Pee-Bales and Neighbourly Chats

Sonny

Before Josh, I hadn’t had sex in nearly six months, so I didn’t mind too much when he asked me to top. Well, told me to top. A bossy bottom, I guess. I mean, it was fine. It was still great. He was great. Even though I did all the work and even though I desperately wanted to be fucked. I hadn’t been fucked in so long I wondered if I ever would again.

I watched the shadowy silhouette of Josh’s sleeping form rise and fall with his peaceful breaths. The moonlight streamed in through my panoramic windows and cast golden highlights across the curves of his naked hip, his shoulder, his jaw. The sheets had tangled around his legs.

On paper, Josh was the kind of guy I could fall in love with—handsome, smart, friendly, successful. Yet there was something not quite... there, and I couldn’t put my finger on what. And it wasn’t that he was human. I knew my lifespan as a fae would be ten times his, but my neighbour was a fae. He’d fallen in love with a human, and evoked some form of ancient fae magic that meant her lifespan had been extended far beyond her human years.

I was a huge fan of archaic fae magic. I may have mentioned that.

No, it was something else.

My watch told me it was just after three a.m. I rolled onto my back and attempted to drift back to sleep, but my mind whirred, and I needed to pee. So I got out of bed, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and an old T-shirt, and headed to my building’s roof.

I relieved my bladder into—onto—a metre by half-metre brick of compacted straw. My pee-bale. My pride and joy. My other collection.

Yep, I collected my pee.

Okay, yeah, it was fucking weird, but there were so many incredible nutrients in urine that plants absolutely loved: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. You couldn’t piss directly onto the plants, or they’d curl up and die from the potency—not to mention, my allotment neighbours wouldn’t be best pleased with the view—which was why the pee-bale came in so handy, tucked away behind a couple of fence panels. The straw absorbed the urine and all those wonderful goodies, and when the pee-bale was full and it had matured, I could break it apart and spread it over the soil’s surface.

I tried to keep my diet as organic as possible, no meat or fish, and I tried not to use my bale if I’d been drinking. But I knew for a fact my neighbour, Goldie, used it too. He mostly came up to the allotments to either sit with his fiancée and watch the sunrise, or smoke weed, so gods knew what toxins were in his pee.

“Sonny?” Came a male voice from the general direction of the two sun loungers on the easternmost ledge.

Think of the devil.

“Hey, Goldie,” I said, strolling over and taking the free seat, the one often occupied by his human girlfriend. “No Holly tonight?”

“She’s gone to the Human Realms to visit family for Spring Fest. It’s a big deal for some of them, apparently,” he said. “You smell like sex.”

Goldie was a nymph. A mountain nymph, to be precise. He had some sort of sixth sense for sex.

“He’s still asleep,” I replied. And then, because I was keen to change the subject, I said, “How come you’re not going to the Human Realms with her?”

He shrugged a single shoulder. “You know how it is. Some of the older family members are not my biggest fans.”

I got it. Not only were the couple from different species, but Holly, who had absorbed some of Goldie’s millennia-long lifespan, would now outlive all her family members, including their great-great-great nieces and nephews. Besides, Goldie had never been the easiest person to get along with. He was a nymph, smoked too much weed, drove a ridiculous sports car, designed video games where unaliving people was actively encouraged, and his resting bitch face was on a gold-medal-winning level.

He almost never appeared happy. Except when he was with Holly. That was really the only time I’d ever seen Goldie smile.

“You like this guy?” he asked. “Is this... a thing?”

Urgh, we were back on the topic of Josh. “I dunno. Probably not. He’s human.”

Goldie pulled a face like he’d smelled a bad fart. Despite Holly being human.

We were quiet for a few moments. Goldie lit a joint, took a drag, offered it to me. I almost refused. Almost ended this moment and took myself back downstairs to bed, but then I remembered Josh, naked and beautiful and... wrong, curled up in my bed, and I decided there was an edge to the night. I wanted to take my finger and smudge that edge like it was drying paint.

I didn’t want to think about Josh, or the sex we’d just had, or the future we definitely wouldn’t have, because he was simply not... right.

I sucked in a lungful of smoke and held it there while I mulled over what I might say to Goldie next. Ordinarily, I spent my time trying to cram words back into my mouth, or trying not to accidentally let stupid things slip out. Oat jizz, for fuck’s sake. But when I was around Goldie, I didn’t care if I said strange shit. Wasn’t worried he’d look at me weird, because, well, he was always frowning anyway. But also because he simply didn’t seem to care. Nothing seemed to faze him. Almost like everything I said had validity, even if it was completely unhinged.

He accepted me and my pee-bale with open arms. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Maybe because he was fae, and the whole fae-no-lie thing made it easier for him to accept my weirdness. I was so used to working with other species—werewolves, humans, gorgons—I’d become accustomed to the sideways glances they gave me.

Or maybe because Goldie was such a chill guy. Sure, the humans didn’t like him, but humans and fae always did have a fraught relationship. They just didn’t understand him.

I’d been watching Goldie and Holly from my veg plot since they’d moved into my building about a year ago. I’d never seen two people more devoted to each other. They would come up here two, three times a week, usually at night, sit on their sun loungers and just be near each other. That was it.

Goldie would close his eyes and nap, or else sketch on a drawing pad; Holly would read a magazine or play on a pocket-games console. They chatted occasionally, but more often than not, they would simply share each other’s silence. Entirely comfortable around each other because they were each other’s person.

That.

That was what I wanted.

To find my person.

Someone who “got” me the way those two “got” each other.

But where? Where do I even begin to look for that?

I knew with one hundred percent certainty that was not Josh. He was not my person.

Not the person I wanted to share my silences with.

“What happened to that shroom fae you liked?” Goldie asked as though reading my mind, or at least reading where my mind had been heading next.

“He’s . . . decidedly not interested in me.”

“Bummer,” he said, taking another drag on the joint.

I laughed, hollow and forced. “Yeah. I need to move on from him. Thought that’s what I was doing tonight, but...”

He passed me the joint again as he blew out his smoke. “Maybe. Though, if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen. You can’t fight it. Fuck knows, I’ve tried to fight it.”

“I don’t want to fight it, though,” I found myself saying. “I just want it to be easy. I’m ready for it.” I leant back on the sun lounger and cupped my palms around my mouth. “Come and get me!” I yelled into the night.

Goldie gave a lazy, one-sided smirk. “It’ll happen soon. I swear that’s how it works. You just have to keep your eye open for the opportunity, you know?”

“No,” I said, and he laughed.

And we sat there in silence as the drugs began to cradle me in their warm fuzzy blankets, making everything—Josh, Claude, work, life—seem decidedly and deliciously insignificant.

I shut my eyes and let myself get swept under the euphoria of the buzz. When I opened them again, the sun was up, Goldie was no longer on the lounger next to me, and when I went downstairs to my apartment, Josh was no longer in my bed.