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He scowled in return and gave me alook. “This is Poppy, Keane. Poppy, this is the ill-mannered friend I evidently spoke too highly of. Keane, chill. I promised her a bottle of water because it’s hot outside, that’s all.” He reached into the cooler and grabbed one of the water bottles, opening it and passing it to her.
“Poppy’s an art student. She was sketching in the sun and the fountain was broken.” Sebastian continued, raising an eyebrow at me as the girl drank. I knew what he was getting at - the sigils, if we could even find the right ones before the spell collapsed, would need an artist’s hand. Beyond the actual intricacy required to make them, we were created beings, and couldn’t manifest the intention they needed the way somethingtrulyliving could. It’d be a little like trying to give a car a soul - the two halves were inherently incompatible.
Speaking of incompatible, I wasn’t a fan of the way the redhead was currently eyeing my boyfriend. Sebastian was flirtatious, mainly because he was made to be the showman of the two of us, while I was the more stoic manifestation. My job had always been to get things done - set up the quarter poles, strike down the tent, pack up the wagon. Sebastian, meanwhile, had been the one to coax money from passersby for midway games, or tarot card readings from the Amazing Zina, our creator, tormentor, and former captor. What Seb and I now shared had been our first choice as free beings, and I’d be damned if I’d let anything come between us now. We’d worked too hard for it.
“Well, mission accomplished. Nice to meet you Poppy, but I need to get back to work. Seb, I need to talk to you about…scheduling.” It came out more brusque than I intended, and Poppy’s smile faded, a worried crease forming between her brows. Of everything that had happened since we’d escaped Zina, the only thing I was truly afraid of now was losing Seb, and I didn’t need some woman complicating everything, artist or no. If her feelings were bruised, so be it - she was a stranger to us and I wanted her gone. I wasn’t lying, either: Ididhave work to do, it just wasn’t concessions-related.
Seb was definitely angry with me, but escorted Poppy back through the narrow trailer out the back door without argument. I heard his faint apologies to her before he stomped back up the gridwork steps, alone. Some of the tension in my shoulders slid away now that she was gone, at least until he spoke up again.
He propped a hip against the cooler, grabbing a bottle and twisting the cap off sharply before taking a swig, glaring at me. “Keane. You were a complete asshole to that girl, and she didn’t deserve any of it. She might have been able tohelpus. What the hell’s gotten into you?”
“Me? What the hell’s gotten intoyou, Seb? We’re fighting for our lives and you’re out - what, flirting with some girl? It’s bad enough you insist we keep up this work nonsense, it’s cutting into my research time and our protection is going to collapse any day now.” I ground my teeth, willing away fearful visions of being back in Zina’s trailer. I stormed past him,thistrailer beginning to feel claustrophobic likethatone had.
Seb palmed my shoulder, spinning me around and pinning me against the tall storage cubby doors. His voice was softer, injured. “Keane. You can’t possibly think-”
I squeezed my eyes closed when hot tears threatened to escape, tensing my jaw as my throat thickened with emotion. “Think what? That you’ll turn tail for a pretty face, a softer touch, now that we’re free? Now that I’m not the only choice besides - besidesher,Seb?
Zina had created us to serve her - there was no kinder way to phrase it. At first, when we were new to creation and exploring existence as men, it had been interesting. We’d been brought into being with all the sense of adult humans, but none of the actual experience. Obtaining that experience became a sort of game, a new task to learn. If we did well, she allowed us to remain in our new forms for longer periods of time. The problem was that Zina tightly controlled what we could know and learn - so much so that the idea that we couldalsoenjoy pleasure was a revelation. She used us with no warmth or consideration at all, leaving us exhausted, used, and unsatisfied after she’d gotten what she wanted.
Seb and I had been careful since that fateful night, a few weeks before our escape. Zina had been especially cruel to Seb, accusing him of purposely underperforming inthattask, grabbing her robe and storming out of the trailer. When she wanted us to service her sexually, our men’s bodies would grow cocks - thick, long, and sporting an extra addition we hadn’t realized wasn’t normal until we spotted one of the roustabouts urinating against a wall one day. Conversely, when Zina was finished using our bodies in bed, we went as smooth between the legs as the plastic dolls carnival attendees won at toss-games.
I’d only meant to comfort Seb that night. He’d been crying from the pinches, slaps, and cruel names Zina always tormented him with during the act. Seb was easier to bring to tears, and seemed to suffer more, which was why she used him so often despite my pleas to use me instead. She only ever took one of us to bed at a time, forcing the other to stay in the next room. He’d been curled up in her bed, sniffling with each new bruise his fingertips found, throwing terrified, defeated glances at the door. I simply joined him in bed, hugging him tight and turning him into my chest to cry it out.
There had been no real word for what Seb and I were to each other - not brothers, even though we’d been created at the same time, and far more than friends, though both prisoners. When his tear-stained lips met mine long moments later, desperately seeking comfort, we at least had a word for that:lovers. When our eager fumbling resulted in our very first pair of messy, writhing climaxes, something important shifted in both of us.
After that, one of us would stand lookout at the window while the other furtively searched through Zina’s hidden cache of occult items. I eventually pieced together the reason Seb and I could maintain the entirety of our forms with one another: Zina’s spell had made her the onlywomanwith the ability to control us sexually. We guessed she hadn’t considered a man could wield the spell, or didn’t think we’d ever turn to one another like that. Either way, Seb and I counted the revelation as a blessing.
And after that first night together, we began to talk of dangerous things between stolen kisses - plans for life outside of Zina’s grasp. We started to whisper more often, getting more bold about exploring one another in the process. One night, we weren’t careful enough and lost track of time, waking up entangled to a furiously shrieking Zina. In a rage, she’d forced us out of our human forms and locked us in separate plastic boxes, the sides and tops studded with sharp, enchanted pins. It was sheer luck I’d already been preparing the sigils for our escape, and that the furious slam of the trailer door jarred the lid of my box enough that I could partially shift. I’d carefully wriggled free and opened Sebastian’s box to free him too. Together, we painted our skin with sigils and walked, ran, and hitchhiked hundreds of miles away. When we felt we were far enough from our captor, we found work at the zoo to hopefully blend into society outside of the circus.
Zina had never spoken of her magic unless it was to threaten us into compliance, so we could only guess her initial intentions with tulpamancy. Both Sebastian and I had started creation as one of the most common sights under the tent or along the midway: colorful balloon animals. My dim first memories of consciousness were of bending and twisting, my maker’s breath filling my body and pulling me through the dream world into this one. My next sensations were of Sebastian’s nearness, and my very first understanding was that he waslike me, and that made mehappy. Until the night we escaped, that had been the first and last time I’d felt unguarded joy - the cruelty and threats had started shortly after.
Now, even with the stress of constant vigilance, Seb made mehappy. He stood on his toes - I had a few inches of height on him - and kissed me softly. “No, Keane. Never. I told you when we left that nothing would ever separate us again. I meant it then and I meant it now - I’m just trying to help the only way I know how. Her linework is good from what I could see in her sketchbook, and she seems friendly. Luckily, even despite your shit attitude, she was still willing to talk to me after. She says she’ll be visiting the zoo again soon, I can bring it up with her next time I see her.”
I pulled him against my chest, tucking his head under my chin, jealousy striking like a serpent when I remembered the way she looked at what wasmine. “No. Not her. We’ll find another artist. In fact, *I* will.”
Yes, that was a much better solution. I’d find an artist that wouldn’t covet my lover, one we could trust, perhaps pay with some of the earnings we both had from our jobs. Being able to turn into balloon animals at will wasn’t much of a superpower, all told, but it saved us a great deal on rent.
Seb squirmed a little in my embrace, and I knew an argument was on his tongue. Guilt rested heavily on my stomach as I deepened our embrace instead, silencing him with a sensual kiss and a slow exhalation of air. I felt the pressure against my thigh as that inflation found its way down the sympathetic path it knew so well, the bulge of Sebastian’s knot wide and tempting beneath the thin striped cloth of his pants.
We were creations of air that didn’t, strictly speaking,needto breathe, a particularly handy trait for what we’d discovered together those first few passionate nights. While I felt we’d perfected the act by sheer chance and repetition, apparently we weren’t the first men to ‘deep throat.’ After Seb and I had first been hired on here, a smartphone from the lost and found offered an unexpected trove of lurid videos in a browser tab. We’d hungrily watched them all on a loop until the battery died, recreating them in the concessions trailer after hours.
“Keane.” Seb’s admonishment came out breathy as I blindly reached out to the side, flicking the concessions sign from open to closed. I tugged down the shade down and latched it before dropping to my knees.
I made short work of his zipper and groaned as the heady scent of powdered sugar and latex sweetened the room. We were creatures of the carnival down to our cores, and Seb’s arousal was a balmy night on the midway, a handful of bright balloons and the funnel-cake booth all colliding in the senses.
My tongue swept up the tempting bud of his balloon tie-knot, the playful little wrinkled ring that was quickly melting into his latex-wrapped cock. If I caught it before the shift completed, I got to take advantage of its hypersensitivity, and who could possibly turnthatdown?
Seb let out a high, birdlike cry, gracelessly falling back against the lid of another freezer as his legs shook. His fingers fisted in my hair, almost unconsciously, desperate for more. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen when he came unraveled like this, his eyes closed and head tilted back in ecstasy. The pressure of his cock expanding in my mouth tickled my palate as he nudged and pushed himself deeper.
I knew I could tease him, drag him along the edge for hours if I wanted to, and the thought was tempting. But I only intended for this to be a distraction, not a marathon, and neither of us thought clearly if we didn’t get a good night’s sleep. Research time before the zoo opened was becoming a necessity, which meant late nights - even if I spent them having fun with Seb - needed to wait. I moved skilled fingers to the bulge near the base of his cock. This was our ‘extra part’ - one we’d ironically discovered was also called a knot.
I squeezed it lightly with my fingertips, forcing the bubble of air further up his shaft, then back down, just a few inches’ worth of stroking. Seb whined and babbled, begging me not to stop, knuckles white and tensed where they gripped the freezer edge.
“Keane - please! Please, I’m soclose-I ca- oh,oh!”
I palpated his knot rapidly, pumping his shaft with my other fist, twisting my grip fluidly as I moved up and down. Thethwhumpof air rapidly scurrying up his shaft, expanding its red latex-coated edges, sent his cockhead ballooning into a sphere on my tongue. His smaller tie-knot reappeared at the tip and I flicked it rapidly with my tongue as he panted, giving it a gentle tug with my teeth. Seb tossed his head back with a gasp, his end unknotting with a snap on my tongue before hot, thin jets of funnel cake icing flowed out to soothe the sting.
I sucked with a happy hum, reveling in the actual, literal sweetness of my balloon shifter lover. He always blushed so beautifully when I called him my favorite dessert, but it was the truth. The bone-deep sigh of satisfaction he gave afterwards was also my favorite sound, and I loved the way he always gave a few languid strokes in and out of my mouth, even after he’d finished. He’d shyly admitted recently that seeing me lick up and swallow what passed for our cum was a massive turn on for him, so naturally I worked that angle mercilessly.
