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“Not the things that are supposed to, apparently. Besides, what’s there to be rattled about?”
“I just appeared in your flat. That’s not at all unsettling?”
“Some might say a beautiful man appearing unbidden is a boon.”
Finding nothing witty to say to the assertion that he was beautiful, Alastair stared at the light on the ceiling’s crossbeams and realized what time it was. “It’s well past morning.”
“It is,” said Paul. He gently brandished the cup. “It’s beyond noon. If you can sit up, drinking this might help you feel less like horse shit.”
The liquid within the cup smelled a little like horse shit. “What the hell is it?”
With a playful air, Paul said, “A friend taught me to make it. She has to deal with many men who overindulge, and this seems to help them trundle along out of bed and get on with their days.”
Alastair mumbled a halfhearted “Shit” as he hauled himself precariously upright. His body felt several feet away from his floating head, but he didn't gag. Looking around at Paul and sifting through his choice of words, he said, “Your friend has many men in her bed? Sounds exhausting.”
“She doesn’t have them all at once. Collectively, I meant. Think she’s done two at a time, though. Here.” He leaned forward a little to hand over the cup. “I make it like she does. Had to use it a few times for regulars and it seems to work the same as what she’s made.”
“Ever had to take it yourself?”
“I’m only human.”
Caring less what was in it and more that Paul had bothered to make it for him, Alastair just leveled it back without trying to taste it. He wasn’t uninitiated in home cures for a morning after too much drink. None were palatable. “Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. I don’t abstain,” Paul said after a frown. “I just learned my limits very early. You tend to if you grow up in this trade. Or… you don’t. But I wouldn’t want to be that kind of proprietor. The drunk kind. Especially now that it’s only me and Bess, and the two lads… wouldn’t want them feeling uncomfortable.”
Teasing just as much as he dared, Alastair said, “I meant, given those eyes…” he settled back on the sofa and a blanket fell from his lap as he stilled. Paul must have covered him. And removed his boots. Unless he’d removed his own boots and forgotten. “You might not be human at all. You could be a good spirit. Or a bad one.”
It was probably just abstraction bred by his exhaustion, but his mind was drawn to the lore he’d heard as a child while his mother completed her seamstress’ work near the fire and told him stories of fairies and elves, kelpies and selkies.
Paul scoffed. “I’d know if I was a spirit.”
“Sounds like what a bad one would say to make me less suspicious.”
“Well, what would a good one say?”
“Nothing. A good one would just show up with a cure for too much drinking. And before that, they’d remove my boots for me. Give me a blanket.” He beamed when Paul blushed. Then he set aside the empty cup. “Thank you. This is mortifying.”
Regaining some of his drollness, Paul said, “I’m a bad influence on you.”
There were a few things Alastair would say before claiming that, surely. He sighed and ran a hand through his tangled hair before reaching for a leather thong wound around his belt. Taking his time to respond, he said to Paul, “You’re telling me a man with a reasonably successful, legal business is a bad influence on me. You’ve got it wrong, I think.”
Paul eyed his hands on his hair as he tried to subdue it, and Alastair wasn’t displeased when he scooted the whole footrest closer to the sofa. Gently, he took the bit of leather and deftly bundled Alastair’s tresses away from his face. “When we were boys, Edward kept his hair this long for an age and it was as wild as yours. He wanted to be a highwayman or a pirate, you see. Our parents didn’t care, they even thought it was funny… but eventually, he cut it off. He had too much trouble taking care of it. I always had to help him tie it back.”
“Oh.” Alastair almost remarked how Edward might have liked to know there was some speculation, proudly on his late, onerous father’s part, that they were related to a somewhat infamous pirate with the same family name. But he was captured by the feeling of Paul so deftly managing his hair and couldn’t make conversation.
Done, Paul trailed steady fingers just along the back of Alastair’s neck and said, “Haven’t seen tattoos this closely before. I’m never this near anyone who has them. Certainly never touched any. I thought they might feel a little different from the skin around them, but they don’t.”
It took a moment for the words to make sense because those fingertips trailed sunlight. Alastair made himself answer. “No. And they don’t all mean something, if you wondered.”
“Oh, that’d be exhausting, trying to come up with that much significance. Better to get mostly pretty, mad, meaningless things and have done with it.”
“Exactly.” Though he didn’t believe in God, Alastair almost began to pray when Paul’s fingers slipped lower, under his collar.
“What’s this one? Can only see a bit of it along the back of your neck. Looks like a… tentacle?”
“Mm… that one. Sea monster. Big fucking squid.”
Paul chuckled. “Right. Big fucking squid. Are you covered in them, then?”
