Sanctuary - 14. Chapter 14 - Ishca

“So the new body of work will be ready on Monday.”

“I want exclusive previews before the show opens,” the client flicked open and checked his phone, “Sunday night. You’ll be there right?”

“Of course,” Ishca gave the man his best winning smile. “We’ll expect your car.”

“Always a pleasure.”

Ishca watched the man in the slick suit leave, and as the town car pulled away, turned around to see the gathered artists lingering in the doorway behind him in a variety of paint, clay, and oil spattered clothes.

“Did he just…?”

“Seriously?”

“We just got an exclusive preview from…. Are you fucking kidding me!?”

Ishca laughed; it had been a good day.

The artists went back to their respective studios and the broken down little kitchen to frantically finish off their work and package pieces for the exhibit. Ishca had the feeling that paint would still be drying on some of the pieces when the show opened on Monday, but by then, hopefully there would be a collection of red stickers denoting the pre-sale of enough pieces to make the rest of the show sell-out before the week closed. For the collection of artists who ‘ran’ the studio, it was the first time they’d ever had anyone organised enough to pull in the sort of clients Ishca had rounded up over the previous month.

“You’re some kind of god-send, you know that?” Ishca’s favourite artist, Dayna, stood in the doorway to his little office in her oil-paint smattered overall wearing the biggest smile Ishca had ever seen. “Are we paying you enough?”

“Haha! Well I’m glad you think so. I’m not sure God would be best pleased with me though.” Ishca stretched in his leatherette desk chair, feeling a little bit like an executive for a moment, and smiled. “It’s just about being in the right place at the right time.”

“Uh-huh.” Dayna rolled her eyes in disbelief. “Nothing, obviously, to do with your uncanny talent for knowing exactly which pieces to show which customers, and being able to talk about them like you know what was going on inside a person’s head while we worked on ‘em?” Dayna hugged Ishca around the back of his chair and rubbed his arm. “You do know that was Charles Saa-?”

“I know who it was, Dayna.”

“And how exactly did you bump into him, take him for coffee, and end up selling him an-hundred-thousand-pounds worth of art? Who does that?”

“I’m just lucky,” Ishca replied.

“Uh-huh, you keep thinking that; I’m gonna go count my commission.”

Ishca turned back to his desk, strewn with bits of paper and an ancient clunky laptop which he had rescued from a skip out back of the studio, and smiled to himself. He’d got the job on charm and what Dayna called his uncanny ability to read people, and then carved out his niche office by moving stacks of old bits of canvas, bags of long-dead clay, and the general flotsam and jetsam of the studio. And then he’d discovered the art.

Ishca’s only experience of being around art and artists was a stint of life modelling classes he’d sat for as a model, mostly because there had been a certain guy in the class who had gazed at him with a kind of lust Ishca had wanted to get drunk on, but as soon as he had started wandering through the studio, the colours and shapes had made him want to touch them. Ishca had never been good at not touching things when he wasn’t supposed to, so Dayna had walked back into her space to find Ishca stroking one of her enormous canvases in tears, because all he could feel when he touched it was the loss she’d felt of the child who’d never made it into the world. Every piece of art, from the tiny hand embroidered illustrations of birds, fish, and flowers produced by an unlikely bear of man named Victor to the life sized clay figurines Gianni made which were faintly creepy until each person came across the one that spoke to them, every piece told a story to Ishca that only the person who’d made it knew. To him, the idea of matching up clients to the right piece of art, was as simple as alphabetising Aki’s collection of paperbacks; a recreational half hour which had made his boyfriend quietly crazy. The first few sales had been a case of shaking hands, smiling politely, then walking in the right direction, and by the time he’d run into Charles, Ishca had it down to a fine well-practiced art.

He scanned over the accounts, pinned the final price and pieces lists onto the studio notice board, and wrote ‘PACKED BY SATURDAY PLEASE’ in big red letters at the top, and shrugged into his long black coat as he left.

“You know, that thing is gonna unravel one of these days.” Ishca glanced across the pavement to see his brother sitting on the low brick wall, looking casual and sensible in jeans and a corduroy jacket. “When was the last time you washed that thing?”

“Leave off Ig.” Ishca plucked at the collar of his coat and sniffed it, then frowned as Ig got up and fell into place beside him. “How are the kids?”

“They miss their uncle. You should come visit sometime.”

“Well that goes for you too,” Ishca replied quickly. “London isn’t so far you know; you could bring the girls up on the train and…” He didn’t finish the thought out loud, but stuck his hands in his pockets as he walked.

“So…?”

“I got a job.”

“I saw that; good for you little brother.” Ig’s smile was as big and bold as it had ever been, and Ishca couldn’t help but grin back at the memory of his brother walking next to him. “And that little smile tells me it’s going rather well?”

Ishca skipped around his brother in a circle and tugged at the corner of Ig’s jacket.

“You haven’t changed.”

“You know the guy who owns that enormous private collection on the river? He wants to view the new collection privately before it opens. Ten artists, mixed media, I booked them a huge gallery over on the north side of the river – walls like you would not believe – and I get seven percent commission on top of my regular pay.”

“You’re going to be rich, kiddo.”

“I wanna take Aki out for dinner.”

“Yeah? And I thought all your boyfriends were wealthy?”

“Ig! Aki’s different. You’ll… see.” Ishca turned to face his brother, but he was talking to the empty evening air. “Dammit. He’s so good at that.” He turned his key in the front door and wandered into the house. “Hey babe!”

“Studio!”

“You know, when Hel finds out the university let you off for three days over half term, he’s gonna regret going up North.” Ishca hung his coat on the bannister and glanced into the fridge on his way towards Aki’s tiny studio. The university still needed the kilns to fire all of the waiting student’s work, but Ishca knew the car had been stacked the previous morning with pieces to fill in the gaps in every square inch of shelf space. Ishca rounded the door of the studio, and grinned in a self-satisfied manner. Aki was shirtless at the wheel, but the board in front of him was empty, and he was pinching out a little shape in black clay with his elbows resting on the rim of the wheel. “On the other hand, I’m kinda pleased he ain’t here. You might be the perfect end to my great day.”

“Oh yeah?” Aki turned to face him. He had clay in various colours smeared on his arms and one cheek, and splattered over his chest and abdomen from the spinning of the wheel. He placed the little figurine on the empty board and sat back with a pleased smile. “And what did you do today, pretty one?”

“I might’ve sold a lot of art,” Ishca bit his lip and grinned. “If I’d known you were sitting at home shirtless and sweaty, I wouldn’t have gone in…”

“Hey, I got a lot of work done today. Sounds like you did too.” Aki craned his neck to look past Ishca at the still open door. “An’ there ain’t anybody else home…”

“Anyone would think you’d planned this,” Ishca purred.

The empath took Aki’s position as an open invitation to step across and straddle his lap, the wheel dish poking him in the small of the back as Aki wrapped his strong hands around his wrists and hoisted Ishca’s arms over his shoulders. The moment their skin touched, Ishca was subsumed into his day, and found his head spinning gently with the motion of the wheel, watching a little blue wolf running around the bowl as it formed under Aki’s firm hands. Flames raced around after the imagined canine, and Ishca found himself filled with Aki’s soft worries for the boy. Underneath the clay and the warmth and the fire he felt the love Aki was carrying around for the scrawny little kid. As Ishca was brought back into himself by Aki’s super-warm kiss, he realised the other man didn’t know; he hadn’t worked out that what he felt for the kid was a rich kind of love he hadn’t known before. Ishca remembered it; knew it every time his brother smiled at him and wrapped him up in a great big bear hug, and he smiled into the kiss, hoping he was there to witness the moment when Aki worked out what was going on inside his heart.

*

“I think I might have died and gone to heaven…” Aki smiled in a deeply satisfied and lazy manner as he gazed at Ishca returning to their bedroom, carrying a tray bearing two cups of coffee, a bottle of juice, and a stack of toast. Even without touching the part-demon, Ishca could feel the deep contentment radiating from him, the kind of soft gratification that could only come from getting laid in the best way ever. Ishca balanced the tray on Aki’s bedside table and slunk back under the sheets to cuddle up to his boyfriend. “You’re the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me,” Aki purred. “So tell me all about this art you sold yesterday?”

“Arranged to sell; not the same thing.”

Ishca folded his arms on Aki’s strong chest and munched his way through a slice of toast as he filled Aki in on all the details of the gallery opening and the private viewing. Through every place their skin touched, which was most of it, he could feel Aki’s attentiveness and his interest in what Ishca had to say, but it was all overlaid with lustful tones. Try as he might to concentrate, the other man couldn’t help but remember flash-fast images of the previous night, like the sexy montage of a film. They’d kissed in the studio, until Ishca had felt Aki’s arousal pressing against his perineum, but before Ishca could say a word he was hoisted up in Aki’s arms, legs wrapping around his waist. Aki had fucked him raw on the kitchen surface, until they’d been sweaty and tired, and then fallen to his knees in the shower to worship Ishca’s cock. And not for one moment throughout the whole night of waking up to have lazy inarticulate sex in the dark had there been anything in Aki’s mind other than a kind of perfect adoration for his lover. Ishca had woken up feeling like a god.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” Aki sipped his coffee with a happy grin. “So do I get to come and see this art show too?”

“Hel will be back by then. We’ll all go,” Ishca beamed. “Family outing?”

“Oh…” Aki blinked hard, “Jeez, I keep forgetting that for all legal purposes he is my kid. How do you think he’s doing up there with Peter and James?”

“Oh, I’ll bet he’s doing fine. Getting him back will be the hard part.”

“Really?” Aki frowned. “You don’t think he’d be better off up there, d’you?” The Rectory Officer smoothed Ishca’s hair with one large hand as the young man turned to face him properly, lying along Aki’s side, feeling all his worries through their skin. He watched Aki place the little clay figurine of the wolf into the kiln with a handful of alumina powder underneath it, and felt the man’s smile at seeing it sit so close to the rough cracked shape Hel had made sitting on the studio floor. But he also heard Aki’s voice inside his own skull. Wouldn’t he cope better with someone more like him? More wolf?

“No,” Ishca shook his head decisively, “I do not think that boy should go and live with the object of his desire.”

“Huh? What does that mean?”

“James… the little boy has got a crush the size of the City of London.”

Aki stared at him, and Ishca felt his shock reverberate through their skin like the skin of a drum.

“Hel’s gay?”

Ishca gave his lover a rueful smile.

“I don’t think he’s figured it out yet. Maybe?”

Aki stared at the ceiling, and blinked hard.

“Ahhh… fuck.”