Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
brANCA
H e ought to be cursing me, cuffing me, killing me, anything but kissing me as if his last breath depended on tasting mine.
His lips were still so soft. He was still so soft, making me remember how hard and rough I was to a human like him and how irresistible he was to me.
Every time he kissed me was like the first time, a cool drink of fresh water. Astonishing. Humbling.
Making me want more.
He pushed against me, had me hard and embarrassed in an instant. I was such an animal.
He knew exactly what I was and he never turned away.
When I stroked his tongue, just lightly, with my longer one, he moaned like a whisper of wind, reminding us both how it felt for me to touch him like that in other ways, other times. Reminding me how I’d lived for that sound.
I felt like my old self again. Confused that he let me touch him that way, and starving for it..
I tried to let go; he leaned back, pulling me against him, into him, pressing us together till we meshed again. As we used to do.
We fit together absurdly well, given his perfection and my—well, me.
“Why’d you leave me in Vienna?” He wasn’t letting it go. “You left right after that photographer took your picture. In K?rntnerstrasse. Was it because of that?”
“Yes.” He was killing me on purpose. He knew my shape exactly, exactly how to make my hardness climb up my belly over my fur toward his waiting hands, exactly how to press himself downwards and make me squirm and gasp and thrust upwards. Maybe we could do this and I could still walk away. Sure, it was the photographer. “Yes.”
“Liar. I went back to him, begged him to destroy the photographic plate. I watched him shatter it. There were no more photographs of you.”
I didn’t have enough blood left to think with. All my sensation concentrated in my swelling tip, made it hard to do anything but push up into his hands.
That, at least, was something I’d always been proud of.
A sane man would fear that animal thing too, if only for its size, but not Christophoros. He seemed as fascinated as ever feeling it emerge from its sheath, growing, growing, feeling the black knob swell at his certain touch.
There was nowhere to go. The closet barely held me; I couldn’t get away from him or his relentless questions or his delicious grip. I planted my hands against opposite walls, trying not to make the wood creak, and leaned back. My legs, which never quite straightened, bent around his knees, unable to get away, unable to fall.
I felt powerless to do anything except let him have his way with me with his talented, twisting touch.
The swelling grew achingly painful, an urgent alarm drowning all conscious thought. You. You. You. It gonged over and over in my head like the last word of the universe. His hands soothed the ache.
How could I have forgotten this? It was his sweetness that drew me closer, his everlasting sweetness. In this as in all things, he gave and gave and gave.
Never thinking of himself.
I had to make him believe. “How many people saw my photo while it hung in his studio? Blurry, shadowed, but definitely me.”
I could still see it in my mind. A furred, misshapen thing, unable to step into the light. Me.
Chris’ voice in my ear. “He told people it was a trick. An effect of his composition.”
“But you knew it was me.” His grip tightened; helplessly, I thrust again. Any sane man would have run; my hardness reached nearly to my chest, blindly seeking more of his attention, more, anything he would give.
That too we had developed ways of managing, and I was desperate to stop thinking about them now.
I had to dissuade him, distract him. “How long before someone captured an image of us together? You’d have had nowhere to go. Outcast. Hiding. Forever.” I couldn’t put him through that again.
He simply answered, “Where would I go without you?”
I wanted to throw off his hands’ hard heat, how it made me pulse, thrust.
All I managed was to wobble forward and kneel at his feet.
I hunched forward to clutch his hips with both arms, rubbing my face in the soft denim. I am not good.
I tried to think of a way to make this his fault. “You simple, simple fool,” I managed to say, my hard length drooping to throb against the fur of my thigh.
Noah howled just outside the door, sounded like mere inches away. “I looked you up!”
Fuck. Christophoros doesn’t like to swear, but I live for it myself.
I don’t show myself in the daylight because I cannot pretend. Clothes only make me more alien, misshapen. I have fur.
That also meant I had no clothes behind which to hide.
I grimaced and willed myself to think of cold things, snow and ice. They only reminded me of our house on the northern ring and how we warmed the long, dark nights.
Desperately I gripped the doorknob to keep the child from walking in.
“I looked you up on mom’s laptop,” he yelled again, and my eyes rolled thinking of all the words I wanted to roar.
But my sainted man was there, and he wouldn’t like that.
“Looked me up, or Santa?” I shouted back, since that seemed to be the conversation we were having. To Chris I said in a more normal tone of voice, “The peanut butter sandwich, by the way, is on the floor behind you.”
I could pretend to recover from his nearness. I’m a decent liar.
“I’m not eating that kid’s only peanut butter sandwich.” He sounded offended that I would even suggest such a thing.
“Christophoros. You have a bag full of presents. You will give him one. He won’t mind if you take his sandwich.”
“ No. ”
I knew his every expression. Every tilt of his head. I could see them, could see the way he thought, even in the dark.
Many hungry children are insatiable forever, but Chris was always restrained. About anything he wanted.
Until we came to the States and encountered peanut butter. His passion for it never waned. He was, more than anything else, consistent.
He was nearly as relentless with his topic. “It wasn’t the photographer.”
You see, lying to Santa Claus doesn’t do much good.
I stayed quiet.
He did not stop. “So what was it?”
I composed myself. He probably knew how my knees hurt and that my erection, seeking him and failing, had subsided. Just like he knew everything else.
Noah yelled again. “Krampus comes for bad kids. He eats them and takes them to hell.”
“I can’t do both,” I shouted back, reasonably I thought, and confused the child into silence.
This was intolerable. I’d already shown Chris I was the same animal-like creature who’d left him in Vienna; he said he still loved me, but what was there to love?
Nothing good would happen in this closet as long as the child stood outside; nor would anything good happen as long as one of the people in here was me.
I could burst the thin wood holding us in like paper. But that would truly frighten the child, and Chris would not like it.
I called to Noah. “Let me out. All I do is ask questions. Let me ask and I’ll be on my way.”
I heard Chris gasp, but I couldn’t see his face.
“Santa Claus really likes peanut butter,” I told Noah, for Chris’ benefit. “Offer him your sandwich.”
“You’ve got my sandwich!”
“Well, let us out—” I was the very model of reason, “—and then you can give it to Santa.”
“If you think I’m letting you walk out of here without answering my questions, you’ve got another think coming,” muttered Chris in the dark.
Then the door opened to blessed, blessed moonlight.
CHRIS
That... wicked man really meant to leave without talking.
I felt cheated; I felt robbed. I had waited so long, too long, for answers. Branca really meant to leave me with nothing but my work and a peanut butter sandwich.
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.
I’d thought Branca was all about justice.
Right outside the door Noah peered in, more worried than frightened, which was good; even better, he stayed outside. I really didn’t want him to see how my legs and Branca’s tangled together.
I have never been ashamed of Branca. I have never been ashamed of loving him. But in some weird way, I was ashamed of how he was ashamed of himself.
It had taken me years and a stack of books to understand that.
Noah craned his head. “You really want my peanut butter sandwich?”
I breathed in. Old wood and Branca’s fur and peanut butter. All the best smells in the world. “I’d enjoy it,” I admitted, “but it’s your peanut butter sandwich.”
“If you’re Santa, how come you can’t have all the peanut butter you want?” His tone implied I should sit on a throne of peanut butter sandwiches.
Strained as I felt, that idea made me smile. “Sometimes things we want, even crave, aren’t good for us.”
“True,” muttered Branca, brushing Noah aside and unfolding himself into the hall.
He must be so cramped. I worried about his knees, watching him unkink himself by stretching upwards.
Then I remembered a present of boxing gloves in my bag and wondered if it would be all right to break them in a little. On Branca.
Did he think he was bad for me, that I shouldn’t crave him?
I really needed to try swearing.
Noah still looked up at me. Perhaps for the first time in our brief acquaintance, he was listening to me.
I guess very peculiar situations can open a person’s mind, even very small persons.
I smiled at the boy. “I do eat peanut butter sometimes.”
“Sunday nights, on soda crackers,” muttered Branca, claws scratching his hip as he leaned backwards. I heard his back crack.
Pathetically, I did still love him; but for the first time I wondered if I could learn to hate him. If I had to.
I pretended he hadn’t interrupted. “When you take things you like too far, they can be bad for you. What if I really liked candy?”
“ I really like candy.”
“There you go,” I agreed solemnly. “But if you ate it all the time, every meal; would that be okay?”
Noah didn’t look ready to give up on the values of a candy obsession. “Well... what if it wasn’t full of sugar?” Another point for his mother; at least he knew he couldn’t live on sugar. “Or...what if it wasn’t candy? What if I liked cars better? Or diamonds?”
“You like diamonds?”
“My mom does.”
My heart melted again for this kid. “Someday maybe you’ll give her some. But nothing is healthy to think about every minute. Even when you want something a whole lot, you can’t spend every minute just wanting things.”
“I thought that’s what Santa was for.”
Sighing, I dropped to one knee. “I can’t control what people think. I wish I could. But to me, Santa means hoping for a life with some happy surprises. Everyone needs to look forward to things, to have hope. Children especially. They deserve that.”
“Like on Sundays you look forward to crackers and peanut butter?”
I blinked. My life, seen through his eyes, looked so small.
But that was all right. I’d had hundreds of years to do whatever I want, go wherever I want. I didn’t have much left to want besides the occasional peanut butter cracker.
And Branca.
With my burly partner looming over us, I had to face a possibility I’d refused to face before. He wasn’t coming back to me. I’d lost him.
He was standing right there; he’d kissed my neck not five minutes before.
But he was still gone. Utterly lost. To me.
“Yes,” I told Noah firmly, finishing the lesson he needed, because Christmas Eve is not about my dreams. “Like peanut butter on Sundays.”
The little boy thought hard about this. I could see the calculations in his eyes. Little-boy calculations about risk and reward, justice mixed with feelings. The kind that made a kid throw rocks at a shop window and still swipe his mom a Christmas present.
He finally said, “I don’t think that’s right.” Ducking around me, he reached into the closet.
From deep inside, right under the stairs, he pulled out a plastic saucer holding a peanut butter sandwich. Whole wheat bread—his mother was trying so hard—cut corner to corner, like moms did for their kids.
That sandwich was a gesture of love.
“I think if all you really like is peanut butter, you should eat it whenever you want.” Noah offered me the plate. “I’ll split it with you. The jelly is grape.”
The size of his generosity caught me unawares and tipped me over. I landed sitting on the floor, arms leaning on knees, trying to brace. My hands came up to cover my face, the unexpected tears, the longing.
This boy had a mother who loved him. This boy was offering love to me.
I’d been alone for so, so long. Branca could say he never stopped loving me, but he couldn’t give me anything, not even a reason for breaking my heart. I still felt alone. I was alone.
That was how I ended up crying on Noah’s floor on Christmas Eve.