Fic: Changing of the Guard
Jensen’s alarm clock doesn’t wake him up, because the loud, obnoxious crowing of a rooster roused him from his sleep half an hour ago. He’s been lying awake staring up at a crack in the ceiling ever since, wondering if he’s finally gotten some good luck or if this too is going to go to shit like most things in his life do.
Larry and Brenda Brown seem nice enough, but if the last thirteen years have taught him anything, it’s that people are two-face lying assholes and that when push comes to shove, you never really know anyone.
The room that Jensen is sleeping in belongs to Larry and Brenda’s eldest son, Michael, who’s thirty now, and married, with a little girl. He’s a marketing executive who lives in California and has no interest in the family farm.
Michael’s football trophies still stand, carefully dusted, on the top ledge of his bookshelf. He has an interesting collection of books; Kurt Vonnegut, Frank Herbert, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula Le Guin, George Orwell; and there are still a couple of Nirvana and Guns ‘n’ Roses posters up on the walls. So a jock, but a smart one, with decent taste in music; who lit out of Iowa for UCLA the second he graduated high school and never looked back.
The Brown’s younger son (Gary), Jensen learned last night over supper, joined the Marines the day he turned eighteen, and was killed in Operation Desert Storm a week after his twenty-first birthday. His bedroom is a shrine; Brenda showed it to him last night and then said he wasn’t to so much as breathe on the door handle.
Larry and Brenda used to raise corn, but as they’ve gotten older, they’ve sold off the farm, bit by bit, until all they have left now is ten acres, on which they have free-range laying hens and a dozen goats that they use for milk and making cheese. Larry also has a business on the side, cutting and baling hay for other, larger farms as well as delivering hay to cattle farmers; which is how Jensen met him.
Just over a week ago, Jensen had been living in Des Moines and working at a factory that made fiberglass molds. It wasn’t the most exciting work he’d ever done, but at least it meant he could pay his half of the rent and bills. The other half was paid by his boyfriend, Brent, who Jensen had met at a Club seven months earlier. Jensen had just arrived in town and was staying in The Starlight Motel, a dirt cheap place where most of his neighbors were in and out of their rooms in under an hour. Brent inviting him to stay at his place was a Godsend. The man was easy on the eyes and good enough in bed that his voracious sexual appetite wasn’t a chore; and he started calling Jensen his boyfriend in less than a month. Brent was five years older than Jensen and worked in insurance and Jensen had been completely blindsided when he’d gotten home one night to an ‘I don’t think this is working out’ speech. Apparently he wasn’t ambitious enough for Brent and the fact that he was ‘a fucking gorgeous twink’ who ‘took it up the ass like a pro’ didn’t make up for the fact that Jensen was a blue collar nobody from nowhere and if Brent was going to climb the corporate ladder, then he needed to be with somebody who was somebody. No offense.
Jensen packed up his stuff (there wasn’t much; it all fit into a backpack and a duffel bag) and moved back into The Starlight Motel. He handed in his notice at work the next day and a week later he fronted up to the Greyhound depot and took the next bus out of town that was in his price range; which happened to be going to Chicago.
The bus had a fifteen minute stop in Marshallville and that was where fate had intervened. Jensen hauled his bags off the bus with him, because everything he owned was in those bags and he wasn’t letting them out of his sight. He went into McDonald’s to use the restroom and walked in on two guys about his own age, beating up a third guy who was on the floor with his arms wrapped around his head, crying.
“Walk away man,” one of the attackers said to Jensen.
It would’ve been the smart thing to do, but Jensen couldn’t do it. He’d heard the slurs the men were spitting at the guy on the floor; had been in his place before; and knew it would eat at him if he didn’t try to help.
He opened the restroom door and the thugs relaxed slightly. “Someone call 911,” Jensen called out, “there’s a guy getting beaten up in here.”
The attackers fled when the McDonald’s duty manager came to see what was going on and Jensen sat with the victim-Warren-until by the police arrived and took both of their statements. By the time the cops took Warren to the hospital, the bus to Chicago had long since gone, so Jensen checked into the local Super 8 and figured he’d stick around for a while; the cops had mentioned that they might need him again if the assault went to court and they hadn’t been happy that he currently had no fixed address. Jensen figured that here was as good a place as any to stay for a while. It was harvest time and some of the surrounding farms were bound to be looking for laborers. Jensen had some experience with farm work; he’d been living with the Taylors in Oklahoma during Grade 5 and 6, and they’d had a wheat farm.
Jensen sighs and throws back the Iowa Hawkeyes quilt cover. The wooden floor is cold on his feet and he puts on a pair of thick woollen socks first, before dressing quickly in sturdy dark blue jeans, a grey Henley and a red-and-white checked over-shirt. He digs the Stetson that used to belong to his dad out of the bottom of his backpack and bends it back into shape, carrying it with him out of the bedroom. He stops by the bathroom, brushes his teeth and washes his hands and face before joining Brenda and Larry in the kitchen.
The farmhouse is over 150 years old, Jensen learnt last night, and it’s been refurbished several times. They did a great job with the kitchen, in his opinion. The cupboards and shelves are all a warm hardwood and the big black wrought iron oven and cooktop nestles nicely into the cavity where there was once a wood-burning hob. They even kept the mantelpiece and brickwork so that it gives the impression of still being a fireplace.
Larry is sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper, a cup of coffee steaming beside him. Brenda turns to greet him from where she’s hovering over the stove with a spatula in hand. She’s a heavyset woman, big boned and strong, and Jensen got the very distinct impression when Larry turned up yesterday with Jensen in tow, that Brenda was delighted to have a new audience for her gossip, because the woman sure does like to talk. Her husband, in contrast, is the taciturn type. He’s a little shorter than his wife, wiry and muscular with weathered, tanned skin and a droopy grey moustache. He acknowledges Jensen’s presence with a brief head nod and an approving smile at the Stetson, leaving his wife to greet him enthusiastically and usher him to a seat, asking Jensen how he slept and generally fussing around him like no-one’s done in a long while. Physically, she’s nothing like Karen Taylor, but she has the same kindness in her eyes and Jensen has to take a steadying breath because no-one ever told him how long Karen survived after the powers-that-be (and Frank too, probably; he hadn’t coped well with his wife’s illness) decided it would be best for everyone if they found him a new foster family. For all he knows she went into remission and is living happily down in Oklahoma with a new foster kid. Not knowing feels like unfinished business and it still kind of hurts.
Jensen accepts a strongly brewed coffee and a serving of bacon, eggs, sausage and toast. While they eat, Larry runs over the tasks he’s going to want Jensen to take care of while he’s out delivering hay to a cattle farmer two counties over.
“I’ll walk you through everythin’ before I head out,” Larry says.
Breakfast finished, they push away from the table. Brenda refuses Jensen’s offer to help with the dishes, telling him he’s got plenty of work to be getting on with. Larry casts a critical eye over Jensen’s outfit. He seems to approve of his jeans, which are the durable, hard wearing type, not the fashionable type that fall apart in six months.
“Got a pair of shit-kickers?” he asks.
Jensen doesn’t. He only has the one pair of boots and while they’re certainly old and not much to look at, he’s not keen to ruin them completely. Larry tsks and disappears out into the storm porch. He’s back before Jensen can do much more than scratch his head uncomfortably and wonder whether he’s supposed to be following the older man.
“Here,” Larry thrusts a pair of black boots at him. “They were Gary’s,” he shoots a defiant look at his wife. “Oughta fit.”
Jensen takes the boots, but he has enough experience with grief to know that he needs to tread carefully here, so he looks for Brenda’s nod before sitting down and pulling them on. They’re a good fit and Jensen wonders what it means-if it means anything-that he has stepped so easily into a dead man’s boots.
Larry nods, satisfied. “There’s a spare pair of Muck boots out in the stable that oughta do you too,” he says.
Brenda hands Jensen a small bowl of cream and Larry harrumphs and stomps back out into the storm porch. “Here,” she doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “Larry will show you where to put it.”
‘Where to put it’ is behind the barn where the hens roost, right beside a small ring of mushrooms.
“You got a cat, huh?” Jensen says, but Larry just rolls his eyes and leads the way into the barn and after that Jensen is too busy learning the ropes and then doing his job to wonder any more about the cat.
By the time Brenda calls him for lunch at midday Jensen has fed the chickens and let them outside to roam freely, fed the goats and let them out into the top paddock, fed the horses and let them out into the bottom paddock, mucked out the barns and the stables, collected the eggs and filled the water troughs. It’s been a while since he did this much physical labor and he’s missed it. The weather’s cool-no more than mid-fifties if his guess is accurate-but the work keeps him warm.
Lunch is sandwiches and hot apple pie and Brenda tells him all about her women’s ten pin bowling team and how they were runners up in the regional championships and how she used to be a nurse until she married Larry and does Jensen have any brothers and sisters?
It shouldn’t be a hard question and yet his response gets stuck in his throat because for the first time in a long while he wants to answer truthfully instead of giving his standard negative response.
Brenda reaches out and puts a hand over his and Jensen raises his head and looks up at her. “I’m sorry,” she says gently and Jensen knows she can see something of the answer in his eyes.
He attempts a shrug. “It was a long time ago,” he says, throat raw and voice husky.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Brenda asks.
He really doesn’t. He didn’t just lose his siblings that day, he lost his entire family. All it took for Jensen’s life to descend into horror was a doddery old man pulling his ‘75 Buick out into oncoming traffic without looking. But. He’s spent the day walking around in Brenda’s dead son’s boots so he feels he owes her something.
“I lost everyone,” he says. “Mom and Dad. Both my little sisters. I was at a friend’s birthday party,” he gives a short bark of laughter. “I still get sick whenever I see or smell chocolate cake.”
The hand that isn’t over his is now fluttering in front of Brenda’s mouth and her eyes are filled with tears. “Dear Lord,” she says. “How old were you?”
When Jensen tells her that he was six, her tears start to fall and he pulls away and stands up. “You want a coffee? How about I put a pot of coffee on?”
She nods and he moves to the bench and fills the carafe with water, before getting out the ground coffee and a scoop. Brenda is obviously trying to pull herself together so he casts about for something to say, to distract her. “Hey, what’s the cat’s name?” he asks. “I put the cream out for it this morning, but I haven’t seen it yet. I know it was around, though because when I looked later the cream had gone.”
Brenda is looking at him with an odd expression on her face. “We don’t have a cat,” she says. “The cream is for the fairies.”
Jensen is pretty sure that Brenda said the cream was for the fairies. Just to be sure he asks her to repeat what she said, as though he hadn’t heard her properly.
“The fairies,” she says. “The cream is for the fairies.”
Maybe it’s a slang expression for some kind of local critter. Jensen nods. “Fairies?” he repeats. “As in…?”
“Fairies,” Brenda replies gravely. “The wee folk. Enchanted beings with wings.”
“Oh,” Jensen says. Damn. Brenda had seemed so nice. And sane.
“That’s good, I guess,” he says faintly, “because cats are lactose intolerant so you shouldn’t really give them cream. I didn’t want to say anything, but…” he trails off and then busies himself making the coffee.
Behind him, Brenda chuckles. “You think I’m crazy,” she says. “That’s okay. You’ll either learn the truth or you won’t and it doesn’t much matter either way. In the meantime, just humor a poor old woman. The cream is a respectful offering. If we don’t make it, the Fae will make their displeasure known with a lot of really annoying mischief.”
Later that afternoon, once Jensen has convinced Brenda that he knows how to ride, she lets him saddle up Black Betty, a sweet-tempered black mare, to ride the boundary fences. He tethers her to a fence post while he checks the vegetable patch and pulls a few weeds. Once that’s done it’s time to put the horses back in the stable and the goats back in the barn and then he spends a ridiculous amount of time trying to shoo all the hens back inside their barn. They’re not keen to go, and squawk and run and flap their clipped wings. Brenda comes out to help. She spent most of the day making cheese and pickling vegetables.
As the two of them chase the hens back into the barn, Jensen doesn’t remember the last time he laughed so much. If the other shoe, so to speak, is that Brenda believes in fairies, then Jensen figures that’s a small price to pay.
The next few days pass much the same as the first one. On the second morning, as Jensen heads out of the house carrying a bowl of cream, Larry clears his throat and claps a hand on his shoulder.
“Brenda told you then? Why she puts the cream out?”
Jensen confirms that she did and Larry asks him what he thinks about it.
Jensen stops walking and turns to face the older man. “Can’t say as I believe in fairies,” he says. “But putting cream out seems harmless enough. And if it keeps Brenda happy,” he shrugs.
Larry’s smile is pleased. “Exactly right,” he says. “She’s a good woman, my Brenda. She has a few…quirky beliefs. But that’s because of her Irish heritage.”
On Saturday afternoon Brenda goes bowling. She takes Jensen with her. He would really have preferred to spend his free time lying on his bed reading one of Michael’s books, but the Browns are sort of insistent that he get out into town and meet some people his own age. Jensen has already met some of the townsfolk who are his age and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Brenda suggests that Jensen might get lucky and meet a nice girl, as though that will definitely by the clincher. He hasn’t mentioned that he’s gay. Too many foster families reacted badly for him to be anything other than cautious about who he tells and when. So Jensen goes with her, because she wants him to and he doesn’t want to be rude.
The Kingpin Bowling Center is licensed and Jensen spends most of his time fetching drinks for the women in Brenda’s team. Once the competition is done, the women hang around to play a bit more, just for fun. When they learn that Jensen has only bowled a couple of times before, they insist on him taking a turn so that they can teach him. They’re a little tipsy and Jensen suspects that a couple of the louder, more raucous women just want an excuse to get their hands on him. Sandy, a 50-something platinum blonde who wears far too much blue eye-shadow spends more time than Jensen is comfortable with positioning his hips. He tolerates her with as much good humor as he can muster and is grateful when Brenda comes and rescues him with a bottle of Bud Light. They move away from the bowling lanes and across to a small round plastic bar table. Jensen pulls himself up onto a bar stool, but Brenda opts to stand.
Jensen takes a long swig of his beer and then grins. “This is probably a bad time to tell you I’m only twenty, huh?” he says.
Brenda’s eyebrows shoot up. “Jerry didn’t card you when you were buying drinks for us?”
“Nope. I think he was just relieved he didn’t have to deal with y’all. Some of your ladies are a little flirty.”
Brenda laughs. “That they are,” she purses her lips. “Is that a hint of Texas I hear in your voice?”
“Born and raised…for the first eight years anyway,” Jensen salutes her with his beer.
Brenda takes a sip of her wine and fiddles with the stem of the glass for a moment before asking him why he moved interstate at eight.
“My grandma had a stroke,” he says, matter-of-factly. “She didn’t die. Not right off, anyway, but she couldn’t even feed herself so she had to go into a home. They sent me to live with my other grandparents, my dad’s parents, who lived in Oklahoma.”
Brenda nods. “And you were able to stay with them throughout your childhood?”
Jensen shakes his head. “Let’s just say it didn’t work out,” he says. He hopes she can hear the finality in his tone, hopes she understands that the eight months he spent with his Ackles grandparents are not something he likes to dwell on. While his parents had been alive, they’d never once visited them or had them come stay. Jensen doesn’t even remember his dad talking about them. He thinks he knows, now, why that might have been. Grandpa Ackles was a sexist, racist homophobe and if he had a point to make, he made it with his fists. Jensen had only been with them for two months when a teacher reported his bruises to Children’s Services. He’d been placed in emergency foster care while his grandparents underwent counselling and training. He was placed back with his grandparents a month later and then alternated between them and several different emergency placements for the next few months, Children’s Services removing him every time his grandfather lost his temper and lashed out and then attempting to reunite him with them. Eventually everyone accepted that it wasn’t going to work; that trying to keep him with family wasn’t worth the trauma and Jensen was put into the system permanently.
Over supper that night, Larry tells Jensen that if he ever wants to take the truck and head in to town for a little R ‘n’ R, subject to all his chores being done, and Larry not needing the truck himself, then he is more than welcome to.
“Thanks,” Jensen says. “But, uh. I don’t have a drivers licence.”
Jensen figures that Brenda must’ve updated Larry some on his background, because he merely nods, strokes his moustache and says, “You need someone to teach you?”
Jensen says that he does. By the time he was old enough to drive he’d been in a group home and there’d be no-one willing to teach him.
“Okay,” Larry says. “I guess I can make some time to do that.”
And so it goes. The Browns are kind and easy to live with and they have almost as many abandonment issues as Jensen does, so Jensen doesn’t think they’ll be kicking him out any time soon. Larry teaches him to drive. Jensen goes bowling with Brenda. He takes long rides on Black Betty.
Putting a bowl of cream down for the ‘fairies’ every day really is a small price to pay for finding the closest thing to a family he’s had in a while.
Everything in Jensen’s life is going awesomely until the morning he goes to put the cream down and finds a ten inch tall man dressed in a sparkly silver-colored suit and shiny black ballet pumps standing inside the circle of mushrooms. He has vivid blue eyes, a shock of messy dark hair, and shiny blue and silver butterfly wings.
Jensen rocks to a standstill. He stares. He blinks and rubs at his eyes. “What the fuck?” he says.
The little man…fairy (?) rolls his eyes. “Awesome,” he says. “It’s not bad enough that I’ve been sent to the ass end of the world, I’ve gotta cop a blithering idiot host as well.”
“What?” says Jensen. “Who are you calling an idiot?”
The…okay, okay…it is a fairy…freezes, his eyes widening in panic. “You can see me?” he hisses.
Jensen nods.
The fairy’s eyes become improbably large and his wings flutter frantically.
“What the fuck?” he says. And promptly vanishes.
“Aha!” Jensen calls out, waving an arm toward the ring of mushrooms. “Who’s the…the blithering idiot now, huh?”
“Misha!”
Misha squeezes his eyes tightly shut.
“Misha, come on!”
He really wishes that Jared would shut up. Jared is a good kid; for an Earth-Sídhe. Floppy-haired with big doe eyes, he is way too tall for a Fae, which is perhaps why Misha likes him so much. He likes people who are different; who don’t fit the mold.
“Inspection’s in five minutes,” Jared says, his voice rising urgently, “and you’re gonna be in so much trouble if you’re not ready by the time the Flight Commander comes in.”
Misha frowns. If he ignores him, then maybe Jared will just go away.
“Misha, please!”
Misha opens his eyes, a tactical error because very few can resist Jared’s mesmer. He is really quite gifted.
Misha climbs out of bed with a sigh and looks around the barracks with disdain. A whole month he’s been here, training. In his opinion, it’s an absolute travesty that a Fae of his céim-a prince of the Royal Court of Aes Sídhe; a great, great, great nephew of Queen Medbh herself, no less-is expected to take a turn at guarding the realm.
Misha makes his bed with a click of his fingers (strictly against regulations, they’re supposed to make them by hand; it’s good for discipline, apparently) and then saunters over to his locker and throws open the doors. In lieu of bathing, he gives himself a good spritz with perfumed water and then he chooses a nice suit to wear for Assignment Day.
Fair enough, he thinks, as he struggles sleepily into his pants, if they’d been training to fight dragons and minor gods. That’s the type of defending the realm he can really get behind. Danger. Excitement. Drama.
But guarding the Fae portals in the mortal realm? Degrading. Boring. Boring. And did he mention boring?
Misha has his shirt on, but hasn’t yet buttoned it up, when Flight Commander Jay Dee flies into the room. Jay Dee is a fearsome bearded warrior, strong, handsome and capable. He’s an Air-Sídhe and Misha has a lot of respect for him; tempered somewhat, it must be admitted, by the rumor that his name is actually Jeff. Misha bites back a snigger at the awful human-sounding name and manages to attract the attention of the man himself.
Jay Dee flies straight at him and then settles on his feet in front of Misha.
“Good morning, Misha,” Jay Dee says, in a deceptively friendly tone.
All the rest of the Fae Guard recruits are fully-dressed and properly groomed, standing at the foot of their beds in perfect parade rest, awaiting inspection.
Misha continues to button his shirt. “Morning, Sir,” he says. At the foot of the bed beside his, Jared tenses visibly. Misha grins. No-one can make ‘sir’ sound like an insult the way he can.
“Is there a reason,” Jay Dee says, “why you are not ready for inspection?”
“Yes,” Misha says. “I don’t really do mornings. And you do have a habit of starting out ridiculously early around here.”
Misha relishes the way everyone in the room holds their breath in horror.
Jay Dee just shakes his head and smiles sadly. “Such a child,” he says. Which is completely inaccurate. Misha is 253 years old.
“Alright everybody,” Jay Dee says. “Fall out,” he puts a hand on Misha’s chest. “Not you,” he says. He conjures a toothbrush and hands it to Misha.
“I have my own toothbrush, thank you,” Misha says.
Jay Dee grins. “Oh that’s not for your teeth,” he says. “It’s for you to clean the floors in the dormitory, and the bathroom too. And no using magic. Don’t think I can’t feel the shimmer of your magic around your bed. If I detect so much as a whiff of it when I come to inspect your work later, I’ll clip your wings and bind your powers for a month,”
Misha’s mouth falls open. He can’t! He wouldn’t! He looks into Jay Dee’s eyes. He so would.
“Do I make myself clear, Misha?”
Misha slumps. “Yes, sir,” he says, through gritted teeth. He frowns. “But…what about the guard assignments? It’s Assignment Day. We’re supposed to be claiming our preferences today.”
Jay Dee’s smile is nasty. “Oh, don’t you worry about that, Misha. I’ve got a special assignment picked out for you.”
Somehow, Misha doubts that he’s going to like it.
Misha is part way through the dormitory when Danneel and Genevieve come to visit him.
Danneel is a Water-Sídhe like him and Genevieve is a Fire-Sídhe. She’s also a member of the Royal Court like him, although not as high ranking.
The girls flutter annoyingly around his head as he works and tell him all about their assignments. They’ve both been given afternoon shifts-midday until 6.00pm-Danneel in London and Genevieve in Paris. Misha is incredibly jealous, not that he’s going to mention that to the girls. He asks them if the details of his guard assignment have been posted yet, but they don’t know, they didn’t look for his name.
Jay Dee comes to inspect his work not long after he starts on the bathroom. Misha shows him the head of the toothbrush, which is now dirty and dog-eared and Jay Dee refreshes it with a wave of his hand. Misha tries not to scowl.
“So what’s my assignment?” he asks.
Jay Dee shakes his head. “You’ll find out later,” he says.
By the time Misha is two thirds of the way through the bathroom his knees are aching and his fingers are red and swollen. It’s a welcome distraction when Jared, Christian and Steve walk in.
Misha laughed out loud when Christian first told him his name. Fancy a Fae couple naming their child after a human religion! How uncouth. Unfortunately Christian (or Chris as he prefers to be called) is a Fire-Sídhe and Misha had to pull some pretty fast magical moves to avoid being battered and barbecued by Chris’s fire fists of fury. Somehow or other this means that they are now, apparently, friends. Misha still isn’t quite sure how that works.
“Shit, son,” Chris says. “That don’t look fun.”
Misha can’t be bothered to say ‘no shit,’ so he just gives him a withering look.
Chris’s soulmate, Steve, grins at him. “Welcome to my world, Misha,” he says.
Steve is a human. Well. He was a human. Now he’s…something more than human, but less than Fae. Time spent in the Fae Realm changes people and being the bonded soulmate of a Fae changes people even faster and more significantly. Steve now has wings, for example, but he can’t perform magic.
Jared clears his throat. “So we got our assignments,” he says.
Misha looks up and is instantly captured by mesmerising doe eyes. “Dude! Stop it!” he says.
Jared blinks. “Stop what?”
“You’re trying to mesmerize me!”
Jared shakes his head and looks away sheepishly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just…I can’t turn it off sometimes. I don’t even realize I’m doing it.”
Misha believes him. Privately, he thinks it’s incredibly fortunate that Jared is a friendly, easy-going, jovial sort of a guy, because with those eyes and his talent for mesmer, if he ever really tried he could have the entire realm on their knees at his feet.
“What did you get?” Misha asks.
“It’s awesome,” Jared says and Misha frowns, because a truly excited Jared isn’t generally this dampened down. “I’m going to be guarding a fairy ring that’s on a farm in Iowa.”
Misha raises an eyebrow. “This is obviously some strange and unusual usage of the word ‘awesome’ that I’m not aware of,” he says.
“No, it’s cool,” Jared says. “For me. I love the land. And crops and animals. Earth-Sídhe, remember? Apparently, they even get moose in Iowa sometimes. I have a natural affinity for moose.”
Misha’s jaw doesn’t quite hit the floor, but it’s a close thing.
“Okay,” he says slowly. “Awesome, then. Chris, what did you get?”
“Same gig,” Chris says. “Different shift. He’s on afternoons, I’m on nights and y-” he stops talking abruptly and looks away.
“Fuck,” says Misha. “Oberon damn Jay Dee to a dragon’s lair! He’s put me on that farm too, hasn’t he?”
Jared nods cautiously.
Misha scowls. “And it goes without saying that he’s put me on morning shift, knowing full well how much I hate early mornings! I’m gonna have to stand in a circle of mushrooms on a muddy, smelly, shit-stinking farm in the middle of nowhere and I’m going to have to get up at assbutt o’clock in the morning to do it. Oh, this is just perfect!”
“Apparently it is,” Jay Dee says, entering the room and slapping Misha on the back. “Oracle Devine says that this is where you’re supposed to be. And look on the bright side. At least on the morning shift, you get to collect the cream. That’s always a bit of fun.”
Misha rolls his eyes. “Woo hoo,” he says flatly. “I get to magic some cream out of a bowl and through the portal into the processing factory. I’m so excited.”
“At least you get to lick the bowl,” Jared says and Misha treats him to his most withering look, because seriously? Does he have no pride?
The next morning is every bit as horrendous as Misha expects. For some reason, he can’t sleep in and his suspects that Jay Dee has bewitched him. For want of anything better to do, he gets out of bed and goes and bathes, before choosing a sparkly silver suit and a pair of black, patent leather ballet pumps to wear for the day. His hair always looks like he just rolled out of bed, no matter what he does to it, so he just leaves it.
There’s a long line of Fae waiting for the barracks portal and Misha clucks his tongue irritably. With all the portals they’ve got in stupid places all over the human realm, would it kill them to put in a few more in the Fae Realm? The outgoing portals get a lot more traffic than most of the ridiculous incoming portals. Seriously. When was the last time someone who wasn’t a guard came in from Fairy Ring CNK80Q3?
Misha finally gets to the front of the line and goes through the portal to Fairy Ring CNK80Q3.
It’s still dark in Iowa when Misha arrives and it stays dark for the next hour and fifteen minutes. Misha is cold and he is miserable. He finally casts a heat spell around himself, having checked very carefully that it wouldn’t cause a problem with the cloaking spell that is keeping him hidden from human perception. The warmth helps somewhat. As does the fact that the sun finally comes up. Well. It helps in that it means he can stare with horror at the bleak surroundings. This is so not his world; in more ways than one. What did Oracle Devine see that made her say he must be sent here? Why couldn’t she have seen him needing to go to Paris? Or Rome? Or Venice? Or Washington. Imagine the fun he could have if he was assigned to the portal in the Whitehouse? He could get up to so much mischief if he pretended to be an intern for a few days.
Misha’s attention is focused by the approach of a human. He’s an incredibly attractive human and Misha can’t help but stare at him. His clothes are awful, of course, but then Misha’s fantasies don’t particularly need him to spend much-or any-time in his clothes. The man is carrying a small bowl of cream and he’s calling ‘here kitty, kitty’ in a soft voice.
Misha snorts back a laugh.
The human rocks to a sudden standstill and it appears that he is looking at Misha. Which he can’t be, because Misha is invisible. “What the fuck?” the human says.
Misha rolls his eyes. “Awesome. It’s not bad enough that I’ve been sent to the ass end of the world, I’ve gotta cop a blithering idiot host as well.”
“What?” says the human. “Who are you calling an idiot?”
Misha’s eyes widen in panic. This is not good. So not good. The human shouldn’t be able to see or hear him. He’s cloaked and he’s been able to do a basic cloaking spell since he was ten years old, so there’s no way this human should be able to interact with him. “You can see me?” he hisses.
The human nods.
This is a disaster! Jay Dee is going to bind his magic and clip his wings for sure. The wings in question flutter in distress. What should he do? What were you supposed to do when a human somehow saw you? If only he hadn’t slept through that part of training!
“What the fuck?” he says. And reactivates the portal.
Misha runs straight back to his dormitory and shakes Jared and Chris awake.
“Guys, guys! We’ve got a problem with our human!” he shrieks. “He can see fairies!”
A significant look passes between Jared and Chris. “He can see fairies,” Chris says, “or he can see you?”
“Well, I was the only Fae there. What’s the difference?”
Before Chris can answer, Jared clears his throat loudly. “No difference,” he says, “probably just a sensitive human. You’re just gonna need a face mask is all.”
If Misha had been on his game, he would have noticed the ‘what the fuck’ look that Chris is giving Jared, but he is too busy freaking out at having been seen by a human. Jared rummages in his locker for a bit and then hands Misha the sparkly silver mask with a headdress of blue feathers that he wore to the Masquerade Ball last Solstice. “There you go,” he says. “Just wear that and you’ll be fine.”
Chris has a sudden coughing fit.
“I don’t know, Jared,” Misha says dubiously.
“I tell you what,” says Chris, who has now recovered his composure. “How about we come with you?”
Misha relaxes at that. The idea of having his friends at his back is very reassuring. He somehow fails to notice that they don’t bother with masks.
When the three of them arrive in the fairy ring, the bowl of cream is placed in the proper offering position and the human is standing right beside it, staring at the fairy ring. He stumbles backwards and falls on his ass when Misha and his friends arrive.
“Oh for Oberon’s sake, Misha,” Jared scolds. “Why didn’t you resize to human proportions when you came through?”
Misha looks behind him. And up. And up. Jared in human proportion is HUGE. Chris is much shorter. Good idea, Misha thinks. If he’s going to be in the human realm, he should at least be human sized. He waves a hand and resizes himself and the human curses quite creatively and spider walks backwards a few steps. And then he cocks his head to one side and says, “Why are you wearing that girlie mask now?”
“He can still see me,” Misha tells Jared; who is inexplicably sniggering.
“Who are you talking to?” says the human, peering past Misha and frowning.
“My friends,” Misha says. “Jared and Chris. Can’t you see them?”
The human shakes his head. “Just you,” he says. He grins. “Did you think that I wouldn’t be able to see you if you put that mask on?”
Misha takes the mask off. “My friends,” he tips his head to where Jared and Chris are leaning on each other and laughing uproariously, “seem to have found it amusing to tell me so.”
The man gets to his feet and Misha is a little irritated to see that even re-proportioned to human size, he is still smaller than the man.
The human frowns over Misha’s shoulder. “So how come I can see you, but I can’t see them?”
“That is a good question,” Misha turns to face his friends and folds his arms across his chest.
“Maybe you should’ve paid attention in class,” Jared says, unrepentantly.
Chris slaps Misha’s upper arm and grins. “Relax man, this is a good thing. The only human who can see you through a cloaking spell is your soulmate.”
Misha blanches.
The human clears his throat and Misha flinches because the man has managed to move right up beside him without Misha even noticing. “What’s going on?” he says. “Did they tell you something? Is it bad that I can see you? Does it mean you’re really sick or something?”
He actually sounds concerned about it, so Misha turns to face him. Up close he can see that the man has a smattering of tiny freckles across his nose and beautiful big green eyes. “No,” he says. “Apparently it means you’re my soulmate.”
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Masterpost