. They'll put a bullet in your brain, and as much as you have the power to cheat death, I don't think your healing powers extend to a bullet in the brain."
Nikolai looked down at the floor. "No, they most likely do not."
"Then start taking this seriously. Start listening to me when I'm trying to protect you."
The only answer Nikolai gave was to turn and walk away. Circling around the nest of pillows, Nikolai moved to the window and pushed the edge of the curtain aside. The lights from the street shone through the crack in fits and starts, jagged edges passing around the room as the cars passed through on the road below. Miguel wished that they were higher up in the building, but he knew Nikolai wouldn't leave this apartment with its protective runes and strong magic. Even as Miguel thought that, he could see one of the runes start to dully glow, a soft green fog rolling off a curving x shape with a triangle attached to one leg.
"What are you doing?" Miguel demanded.
Nikolai jerked his hand back from the window, his expression shocked. "How do you..." Nikolai glanced over at the rune and then at Miguel before sighing. "You know, I am beginning to think that I was treated unfairly by the universe. I studied for months before I could perceive the reality behind the images, and you just...." Nikolai waved his hand to indicate something, but the something made no sense to Miguel. "I am trying to see into their hearts—to see if any would kill me tonight." This time he waved toward the street and the crowd outside. Miguel was almost ready to call it a mob, but the night had chased a lot of people away. Protesting Nikolai on his nice, safe university campus was one thing, but to stand on a street in East Tremont with the hookers and the children grown old through poverty and the tired women—that was more than most middle-class people wanted to deal with.
"Are any of them dangerous?" Miguel asked.
Nikolai sighed. "Most of them. They see me as something evil, something which does not deserve human respect because I am not—" Nikolai stopped.
"Christian?" Miguel guessed, although white and heterosexual came to mind nearly as quickly. Most of the press had been focusing on Nikolai's religious beliefs, so he suspected that their current crop of crazies came from the religious right. He dreaded the day when this whole mess spread into other parts of Nikolai's life, but Miguel had been down this path, and once the reporters smelled the blood of a wounded animal, they were like hyenas going in to strip the flesh from the bones.
"Maybe. Many of them just do not think of me as human."
"That's the only way you can think of the enemy when you're at war. If you see the humanity in them, you run the risk of realizing you're a monster," Miguel said softly.
"Is this war?" Nikolai had his head tilted to the side, and the green fog slowly slid along the floor and vanished.
"Yeah, it is." Miguel walked to the pile of pillows and looked down at the bowl of soup. Someone had fixed that knowing that Nikolai would eat it. The man bought enough groceries to feed an army, and in return, some of that food returned to him cooked into native dishes. How easy would it be for someone to slip a poison into Nikolai's food? How much temptation could one of these people endure if some asshole offered them money to kill the great and evil Nikolai Adleman, corrupter of youth? Miguel startled when Nikolai slipped his hand around Miguel's arm.
"That you do not need to worry about." Nikolai stared down at the bowl.
Miguel didn't even bother asking how Nikolai knew what he'd been thinking. "I shouldn't worry because you're okay with dropping dead or I shouldn't worry because it's not a problem in the real world?
"Poison hath residence and medicine power."
"Please. No more Yiddish grandmothers," Miguel begged.
"Actually, that one was Shakespeare," Nikolai pulled Miguel closer to the pillows, tugging on his arm until Miguel finally sank down into the pillows with Nikolai. "The priest, he tells the audience that every plant has both poison and medicine—good and bad. For a shaman, the turning of a poison to a medicine is a simple task. Poison would be..." Nikolai stopped and pursed his lips, and Miguel knew that expression entirely too well.
"Whatever mischief you're thinking, just don't," he warned.
Nikolai laughed. "I was only thinking how frustrated someone would be if they could get a poison into me and then they had to stand by and wonder why it didn't work. That would be amusing."
"You have a sick sense of humor."
"I know," Nikolai agreed. "I was born in the year of the pig—we are often too intelligent for our own good. Our humor and sometimes our imaginations become skewed."
"You got the skewed part right." Miguel stretched out on the pillows and Nikolai shifted until he was lying on Miguel's chest, his hands tucked under his chin. "Do you really believe in the year of the pig stuff?" Miguel asked. He'd be happier if he didn't believe in any of Nikolai's magic, but he'd lost that fight a long time ago.
"No," Nikolai said with a shrug. Stretching out, he snagged the soup bowl and pulled it closer. "Magic will not be contained by time. When you are born cannot set rules for who you will be. Besides, I believe in too much other magic to have any time for the zodiac. I believe that I can feel the lives of those who stand on the street, and all their anger is tightly constrained. They won't let their rage out because too much of it would be for themselves. I also know that the soup is both safe and very good."
"Sopa de Camarones," Miguel corrected him in a whisper.
"Sopa de Camarones," Nikolai said, his accent making the words nearly incomprehensible. He pulled a piece of shrimp out, but this time, he offered it to Miguel, dripping orange soup across Miguel's chin.
Reaching up, Miguel caught Nikolai's hand and pulled it closer so he could take the shrimp from his fingers. Then he reached up and wiped the back of his hand over his chin. "If someone's trying to kill you, they're going to have to go through me," Miguel said. Squirming, he tried to move, but Nikolai remained draped over him like an afghan. With some effort, Miguel shifted onto his side. Only then did he reach out and pull the bowl closer.
"So, you're going to taste all my food?"
"No, I’m going to eat all of Mrs. Garcia's Sopa de Camarones and leave you to go hungry." Miguel pulled one of the spoons out and started eating. His own mother tended to cook with Velveeta and Wonder Bread, but his friends had always had Mexican families and the soup reminded him of those days when he would try and finagle an invitation to dinner so that he didn't have to go home to his own mother's sad offerings.
"So, you'd let me starve?" Nikolai asked with a laugh. He wiggled around so that he could reach for the other spoon, and Miguel ignored the way Nikolai's cock was starting to harden as it pressed down into him.
"I doubt you'd starve. Every grandmother in this building tries to feed you. They look at me like it's my fault you're a scrawny little shit." Miguel grunted when Nikolai's elbow found his side.
"Insulting one's lover is a taboo is most cultures."
Miguel paused and looked at Nikolai, studying the man's face for several seconds. "You're full of shit," he finally announced. Nikolai's face cracked into a wide grin.
"Maybe. I am full of something." Nikolai's grin grew wicked as he started rocking slowly, rubbing his cock against Miguel's hip.
Miguel struggled to not smile and just keep eating his soup. "Really? Need to use the bathroom?"
Nikolai gave an exaggerated sigh and leaned forward to get his spoon into the bowl before Miguel could make good on his threat to eat it all. However, Nikolai seemed to spend more time squirming against Miguel's body than trying to get to the food. Miguel could feel his own cock harden as his lover pressed close. He knew every inch of Nikolai's body, and he could imagine running his hands over Nikolai's hips, tasting the sweat that gathered along his spine, watching the man writhe as Miguel teased him.
"Someone seems to have a problem," Nikolai said, his hand grazing over the growing bulge in Miguel's pants.
"And I'm going to keep having a problem unless we go in the back room."
"What? No sense of adventure?" Nikolai asked. But he grabbed the bowl and got up.
"Adventure, yes. However, that doesn't mean I want some kid walking in on us," Miguel answered. Rolling to his back, he watched Nikolai head to the sink to wash out the dish. "You could consider locking your door."
"Locks between a shaman and his tribe would create a sense of division which violates the inherent—"
"Oh no," Miguel said as he got up. "You can give the lectures to the students at your university. I just want to get you into the back room where we can have a little privacy." Miguel reached out and caught Nikolai when the man came close. Nikolai's body yielded to him, pressing close. Miguel breathed in the smell of sweat and soap. "Are you using some shamanic power to keep me distracted from the mess we have waiting for us out there?" he whispered in Nikolai's ear.
Nikolai looked up at him. "No. I am just hoping that you can distract me."
Miguel ran his fingers over Nikolai's cheek and over his stubbled chin. "I can do that," he promised. Pulling Nikolai toward the back room, Miguel decided that the war on their doorstep could wait. Tonight, the man he loved needed to be distracted, and that was one task Miguel knew he could excel at.