A Pucked-Up Situation

Title: "A Pucked-Up Situation"

By: Chys Lattes

Chapter: Six/?

Universe: A (Rob Thurman) 'Cal Leandros' Series FanFic

Setting: Story takes place in a modern urban fantasy/paranormal world where the preternatural things that go bump in the night happen to live in the supernatural underbelly of New York.

Timeline: After the book 'Roadkill' ends. It doesn't hurt to read 'Trick of the Light' too, but it's not necessary.

Rating: 18+

Author's note: Piper and Jazel are my OCs. I make no money off of this fic and I don't own the Leandros Brothers Fandom, Rob Thurman does.

Warning: This fic contains yaoi lemons in this chapter, with canon paired characters: RobxIsh.

Chapter six:

Back in their apartment, Niko dropped the spoon he'd been stirring the soup with as he felt a coldness creeping up the back of his arms, up his spine, and touching the back of his head. With a gasp he tried to fend off unseen and insubstantial invaders to no success. Something ethereal was behind him, he knew, some force beginning to envelop him with tentative touches and caresses. For a moment sheer panic filled his mind, though his exterior belied nothing of his plight. There was nothing there. There had to be something there. Was he losing his mind?

Memories of traumas past flooded his conscience, things repressed, and things once forgotten. The very memory of the troll Abbagor's near fatal embrace in which the touch of his mind was eerily similar to this new sensation overrode his common sense and caused him to choke and gasp for air. He threw his hands out, a dagger in one, the other empty, to try to harm the invisible thing that seemed to be attacking him. His left hand flew out in a wild punch which broke the cupboard door off of its hinges to clatter onto the counter then slip off to crack the floor's cheap tiling. Blood from his knuckles smeared onto the countertop as the soup began to boil over and hiss loudly on the glass stove top. He could feel himself breathing, hard, though the acrid stench of burning potato soup drug up visions of a dark, cold cave or a sewer and the stench of rotting flesh.

The icy sensation enveloped the rest of him as his knees grew weak and he involuntarily lost what little was left of his breakfast all over the narrow floor space between the counter and the refrigerator. The smell of vomit on top of everything both physical and perceived drove him to hurl once more. Finally stopping, cleaning his throat out and gasping for breath, the coldness receded. He couldn't remember a time before when he'd been this involuntarily sick. Had he caught the flu? Was he delusional with fever? He couldn't tell, when checking his own temperature by feeling his sweaty forehead. He felt light headed with nausea and stumbled to his knees.

Visions of giant man-eating cats with razor teeth, the howling laughter of a psychopathic madman, the acrid stench of blood and bile and disembowelment, the screech of the Auphe, a sword piercing through his brother's abdomen and clenched tightly in his own hands as silver eyes stared, taunting. It was all just a flash back. His brother was not dead, he hadn't killed him. He'd tossed out the rug where he'd been tricked into envisioning his dead body ages ago. Someone was messing with Niko's mind again? No. He was just ill, somehow, and losing his iron control. He could focus.

The aftermath of the illness worked to clear his head enough for him to get together some resemblance of coherent thought. He was in the kitchen, at home, safe. He focused on the things before him, his fridge, the smoking stove, and the tiny two-seater kitchen table propped up on one side by an unused and long forgotten dictionary. All elements of a safe environment, right?

Wait, stove? Smoking? That can't be safe!

Niko struggled to his feet but actually slipped in the vomit and caught himself by dropping the knife and clinging to the counter. He pulled the pot off the stove and grimaced at the foulness that had become of what would have been a decent potato soup dinner. Then he saw the mess he'd burnt onto the stove, tossed the pot into the sink, and shut the heat off. It looked like Cal would be getting another free trip to the local hot dog vendor tonight if he couldn't set things right in time. Usually he made him run a few miles for every one of the foul, unhealthy things he allowed his brother to eat but considering that Niko was suffering from one of the worst domestic days from hell, he figured he should let it pass. What a day to have scoffed at an apron; he'd gotten sick all down his shirt.

'Now I have to clean up this mess before Cal comes in and acquires new blackmail material.'

-

The demon smiled broadly at Cal's words, "What I want… is none of your damn business." Cal growled through his clenched teeth, "Now, let me go."

The demon pulled back and stepped lightly before the fallen movie boxes that now littered the floor. His careless smile still plastered to his angelic face. "You're fast." Cal observed, rubbing his pained wrists where Jazel had held them down.

"Why, thank you!" Jazel nodded, his hair falling into his eyes in a long silken curtain of shimmery blond. "Truly though, if you wanted to trade that soul of yours I could give you your wildest dreams! Or is it normalcy that's your point of interest? If you want something boring like that it's up for grabs as well." The hint, yet again, that the demon could move miracles rankled at Cal's conscience. His light grey eyes narrowed. Do Auphe even have souls? Would half of a human soul mean only half of a wish granted? He couldn't do that to his older brother, to only have half of perfection- but all his life Niko had been stuck with a monster for a brother. Could the demon reverse it? Change it? Make it all better with a band-aid and a lolly? Bullshit.

"And fairies would fly out my ass."

"If you're into that. Frankly I don't fancy it though." Jazel examined his own fingernails, deemed them perfect and went back to staring mockingly at Cal.

"What do you want from me?"

"That eternal soul you have. Right here." He pointed at Cal's heart.

"Sorry, not for sale." Cal shoved his hand back.

"How about an exchange?"

"I've already given the damn thing away so don't bother." That murmured response stopped the demon in his tracks, literally, as Cal started to walk away. He reached into his pockets to pull out another pack of cigarettes, hastened to catch up with Cal, and offered him one. "So, seriously, which lucky demon beat me to it? I'd like to shake his hand." He said, then added as an afterthought when Cal waved his cigarette away, "Or break it."

"Go away."

"Fine, fine, but I will find out who sniped me." Without a sound, Jazel's body vanished from sight. Cal stiffened and glanced around the room quickly. 'I'd like to learn how he does that.' Cal retrieved his cell phone and headed home, worry lying heavy on his brows.

He didn't have to tell the demon the truth of the matter; that his soul, if he had one, really belonged to his brother from the start.

-

There were very few times in Niko's existence when he'd found himself so physically incapacitated that he himself would admit to needing to lie down. He was trying his damndest to stop this from being one of those very few times. Even if he did have a sinking suspicion he'd contracted some strain of the influenza virus.

Having only just finished mopping up the vomit off the floor and disposing of the evidence in the toilet, he started gathering scrub rags to use in his attack on the stove. The soup had been tossed down the drain but the smell of pasty burnt potato still lingered strongly and if it was a bother to Niko's nose Cal, with his slightly more extraordinary preternatural senses, would definitely notice it if he didn't air out the building. He opened a window and turned on a fan. It was time to get out the industrial strength cleaning supplies. Cal never touched those without the threat of a ten mile jog before breakfast.

He wiped the blood off the counter, careful to rinse it away in the kitchen sink and clean out the open wounds on his knuckles as well. Drying it off, he took a good look at the mess he'd made. Usually mess making is Cal's profession. He grimaced as the cracked floor tile as he leaned the broken cupboard door against the side of the fridge. There was nothing to be done about it now. He didn't want to think about what had brought the sudden flashbacks to the foreground of his mind. Some things were better left alone. After working on it for a bit, the dizziness had passed. Maybe having the window ajar was helping, with some fresh air coming in.

He'd only just gotten through the last of his Chupacabra-telepathically-induced trauma involving visions of his brother, dead. These had sent him into a berserk rage for revenge against the perceived murderer and gave him nightmares he didn't want to admit to still entertaining occasionally, or at all. He knew Cal had intuitively understood that such things were still plaguing him, but Niko didn't want to make it any harder on his brother than it already was. All too often he got the short end and that just wasn't right or fair. Niko kept his secret little episodes of sudden relapse to himself, locked away in his logical, calm mind. He knew he was much stronger than this. It was all in his head. He was the master of his own mind, right?

Of course he was. It was ridiculous to think otherwise.

He concluded he would need to meditate after this, already going through the mantras while he scrubbed the black tar off the warm stove top. If he hurried he could have it all cleaned up and a fresh made dinner on the stove by the time Cal got back. Slipping yet again into a perpetual state of semi-apathy, Niko went automatically about cleaning the mess until the stove and counter sparkled with only the scent of the harsh cleaners to leave evidence he'd been at work there. Changing into a clean green turtleneck, he tied his hair back with a brown leather thong. By the time the soup started bubbling, Cal wandered in. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd came back to smell industrial strength cleaning solutions. It probably wouldn't be the last since both of them knew how much of a neat freak Niko could be, though for this particular reason Niko adamantly refused to consider a potential incident mirroring this in the future. Mind over matter is all that matters.

Niko straightened his shoulders, tapping a wooden spoon against the countertop and cast a wary eye at Cal's muddied footprints on his newly mopped floor. "I just cleaned that, Pigpen."

Absently looking down, Cal listed against the wall and crossed his arms, "You clean it just so it can get dirty again. That's the whole point, right?" Slipping off his shoes which he abandoned against the wall, he hustled into the hallway to disappear from sight. When he returned he had a broom in hand, surprisingly. He cleaned up the dry, caked mud and then grabbed a dinner bowl.

Sitting at the table the two brothers ate in silence, Niko enjoying a salad with his tomato soup, Cal reluctantly picking at one and pushing around a crumbling crouton. Seeing his brother preoccupied, Niko tiled his head and gave him a significant glance. Cal relented, leaving the poor crouton alone, and explained how he'd been accosted by Jazel. Niko listened in silence, food forgotten.

"Your soul? He wanted your soul?" He quietly asked, his eyes lingering on his brother's down turned face.

"That sums it up." Cal scratched the back of his head, fine threads of loose black hair slipping between his fingertips. He'd let his hair down and it seemed much longer than it had been in the faint light from the dimmer bulb hanging overhead.

"Robin led me to believe your energy could never please a palette as discriminating as a demon's. The succubus didn't like you, remember?"

"He said he'd stay mum, that bastard!" Robin was not supposed to have told anyone about the incident with the succubus- neither was Cal. The succubus had thought that Cal's Auphe metaphysical energies were gross, and had ended up dealing with Robin instead.

"Yeah, well I can be quite encouraging, where Robin is concerned." Niko said, piling the cleared plates in front of his brother pointedly. He'd done enough cleaning on his own today.

Still fuming over Robin's betrayal, Cal washed the dishes with a forceful gusto that sent the soapy suds splashing to the ceiling. He didn't even notice the broken cupboard door or the crack in the floor. He couldn't really blame Robin though, after all that had happened back then, and Robin hadn't been in the best of moods at the time since they had been trying to rescue George from the hobgoblin and he'd been grasping for any kind of amusement in their state of despair. Niko was informed about it so Robin had doubtlessly shared a humorous tidbit with Niko, no doubt in a drunken moment. Cal could forgive him for that, he supposed.

But the dishes? Oh, they would pay dearly.

-

"No matter what science and technology can come up with along the lines of inventions and innovations, there is no way to out-do what the physical body alone has perfected over the many years of never-ending long hours of practice through the utilization of masterful skill and time-trusted techniques. Many of which I came up with myself, thoroughly tested and diligently mastered, all to lead up to this one, outstandingly epic moment."

"Just get in bed, Robin." Ishiah flicked the light switch and the room fell into darkness. The rustling of sheets was the only indicator that Robin was still in the room, then Ishiah knew from the slight jarring of the mattress that his lover was sliding closer to him. Rolling onto his side, he leaned over his lover's pillow, pulled the sheet back and kissed Robin's forehead. Or what he'd thought was Robin's forehead. As he leaned back, he realized the texture against his lips was all…wrong. Something scratchy and, was that…?

"Ugh!" Ishiah pulled a hair from between his lips.

A plaintive mewling brought attention to the horrifying fact that Ishiah had just kissed a dead cat. Sputtering, he reached back for the light switch on the lamp. After the room was illuminated once more, he spat the mostly imaginary foul taste from his lips. The cat looked up at him owlishly from where she had curled up on Robin's side of the bed.

Robin asked, "What's wrong?" in a curious tone. He'd crossed his arms and looked questioningly in this lover's direction. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, nude and excited to the extent of his glory, per-usual, and morbidly examining Ishiah's rapidly flushing face. Red most often was his color lately, but for different reasons all together. "Oh, you just kissed Salome? Haha!"

"Get that thing out of the bed!" He gestured at the boney feline who yowled and stretched. She raked her sharp-as-knives claws through the sheet to a small ripping noise.

"Salome, off!" A shooing gesture caught the cat's attention and she sulked out of the room, dismissed. Robin slid into bed where Salome had vacated the pillow, a wide grin ever present.

"Now if you're done loving on my pussy you can start loving on me."

The growled response made Robin gape, "Go to sleep." Ishiah hit the lights once more and turned his back on his lover with a 'humph' sound. He'd had enough irritation to last him a week or two. But Robin, being Robin, would have nothing of it. He'd been promised sex. He. Was. Going. To. Get. It.

A soft arm wrapped lightly around Ishiah's bare waist as the puck slid close and spooned up behind his annoyed lover. The warm, hard touch behind Ishiah told him that Robin had all but forgotten what he'd planned for entertainment tonight. Robin nuzzled the Peri's neck lovingly. He whispered soothing words in an ancient, lilting tongue with rampant promises of pleasure and love. In nearly impossible positions too, if he were in the mood for that. Ishiah slowly and reluctantly melted into his lover's arms as Robin's other hand rubbed gently down his back, massaging at tensed muscles.

Gentle kisses landing on Ishiah's shoulder coupled with soothing touches on his skin relaxed him further. Why was Robin always so convincing when all Ishiah wanted to do was to be a perpetual grump? Sometimes he wondered if pissed-off were his natural state of mind. If not then he'd certainly tried the hat on for size far too often. He allowed himself to be lulled into the familiar sensuality of Robin's embrace, for once forgetting the anger that kept riding to the surface of his insecurities.

Ishiah, while in no way a primary submissive, still understood the true value of a little give and take. The only thing that pricked at his ego was when the Puck insisted on playing for keeps rather than to reciprocate. Of course, Robin had proven countless times that he could be flexible (in way more than one sense) about giving and taking not just in physical positions but in theory as well. Once the Puck had explained that it had been Piper and not Robin who had physically assaulted Ishiah at his own bar, hit on Cal, and generally made a ruckus in the process, Ishiah was a bit more willing to forget the incident had disgraced their doorstep. He did enjoy moving on to more important and pleasurable activities like ravishing his lover into the mattress. That would be a good one.

Robin's hand drifted down to begin stroking the length of Ishiah's growing need. He quietly groaned into his pillow, knowing full well that Robin wouldn't let go of the dominant position tonight. Well, it was his turn, really. The flutter of lips attacking the Peri's neck made him shiver in anticipation as Robin's strokes slowed, his fingers delicately tracing the vein that pulsed beneath them, teasing in a manner he'd acquired with centuries of expertise.

Robin's tongue lashed out to stroke up and down Ishiah's back as his lover slipped to a lower position, kissing the small of his back and tracing the lines where his wings magically appear. Even during their very first time together Robin seemed to instinctively know that the spaces where the wings came out where extremely sensitive. He timed his languid tongue passes over them with the stroking of an even more sensitive area to find a pleasurable rhythm which left Ishiah rocking back at the shoulders and thrusting forward at the groin. The rasping attentions of the Puck's tongue tickled and sent waves of warmth down the Peri's back.

If Robin wasn't careful he'd let his wings out, in bed, which during previous love-making sessions involved a bit of contortion, some unexpected wing pulling, and the loss of many fine feathers. As it was the attentions to his flat and nearly invisible but tender wing-buds was just enough to arouse him further which he was certain was what his lover was going for, but it made him manifest his short, downy body feathers which also prickled and tickled under Robin's ministrations. He imagined Robin was enjoying himself back there, rubbing his own erection against the soft feathers on the back of his legs.

Robin, ever ready with lube in hand, (he must have hidden it under the pillow somewhere,) prepared his lover in silence, working diligently to keep his arousal entertained and carefully so as to not hurt the Peri while he went through the motions of stretching him. He was taking his time, working slowly and torturously, distracting Ishiah with his fine-boned fingers working their magic in an ever tighter and slow pumping rhythm which made Ishiah gasp and shudder. He was so stressed from work and what Piper had done and the emotional outpouring following it that it was a very difficult task to be put upon to get Ishiah to loosen up enough for proper penetration without a fight. Robin's lips caressed the Peri's back, his waist, and after a bit of repositioning, the head of his aching cock. He took it in and lavished his devoted attentions to its oh-so-sensitive tip. Hearing a sigh from the Peri, Robin pulled back, an unmatched mischievous grin on his fox-like face. He'd successfully gotten Ishiah both sedated and well worked up at the same time.

"Finish what you started!" insisted Ishiah, fists clenched around the then deformed pillow.

"Oh, but I am, love!" Robin stated while sliding behind Ishiah and into position to slide in in another manner. Which he did in full and more enthusiastically than he should have, making Ishiah fall still at the sharp but quick shock of pain that traced up his spine and down to the tips of his wings. Robin could only hold out so long before he was jousting forward with ill concealed vigor. It was all Ishiah could do to simply fade back and enjoy the sure to be long ride.

-

Chys: So, how is my writing so far? Please review/comment. Any places to improve?