…or, Big Package, Little Package
I expected Iason to pull something at Skinchanger’s, or for him to think that his overblown gifts would make me forget all about the promised apology, but he apologized first to Rosalie and then to Jeff, for putting him in a position where he had to choose between his colleague’s dignity and getting paid.
Jeff looked shocked and Rosalie looked embarrassed, but I couldn’t blame Iason for that. I was the one who’d made him apologize. Maybe she’d just wanted to forget about it.
The application took about five minutes, and most of that was simply getting the piece of parchment lined up exactly right on my back. When Jeff invoked it, I felt a tingle, and then the scroll crumbled to dust, which Rosalie brushed off my back with a feather duster.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” Rosalie said. “No fuss, no muss. Little mess, though.” She sneezed. “Sorry, I’m a bit allergic, I think. It’s the one reason I don’t like these things.”
“How do I wake her up?” I asked.
“Him,” Iason said.
“Her, actually,” Jeff said. “I got bored and looked some stuff up while you were gone. The males have horns, and thicker frills.”
Iason looked like he’d been poleaxed, but he just mumbled something about it being alright. Rosalie turned away and started dusting the glass framed samples on the walls. I’m pretty sure she was laughing.
“Anyway, dude, you don’t want it moving until the ink’s had a chance to set a bit,” Jeff said. “When it’s ready, you’ll feel it. It takes a few days. Maybe a week, for something that big.”
“What will it feel like?” I asked.
“Kind of like your hand waking up,” Rosalie said. “When it does, you’ve just got to sort of flex. It might take some practice before you can turn it on and off at will.”
“Okay,” I said. “Good to know.”
Then it was time to head back. Iason seemed to have an internal debate on whether or not he should get another cab. I resisted the urge to ask him again if he’d overspent. Considering the scope of his purchases, things would have to be pretty dire if he now couldn’t afford cab fare.
If it turned out he’d spent his whole inheritance on one impulsive date, we could sell back the jewelry and maybe he’d learn to be a little more careful. In the meantime, I’d let him have his pride.
Of course, the alternate explanation was he was trying to decide between a cab and something more impressive. We’d left the campus in a chauffeured carriage, after all.
Finally, he gave in and hailed a cab. After telling the cabbie to take us to Pelinor Hall at Magisterius University, he helped me inside. As soon as the cab was in motion, he was all over me.
The urgency surprised me. He didn’t kiss me so much as grind his lips on mine. That’s not to say there was no skill in it.
“You know, you can just come up to my room when we get back,” I said as he undid my pants and started fishing around.
“I’m due on the field, I am afraid,” Iason said. He gave the head of my cock a painful squeeze. “Next week, we’ll have this done. Do you think Clan Sternbauer makes body jewelry?”
“I think you’ve given me enough gifts for a while.”
“Very well, you can pay for this one.”
“I would have got my ears done anyway, eventually, but I’m less sure about sharp bits of metal in other parts of my body,” I said.
“You have the wrong perspective here, Iamie,” he said. “We are lovers, and though you insist on reminding me that this condition may not persist, for as long as it does, this is mine,” he said, stroking my cock. “Just as this is yours,” he said, putting my hand on his.
“So, you’re saying you’d get a penis piercing if I wanted you to?”
“Of course not.”
I took back my hand and pulled away from his grip.
“I’m being honest, Iamie,” he said. “I could have said yes and been confident you wouldn’t call my bluff. A piercing would go horribly with my dragon, though. I wouldn’t ask you to put a metal bolt through yours.”
“So, if you didn’t have that tattoo on your cock, you’d get it pierced for me?”
“No,” Iason said. “You see how honest I am?”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“And yet I am telling the truth. Do you want me to get a piercing?”
“No,” I said.
“Then our desires are in perfect harmony with one another,” Iason said. “You see how nicely this all works out?”
We were hardly in concert, but I wasn’t going to sit and argue over a piercing that neither of us wanted. Especially not when we were heading back to the campus and about to go our separate ways for the day.
“Well, it’s been fucking surreal,” I said after he helped me out of the cab.
“It was good,” he said. “You know that it was.”
“It was,” I said, smiling. “Honestly, it was. Are you sure you can’t come up?”
“You are a ravenous little beast,” Iason said, kissing my hand. “But I am already late.”
I got upstairs and found a note on my door saying there was a package at the desk for me. I had a moment to think “he wouldn’t,” then reason took over and reminded me that yes, yes he would. It was no wonder he hadn’t wanted to come up. I tore back down the stairs to see if I could catch him, but he was long gone.
I headed inside to the front desk. Jennifer, the girls’ R.A. from my own floor, was manning it.
“Oh, hey, did you get your ears pierced?” she asked when I approached.
“Uh, yeah. Just today,” I said. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed she meant “recently”.
“They look nice. Did you go to White Dragon?”
“Sternbauer.”
“Oh, wow. Did your boyfriend buy them for you?”
“Does everybody know about Iason?”
“Is that how you say his name?” she asked. “I saw it on the card for the flowers. Is he supposed to be a secret?”
“Not really, I guess.”
“Oh, good. I think it’s cute. You know, when I saw you at the meeting last week I thought ‘I bet that guy’s gay.’ I told Brad so later, but he thought I was full of it.”
“Um, package?” I said, holding up the note.
“Oh, right! You’ve got two of them,” she said, went into the office.
Two of them? That was really laying it on with a trowel. Before Iason had pushed my tolerance almost to the breaking point with his constant gifts. Having two surprise packages waiting for me when we got back from our date was too much. He’d overplayed his hand.
When had he even found the time to send them? They must have been arranged in advance, unless he’d done them inside the bank.
Jennifer came back with a great big box wrapped in the same paper my mom used to ship large items and a slightly smaller one that was bound in silver string.
“Sorry it took so long to find them,” she said. “A lot of people got care packages today. Sign the clipboard?”
I did, then picked up the smaller box. The return address was the inn. That answered one question.
“Well, let’s see what he sent me,” I said. I slipped the cord off of it and removed the lid and started pulling out the wadded packing paper until I found the item underneath.
I felt stupid as soon as I saw that it was the music box decorated with molded dragons that Iason had bought me at the concert. I had been with him at the front desk when he’d arranged to have it sent over.
“Oh, that looks neat,” Jennifer said. “Do you like dragons?”
“Yeah, I guess I do,” I said.
I put the packing material back in the box and moved it aside. The handwriting on top of the bigger box jumped out before I had a chance to recognize the address as my own. Of course the wrapping job looked familiar. My mom had done it.
I could hear Iason in my head, chiding me for being so “demanding” as to expect two more gifts on top of everything he’d already done.
Okay. Realistically, I had a hot guy who wanted to have a lot of incredible sex with me who also had money to throw around. Was any of that really so bad?
I rebound the small box, stacked it on top of the bigger one, and carried them upstairs. Two girls I passed on the way up complimented me on my earrings.
Juliana and Iolana were hanging out in the corner of the hallway by the stairwell when I came out on the third floor. I would have smiled at Iolana, but I didn’t want to get in a conversation with Juliana there.
If only wanting made it so.
“Oh, hey, gay kid!” she called when I was about halfway down the hall.
I would have ignored it and kept walking, but then Iolana spoke.
“Hey, he has a name,” she said. My heart fluttered, and my pulse quickened as she turned her face to look at me her long eyelashes fluttering. “Uh, what was it, again?”
“Jamie,” I said, heading back towards her.
“Oh, right,” Iolana said. “I knew it was something kind of girly like that.”
“I just wanted to ask who you think is hot, on our floor?” Juliana asked.
“Yeah, I’m not answering that,” I said. “If I did, the people on my list would all be girls because I don’t know any of the guys and I already have a boyfriend.”
“But you don’t like girls,” Juliana said.
“But I do,” I said. “I have a girlfriend.”
“Okay, but you just said you’d list girls because you have a boyfriend,” Juliana said. “So which is it?”
“I have both,” I said. “I’m bisexual. It’s a real thing. Look it up.”
“Just tell me,” she whined.
“No.”
As questions went, “Which of these straight guys that you have to share facilities with do you find attractive?” was in the same class as “Do these make me look fat?” There was no right answer. The consequences for giving a wrong answer could be pretty harsh.
“Oh, leave him alone, Jules,” Iolana said.
“Oh, gay kids always get shit. He’s used to it.”
“You know, we’re the same age,” I said. “So this ‘kid’ thing is really starting to irritate me.”
“My naturalism teacher said that being gay means you’ve got arrested development,” she said. “So you’re still a kid even though you’re as old as people who are adults.”
“Did you go to a doctrinal school?” I asked.
“No, why?”
I rolled my eyes, at her and her distant teacher.
“No reason,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said. “So, who has a bigger dick?”
“What, you think I go peeking in the showers?”
“I meant you and your boyfriend,” she said, in a tone suggesting that this was obviously implied. “He’s an elf, right? So is yours bigger than his?”
“Mine is bigger around,” I said.
“So his is longer.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yeah,” I said.
“That means he’s on top, right? He fucks you,” she said. “Because he has the bigger dick.”
“No,” I said.
“He lets you fuck him, even though he’s bigger?”
“He isn’t bigger,” I said. “And that’s just—that’s not even how it works.”
“How does it work? Do you flip for it? Heads or tails?”
“Juliana?”
“What?” she asked.
“Fuck off,” I said.
Her jaw dropped. She stared at me for several seconds.
“If you were a real man you’d know better than to talk to a lady like that!” she said. She stomped past me and went into her room, slamming the door behind her. The latch didn’t catch, and she slammed it again with the same result before closing it a bit more gently.
Iolana laughed.
“If she’d ever had more than one boyfriend, she’d know that thicker around is better, anyway,” she said.
“Yeah, really,” I said.
“I guess you would know that, too,” she said.
“Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, I was going to put these in my room and then grab a smoke,” I said. “I could use some company, if you wanted to join me. If you’re not busy.”
“Oh, I can’t stand cigarette smoke,” she said, making a face.
“Yeah, it’s a terrible habit. I’m trying to quit, but it’s so hard.”
“I’m pretty sure addiction removal is part of the healing plan,” she said. “If you want, I could walk over with you?”
“Oh, uh, I’m not supposed to mess around with healing magic while my holes are new,” I said.
“I don’t think an addiction cure is going to mess with your piercings,” she said.
“Yeah, but you know, better safe than sorry, right?” I said. “I don’t want to mess around with my health.”
“Okay. Well, bye then,” she said. “It was nice talking to you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We should do it more.”
I could have gone over and gotten a cure addiction put on me, but I knew from experience that it would just make the next cigarette I smoked feel like the first one, ever. Being a brand new smoker isn’t fun, and thanks to my mom I’d experienced it three times already. My body was used to the smoke, and being hooked just meant I got a bigger rush when I lit up.
The box from my mom was full of things like crackers, oatmeal, popcorn, and other things that I hadn’t had a chance to run out of. She’d also sent ten extra pairs of socks. I laughed when I saw this. She’d made such a big deal out of making sure I had enough socks that if I lost all my other clothes, I could probably have made a whole wardrobe out of the extras she’d bought me. Then I started unpacking the box and realized she’d stuck a silver coin inside each of them.
There was a note under all the socks, too.
J - Sorry for all the socks but I didn’t want the box to jingle and attract attention. Also, you can never have too many socks. Your dad doesn’t think it’s a good idea to give you so much pocket money all at once but I just finished two big chests of drawers and I didn’t want you to have to gamble so much.
Love, Mom.
P.S. I know that hall has a mirror in it somewhere.
P.P.S. Let me know if you need more socks or anything. Just kidding about the socks. But seriously let me know.
I smiled at the last line. She was right, too. There were public pay mirrors by the stairs. I didn’t have anything else to do, and if I could honestly say I had thanked her right after opening the package, that would be worth a whole lot of Good Son Points.
Also, twenty silver out of the blue? Score. I could turn the tables on Iason by taking him out for a really expensive dinner. Or I could take Marlot out for crab legs and still take Iason out some place nice. As a third alternative, I could put the silver coins away some place safe or even open a savings account with them.
But it wasn’t like my mother would never get the urge to send another care package right after finishing a huge commission, and it wasn’t like I couldn’t find some guys playing cards for coppers if I needed cash in a hurry.
I went through the lounge to get to the landing where the mirrors and the vending cupboards were, to avoid bumping into Juliana again. I pushed some copper coins through the surface of the mirror and asked for Aurora Bowman in Agora, West Phale. It didn’t take long at all for the mirror to find her, and the image began forming almost right away.
“Jamie?” she said, her voice watery as the surface was still rippling. “Sweetie, is that you?”
“Yeah, Mom,” I said. “I just wanted to thank you for the package. I just got it, and—”
“James Endymion Bowman!” she said as soon as we came into focus for each other. “Did you get your ears pierced?” Then, in a completely different tone, “Are those diamonds?”
“Uh, yeah they are,” I said. “You told me I could get them done when I turned eighteen.”
“You were twelve,” she said. “I thought you would forget about that!” I had, actually, until the moment came where I needed an excuse. “Is that silver?”
“Platinum, actually.”
“What were you thinking? Were you thinking? We give you money to take care of your education expenses, not so you can buy a bunch of expensive—did you say pl-platinum?”
“Yeah,” I said. I decided it was time to bite the strap. She couldn’t yell and be supportive at the same time. I hoped. “Mom, I have a boyfriend.”
