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Carson's First Christmas - Part Two: Street Faire
R for language

I've decided to post this as is, with a description of how Keith "paints the town" to come a little later.  Since I really don't have time to complete this part right now, we'll call it Part 2A.  I hope I'm not confusing anyone, especially poor Midnight!

This part occurs right after our intrepid heroes finish shopping at the dreaded Gump's.

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After kissing Carson for about five, ten, fifteen minutes, I managed to slowly pull away.

You wouldn't believe what a drag that was, the pulling-away part.  So what that it wasn't a polite thing to kiss your male lover outside of the Castro district?  So what, that a gaggle of Japanese tourists were staring at us, babbling something that sounded like "Yowee, yowee!" and taking pictures even?  So the incarnation of Baast was watching, and definitely leering all over the place.  So the hell WHAT?

I looked up into Carson's eyes, and he smiled back down.

Up.  Oh, God.  I was looking UP at him.  He was looking DOWN at me.

"Have we gone another level?  Is this----"

"Yes," he breathed.  His eyes were the color of storms in the East, blue touched with violet.  Storms in the East?  Of a world I'd never seen, perhaps.  "Your magic has made it so, pushed us closer.  Beloved----"

Nervously, I shied away from his embrace.  "Great.  My so-called magic has given you two, three inches on me at least.  Holy nightmare, Batman!  When does my magic make ME taller?"

Baast snickered at my feet.   "If you dislike the big boys, you had better run about now, Gatewalker.  It only gets worse.  Or---better."

"Thanks!" I snapped at her, then glanced at Carson.  He was staring at the purring black cat with a small frown.  "Can he---does he---?"

"See me?  Yes.  Know what I am?  No.  He is powerful, but not in this form of magic.  He knows I am more than I seem, of course, though he does not hear my thoughts as you do."  Baast smiled, and threw her leg over her shoulder to lick her butt industriously in the manner of true cats everywhere.  "He thinks I am perhaps your familiar.  Shall we indulge this fantasy?"

I studied her somewhat grimly.  She gave me a look so cat-innocent that I just had to crack right the hell up.

"Sensei---" Carson said questioningly, and I waved him to silence.

"Hang on.  Talking to my familiar here.  Give us a sec?"

He studied me, and smiled slightly.  The pride in that look blew me right the hell away.  Well, why not?  Two days ago I had been fighting the very idea of magic, per my therapists.  Now I claimed a familiar.  He had to be gloating, the prick.

"Forever," he agreed softly.  Ah man, it was almost painful to bust his bubble.

I did it anyway.  "And while you're waiting---dig around and find that San Francisco Visitor's Guide and prepare to hand it the hell over.  You know, the little package that tells you where to go and the best places to spend money in the Bay Area?  I don't need the advice but I could use the map.  Been awhile since I was in the City with money to burn."

I had the nasty joy of seeing him flush deeply.  He reached into the confines of his jacket once again, and brought out a stupid looking brochure with a picture of tourists frolicking on a beach.

I snorted.  Somebody from Idaho must have assembled this package, if they thought Northern California beaches were warm and friendly places where you could trot around in a bathing suit!  "You gotta stop wasting your money on crap like this, Carson," I scolded him.  "Hey, that jacket is fitting a bit tighter on you.  Looks nice.  Turn around so me and the cat can leer at your ass.  Um---yes, indeedy!"

The flush was gone, and I had him laughing again.  I shouldn't have teased him about the little guidebook.  Of course dear old Dad had never brought him to San Francisco for a day trip, he might as well have lived a continent away.  Darkangels aren't really much good at parenting skills.  I felt ancient anger swell in me, and crushed the useless emotion.  Charles Ravenstreet, or rather the thing that had worn his shape, was dead now.  And his son was MINE.

"If you're a good boy, maybe Santa will let you sit on his lap when we get home," I had the nerve to say softly, staring up into those very blue eyes as he turned back around to face me.  "Would you like that, kid?"

His eyelids lowered slightly, and his smile faded into a look of molten danger. "You have a filthy mind, teacher.  A trait you hid well, for too long a time."

"You bring it out in me.   What can I say?"

"You can say that you mean what I think you mean," he replied softly.  We were back to kissing-close, packages and the dumb brochure pressed between our bodies.  Chest to chest, if not exactly eye-to-eye anymore.  Definitely hard-on to hard-on.  Baast was purring hugely, winding between our ankles happily.  She was one slut of a cat all right.

"My dick, your ass.  That concrete enough for you?"

His lush mouth quivered in a way that made me wanna take a little bite from the lower lip, except I'd have to stretch a bit now to reach it.  Damn him, I could see by the sparkle of his eyes how much he enjoyed being taller than me.  "You are crude, Sensei.  But beautifully to the point.  And if this is not a firm promise at last---I will hurt you, I swear it."

"Firm as hell, can't you feel THAT at least?"  I was really enjoying this little seduction/snark-contest, had actually forgotten we were in public view.  Baast was enjoying herself so much she was rolling about like a playful kitten.

"Goddamn perverts!"  The word snapped through the air behind us.  "Take your filth somewhere else where my kids can't see it, you faggots!"

I looked around in surprise.  Oh, of course----a couple more tourists by the look of all the expensive cameras, but these folk looked Mid-American, and certainly not as appreciative as the Japanese flock had been.  There were two adults and three kids of various sizes; the fat woman who had snapped at us was trying to shield the eyes of the little girl.  The kid was not cooperating, complaining loudly that she wanted to take a picture, Mom!  This was the prettiest thing she'd seen all day!  The boy, a kid of maybe ten with glasses like a hoot-owl, stared at us with a kind of intense wonder, total interest.  The tall skinny husband, who resembled Christopher Lloyd in a mad scientist role, seemed embarrassed to death, but more at his wife's outburst than the sight of two guys leching it up in public.  The baby in the stroller was only interested in her rattle.

Carson stiffened and pulled away from me; angry or hurt, I wasn't sure which, but did it make me mad?  Goddammitall!   I turned swiftly, words snapping out of me without any planning on my part.  "Hey, fatso, take your kids somewhere else if you're so worried.  This is MY town, MY lover and none of YOUR damn business!"

I don't know how I managed to be so articulate and calm.  Yeah, calm.  I was irritated at the interruption, but there was no embarrassment left in me.  The magic had burned it all away.

I heard Carson choke; I had turned around to face this big momma down.  The feel of his arms winding around me from behind was supportive in the extreme.  Baast was sitting on the steps haughtily.  "Peasants!" she remarked, scornfully.

Mom's mouth opened and closed like a carp's for a few seconds, a less than attractive sight.  She turned to her weedy husband at last in a fury.  "Ralph!  What kind of man are you?  Say something!"

He did, but not what she was hinting for.  "The cat called us peasants," Ralph said with only mild amazement.  He was one of those people who didn't freak out at strange things happening, maybe because he was himself a little goofy in the head.  He met my eyes then, with definite apology in his.  "And the cat's right.  So's this gentleman.  Let's go, Martha."

Martha gaped at him disbelievingly, while the girl-child, freed from her clutches, happily aimed a little pink camera at us.  I grinned, leaned back into Carson, and flashed her the peace sign.  She seemed tickled to death.

Her mom sure didn't.  She raised quite a ruckus as Ralph propelled her on her way, swooping his kids along too with an amount of backbone that must have amazed the poor woman.  Appalled at his betrayal---and maybe also at his crazy notion of a talking cat---she started bleating out requests to passersby to do something about the damn perverts.  She didn't get much response, except from one woman in a business suit who advised her to shut the hell up.   Martha was wailing to San Francisco natives here, people with zero tolerance for tourists challenging anybody's lifestyle.  Tourists were supposed to just spend money and keep their yaps shut.  Even natives who themselves disliked the idea of "gay" wouldn't support a goddamn tourist.

The last sight of them I got was a piercing look from the boy, who turned and actually walked backwards for a few paces to study us one last time.  I wasn't quite sure what that assessing expression meant in a kid that young.

So I shrugged, and dismissed them all from my mind.  "C'mon, Carson, let's find the car and get movin' over to a better part of town, like Fisherman's Wharf or the Castro," I suggested, pulling free of him reluctantly.  "This area is just too low-class for me to handle, man."

We went to my side of town, the very intricate and half-crazed town I'd learned to love at its best, despair of at its worst.  And I was loving it again, now that magic was once more alive there.

Baast trotted beside us as we walked to the car, smiling as only a cat can smile.  Carson eyed her but said nothing; he was still a little rattled by me, I think.

Because I was afire.  Beyond that; I was molten.  And every step I took seemed to build it inside me.

Not to mention OUTSIDE me.  Though only certain people seemed to notice, that a silver twilight circled around me in the middle of the afternoon, that the buildings were suddenly limned in pale violet fire as I passed.

"I thought you said that Earth was low on magic; why's it all fired up now?  How come I feel like I can do---anything?"

"Because you can," Carson said, quietly.  I'd been talking to the snooty black cat, not him, and I think he knew it; anyway he politely held the car door for her as she stepped inside, proud as a princess, and yakking away as she leaped to the back of the passenger seat to gabble on in my very ear.

"It is a time of enchantment in all worlds, the Winter Solstice," she pontificated, as interesting as ten pounds of dry cat litter.  God grant that as a teacher I never sounded off in such a boring monotone!  Her info was far from dull, but her delivery made me cringe. "Through all beliefs, this is a holy season, even here in this place of pitiful power.  And for a true wizard to use magic at such a time?  You tore open a portal, boy.  I think that Portal Magic may be a gift of yours.  In any case it will not last for long, this world is not as strong in power as some.  And yet you have filled this place of yours with the dream of what it could be.  As well as yourself."  The cat began to lick one paw delicately.  "Use it while it lasts, for what you will."

She said this to me, and I knew it was real.  It couldn't be fantasy, she'd made it sound too boring!  I knew that magic was mine, that I could have my fifteen minutes of fame, stop wars or begin them. Get a feel of what ruling the world was like.

Or merely---alter other things.  A whole bunch of important-to-me but definitely lesser-on-a-world-scale things.

I watched as Carson slid into the driver's seat.  I smiled at him, and slipped my hand over his as he gripped the wheel.  He glanced at me, then at the purring cat.

"Chocolate is the first order of business," I said firmly, and was pleased to see him fighting off something like a grin.  The sixteen-year-old kid's sweet tooth hadn't disappeared then.  "We're going to Cost Plus, East Coast boy.  I'll teach you how to shop for candy, coffee and Far Eastern trinkets.  Gump's my ass!"

I bent to the map to plot out directions, and felt the soft whisper of his breath as he kissed my hair near my ear and whispered, "What I want for Christmas, you won't need money for.  Only stamina."

"Hey, hey, not in front of the cat!" I scolded him firmly.  And had the joy of hearing him laugh again, as he pulled out into the mind-boggling mess of San Francisco pre-Christmas traffic.

TBC

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