Sanctuary - 5. Chapter 5 - Ishca

The Rectory Officer stared at him in something like shock, and the moment lasted long enough that for a second Ishca wondered if he’s pitched his slick confidence wrong. But then the young man swallowed dryly, and Ishca didn’t need to be an empath to see his lustful nervousness as his Adam’s apple bobbed in the column of his throat. Ishca smiled warmly, and without a word the Rectory Officer stepped back to let him in.

“Thank you,” Ishca held out a hand to the other man, “I’m Ishca.”

“Aki,” the young man watched him like a small mammal trapped in the gaze of a snake, and Ishca took his hand in both of his.

Everything rushed down his senses, a combination of incredibly heightened touch and his empathic abilities giving him a window directly to the inside of Aki’s head. His skin was dry, a little rough over the back of his knuckles, but his fingertips were smooth, the nails clipped short and round. Ishca could suddenly smell the clay, the wet slap of water against processed earth, saw the memory through Aki’s eyes of the young man sitting in front of a potter’s wheel, one hand hidden inside the vessel that formed so softly under his fingers. There was lust, plain and simple, staining everything red and pink, but underneath was worry and hurt: the tainting coil of stress winding him tight. Aki was troubled, but Ishca knew the ache under his heart was not as new as the bunched tightness in the forefront of his brain.

He let go with soft smile.

“Might I stay?”

“Um… of course.” Aki stammered, but there was growl from the doorway to Ishca’s left. He arched an eyebrow at the skinny, tousle haired boy who stood there, balanced unconsciously on the balls of his feet.

“I see we have a wolf.”

To his surprise, the boy made a strangled noise of shock and panic in the back of his throat, and fled the room.

“Oh fuck…” Aki sighed.

“Sorry,” Ishca shrugged out of his long coat and hung it in amongst those he assumed belonged to his new host, “he’s a bit sensitive, huh?”

“Yeah, I’d better go calm him down.”

“I might be better at that,” Ishca offered.

Aki frowned.

“And why do you think you’d be better at dealing with an anxious teenager?”

Ishca licked his teeth and grinned smugly.

“I’m an empath; it’s kinda what I do.”

“Oh…” realisation dawned in Aki’s hazel eyes, “oh!”

“Don’t worry Officer,” Ishca teased him gently, “you’re just my type.”

He left Aki standing in the hallway staring at his back, and followed the boy into the rest of the house. Ishca brushed his fingers along the back of the sofa, and got two very clear images, almost simultaneously. The boy, wearing nothing but rags, emaciated, bruised, in pain, and passed out, lying there with Aki kneeling next to him, concern written all over his features: Aki naked, beautiful with his rough body and smooth hands, smiling lovingly at someone Ishca couldn’t see.

Ishca blinked out of the visions, and turned to find the boy staring at him. Everything about his pose showed his intent to flee. Even from a distance, Ishca could tell the borrowed clothes hung from his frame like so much cloth on a skeleton: his leaving might be dangerous. Ishca didn’t make eye contact, but simply folded himself up into a sitting position, and began very calmly to pick at the laces of his long boots, untying them for the first time since he’d left Tideway. Without touching him, Ishca couldn’t work out exactly what the boy was feeling, but he had learnt to read people very well as a child, a skill honed from being raised by an empathic clairvoyant mother, and it was easy to see the kid was scared, confused, curious, and angry. It wasn’t until Ishca had removed both his boots and stood them next to each other on the carpet that he stretched out his legs in slow considered movements, and brushed one foot against the boy’s knee.

Directly skin to skin contact was better, but the small movement was enough, and Ishca kept his movements slow, even though he wanted to recoil away from the boy in shock. The emotions were a wash of colours, too many and too confusing to make sense of, but there had been one image, clear as a photograph, that made Ishca’s throat close on the words he’d been about to say. The boy, looking healthier than he did now, his face distorted in anger, his fist raised to strike a much weaker opponent. Touching violence always made Ishca want to be sick, but he swallowed the bile in his throat.

“Hello.”

The boy grunted at him, and Ishca got the feeling he had arrived during an uncomfortable moment for both the kid, and his new host.

“My name is Ishca,” he saw the boy’s lips move in the shape of his name, trying out the unfamiliar syllables without making a sound. “My parents were fond of odd names. I’m an empath: do you know what that means?”

The boy wrinkled his nose.

“Are you like Aki?”

“Not exactly. I’m sort of human, but I can do things they can’t. I can feel emotions, someone else’s emotions,” he clarified, “and sometimes memories from their past.”

“You can see inside my head?” The boy jerked his head up from his crouched position on the floor, and Ishca saw the tension crackle across his narrow shoulders.

“No, no I can’t. It’s more like feelings.”

“Oh…”

“Well why don’t you tell me about you?” Ishca offered in his best soothing voice.

“No.”

“OK,” Ishca shrugged noncommittally, and shifted his weight onto one side in order to stand up. Just as his fingers moved against the carpet, the boy opened his mouth.

“Hel,” he swallowed, “that’s my name.”

“That’s nice.”

“I’m just a person,” Hel chewed his lower lips so hard Ishca worried for a moment he might break the skin. “I’m human. I’m not special.”

“Oh… I doubt that.”

“I’m scared.”

“Of me?”

“No.” Hel’s voice was little more than a whimper, “Of me.”

It was an admission that made Ishca’s head ring with truth. Hel wasn’t lying, either to Ishca or to himself, and though Ishca didn’t think the boy had any idea how twisted he seemed on the inside, he was all too aware that something was wrong. The empath smiled warmly, and shifted so that he was kneeling, resting his butt on his bare heels.

“We can work on that,” he said softly. “It smells like I interrupted you guy’s right in the middle of dinner. Is it OK if I join you?”

Hel’s stomach growled at the boy’s thought of food, and as Ishca got up Hel put out a hand to help him. There were dozens of emotions under his skin, but the one which overrode them all was fear. Fear of change; fear of the unknown; fear of himself, of Ishca a little bit, even of Aki; fear of his past; fear of being alone. But the one that made Ishca smile was the one that made the boy pull towards the little kitchen-diner: fear of being hungry.

*

“How long has he been with you?” Ishca asked his host as Aki cleared away the plates they had used. Hel had eaten like a starving wolf, gulping down is food until his stomach had growled once more, but this time with the sudden effort of dealing with fullness, rather than emptiness. He’d slunk away upstairs like any other moody teenager, but Ishca didn’t figure he’d been there long, because he was still so incredibly thin.

“About twenty-six hours?” Aki sighed heavily, “and I‘ve already screwed up worse than I did in my last rela-.” He cut himself off, and Ishca felt him blush with senses far finer than sight. “I shouted at him.”

“Well, he’s a teenager,” Ishca shrugged, “his hormones are designed to wind up himself and everyone else around him until someone breaks down and shouts, screams, or bursts into tears.”

“Oh…”

“What is he? I assume you know.”

“He’s a spirit. He thinks it’s a punishment for being a bad person.”

“What? An animal guide?” Ishca gaped. “But they’re so rare; and usually so… pure.”

“What do you mean?” Aki frowned at him. As hard as he was trying to stay with the conversation, a brief bump of their hips against each other as Ishca plucked a tea towel and started to dry up the dishes, showed that Aki’s brain was being fogged by lust once more.

“Don’t worry – it’s an empathic thing.”

“So you’re really…?” Aki gulped rather than finish the question.

“Oh yeah,” Ishca smirked, arching one eyebrow, “and a haptic.”

“A… haptic?” Aki blinked at him, back to being a moth drawn towards a flame. Ishca knew the young man understood what he’d said, but his brain was apparently firing several empty cylinders as it backtracked over the moments when they had touched.

“Means I’m really good with my hands,” Ishca purred.

“Ohhh…” Aki’s blush spread up his neck and across his cheeks in a manner Ishca found sort of adorable. Being with vampires, no one blushed, and though Ishca could always tell what everyone’s emotions were anyway, it was nice to see the effect his was having on his host.

“I can show you, if you like…”

Aki licked his lips, his pink tongue flicking nervously, and Ishca took it as an invitation to proceed. A moment later, he had Aki backed up against the kitchen table, and the young man shivered with nervousness as Ishca touched him. Aki’s brain was full of sex, and Ishca filtered through the remembered pornography, the imagined fantasy, and the memories of lover’s past, and found the heat of Aki’s sexual desire. Regardless of anything else, Aki wanted him, desired him; and Ishca smiled, ran his fingers up into the back of Aki’s hair, blocked a memory of a hairdresser with a happy smile and chatty voice doing the same thing, and pushed his tongue down Aki’s throat. There was a moment of shock, and Ishca could feel his host working out what he should have been thinking, trying to control the emotions he communicated to his guest. But then Ishca pressed his palm directly over the bulge of Aki’s crotch, and the empath knew he’d judged his approach just right.

Aki loved to have the upper hand, and Ishca was more than happy to be pushed away, pinned against the work surface as Aki took over their kiss. The Rectory Officer opened him up with tongue and hands, and Ishca dived into the strength of his desire, ignoring the desperate edge it bore, and moaned against his lover. He had firm hands, a strong grip, and Ishca only saw what was coming a moment before Aki spun him round and shoved his trousers down, kicking his feet apart and gripping his hips. Ishca braced himself against the surface and groaned as the hard heat of Aki’s cock slapped against his arse.

“Mmmm…” Aki pressed against Ishca’s spine, massaging firm lines up his pale skin, “look at you arching your back… eager, aren’t we?”

“Nghhh…” Ishca might have had a direct line into everything Aki was feeling, but that didn’t mean he was any better at controlling his own raging desire. “Oh fuck… pleasepleaseplease…”

“My pleasure,” Aki rumbled. There was a bottle of oil on the surface, and Ishca shivered with twinned revulsion and delight as Aki grabbed for it and splashed the slick liquid over his opening. He pulled Ishca’s cheeks apart with his thumbs, and the empath could see reflected through his lover, how incredibly desperate and sluttish he looked as he moved his hips back into Aki’s touch. “Ahhh… would you look at that?”

Ishca moaned when he was penetrated, Aki’s hot flesh sliding into him as snugly as a key in a lock. He clenched his fist on the surface, and was pulled out of himself for a moment by the image of Aki slamming his fist into the surface, the scream and crack of a dislocating knuckle, and the hot scent of the wood as it singed under his touch. Aki gripped his hips, nothing but fiery passion pouring through everywhere their skin touched, and Ishca wanted to scream in pleasure, pressing his forehead to the kitchen surface, eyes screwed shut in pleasure that bordered almost on pain. Even so, he thrust back against Aki hard as he could, and moaned, whimpered, pleaded, and begged without shame as he was thoroughly reamed.

“Fuck…!”

“Yes!” Aki snarled, his fingers digging into Ishca’s ribs, and three juddering thrusts later they came together with a pair of wordless snarls. Ishca felt his lover collapse against his back, panting hard. The empath blinked softly, tasting again the barbecue flavoured kiss they had shared. He felt Aki’s smile.

“So,” the young Rectory Officer tried to make his voice as normal as possible, despite still being intimately joined to his lover, “can I ask you to stay the night?”