Sanctuary - 7. Chapter 7 - Aki

Aki sat down in front of the wheel and exhaled until there was no air left in his lungs. The senior ceramics lecturer had called in sick, the third year master’s students were at a conference, and the new junior lecturer was so hung-over she had shut herself in the office with a coffee cup the size of her head and put a sign on the door saying she was out to lunch. Aki had spent his entire day babysitting the studio, herding the second years out of the glaze room, finding specialist tools for a distraught third year with a final piece which was trying to give her a panic attack, and trying to teach some basic clay thumbing skills to a group of brand new first years in the department for a short rotation. It had been hell, and way above and beyond the duties covered by Aki’s measly technician’s salary. Most of the students had finally gone home, and those who stayed were working independently to the soft rock music coming out of the radio, and no one was using the throwing room. Aki put his foot on the pedal, dipped his hands into the water and began to press the frustration of his day into the clay under his fingers.

Aki loved to throw clay. Moulding figures was wonderful, but conscious. For Aki, throwing vessels was cathartic, soothing, and even though Aki knew he should be heading home, getting dinner, and worrying about the fact that he had left an unstable teenager and a virtual but beautiful stranger alone in his home, he couldn’t resist. But the draw of the throwing wheel was too strong, and before Aki had even finished centering the clay mound in the middle of the wheel, he was lost in the nod and the motion of the wheel. He threw in time with breathing, bringing the clay out and up, pinching the collar of the neck as he sighed. By the time he slowed the wheel for a last set of fingernail stripe impressions, the vessel was sixteen inches high, and Aki felt happy but exhausted. He pinched the spout of the jug without thinking and attached a handle with his signature stamp in the base, and sliced the jug from the wheel base with a cheese wire before transferring it to a drying shelf near the window. There was another already there, a few days old, and Aki trimmed its foot with a wire tool before placing it back. In another few days it would be fully dry and ready to join the batch ready for bisque firing, and Aki found himself wondering when he would find time to spend a Saturday happily glazing and setting fire to his work in the raku kiln when his house was full of unknown supernaturals.

Aki was not too distracted on his journey home to forget his promise to Hel, and he filled the back of his car with half his take home pay in meat and other groceries, as well as a pair of brightly colour t-shirts from the teens clothing section of the supermarket, a pair of jeans he figured would fit the boy well enough and a multi-pack of plain black boxer shorts. Being homeless, starving, and dressed in Aki’s old clothes couldn’t have been doing anything good to the kid’s self-esteem. He shouldered open his front door, keys in teeth, trying not to drop the shopping bags, and turned to see Hel’s body slouched in an armchair. The key clattered to the floor.

“Hel?” Aki divested himself of the shopping without caring where it fell, and crossed the room swiftly to the body of the boy. He looked dead, but Aki reminded himself the moment he touched the dry skin of the boy’s wrist to find his pulse that Hel was known for abandoning his physical form in moments of stress. He touched the kid’s hair, which was now clean, de-knotted, and trimmed into a fashionable shape with a short back and sides and wavy fringe, and frowned. “Ishca!”

“Oh, hey; you’re back.” The man Aki had happily shared his bed with appeared behind him and stepped delicately over the shopping, “how was work?”

“What the fuck happened?”

“He is one overly stressed spirit guide, you know that? Poor kid.”

“Ishca,” Aki found himself getting hot all over and tried to take a soothing breath, “explain.”

“He freaked out when he saw me,” the young man shrugged, “I don’t think he’s ever seen an empath before. Before I could explain he ran through the wall.”

“Which wall?” Aki gaped. He’d lost a ward of the Rectory. Aki wanted to kick himself for leaving Hel alone with Ishca. He hadn’t had a visitor who actually needed him for more than a year, not like this, and now he’d lost a minor, a troubled kid, and a rare species too boot. Hel’s body might have been sitting in the front room, but he wasn’t in it. Ishca didn’t answer him, and Aki shook the slender man’s shoulders with force. “WHICH WALL!?”

“That one!” Ishca glared at him, pointing through to the door between the kitchen and the garage. “But the door is locked.”

“Won’t make a difference now,” Aki muttered, feeling his anger deflate quickly. “He’ll be long gone.”

“Er…” Ishca frowned at him, “he’s still there. He stopped being distressed about an hour ago, now he’s just miserable.”

“Huh?”

Ishca rolled his eyes, as though it was obvious.

“He’s touching the wall? It’s not the best reading in the world, but it’s clear enough….” Ishca rubbed his shoulder, “Now how come you spent an hour up to your wrists in wet clay today?”

Aki blinked at his lover, and realised that they’d never gotten around to exchanging anything past their names and kisses. Ishca had no idea who he was, what he did, or anything about him; and Aki was none the wiser about his lover either. It seemed suddenly like an enormous oversight.

“It’s my job,” he muttered softly, then went to the door leading into the tiny studio. “Hel? Hey bud, it’s me. You wanna come on out of there?”

There was no answer, not even a whimper, and Aki frowned at his other visitor.

“You’re sure he’s there?”

“You realise that empaths are shite liars right?”

“Hel… c’mon kid,” Aki sighed, “I’m gonna unlock the door and come in OK?”

This time a high pitched whine followed his words, and Aki turned to look at the beautiful man he’d shared his bed with the previous night.

“What do empaths look like to a spirit guide?”

Ishca bit his lip and looked guilty.

“Repeating pattern grabbing at anything which comes near us? And we’re coloured by what we’ve had contact with.”

“What, so you look like me?”

“With a blend of where I was before,” Ishca admitted uncomfortably.

Aki knew he didn’t actually want to know the answer to the question, but he asked anyway out of sheer bloody minded curiosity.

“Where were you before?”

“Living with vampires.”

“Ah, fuck.”

*

It had taken Aki an hour to persuade the faintly glowing blue wolf to come out of the studio, and Aki had been thankful that when he’d emerged, Ishca had put the groceries away and wasn’t in sight. Aki carried the body of the boy up to his room, the wolf following on his heels, and lain him on the bed. He looked a lot more normal with his hair cut and styled, and Aki wondered what on earth he was going to do in the long term. It was as clear as day that the boy wasn’t going to be ready to be independent for a good long while: and why should he have been, when humans his age were still children in so many ways, and about as autonomous as puppies?

The blue wolf had curled up with his body, resting his muzzle on his own sternum as it rose and fell ever so slowly, and Aki spent a little while showing him the clothes he’d bought for the kid. Hel’s ears twitched, but Aki had never been very good with dogs, and he couldn’t tell if it was a happy sign or not. He promised Hel they’d go shopping at the weekend to get him some more stuff, then left the wolf alone with himself.

“Aki?” Ishca waited for him in the hallway, looking nervous but still sexy. Aki wondered if it was even conscious: the way he bit his lip and moved his hips, giving off all the right signals to put Aki’s brain into overdrive. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise he’d be that…”

“It’s not your fault,” Aki sighed, but reached out an arm to the empath. Ishca snuggled against his side, and though Aki couldn’t feel it, he knew the other man was absorbing the stress he felt and finding things out which Aki wasn’t consciously broadcasting. Regardless, it felt good to have a warm body against his. “You cut his hair.”

“Yeah, I figured he could do with a little bit of pampering,” Ishca ran his fingers through Aki’s thick hair and smiled, “looks like you could too.”

“I don’t need you fussing over me and learning all my secrets.”

“No fair,” Ishca pouted in an adorable manner.

“Like you wouldn’t learn them anyway,” Aki arched a quizzical eyebrow at his guest, “but I’m not sure we should have sex in the kitchen again. I don’t fancy the idea of Hel walking in on us.”

“Good point.”

“Now, can you cook?” Aki asked with a broad grin, when Ishca nodded, he slapped the slender man’s arse firmly. “Good, go make yourself busy. I have important Rectory Officer stuff to do.”

Aki waited until the empath had wandered away downstairs, swinging his hips flirtatiously until he was out of sight, then sat on the end of his bed and dialled Peter’s number.

“Hello?” It was James, and Aki sighed.

“Hey James.”

“Hey there Flamey-One, what can we do for you? Peter’s out getting pizza.”

“I need his help.”

“Hey, is this with the pup? Was I right?” James sounded much more excited than Aki felt was proper, given the circumstances.

“No, not exactly. He’s a spirit animal.”

“Well fuck me sideways…” James whistled in surprise. “And he’s a wolf? It’s all happening down there at station twelve, huh?”

“Yeah,” Aki shook his head, “it really is. Get Peter to call me, OK?”

“Sure thing, Aki. Have fun.”

Aki hung up the phone, and wondered what he’d done to force the universe to fuck up his life so monumentally in quite so little time. Last week he had come home from a not too dissimilar day at work, eaten a toasted sandwich standing over the sink, and carried an open beer and a packet of crisps into his studio. Normally Aki would relax with his clay, smoothing little figures out of porcelain and chunky black ceramic paste, adding to the army of little creatures which decorated his studio and filled his dreams. But as though having a young, anxious and emotionally unstable teenage runaway animal guide turn up on his doorstep wasn’t enough, he was now also playing host to a man who made his libido jump into the driving seat every time he was in the same room.

After eight months with no late night company but his own right hand, Aki would have loved to think about nothing else but the tight, hot feeling which grew in the pit of his stomach as he caught sight of Ishca in the kitchen. The beautiful man was dancing, hopping from foot to foot in time with the radio and swivelling his hips as he sprinkled salt and spice into the pan. The idea of being with someone that beautiful, who could cook, who was more than human, and who whimpered and begged and arched his back when Aki fucked him was so incredibly enticing. But Aki could feel the niggling worry in the back of his mind. The bit of himself which over thought everything and his mother had always said came from her side of the family, wondered how on earth he was going to managed not to screw up two very different relationships.

Ishca saw him and stopped dancing, waving him over with a spatula.

“Hey, what’s this?”

“Fajitas,” Ishca smiled like the sun coming out.

“You made flat breads?”

“Yeah,” the man shrugged like it was nothing, “sit down; let’s eat.”

Aki sprinkled cheese into his wrap before he rolled it up and ate happily.

“What’s the betting Hel will have demolished any left overs by morning?”

“Oh, pretty high,” Ishca gestured to the plate on the kitchen surface where four fat fajitas were ready rolled up and steaming softly, “I made extras for him.”

“That’s really thoughtful.” Aki tried to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“He’s hungry, and scared. But mostly he’s scared of being hungry.”

“He doesn’t need to worry about that; it’s not like I’m gonna kick him out.” Aki ate the rest of his fajita, and started to assemble another one.

Ishca looked at him levelly, and frowned.

“Yeah, but does he know that?”