A Situation Has Arisen . . . Again

Claude

I awoke with a groan, my hand already cradling my shaft. Oh no, Sonny saw that.

“It’s getting worse each morning,” Sonny said from beside me. “It’s getting harder”—he winced—“to ignore.”

“Honestly? I might crack,” I said.

He was right. It was getting more difficult to ignore the impulse. The throbbing, pulsing need. There was an easy fix. One that would take next to no time to sort out. But there was also the fact that even if we sequestered ourselves in separate bathrooms, or wherever, we weren’t alone. Not truly alone. There was always Jenny, watching—peeping. How much longer could I go before I decided the desperate urge to come overrode the knowledge of a sentient pervert house studying me?

He scraped his hands down his face. “Okay, but if you do, tell me, so I can crack too. I don’t want to do it by myself—ugh, I mean, I don’t want to do it alone—fucking hell, I mean...” He puffed out a breath. “I don’t want to be the only one this house is perving on.”

“Morning!” called Jenny, as though being summoned.

Maybe I should find somewhere in a nearby town where I might have twenty-five minutes completely to myself. Wouldn’t need all that time, but I could get in a power nap with the remaining twenty-four-and-a-half minutes.

“Oh, what a shame, you both have ‘situations’ again this morning,” Jenny said, clearly enjoying the moment more than Sonny or me. “Why don’t you deal with your ‘situations’ together? A ‘situation’ against ‘situation’ moment.”

I turned to Sonny. “You’re so lucky you can’t hear this house. If ever there was a boner killer, it’s Jen—” I faltered. A thought popped into my head, something I needed to ask the house, but not in front of Sonny.

“Everything okay?” he asked, sitting up and peering down at me.

“Yes, everything’s fine,” I said, which was the truth, but I wasn’t about to admit my theory. “We should get to practicing this teacup magic, though.” I threw the covers off and got out of bed, not caring that Sonny would catch an eyeful of my hard cock through my pyjama pants. Not that I’d have had any way to hide it besides holding a cushion in front of myself. The thing was... disproportionate. I didn’t let myself watch where his gaze travelled.

I took some fresh clothes from the armoire and shut myself in the bathroom before Sonny asked me any more about my brainwave.

It was the house. The house was making us extra horny. I never had this problem back at my Remy apartment. But then, I also wasn’t waking up next to Sonny every morning.

I undressed and stepped into the shower.

“Goodness, that’s quite the specimen you’ve got there,” Jenny said.

“Can you please not refer to my dick as a specimen, or a situation, or any other random word you’ve assigned to it?” The damn thing was still fully hard, standing proud and flush against my lower abdomen. When was the last time it ever did that? Must have been three hundred years ago when I was an adolescent, easily.

“What should I refer to it as then?” the house asked.

“Nothing. Please do not talk about it. Don’t look at it, don’t think about it. I don’t consent to those things.”

Jenny was quiet for a few moments. I took the opportunity to wash, purposefully ignoring my aching need. Though the insistent little slaps my dick gave to my stomach made it difficult to ignore completely.

I closed my eyes. One tiny touch wouldn’t hurt. I would just disguise it as a washing stroke. One gentle, quick—no. Nope. Not with that bloody house watching.

“I’m sorry,” Jenny said as soon as I hit the water-off switch. “I won’t talk about your penis or Sonny’s, or anybody else’s for that matter. I had not realised it was rude.”

“Thank you.” I wrapped the towel around my waist. “Can you demist the mirror? I’d like to shave.”

The condensation on the bathroom mirror evaporated instantly, and I took out my shaving kit. “Your father always enjoyed a good dick discussion. He’d often gallivant about the place naked, letting his member swing wildly between his legs, slapping his knees.”

My hand slipped. Slapping his knees! Bloody hell. Luckily, I was only applying the foam and hadn’t picked up the razor yet.

“You didn’t like him?” I asked Jenny, remembering what Oggy and Willow had said about him. “We saw him twice a year. At the summer and winter solstices. He stayed as long as he had to, and then would disappear for another six months. Think the house hated him for it.”

“It’s not that I didn’t like him,” Jenny said thoughtfully, or as thoughtfully as a house could say. “It’s probably impossible to hate the person who diligently kept me alive for centuries. But he was never here. I can only communicate with the current Lord of Mushrooms, and when your father was lord, he’d do what needed to be done and then he’d bugger off. I... have been so lonely. For hundreds of years. People don’t come to see me, they stay in their guest rooms in the B&B. The sentry fae are afraid of me. The warlock is the only one who ever visits, and I can’t bloody stand him. Besides, customs and behaviours change so rapidly, I don’t know what’s considered acceptable anymore.”

“The warlock?” I asked, finally deciding it was safe enough to take a razor to my skin.

“John, he’s calling himself these days.”

“Interesting,” I said, through lips pulled over to the right. “So, you know about the guests?”

“Of course.”

I swished the blade under the water and moved to the other side of my face. “What’s Mrs Z’s deal then?”

“You mean Hades?”

“Oh, my gods!” My hand slipped again, and this time I was holding the razor. A neat line of blood appeared from my zygomatic bone to my jaw. Thank goodness for faes’ rapidly healing skin. I wiped the excess foam from the area with a towel and watched the slice stick itself back together until it was nothing more than a fading red mark. “Mrs Z is Hades, God of the Underworld?”

“Yup. I’m probably not supposed to tell you that, but I haven’t had anyone decent to chat with in approximately seven centuries, so if they want me to keep my mouth shut, they can fuck off.”

I actually laughed. “Okay, tell me more. I always thought—assumed—Hades was a man.”

“She is when she wants to be. She’s a shapeshifter, and she’s in hiding. Well, not so much hiding, but imprisoned, for diabolical mass crimes against... every species.”

“Wow.” I had so many questions. I dragged the blade up over my top lip, and rinsed off the residue. “What were the crimes? Who imprisoned her, and for how long? Why here at Stinkhorn Manor? And also, how?”

I remembered Oggy saying something about being beyond the cell boundary. Like a literal gaol cell? Was Mrs Ziegler tethered to the house somehow?

“Oh, you know, all the usual crimes. Mass murder, necromancy, inciting a rebellious army of the undead, fighting with the other gods, impersonating Zeus at a charity function, public urination, torture. One of her more brilliant gifts was drawing every moment of guilt or regret from a person and playing them like a private movie inside their minds, reducing them to a cowering husk. She did that to a lot of people. Still would if she had the chance.

“Cannot say who imprisoned her, cough —Hera— cough, cough . Sentence is until the sun freezes, or until she has atoned for her crimes. Here because of the ley lines. The person who imprisoned her, as magically powerful as they are, needed to borrow an inordinate amount of extra magic from the earth, and the ley lines are the point where that magic is as close to the surface as can be. That’s also why I was created here.”

Wow, that was a lot of information to process at once. “What would happen if she tried to leave? Has she ever tried to leave? Why does she hate Mr Dupont so much?”

“If she tries to escape, she will simply evaporate into nothingness, and Mr Dupont is an evil bastard who believes destroying me will destroy her, and therefore leave the Underworld for his taking. But my magic far outweighs his, though it gets weaker the closer we get to the solstices, and he knows this. Still, he cannot crush me, or her, on his own. And just between us, he’s grown rather fond of this cat-and-mouse game he and Mrs Ziegler have going on.”

I wiped my freshly shorn face on the towel and peered at myself in the mirror. If only to give myself some time to process everything. But I realised nothing here was as it seemed.

“Should I be worried? About Mr Dupont, I mean? If he’s trying to destroy Mrs Z by destroying you, would he not attempt to stop me from performing the rhizome ritual?”

I began dressing as Jenny answered.

“He has already made several attempts on your life.”

“Holy shit!”

“But please don’t worry. He might seem scary, but I would never let harm come to you. Or Sonny, for that matter. You both are mine to protect. Besides, his attempts were half-baked at best. Just try not to leave the Stinkhorn Manor boundary wall.”

There goes my idea of finding somewhere outside of Jenny’s reach to have a secret wank. But all the talk about Mrs Ziegler and Mr Dupont had softened my cock to a point I no longer felt the irrepressible need to touch it and relieve the pressure. I’d have to remember that for next time.

When I re-entered my room, Sonny was already waiting for me. He wore black jeans and a black T-shirt that had only words printed on the front: Ask Me About My Ghost Disguise . He stood beside my bookcases and was perusing a palm-sized leather-bound book.

“What’s with the shirt?” I said, reaching the bottom of the spiral staircase. I didn’t specifically want to ask him about his ghost disguise, but I was curious.

“Oh.” He flushed. “It’s from my friend, Mash. Like a novelty gift. Have you not seen these before?”

I shook my head.

His flush extended further, right up onto his temples. Then inexplicably, he lifted the front of his shirt, exposing his pale, lean, almost concave stomach, his chest and nipples. Oh, my goodness. And brought the underside of the shirt up to his face. It took me a while to tear my eyes away from his perfect form and see there was a print of a ghost’s head there and the word BOO underneath it. He hastily dropped the hem and rearranged it over his stomach.

“Witty,” I said, turning my face to hide my blush. “Are those your new jeans?”

“My new-old jeans,” he said. And then, gods help me, he did a twirl and I got the most marvellous, too-brief view of his ass.

Jenny had known what it was doing the moment it placed those trousers in Sonny’s possession. I had never seen any item of clothing fit someone so impeccably. It was like they’d been fashioned from denim hands, gently caressing his buttocks, lifting them up, putting them on fabulous display for me.

The first inappropriate thought that flitted through my mind was, damn, I hope he’s a bottom . The second was, maybe I could ask him during our truth or dare games.

“Shall we go down for breakfast?” I asked, desperate to stop thinking about Sonny’s butt in order to keep the front of my trousers flat, but turning my head and whispering, “Thank you,” to Jenny.

“It’s a gift for both of us,” Jenny said. I pretended I’d heard nothing.

After breakfast, we came back to my room to practise the teacup glamour. Sonny brought me a small glass beaker filled with what looked like cold tea, no milk.

“What’s this?”

“It’s water, with ten mils of lion’s mane tincture,” he said. I raised a brow. “It’s a mushroom, has incredible abilities to help you focus. Clears brain fog like nobody’s business.”

“Sure.” Why ever not? I drained it in one. Tasted a little rubbery, but not too unpleasant.

“The glamour is the same principle as last time,” Sonny said, picking up the teacup and effortlessly swirling the tea leaves into a tiny tornado inside it. “Only this time, all you need to do is whoosh the leaves about. We’ll start with dry leaves because they’re lighter, and when you’ve mastered that, we’ll move to wet ones.” He smiled at me as though it was all super simple, and it probably was. But I guessed now he’d learn just how inept I was at any form of glamour.

“So, I feel, not think?”

“Exactly. You got it,” he said, smiling at me.

“Can we talk at the same time? I have a lot of gossip.” I paused, doubt flitted through my mind. “Wait, Jenny, am I allowed to tell him everything you said?”

“Of course,” Jenny replied. “And there’s so much more where that came from.”

Sonny looked at me, eyes wide, eyebrows raised, an expectant smile playing on his mouth. So I told him everything Jenny had told me in the bathroom. About MrsZiegler-slash-Hades and her imprisonment, about Mr Dupont and his attempts to sabotage Stinkhorn Manor, even about John not being human.

“Knew there was something off about that guy,” he said.

“Same. What’s with that fucking notebook?”

Sonny shrugged, laughed, and I concentrated hard on trying to make the leaves swirl. We stayed mostly silent for the rest of the morning. Sonny lounged on the couch next to me. Occasionally, he would sit forward in excitement, but when he realised the leaves hadn’t moved of their own accord, and it was in fact my resigned breaths that caused them to stir, he would relax again, and say something along the lines of, “Not to worry. You’ll get it soon enough. I believe in you.”

Which caused all manner of emotions to churn in my stomach like an emotion soup. Scepticism, doubt, frustration, but also pride, because he must have believed I could do it. He was fae. He wouldn’t be able to say that if it weren’t the truth.

We paused only for bathroom breaks and for lunch at around one o’clock. At three, Sonny said we should call it a day as his ass was falling asleep from sitting too much. Since I was attempting not to think about Sonny’s ass and I still hadn’t even so much as made a leaf quiver, I agreed without hesitation. For the rest of the afternoon and evening we wandered the grounds and halls of Stinkhorn Manor, trying to find the library, or the room with the model trains, or else any sign of the Earth Bells.

As per, Jenny was about as helpful as an edgeless, six-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of a blue, cloudless sky. We found nothing. No library, no model-train room, no tiny mushroom folk.

After dinner, we got changed into our PJs. Sonny had a shower because he preferred to wash the day off rather than sleep in it.

“I’m usually all sweaty and muddy, and it feels so icky at night,” he’d said. And then we climbed into bed, and Sonny continued to tell me about improving soil health, and how to create good microbes in the soil.

I turned onto my side so I could watch the way his lips moved over the words. He had a barely there lisp, which I hadn’t noticed until I studied the movements of his mouth, but now heard plain as day. His tongue would just peek out from behind his teeth over the letters S and C (when pronounced like an S). I wondered if he’d sucked his thumb when his teeth were forming. It was freaking adorable and made my chest feel achy.

As though moving of its own accord, my hand crept along under the covers, into the no-man’s-land between us. I left it there, in case—my heart beat faster at the thought—Sonny wanted to press his against mine.

He didn’t, but I left it there regardless.

And every night since.