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escapefromrealityI've posted three unconnected bits of this previously, but I'm hoping that maybe periodically posting sequential pieces from the beginning might help push me on, since that has sometimes worked for me. I have about 19K words as a long sequential section along with some future, so far unconnected pieces written.
It's Side B-era--so it takes place in the ’00s--and Schuldig and Crawford (and eventually Farfarello) are currently working in London too. Schu discovers that Aya, who's with Kryptonbrand, has a bit of telepathy and decides to train him in it for fun on the sly (and to hopefully get into his pants at some point); Aya takes him up on it when he sees it actually helps. Otherwise, the fic is mostly Schuldig/multi-directional, and some of it is about how being the village bicycle can suck.
The title comes from an Eisbrecher song of the same name and loosely translates to “Can love be a sin?” Note: Farfarello's electrical abilities and the thing with Sally are from the Schwarz CD.
R to NC-17-ish part here.
===================================
“Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein?” 2/?
by Viridian5
===================================
I liked to make Brad jealous. Everybody needed hobbies. Unfortunately, Brad often chose awful times and ways to show his jealousy.
“Brad, what the fuck?” I asked. “Start moving already.”
Smirking, the bastard remained still inside me, refusing to get the actual fucking started, and kept me pinned. If he’d worn his glasses, they’d be glinting right now. “There’s something important I want to get out of the way first.”
“What?!” All the spurring with my heels, wiggling, and clenching I did got me nowhere with the immovable object.
“I’ve been getting a lot of precognitive glimpses of Abyssinian lately. I hope you’re not getting too involved with him.”
How much did Brad know? “Do you foresee something awful happening?”
“Not particularly. I just don’t want you wasting your time on fucking with him, in either sense of the term.”
“Why not?”
“Because I said so.”
“That’s not--”
“Because I said so.”
This was such bullshit. “You should know me well enough to realize that you’re making him irresistible to me right now. Also, you don’t fucking mind me dallying with other people so what the hell makes Abyssinian so special in your mind? We’re not enemies anymore and we’re barely rivals. Weiß and Kryptonbrand can’t reach our level on even their best day. Give me reasons to stay away. Don’t figure that stopping mid-fuck will make me promise anything you ask for just to get you going again. You’re not that good.”
“Why can’t you just listen?”
“I do if I hear a good enough reason!” Even if Brad would admit he was just a jealous bastard, it might make me consider things.
Fuck this. I fought harder and used all the extra speed I had in me, getting free and loose, though pulling Brad out like that made my ass hurt. In a moment I was back in my own bedroom with the door locked. Although locked doors couldn’t really keep either of us out of a place, he knew I locked it as a statement. As I dressed, I kept my attention on the door, waiting to see if he disregarded my stated wishes.
He didn’t. Maybe he’d finally figured out that he’d pushed me too far and too hard.
Someday the authorities would find his naked corpse with his brain turned to the consistency of a runny egg and wonder what’d happened to him. They’d never know how thoroughly he’d deserved it.
Sometimes I felt like I was getting too old to take this kind of shit, and I really didn’t know what to make of that. Nagi would tell me to just leave Brad already, but something made me stay, even aside from having him as the anchor to my telepathy. I just didn’t always know what that “something” was.
******************************************************
A few days later Brad became distracted by getting a closer, more immediate fish than Fujimiya to fry. I got my first touch of Farfarello’s mindlink since that dust-up with the school in Japan, and right after it caught a flash of Brad foreseeing me opening our apartment door to the little demon. Although I found it hard to read much of Farfarello through the worse than ever crackle of his electrical powers interfering, I got the impression that Sally wasn’t with him and never would be again, with a tinge that suggested Farfie had killed her himself.
Good. Damned succubus stole him from us and even fucked with my head. I choose the places where I stick my dick. She’d claimed that the compulsion thing she had was out of her control, but if I had a power that made people want to attack and kidnap me I would work damned hard to fix it. My telepathy hadn’t been child’s play to get control of but I’d worked at it.
I was watching the telly when Farfarello rang our doorbell but quickly turned it off to let him in since with him around I’d get plenty of real-life drama. He’d dressed like a normal person--plain black T-shirt, old blue jeans, and kind of lumberjack boots--with sunglasses on to make his eyepatch less obvious. Hadn’t done anything to hide his distinctive facial scars or the ones he had on his arms though. I felt excitement, power, anger, and a tinge of grief from him, but excitement became most prominent as he said with a smile, “Embrace me, Lucifer.”
Although I did hug him, I did it quickly so I wouldn’t feel that electrical crackle so close for too long. It set my nerves on edge. I’m so glad he didn’t really start manifesting the electricity until late in our team time together. I felt a knife in its sheath at the small of his back, under the T-shirt. Despite everything, I’d missed him. “Come in. What do you want?”
“I’m at loose ends, looking for work and a new life.”
“Did you bring any trouble to our doorstep?” Brad asked, sounding imperious and somewhat bored, even though I could sense some excitement beneath that. Having Farfarello with his blades and lightning back would make Schwarz more powerful, versatile, and valuable.
It would also irrevocably alter my cozy, years-long duet with Brad. We’d become a couple as well as a team, and I didn’t know if that would survive Schwarz becoming a trio again. Fuck.
“I worked to leave it behind me,” Farfarello answered, “but anything’s possible. Authorities frown on murder, no matter the state of mind the perpetrator had been in and its causes.”
“I’ll keep this potential trouble in mind. After the way you left and your long absence, it’ll take you a while to regain any trust from us. You’ll have to really work.”
As he took off his sunglasses, Farfarello said, “I look forward to getting blood on my hands.” He really did. Although he’d managed to keep his bloodlust mostly asleep for years, sublimating it into occasionally hunting game for food, the death of his son and his own murdering of Sally had fully awakened it, and years of famine had made it ravenous. “I assume I’ll reside here.”
I immediately replied, “We only have two bedrooms at this residence, and I refuse to live any closer to Brad than I already do.”
Brad sounded very annoyed as he said, ~ You spend so much time in my bed that you don’t need another room. ~
~ I need my own space to use and decorate as I see fit. ~
~ You’re being childish. ~
~ Fuck off. Also, Farfarello’s crackling has gotten worse, and it’s harder for me to block out. I don’t want to live with that. ~
~ You should have trained enough to shield against it. ~
~ That doesn’t work in this situation. ~
~ Other telepaths might do better. ~
Really? Bristling, I answered, ~ No, they wouldn’t, and thanks to your sparkling reputation no other telepath in the area would want to work with you. You don’t have Eszett around to force them anymore. ~ Plus, he hated Aya, and Aya didn’t have the training to even start to block out Farfarello’s kind of problem yet. I wondered when Aya would contact me again for another lesson.... ~ By the way, you won’t be getting laid tonight. ~
“I won’t steal anyone’s room,” Farfarello said. “I haven’t gotten so soft that I can’t sleep on the couch or the living room floor.” He directed a heated look my way that made my cock twitch.
“Welcome back,” Brad said. Obviously, my problems with Farfarello didn’t outweigh the benefits Brad saw in having him with us.
This situation had trouble written all over it, and while I loved giving trouble to other people, having it blossom within Schwarz at close range and in my own home had the potential to mess me up very badly.
******************************************************
It didn’t surprise me at all when Farfarello opened my bedroom door and crawled into bed and under the sheets to be naked with me, though I wondered if Brad had foreseen it. While Brad had trouble foreseeing Farfarello, he often got me just fine.
“This won’t get you out of sleeping in the living room,” I told Farfarello.
“Does the ‘crackling’ you used to mention sometimes still plague you when I’m around?” he asked.
It surprised me that he remembered. “Even worse than before.”
“I’ll try to keep it to myself. How’s that?”
“It’s somewhat better now. Thanks.” I still felt it a bit but found it bearable. I’d have to keep shielding against it to keep it at this level, though.
“I’ll be even easier to deal with once I’m working regularly and draining off my lightning.”
Even if he hadn’t been radiating lust at me, making me hard, I’d know what he wanted here. “I don’t want to be your rebound fuck.”
“I want you for yourself.” His callused fingers stroked down the length of my cock, making me shiver. Better that than his crackling giving me nasty goosebumps. He radiated his lust at me and sent me arousing images of the dirty things we could do together, some of them memories and some of them fantasies. “I’ve been living like a married man for years but never forgot what you could do to me and how you always knew what I needed. Never forgot your filthy mouth and the way you’d slip your sensations into me....”
With his sensation issues, Farfarello needed somewhat different things than most of my lovers. He needed me to be rough with him so he’d feel it better. To engage his brain, I’d tell him all the dirty things I’d do to him and also telepathically share some of my physical reactions and pleasure with him. After all that past experience with me, he came to my bed already hard in expectation.
“Buttering me up guarantees nothing. I’m not that easy.” But it certainly helped, especially with him stroking me so expertly with his callused and scarred fingers and speaking with that rough voice deepened with lust. He said all this shit so easily, where I usually had to yank this kind of thing out of Brad.
“I want you, pretty. I missed you,” he whispered into my ear as he nipped at the lobe, remembering what I enjoyed.
I had a bad feeling about this but went for it anyway. “This kind of thing will be on a case-by-case basis. I reserve the right to say no anytime I please.”
“Noted. Now fuck me.”
******************************************************
Farfarello’s charge actually built up within a space over the course of days despite his best efforts, leaving me very tense. He bled it off a bit when we had work, and we only had sex after jobs because of it. I’d refuse otherwise. (Not that I always gave in.) The promise of nookie made him quicker and happier to kill people, which pleased Brad. That might be why Brad left me and Farf alone together after jobs, the asshole, like I was a part of Farfarello’s payment, a thing my owner could bestow as a reward. I gave Brad a piece of my mind on all of it too. No matter how good the sex might be and how it seemed to direct Farfarello’s energies in good ways, Brad didn’t have the right.
Maybe Brad told himself that I wanted Farf but couldn’t safely have him any other time than after a mission and thus thought he did me a favor, but he could damn well ask me each time instead of making the assumption about us and disappearing to do paperwork. I even bitched at him now and then about it but he didn’t take it seriously enough.
I wanted more of his time and personalized attention. Although Brad occasionally let me bask in the quiet and order of his head, in and out of bed with him, he also told me I had to be stronger and better. I’d be more pissed at him for that too if I didn’t agree with him a bit. But still!
I’d missed Farfarello and working with him--having him back felt like a missing piece of me had returned--but his delusions had shifted a bit after all this time and sometimes I ran headfirst into a new, irritating aspect of them. Why couldn’t everybody manage their own mental illness as well as I did mine? Although he repressed a lot of it, he grieved for his recent dead in his own way. Since none of us wanted him to run wild in a city our clients and future clients lived in, I kept track of him and did my best to keep him repressed and thus nearly stable. He also knew enough about how my abilities worked to try to bind me closer to him and manipulate me. Most of the time I noticed and gave him a large and sharp piece of my mind. Most of the time. I think.
It made me gladder that I never let anyone in Schwarz, Brad included, know the full extent of the things Eszett did to and installed in its telepaths.
Despite everything, I still found Farfarello attractive, even his neediness. My taste in men sucks, though it doesn’t help that I have so many psychotic people in my life.
During our continuing internet correspondence, Nagi continued to dangle entry into his gang of operatives back in Japan in front of me, more than happy to poach me from Brad. Sometimes I seriously considered it. Besides, Brad valued me more when he knew other people wanted me.
******************************************************
Aya contacted me for more psi training in a terse e-mail. Still pissed at Brad, I quickly replied. Since Eszett fell, nobody gets to tell me whom I’m allowed to associate with.
Aya met me in the lobby of a small hotel of his choice and led me to a room there, glaring at me and daring me to say something lewd about it. I disappointed him by being completely professional. Guy had been in the business for years now, seeing all kinds of weird and fucked-up shit, but you could still upset him by playing against his expectations, even in small ways. Other than that, he looked happier, actually happier, than the last time I’d seen him, and I got a feeling it wasn’t just from losing the perpetual headache.
The room had a small table with two chairs, and he sat in one and head-gestured me to use the other one. At the table, not sitting on the bed. Either he thought I was a desperate pervert, he feared his own reactions, or both. I couldn’t tell yet without digging because he had a credible shield up. It figured that he’d be able to pick up shielding quickly and well. Nothing I couldn’t break through, but I’m a sun to his candle flame and I wanted to encourage, not discourage, him in his training.
“Should we start with the pleasantries or get right to business?” I asked in Japanese, encouraging him to answer in the same since he was more articulate in his native language, he had to speak a lot of English with Kryptonbrand and it could be tiring, and his accented English made me smirk too much and he just wasn’t Aya to me while using it.
“You should know me well enough by now.” But it sounded nearly playful instead of bitter or angry. Progress.
“To business, then.”
I set my hands along the sides of his face, enjoying his warmth, and told him he’d have to open up for me to work with him, so he let me into his head. Nice work too in him being selective instead of dropping all his shields like dropping his trousers down to his ankles. As I directed him to use his small telepathy to reach out and read people, I read him a bit. If I couldn’t do two or three things at once I’d be confined to a bed and need people to feed and clean me.
I read from Aya that being able to block and use his ability had already made a difference in his life. As much as it kind of turned my stomach to see it, Aya had been relating to Ken on a deeper level lately and their sex life, when it did happen, had improved. Ken felt... warm to Aya now. It stunned Aya and totally pleased Kenchen, not that the jock had any idea of what was behind it because Aya hadn’t confided in him about the telepathy, figuring that if he revealed it he might get asked who had helped him discover, tame, and use it. Not that I wanted him to tell his new team about me. Besides, he worried about their reactions to his newfound talent, especially Ken’s since he hadn’t been given the best impression about telepaths after having faced me. Awwww.
I didn’t think he had to worry. Ken-ken had really said, “I need you, the god of death, Aya” when they first met up again as members of the new team. Who said Siberian didn’t have some cockeyed sense of romance?
Hmph. No one had ever called me a god of death so adoringly and I deserve it far more.
Aya felt concerned for me over how I seemed a bit downcast since he last saw me, although it disgusted him to admit he felt that. Poor guy. It was easier not to feel anything for other people when you were barely aware that other people existed.
Once finished with our session, we leaned into each other across the small table, close enough to almost breathe on each other, staring into each other’s eyes, the air charged with sexual tension. Yeah, some people might laugh at what they saw as my delusions, but they didn’t see him and didn’t know how some of the more intimate telepathic training could hit people. It was like some people developing crushes on their shrink but far stronger. Some Rosenkreuz trainers used to get really evil with this. I was hard, I could tell he was hard.... His eyes really were such an amazing color, and framed by such long, dark red lashes....
Aya blushed, shook his head, and stood in a rush. As he left, he thanked me curtly, said he’d contact me again sometime, and grabbed his coat and katana in a fast and graceful move as he flew out the door, so pretty when he felt angry/scared, which meant he was pretty a lot of the time. As he went down the hall at a fast walk--not retreating, of course--he tried unsuccessfully to will his erection down and crush the feelings I’d inspired in him.
Knowing that Aya had paid for another hour, I assumed a comfortable, spread-out position on the bed and enjoyed the peace and quiet, relaxed for the first time in a long time. It felt so good.
It's Side B-era--so it takes place in the ’00s--and Schuldig and Crawford (and eventually Farfarello) are currently working in London too. Schu discovers that Aya, who's with Kryptonbrand, has a bit of telepathy and decides to train him in it for fun on the sly (and to hopefully get into his pants at some point); Aya takes him up on it when he sees it actually helps. Otherwise, the fic is mostly Schuldig/multi-directional, and some of it is about how being the village bicycle can suck.
The title comes from an Eisbrecher song of the same name and loosely translates to “Can love be a sin?” Note: Farfarello's electrical abilities and the thing with Sally are from the Schwarz CD.
R to NC-17-ish part here.
===================================
“Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein?” 2/?
by Viridian5
===================================
I liked to make Brad jealous. Everybody needed hobbies. Unfortunately, Brad often chose awful times and ways to show his jealousy.
“Brad, what the fuck?” I asked. “Start moving already.”
Smirking, the bastard remained still inside me, refusing to get the actual fucking started, and kept me pinned. If he’d worn his glasses, they’d be glinting right now. “There’s something important I want to get out of the way first.”
“What?!” All the spurring with my heels, wiggling, and clenching I did got me nowhere with the immovable object.
“I’ve been getting a lot of precognitive glimpses of Abyssinian lately. I hope you’re not getting too involved with him.”
How much did Brad know? “Do you foresee something awful happening?”
“Not particularly. I just don’t want you wasting your time on fucking with him, in either sense of the term.”
“Why not?”
“Because I said so.”
“That’s not--”
“Because I said so.”
This was such bullshit. “You should know me well enough to realize that you’re making him irresistible to me right now. Also, you don’t fucking mind me dallying with other people so what the hell makes Abyssinian so special in your mind? We’re not enemies anymore and we’re barely rivals. Weiß and Kryptonbrand can’t reach our level on even their best day. Give me reasons to stay away. Don’t figure that stopping mid-fuck will make me promise anything you ask for just to get you going again. You’re not that good.”
“Why can’t you just listen?”
“I do if I hear a good enough reason!” Even if Brad would admit he was just a jealous bastard, it might make me consider things.
Fuck this. I fought harder and used all the extra speed I had in me, getting free and loose, though pulling Brad out like that made my ass hurt. In a moment I was back in my own bedroom with the door locked. Although locked doors couldn’t really keep either of us out of a place, he knew I locked it as a statement. As I dressed, I kept my attention on the door, waiting to see if he disregarded my stated wishes.
He didn’t. Maybe he’d finally figured out that he’d pushed me too far and too hard.
Someday the authorities would find his naked corpse with his brain turned to the consistency of a runny egg and wonder what’d happened to him. They’d never know how thoroughly he’d deserved it.
Sometimes I felt like I was getting too old to take this kind of shit, and I really didn’t know what to make of that. Nagi would tell me to just leave Brad already, but something made me stay, even aside from having him as the anchor to my telepathy. I just didn’t always know what that “something” was.
******************************************************
A few days later Brad became distracted by getting a closer, more immediate fish than Fujimiya to fry. I got my first touch of Farfarello’s mindlink since that dust-up with the school in Japan, and right after it caught a flash of Brad foreseeing me opening our apartment door to the little demon. Although I found it hard to read much of Farfarello through the worse than ever crackle of his electrical powers interfering, I got the impression that Sally wasn’t with him and never would be again, with a tinge that suggested Farfie had killed her himself.
Good. Damned succubus stole him from us and even fucked with my head. I choose the places where I stick my dick. She’d claimed that the compulsion thing she had was out of her control, but if I had a power that made people want to attack and kidnap me I would work damned hard to fix it. My telepathy hadn’t been child’s play to get control of but I’d worked at it.
I was watching the telly when Farfarello rang our doorbell but quickly turned it off to let him in since with him around I’d get plenty of real-life drama. He’d dressed like a normal person--plain black T-shirt, old blue jeans, and kind of lumberjack boots--with sunglasses on to make his eyepatch less obvious. Hadn’t done anything to hide his distinctive facial scars or the ones he had on his arms though. I felt excitement, power, anger, and a tinge of grief from him, but excitement became most prominent as he said with a smile, “Embrace me, Lucifer.”
Although I did hug him, I did it quickly so I wouldn’t feel that electrical crackle so close for too long. It set my nerves on edge. I’m so glad he didn’t really start manifesting the electricity until late in our team time together. I felt a knife in its sheath at the small of his back, under the T-shirt. Despite everything, I’d missed him. “Come in. What do you want?”
“I’m at loose ends, looking for work and a new life.”
“Did you bring any trouble to our doorstep?” Brad asked, sounding imperious and somewhat bored, even though I could sense some excitement beneath that. Having Farfarello with his blades and lightning back would make Schwarz more powerful, versatile, and valuable.
It would also irrevocably alter my cozy, years-long duet with Brad. We’d become a couple as well as a team, and I didn’t know if that would survive Schwarz becoming a trio again. Fuck.
“I worked to leave it behind me,” Farfarello answered, “but anything’s possible. Authorities frown on murder, no matter the state of mind the perpetrator had been in and its causes.”
“I’ll keep this potential trouble in mind. After the way you left and your long absence, it’ll take you a while to regain any trust from us. You’ll have to really work.”
As he took off his sunglasses, Farfarello said, “I look forward to getting blood on my hands.” He really did. Although he’d managed to keep his bloodlust mostly asleep for years, sublimating it into occasionally hunting game for food, the death of his son and his own murdering of Sally had fully awakened it, and years of famine had made it ravenous. “I assume I’ll reside here.”
I immediately replied, “We only have two bedrooms at this residence, and I refuse to live any closer to Brad than I already do.”
Brad sounded very annoyed as he said, ~ You spend so much time in my bed that you don’t need another room. ~
~ I need my own space to use and decorate as I see fit. ~
~ You’re being childish. ~
~ Fuck off. Also, Farfarello’s crackling has gotten worse, and it’s harder for me to block out. I don’t want to live with that. ~
~ You should have trained enough to shield against it. ~
~ That doesn’t work in this situation. ~
~ Other telepaths might do better. ~
Really? Bristling, I answered, ~ No, they wouldn’t, and thanks to your sparkling reputation no other telepath in the area would want to work with you. You don’t have Eszett around to force them anymore. ~ Plus, he hated Aya, and Aya didn’t have the training to even start to block out Farfarello’s kind of problem yet. I wondered when Aya would contact me again for another lesson.... ~ By the way, you won’t be getting laid tonight. ~
“I won’t steal anyone’s room,” Farfarello said. “I haven’t gotten so soft that I can’t sleep on the couch or the living room floor.” He directed a heated look my way that made my cock twitch.
“Welcome back,” Brad said. Obviously, my problems with Farfarello didn’t outweigh the benefits Brad saw in having him with us.
This situation had trouble written all over it, and while I loved giving trouble to other people, having it blossom within Schwarz at close range and in my own home had the potential to mess me up very badly.
******************************************************
It didn’t surprise me at all when Farfarello opened my bedroom door and crawled into bed and under the sheets to be naked with me, though I wondered if Brad had foreseen it. While Brad had trouble foreseeing Farfarello, he often got me just fine.
“This won’t get you out of sleeping in the living room,” I told Farfarello.
“Does the ‘crackling’ you used to mention sometimes still plague you when I’m around?” he asked.
It surprised me that he remembered. “Even worse than before.”
“I’ll try to keep it to myself. How’s that?”
“It’s somewhat better now. Thanks.” I still felt it a bit but found it bearable. I’d have to keep shielding against it to keep it at this level, though.
“I’ll be even easier to deal with once I’m working regularly and draining off my lightning.”
Even if he hadn’t been radiating lust at me, making me hard, I’d know what he wanted here. “I don’t want to be your rebound fuck.”
“I want you for yourself.” His callused fingers stroked down the length of my cock, making me shiver. Better that than his crackling giving me nasty goosebumps. He radiated his lust at me and sent me arousing images of the dirty things we could do together, some of them memories and some of them fantasies. “I’ve been living like a married man for years but never forgot what you could do to me and how you always knew what I needed. Never forgot your filthy mouth and the way you’d slip your sensations into me....”
With his sensation issues, Farfarello needed somewhat different things than most of my lovers. He needed me to be rough with him so he’d feel it better. To engage his brain, I’d tell him all the dirty things I’d do to him and also telepathically share some of my physical reactions and pleasure with him. After all that past experience with me, he came to my bed already hard in expectation.
“Buttering me up guarantees nothing. I’m not that easy.” But it certainly helped, especially with him stroking me so expertly with his callused and scarred fingers and speaking with that rough voice deepened with lust. He said all this shit so easily, where I usually had to yank this kind of thing out of Brad.
“I want you, pretty. I missed you,” he whispered into my ear as he nipped at the lobe, remembering what I enjoyed.
I had a bad feeling about this but went for it anyway. “This kind of thing will be on a case-by-case basis. I reserve the right to say no anytime I please.”
“Noted. Now fuck me.”
******************************************************
Farfarello’s charge actually built up within a space over the course of days despite his best efforts, leaving me very tense. He bled it off a bit when we had work, and we only had sex after jobs because of it. I’d refuse otherwise. (Not that I always gave in.) The promise of nookie made him quicker and happier to kill people, which pleased Brad. That might be why Brad left me and Farf alone together after jobs, the asshole, like I was a part of Farfarello’s payment, a thing my owner could bestow as a reward. I gave Brad a piece of my mind on all of it too. No matter how good the sex might be and how it seemed to direct Farfarello’s energies in good ways, Brad didn’t have the right.
Maybe Brad told himself that I wanted Farf but couldn’t safely have him any other time than after a mission and thus thought he did me a favor, but he could damn well ask me each time instead of making the assumption about us and disappearing to do paperwork. I even bitched at him now and then about it but he didn’t take it seriously enough.
I wanted more of his time and personalized attention. Although Brad occasionally let me bask in the quiet and order of his head, in and out of bed with him, he also told me I had to be stronger and better. I’d be more pissed at him for that too if I didn’t agree with him a bit. But still!
I’d missed Farfarello and working with him--having him back felt like a missing piece of me had returned--but his delusions had shifted a bit after all this time and sometimes I ran headfirst into a new, irritating aspect of them. Why couldn’t everybody manage their own mental illness as well as I did mine? Although he repressed a lot of it, he grieved for his recent dead in his own way. Since none of us wanted him to run wild in a city our clients and future clients lived in, I kept track of him and did my best to keep him repressed and thus nearly stable. He also knew enough about how my abilities worked to try to bind me closer to him and manipulate me. Most of the time I noticed and gave him a large and sharp piece of my mind. Most of the time. I think.
It made me gladder that I never let anyone in Schwarz, Brad included, know the full extent of the things Eszett did to and installed in its telepaths.
Despite everything, I still found Farfarello attractive, even his neediness. My taste in men sucks, though it doesn’t help that I have so many psychotic people in my life.
During our continuing internet correspondence, Nagi continued to dangle entry into his gang of operatives back in Japan in front of me, more than happy to poach me from Brad. Sometimes I seriously considered it. Besides, Brad valued me more when he knew other people wanted me.
******************************************************
Aya contacted me for more psi training in a terse e-mail. Still pissed at Brad, I quickly replied. Since Eszett fell, nobody gets to tell me whom I’m allowed to associate with.
Aya met me in the lobby of a small hotel of his choice and led me to a room there, glaring at me and daring me to say something lewd about it. I disappointed him by being completely professional. Guy had been in the business for years now, seeing all kinds of weird and fucked-up shit, but you could still upset him by playing against his expectations, even in small ways. Other than that, he looked happier, actually happier, than the last time I’d seen him, and I got a feeling it wasn’t just from losing the perpetual headache.
The room had a small table with two chairs, and he sat in one and head-gestured me to use the other one. At the table, not sitting on the bed. Either he thought I was a desperate pervert, he feared his own reactions, or both. I couldn’t tell yet without digging because he had a credible shield up. It figured that he’d be able to pick up shielding quickly and well. Nothing I couldn’t break through, but I’m a sun to his candle flame and I wanted to encourage, not discourage, him in his training.
“Should we start with the pleasantries or get right to business?” I asked in Japanese, encouraging him to answer in the same since he was more articulate in his native language, he had to speak a lot of English with Kryptonbrand and it could be tiring, and his accented English made me smirk too much and he just wasn’t Aya to me while using it.
“You should know me well enough by now.” But it sounded nearly playful instead of bitter or angry. Progress.
“To business, then.”
I set my hands along the sides of his face, enjoying his warmth, and told him he’d have to open up for me to work with him, so he let me into his head. Nice work too in him being selective instead of dropping all his shields like dropping his trousers down to his ankles. As I directed him to use his small telepathy to reach out and read people, I read him a bit. If I couldn’t do two or three things at once I’d be confined to a bed and need people to feed and clean me.
I read from Aya that being able to block and use his ability had already made a difference in his life. As much as it kind of turned my stomach to see it, Aya had been relating to Ken on a deeper level lately and their sex life, when it did happen, had improved. Ken felt... warm to Aya now. It stunned Aya and totally pleased Kenchen, not that the jock had any idea of what was behind it because Aya hadn’t confided in him about the telepathy, figuring that if he revealed it he might get asked who had helped him discover, tame, and use it. Not that I wanted him to tell his new team about me. Besides, he worried about their reactions to his newfound talent, especially Ken’s since he hadn’t been given the best impression about telepaths after having faced me. Awwww.
I didn’t think he had to worry. Ken-ken had really said, “I need you, the god of death, Aya” when they first met up again as members of the new team. Who said Siberian didn’t have some cockeyed sense of romance?
Hmph. No one had ever called me a god of death so adoringly and I deserve it far more.
Aya felt concerned for me over how I seemed a bit downcast since he last saw me, although it disgusted him to admit he felt that. Poor guy. It was easier not to feel anything for other people when you were barely aware that other people existed.
Once finished with our session, we leaned into each other across the small table, close enough to almost breathe on each other, staring into each other’s eyes, the air charged with sexual tension. Yeah, some people might laugh at what they saw as my delusions, but they didn’t see him and didn’t know how some of the more intimate telepathic training could hit people. It was like some people developing crushes on their shrink but far stronger. Some Rosenkreuz trainers used to get really evil with this. I was hard, I could tell he was hard.... His eyes really were such an amazing color, and framed by such long, dark red lashes....
Aya blushed, shook his head, and stood in a rush. As he left, he thanked me curtly, said he’d contact me again sometime, and grabbed his coat and katana in a fast and graceful move as he flew out the door, so pretty when he felt angry/scared, which meant he was pretty a lot of the time. As he went down the hall at a fast walk--not retreating, of course--he tried unsuccessfully to will his erection down and crush the feelings I’d inspired in him.
Knowing that Aya had paid for another hour, I assumed a comfortable, spread-out position on the bed and enjoyed the peace and quiet, relaxed for the first time in a long time. It felt so good.
