Incubus Dreams

“No, he’s mypomme de sang. ”

Richard shook his head and had to stop again. I don’t think he knew how often he made that motion until today. “I thought, weall thought, he was your live-in, but now I know he’s not.”

“He does live with me,” I said.

Richard started to shake his head, but actually caught himself before he’d begun the movement. “I know that, but he’s not your live-in lover.”

“And that matters, how?”

“Alright, children,” Doc Lillian said, “I made a careless remark.

I didn’t understand what apomme de sang means to its, his… owner, master.” She sighed. “I didn’t mean to offend anyone, let’s just leave it at that.”

“You didn’t offend me,” Nathaniel said, and handed her coffee in one of the colored mugs he’d purchased for Furry Coalition meetings.

He’d thought it would be nice if we had enough matching mugs to serve our guests. I’d agreed, if I didn’t have to shop for them, so he shopped for them. They were all either a deep, rich blue or a dark, forest green. Nice.

He handed me my baby penguin mug with coffee nearly to the brim, just the color I liked it, pale brown. By the color alone, I knew it would be perfect. “Drink,” he said, “you’ll feel better once you’ve had some coffee.”

“I feel fine,” I said, but I sipped the coffee. Perfect.

He’d also already plugged in the coffeemaker. I was right about the French press not making enough coffee at a time to satisfy this many people. Hell, it barely made enough for my early morning needs.

“We’ve got enough for one more cup, who wants it? There’ll be more in a few minutes.” He smiled at the room in general, getting more of the blue and green mugs out of the cabinet.

“He acts like it’s his kitchen,” Richard said.

“He cooks in it more than I do,” I said.

Richard made a visible effort not to shake his head, though he wanted to. “No, I mean… Jason is Jean-Claude’spomme de sang, but he doesn’t move around the Circus of the Damned like he owns it.

Nathaniel acts like this is his home.”

Nathaniel had his back to the room, but he was close enough to me that I felt his sudden stillness, as he poured coffee and tried to pretend he couldn’t hear.

“It is his home,” I said.

I was standing close enough to him to hear the slight sigh of his breath, as if he’d held it waiting to hear what I’d say. He was careful not to look at me, but he was smiling as he puttered with the coffee.

“Jason lives with Jean-Claude, but he isn’t…” Richard seemed at a loss for words.

Lillian helped him out. “Jean-Claude wouldn’t have minded me remarking how cute Jason was, you minded when I said something about Nathaniel. If they’re bothpomme de sangs, then I think Richard and I are both confused about how we’re supposed to act around them. Not boyfriend, not lover, it can get a little confusing.”

Nathaniel was very carefully not looking at me, or anyone, but especially not me. I don’t know how I knew that he wasn’t just busy getting real cream out of the fridge to pour into an honest-to-God cream pitcher. The little pitcher was blue, and the sugar bowl was green, so the mugs matched everything. I knew his favorite color was purple, and had asked him why blue and green, and not purple? His reply was that blue was my favorite color, and green was Micah’s favorite color. The answer seemed to make sense to him. It didn’t really make sense to me, but I was begi

He set the creamer and pitcher on a little tray, along with little tongs for the sugar cubes. Why sugar cubes? Because Nathaniel seemed to get a kick out of asking how many lumps people wanted. He was like a kid playing house. No, that wasn’t fair. He was like a new bride that had never had a house, or a kitchen of her own, and was really enjoying the hostess stuff. But it was like he didn’t know what real people did in a house, so he was taking it from movies, books, or magazines. I mean nobody serves cream and sugar anymore on a little tray with little tongs, right?

Nathaniel was wearing one of his favorite pairs of blue jeans, so faded that they were turning white in places. They fit his lower body like they were painted on, and it was a nice paint job. His shoulders had broadened since he moved in with me. He was filling out, developing the body he’d have for the rest of his life, if he took care of it. A “late bloomer,” my grandmother would have called him.

He’d looked younger than he was for years, a delicate body to match the eyes and hair. It had made him popular with a certain kind of clientele that his old Nimir-Raj had pimped him out to. Muscles moved in his arms, shoulders, and back, as he set the tray on the table and began to pass out mugs of coffee. I watched him asking, “How many lumps?” and “Do you want cream?” He moved gracefully around the table on his bare feet. He’d thrown his hair over one shoulder like a cape, so that it was out of the way. I’d have never been able to keep that much hair out of the way without help. Nathaniel made it look effortless.

I sipped coffee out of my penguin mug, and watched him play Suzy Homemaker. I waited to be irritated, but I wasn’t. In fact, I was somewhere in the middle of amused, proud, and pleased. He was so cute when he did this.

Richard tensed whenever Nathaniel got close to him, as if he’d have moved back if it hadn’t hurt. He didn’t take coffee, because he didn’t drink coffee. Nathaniel offered to fix tea, but Richard said he didn’t want any.

Richard looked at me. “Jason never does this for Jean-Claude.”

“Does what?” I asked.

“Play hostess.”

“Nathaniel isn’t playing,” I said. “He’s the closest thing we’ve got to a hostess. It’s not really my gig.”

Richard looked down at the floor as if looking for inspiration, or counting to ten. Since I hadn’t done anything to piss him off in the last five minutes, I wasn’t sure where all the tension was coming from. He looked at me with those solid brown eyes, and I still missed his hair. The sad remnants of curls were begi

Nathaniel moved back to the coffeemaker, and since I was still leaning nearly in front of it, that put him beside me. He was very careful not to meet my eyes, almost as if he were afraid where the conversation would go.

“And that seems to bother you, why?”

“You’re not sleeping with him.”

“Yeah, I am, almost every damn night.”

“Fine, you want to split hairs, we can do that. You aren’t fucking him.”

I shook my head. “You always were a sweet-talker when you got pissed.”

“I’m not pissed, I’m trying to understand.”

“Understand what?” I asked.

Micah wasn’t watching Nathaniel or Richard, he was watching me.

His chartreuse eyes were very serious, as if he were afraid of what I was going to do. I tried to give him a reassuring smile, that I wasn’t going to blow this, but I’m not really good at reassuring smiles. So his eyes went from serious to a little worried.

“You and Nathaniel and Micah.”

What I wanted to say was, Why do you need to understand it? But I was trying to be nice, or nicer. “What’s to understand, Richard?”

Nathaniel began to pile his hair up into a high, tight ponytail.

It was a style women wore more than men, that high, bouncy ponytail that moves when you walk. But his hair was long enough that, to keep it out of the way for cooking, he had to either braid it or do the bouncy ponytail. Once he figured out that I actually thought the bouncy ponytail thing was cute, he’d started doing it more. He washed his hands and went for the fridge.

“How can you watch him like that, when you aren’t fucking him?”

Richard asked.

By the time I looked fully at him, I knew my face wasn’t friendly.

“If you want to play rough, we can, Richard, but you won’t like it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Fine,” I said, “we’ll play it your way. Why don’t you watch Clair the way I watch Nathaniel, if you’ve fucked her?”

His face darkened. “Don’t talk about Clair like that.”

“Then don’t talk about Nathaniel,” I said.

Nathaniel seemed to be blissfully unaware of us. He got the big marble board out of the cabinet and put it down beside the sink. The marble was only used for one thing-baking of some sort. He moved to the fridge, getting out the dough that he’d made yesterday before we had to get ready for the wedding. Apparently, we were still going to have homemade biscuits, as pla

“What is he doing?” Richard asked.

“I think he’s making biscuits,” Micah said.

Nathaniel nodded, making the long fall of auburn hair bounce like it was on a string. “Who’s having biscuits, so I’ll know how many to make?” He turned peaceful eyes to the kitchen, as if we weren’t fighting. Of course, I’d seen what his memory of “fighting” entailed, so maybe by his childhood standards this wasn’t a fight.

“I want some,” Fredo said.

“Homemade biscuits?” Doc Lillian asked.

“From scratch,” Nathaniel said with a smile.

“In that case, yes, please.”

Nathaniel looked at Richard and Clair. “Do you want some? I know Gregory will.”

“We’re only staying until we’re sure Damian is safe,” Richard said.

He turned his lavender gaze to Clair. “Do you want a biscuit?”

She looked at Richard, sort of nervously, then nodded. “Yes, please.” She patted his shoulder. “We didn’t get breakfast.”

Richard scowled.

I was willing to let the fight go. Nathaniel was right, without saying a word he was right, it hadn’t been much of a fight. Of course, just as it takes two people to fight, it takes two sides to call a cease-fire.

“Why do you care what I say about him? He’s nothing to you.”

I sipped the last of my coffee, put the mug down carefully on the cabinet, and smiled. I knew without a mirror that it wasn’t a good smile. It was the smile I got when I finally got to do something violent, when people had been making me behave. If I’d had any doubts about the smile, Fredo pushing himself upright, hands loose at his sides, clinched it. He knew it was trouble. The look on Micah’s face said he knew it was trouble, too. Even Clair looked worried. Nathaniel had gone back to smoothing out biscuit dough. No matter what happened, we’d need breakfast, so he was going to make breakfast. In his own way, Nathaniel could be as practical as I was.