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  All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Selena Kitt

  The Fullness of Earthly Bliss © March 2009 Tessa Buxton

  eXcessica publishing

  All rights reserved

  The Fullness of Earthly Bliss

  By Tessa Buxton

  The departure lounge of Venice Airport was designed with little consideration for any of the town's famous and beautiful architecture. Departure lounges the world over were exactly the same. All white concrete and glass, with hard blue plastic chairs and screaming children and the strange stink of travelling despair. Perhaps it was body odour, jet fuel or long over-percolated coffee. Perhaps it was just his own exhaustion.

  Marcus had thought that he loved airports but he had moved from departure lounge to departure lounge for the last six months with occasional stops in cheap nameless hotels, in hostels once in a while, and his opinion had changed. The reality of staying on a train from Paris to Moscow had not lived up to the fantasy and there had been no time to stay in Moscow, to appreciate the scenery, the wonder of travel, just enough to pick up a cheap bottle of vodka from a street vendor, two cups of borscht, drunk laced with the raw vodka and then on the metro to the airport and out, half way to Hong-Kong before they had even stamped his new EU passport.

  What surprised him most, because he had thought that he had loved travel, was how very nutritious airline food could pretend to be. There was no flavour to it, that had been steamed out of it, very little colour remained and even watching Tvorceskiy chasing the beans around the plastic tray with a little plastic fork had grown old.

  Marcus made the same jokes about the mile high club on this night flight that he made every time, on every flight. Tvorceskiy looked at him for a long moment before he pulled the air-line blanket that he had wedged in the pocket in the forward chair, and then ripped it open with his teeth, much as one would open a condom.

  Lie on your side he said, and Marcus twisted in the slim, uncomfortable chair, his long legs getting in the way but knowing Tvorceskiy's intent as he pillowed his head on Tvorceskiy's shoulder and Tvorceskiy draped the blanket over him.

  Tvorceskiy's hand was hot and dry, the skin turned almost to sandpaper from repeated and prolonged travel, but it was sure and it knew what it was doing. A quick jerk released the buttons on his Levis and strong fingers were inside with skin like an old chamois left in the sun and hard bitten nails. Tvorceskiy was perfunctory, he knew Marcus's responses like he knew his own, and the added danger, the people snoring around them in cattle class, even the smell of detergent in Tvorceskiy's stolen hooded sweatshirt just made it that little bit better, that little bit hotter. He could smell the strange peppered chicken on Tvorceskiy's breath, bent over, resting his head on Marcus's as if they had fallen asleep in this position.

  Tvorceskiy's palm was dry and his fingers loose as they slipped back and forth along Marcus's cock, his nails catching in fire bright pubic hair and remarkably dexterous despite the position and his still mostly closed jeans, his hand just inside the open fly. His palm rubbed and pulled and it took all Marcus had to not move into that hand, to murmur because it had been so long, and that had been a quick fumble in a cheap by-the-hour hotel in a suburb of Paris. Tvorceskiy straining above him in the street light that came through the window and his eyes boring into him like diamond drills.

  The danger, the silence, Tvorceskiy's apparent inattention and the memory of that night in the 14th arrondissement and the scratch of Tvorceskiy's bitten nails, once so carefully manicured, was enough to bring Marcus to climax, burying his face in the scarlet coloured sweat fabric of Tvorceskiy's shoulder. Don't you dare drool, Tvorceskiy warned and Marcus, boneless, tired, satisfied, just smiled.

  * * * *

  There was an argument in Lima because Tvorceskiy wanted to move on to Mexico City by train and instead Marcus wanted to see Machu Picchu. The argument was quick and nasty. They'll expect it, Tvorceskiy hissed, Marcus answered sarcastically what, that we might actually behave like tourists for once and it's not like the last sighting wasn't in Iceland. Tvorceskiy told him it's just a building but gave in anyway. He always did when Marcus made sense. He said it was rare enough that it wasn't as if Marcus would make a habit of making sense.

  Marcus knew not to push Tvorceskiy. It had been a long time since they had run hot, and the lack of control hurt him. This was free-fall, travelling wherever the next plane was going, catching trains when they thought that the planes were too dangerous, to throw off the scent. Tvorceskiy's hair had gone white, kept in the same style, though the glasses were long broken and replaced with cheap lasik surgery that had almost destroyed his night vision.

  The bus was a converted Volkswagen van, Tvorceskiy sat behind a Peruvian lady in a brightly coloured poncho, with a chicken on her knee and a dog on a rope leash, chewing his nails. They had eschewed the tourist bus in a concession to being recognised, though Marcus had grown his hair long and dyed it a muddy blonde and Tvorceskiy's white hair had taken a green rinse. To the casual observer they looked like backpackers, even down to their worn Timberland boots and busted Levi 501s. Marcus suspected that the kid would be paralysed with laughter to see them, but this was to allow the kid his laughter.

  A heavily pregnant woman nursed her child on the back seat, singing him some soft lullaby, as she rocked the baby hanging on her tit. There was a time when Marcus would have dipped into her mind and felt her happiness as if it were his own, there was no drug, no greater rapture than such simple moments of bliss, but it was too dangerous.

  Tvorceskiy saw him looking, give her some privacy, he said and Marcus sighed and turned to Tvorceskiy, gnawing on his nails, gaunt and belly rumbling on this long close bus journey across Peru. He looked at Marcus and asked, do you think I'd catch something if I just ripped that chicken's throat out with my teeth? I'm hungry enough to eat it, feathers, parasites and all.

  Marcus remembered Tvorceskiy in the luxury restaurants complaining that his steak wasn't blue enough, or that his beans were over-cooked, he liked his vegetables crisp and his beef blue. He was fussy, complaining about the wrong year in his favourite wine, or the wrong thread count in his napkin. He had been impossible to please, and now he wanted to eat a raw chicken, the irony was almost ludicrous and Marcus laughed. Then Tvorceskiy laughed with him.

  They had a chilli prepared at a street booth and served through the windows in a bowl made of stone-baked bread, thick with peppers and large chunks of meat. They ate it on the bus with their fingers, Marcus bent over his bread bowl as the sauce dripped down his chin. Hot and vicious and good even without hunger.

  Tvorceskiy laughed at the sight he made. The image of Tvorceskiy, chilli smeared around his mouth from eating and his hair a brilliant lime green seemed, just for a moment, to be a whole new person, perhaps who he might have been before Vienna, softer, warmer, and then he burped and laughed some more.
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br />   Marcus didn't like it though, it wasn't his Tvorceskiy, and the thought sobered him up.

  * * * *

  At Machu Picchu they found themselves a quick bunk in someone else's tent. In exchange for the use of it they would protect the other couple's stuff from being stolen whilst they took a night hike with a local guide.

  The night was clear with little chance of rain. So they sat around a camp-fire as Marcus pulled at his split ends and Tvorceskiy squinted at him, his eyesight almost shot in the dark, even though the moon was full and bright casting everything in a sort of Atzec silver radiance.

  Tvorceskiy asked, do you miss it, other people's minds? And Marcus didn't know how to answer him. So they were quiet for a while, Tvorceskiy poking at the fire with a stick because this was too close to being personal to them, too raw and private. Eventually he surprised himself with his half-mocking answer, it's better than burnout, he explained, and they still have too many things to do, and white hair wouldn't suit him. It would make him look pasty.

  Tvorceskiy touched his own, now green, hair and said nothing.

  The sex that night was prolonged and desperate. Tvorceskiy seemed fascinated by the sheen of sweat on Marcus's stomach in the moonlight, using his bitten uneven nails to draw alchemic designs on it. It was no longer a flat plain of fanned muscles, inconstant and crappy food had ruined that, now it was soft and somewhat flabby and Tvorceskiy was almost as fascinated by the new ability to dip his little finger inside his navel as he was by ensuring their safety.

  Tvorceskiy had lost weight instead, his clothes hanging loosely on his slender frame where he had borne a comfortable bulk before. He looked younger, less secure, but he had a ceramic glock in his rucksack, just in case. He looked softer, but he was still Tvorceskiy and would not concede an inch in their world war.

  It just meant he fit better between Marcus's thighs. Or at least that's what Marcus told himself.

  * * * *

  He was asleep in the back of an open top black Plymouth driving across Arizona when the dream hit him.

  He is back in Vienna, in the office of Großvater, young enough to still be dandled on a knee but Großvater is past that, a hundred or a thousand years past that, they whispered in the dorms. He is giving the warning that is instilled in them almost as soon as they came into their power, I know it's good, he says, it's addictive, it's like honey and heroin, but you'll know that when you're older, a smirk to himself, a private joke not shared, but it always ends in two things, you'll learn or you'll burn out. If you disobey, if you're lucky they'll kill you.

  He woke up gasping as if he were being held under water, and Tvorceskiy was there, holding his shoulder and staring in his face with those eyes like insects trapped in amber, without a moment's softness. I need you, he said, you can't burn out yet.

  * * * *

  A cheap motel in Chicago, that rented by the week, the room under the rented sign for a negotiated cheaper rent. Tvorceskiy was fascinated by the refrigerator, a small stained thing in the corner, he called it an icebox and the promise of keeping fresh milk had him in raptures like a small child to whom a present was proffered.

  Marcus's head was splitting, a migraine that seemed to wait for him at the Illinois state border and had left his stomach unsettled and the very air painful. He denied to himself what it meant. Just a little longer, he told himself, just a little more.

  He didn't notice Tvorceskiy leaving.

  Drug-store dye and nail scissors saw Tvorceskiy's hair a rather banal brown, eyeliner and gel finished the look of a young misanthrope. The stained and ruined sweats replaced with skull printed Vans and cargo pants. He didn't look thirty in them and that was the intention. Marcus split open his eyes and laughed, if it isn't the fourth member of Green Day. Tvorceskiy frowned as he pointed out that they had four members anyway. It wasn't in Marcus's heart to tell him he was wrong.

  The smell of the sheets was making him sick, old sweat, cheap detergent, cigarettes, other people's filth and ordure. He took a handful of Tvorceskiy's store-bought day strong and bright blue Aleve and washed it down with toxic green Mountain Dew, wincing at the thin light that was falling through the curtains. He had collapsed on the bed with his boots and jeans on. Did you get me new clothes on your shopping spree? but he doesn't really want the answer, soda to take the taste out of his mouth and the strongest pain pills he could get over the counter, that's all Marcus wanted.

  Tvorceskiy jutted his jaw towards the shopping bags falling against each other like young drunks in the corner. Sleep now, he said and he picked up the keys, leaving the glock where Marcus could find it. There are a few other things I need to get and then he was gone.

  Marcus slept a little, drank the last of the Mountain Dew, emptied the bags Tvorceskiy had brought him, a couple of cheap battered tees, probably from a thrift store, cargo pants, short jeans too big in the waist, bright new briefs in vibrant blacks and white, with Converse trainers still with their security tag on, though now disabled. Marcus wondered if their money was running thin if Tvorceskiy had taken to shoplifting, then he saw the price tag and understood.

  In the “ice-box” he found a large container of bottled water, a thing that had always amused him about America. It took up nearly half of it and there were a few chipped tumblers and he poured himself a glass, slipping down beside the fridge to drink it, unsure on his feet. He rolled the glass about his forehead trying to cool down, the migraine having left in its wake a feverish feeling and a dry throat. He drank one glass, two, a third, before he felt the need to pee.

  In the small en-suite, it was too small to call a bathroom after all, he discovered that they had squatters, two rather annoyed looking cockroaches in the shower stall. He saluted them before he undid his jeans with a quick jerk of his wrist and holding his cock let out a stream of water into the bowl. Out of habit he checked it for blood.

  Tvorceskiy called him as he opened the door, you feeling more like yourself, he didn't open the bathroom door, just opened cupboards and there was the clanking of things being put away. When Marcus met him in their small open plan retreat he found Tvorceskiy had hit Walmart without him. He had never been so grateful. They were staying here for at least a few days, perhaps the whole week they had rented the room for.

  Just a little longer, Marcus told himself, just a little more.

  * * * *

  The smell of good vodka prickled around the edges of the room, sharp like frost, mixed with tap-water ice and Mountain Dew. It was the very best that Walmart had to offer, served in plastic cups and drunk on the veranda outside their modest, foul, little room. They sat on garden chairs pilfered from the side of the empty pool where one of the kids in the complex practised his skating and complimented Tvorceskiy every time he walked past, and even helped him with his pink tips.

  The ear piercing gun was sitting on the small table back in the room waiting for them both to pluck up enough Russian courage to use it. It was mid-afternoon and they had tickets, courtesy of Steven who wanted to be called Vergil to better suit his goth mannerisms, to see a local band and they wanted to be pierced before they got there. He was a good kid and he'd do stupid things for a tab of E or a glass of vodka, but mostly the chance to feel grown up.

  This was the closest Marcus and Tvorceskiy had ever had to a date, and even then it was just part of their life here, for however long it lasted.

  Tvorceskiy had taken to selling recreational drugs to plausibly explain their having any money as Marcus took the break as a chance to rest, to recharge because it was hitting him hard. There had been no sign of it affecting Tvorceskiy after his hair turned white. Tvorceskiy had bought an ear cuff and one of them was getting that and the other one was getting studs and that was that, he had spoken.

  He had conceded too much by then anyway.

  The pain was sharp and quick, like a bolt of fire, through the lobe as Vergil dealt with it; Marcus kicked his feet but otherwise held still. That hurts like a bitch he yelled, suck it up, Tvorceskiy smi
rked from the door only five more holes to go.

  He was wearing a tee for a band that would have reshaped the world twenty years ago and now were only mediocre remnants, he looked young and slightly vulnerable in a pair of plain glass David Byrne frames and chipped black nail polish poking through his fingerless red mittens.

  The kid would have choked himself to death laughing if he could have seen them, but to Vergil they were wild and reckless and free and under instruction from his mother, terrifying enough that they listened, that he was not to be pierced.

  Coloured gel and eye glitter had completed the look and Tvorceskiy looked less like Tvorceskiy than Marcus had ever seen him, a stranger with Tvorceskiy's hard gold eyes looking out from his skin.

  * * * *

  Despite the pain Marcus couldn't stop touching the rings in his ears, twisting them through because it felt strange and wondrous and sharp and all his own. The pain was delicious, sexual, tasty. The look of bemusement in Tvorceskiy's eyes was like mother-love as he flicked the blue metal ring through his left nipple. He still wondered if and when he had agreed to it, and was pretty certain it involved that purple thing he had been drinking out of Marcus's mouth.

  The pain was delicious.

  It ran a thrill down his spine like lightning, the ball hanging on it feeling like one of those plasma balls in an old science fiction film laboratory even as Marcus crawled across the bed, still slightly drunk, still slightly high to disguise his mental signature just in case, and pushed him back. With a shark's grin Marcus took the ring in his teeth and pulled.

  They had been quiet too long, quick fumbles and disappointing hand jobs. Marcus was drunk, stoned and horny, and this stranger-Tvorceskiy, this stranger-Tvorceskiy with a nipple ring, was prey. He was smudged eye make up and painted nails and this, he tugged the nipple ring again listening to Tvorceskiy whimper as sex and pain mingled. It had been too long.