The Courtship of Julian St. Albans (10 page)

“Not until you’re clear of spell residue,
I’m afraid,” said Dr. Tamlinson. “But you can call me Geoff if you
like.” He flashed a very charming smile indeed, and Alex had an unworthy
moment of wondering if he’d been the source of the attraction spell earlier.

“Geoff, then,” said Alex, letting his
hand fall to his lap. “What do you need me to do?”

Geoff chuckled, putting on a pair of latex
gloves from his neatly-packed medical kit. “I should think you’d be used
to this.”

Alex couldn’t tell whether Geoff was teasing or
serious, but given Alex’s opening gambit, it wouldn’t do to take offence.
“I actually don’t stumble into magical traps as often as you might expect,
given my line of work,” he said, trying to keep the indignation out of his
voice.

“That explains how you’ve kept away from
my lair, though you are due for a physical sooner rather than later,” said
Geoff. “For now, if you’ll just remove your coat and any magical artefacts
on your person? We’ll check those for contamination separately.”

Alex spared a moment of worry for his pricey
new toy, but he obediently removed his coat and waistcoat including the watch,
chain and fob. He slipped off his shoes and put his keys and wallet on the
pile, then tried to remember if anything else he was wearing today was charmed.

“I’m tempted to suggest there might be
anti-wrinkle charms on your trousers,” said Geoff teasingly, “but
that wouldn’t be professional.”

Alex laughed. “I don’t think they’ll leave
us alone in the office long enough for that sort of probing, Doctor.”

Geoff chuckled and then held out his hands.
“Gloves off, too, and then put your hands in mine.”

“Oh, right, I’d forgotten… how strange,
that I’d forget them,” said Alex, removing the gloves and setting them,
not with his other things, but on the floor away from him. As soon as his
fingers left the cotton, he felt better. “Oh, that’s why, they’re
definitely contaminated.”

“Good to know,” said Geoff, making a
little beckoning motion with his hands.

Alex put his now-cold hands into Geoff’s warm
ones and hoped his blush would be chalked up to spell residue. “How do you
sense magic?” he asked, mostly making conversation; even sight-based mages
often got a perception boost from touching the object in question.

“I should say taste,” said Geoff,
making Alex’s pulse pick up just a little, “but actually it’s touch for
me. The gloves make it harder, but I need to be a little bit protected from the
spell that knocked you out.”

“Touch, that’s,” Alex swallowed,
“intriguing.” His imagination kicked into overdrive, presenting him
with images of a touch mage and sound mage together, each moan carrying magical
overtones, each caress exploring both physical and magical contours.

“What are you thinking
right now?” asked Geoff sharply.

Alex turned bright red.
“I don’t know if-” he protested.

“It’s the spell, I can feel it growing
stronger,” said Geoff, his voice all authority now.

Alex let out an embarrassed whimper. “You,
I’m thinking of you and me and the very magical sex we could have,” he
said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

Geoff looked surprised, blinking up at him
owlishly. “The spell is making you want me?”

“More,” clarified
Alex. “It’s making me want you more.”

“Ah,” said Geoff, clearing his
throat. “So the spell is intensifying already-existing feelings of
lust?”

Alex nodded, feeling miserable despite the
deliciously vivid images still playing through his mind. “There’s some
underlying affection building as well,” said Alex, “so it’s not
entirely lust.”

“What if I told you I
had a boyfriend?” asked Geoff.

Alex’s pulse spiked. “No!” he said,
and then stopped, shocked. “Oh, my. I assure you, such vehement
possessiveness is not a natural trait for me.”

“I wonder why it chose
me?” said Geoff.

“Perhaps it needed the prior lust to build
on?” said Alex, trying very hard to push away the foreign impulses.

Geoff chuckled. “Don’t swing both ways,
then?” he asked, and Alex’s fingers twitched again at the thought of Geoff
with a woman, with anyone but himself.

“This is very unpleasant,” said Alex.
“Not the lust part, but the jealousy, it’s quite odd and unwelcome.”

“I think you’re going to have to go
through a full purification to get this out of you,” said Geoff
apologetically.

Alex sighed. “Can it be done here?”
he asked. “Agent Lapointe can see to my things.”

“Well, not on the couch, but you can come
to the infirmary, yes. Just let me bag up the gloves and your artefacts, and I
can examine them while you have your bath.”

“Ugh,” said Alex,
“I hate salt baths.”

Geoff chuckled, using tongs to drop the gloves
into a magically null bag and then dropping the tongs in after and sealing the
whole thing up. “Should’ve been more careful, then,” he said,
demonstrating by using more of the little plastic tongs to bag up Alex’s
personal things. “None of this feels like the spell, though, so I think
you’re safe.”

“I hope so,” said
Alex with a sigh. “I really like my stuff.”

“Come on, let’s get you to the infirmary
before I strip you naked. You can bring your other clothes,” he said,
nodding to the discarded jacket and waistcoat.

“Oh, goodie,” said Alex
sarcastically, but he complied, gathering his things and trooping after Geoff.
They paused long enough to assure Lapointe that he’d be fine, and then it was
down to the much more private infirmary in the basement, which Alex had always
thought was situated far too close to the morgue for comfort.

“In there,” said Geoff, pointing to
one of the exam rooms. “Shuck your kit, every stitch, not a single bit of
jewellery left.”

“This really isn’t how I’d hoped you’d get
me naked,” said Alex, a halfhearted attempt at flirting as he shuffled
into the small room. He left his clothes in an uncharacteristically messy pile
on the bed and tried to decide if it was worse to be small because it was
bloody cold in here, or big because he was still seeing pornographic images of
the two of them in a loop in his head thanks to the spell.

Geoff knocked on the door. “The bath’s all
set, you can go through the far door.” There was a pause, and then he
added in a more playful tone, “Don’t worry, I’ll still see all of you for
the last bit.”

“Hooray,” said Alex sarcastically,
finding the spell’s effect lessened now that he was away from the target, but
his headache beginning to return.

He sighed and went into the next room, where a
raised round tub held a milky-looking bath that was unhappily not steaming at
all. “I hate this part,” he said to nobody in particular, then he
forced himself to get in the cold water with its harsh mineral salts, immersing
himself despite the way the salt stung his nose and the small abrasions of his
everyday life. He hadn’t even known he had a hangnail, but now every tiny break
in his skin was a point of sharp pain.

He stayed under for as long as he could stand,
which he knew was rather pathetically short, and then he came up just enough to
get a few good breaths of air before going back under. With his real ears
muffled by the liquid, he could hear the alien magic buzzing around inside him,
the noise angriest at those points where the salt bath stung, as the bath
slowly purified everything it could reach.

After a dozen dunkings, he sat up and made the
very unpleasant effort of getting the salt bath to wash over every wrinkle and
crevice in his nether regions. When he emerged he was cold, sore, his head hurt
and his skin felt as though he’d been lightly sandblasted.

The warm shower waiting for
him afterward was bliss.

Special purifying soap washed away the residue
of the salt bath and soothed his small pains, and he was just as thorough with
it as he had been with the cold. He even used a neti pot full of warm saline to
clean out his sinuses, and a specially designed ear washer to get the stinging
salts out of his smarting ears. He also drank a good pint of cool, clear spring
water, and by the time he stepped out of the shower and found the stack of
fluffy unbleached cotton towels waiting for him, the buzzing magic had been
reduced to a tiny shadow of itself, echoing around his ribcage but unable to
insinuate itself back into his subtle body.

He resisted the urge to wrap a towel around his
waist and instead went naked into the next room, not the way he’d come but
another chamber kept magically charged for situations such as these.

Inside, Geoff was waiting for him with a smile
on his face and a tiny cup of thick, sticky liqueur distilled from honey and
purifying herbs and given a very potent magical charge by the order of monks
who created it.

Alex felt the spell trying to rise up in him,
to burrow down to his more easily-influenced parts, but the magic crowding the
room stifled it, kept it trapped, squeezed it down until it was just a tiny,
angrily buzzing little bee right at the centre of his chest.

Geoff lifted the cup, pouring the liquid into
his own mouth and then stepping forward to place one hand on either side of
Alex’s head, his thin white robe brushing all along Alex’s front as they
kissed. The magical liqueur spilled into his mouth and he swallowed
reflexively, taking that magic into himself and feeling it spread through him
in a white-gold wave, splitting the remains of the spell up and shoving it out his
fingertips until there was nothing left but light.

The tangling of their tongues as the power
faded was not, strictly speaking, part of the ritual, but Alex couldn’t bring
himself to object.

“Mmm, not how I’d imagined a first kiss
going,” said Geoff with a chuckle as he stepped away.

“Hard to live up to,” teased Alex,
trying to pretend he was comfortable standing there naked, his whole scrawny,
pale body on display before he’d had a chance to impress the man with his
other, more inspiring attributes. Not to say that he was below average, but
he’d always been a man whose full talents took time to fully unfold.

So to speak.

Geoff gave him another look and then sighed.
“I will say it’s a shame you’re being Courted, but it’s probably for the
best. If there’s any spell residue hiding on your clothes or artefacts, I
couldn’t find it anywhere but the gloves, but we should avoid,” he
chuckled, “extra-curricular contact, at least for a few weeks until we’re
sure you’re free of its influence.”

“Go and be all wise and practical while
I’m standing here naked, why don’t you,” said Alex, sounding petulant even
to his own ears.

Geoff grinned, surprised. “Patient,”
he said, running a single finger down Alex’s sternum and sending a shiver
through his body. “I’m being patient.”

Alex took a deep breath and nodded. “I
suppose I can handle patient,” he said, then he cocked his head and
grinned impishly, “as long as I don’t have to keep doing it naked.”

“Yes, yes, clothes are through here,”
said Geoff with a laugh, leading Alex to a small room where Alex’s things were
all laid out on a metal exam table, and Geoff’s scrubs were hanging nearby.
Geoff grabbed the collar of his white robe and winked. “All’s fair,”
he said, lifting it off over his head to reveal his own, rather more fit, naked
body. Unlike Alex’s fish-belly pallor, Geoff’s skin was a warm honey colour
that looked like velvet stretched over the contours of muscle and sinew and
bone. The shock of hair around his thick cock was a chestnut brown, darker than
the stuff on his head but not by too much, the same way his hands were nearly
the same colour as the skin on his taut abdomen.

“Either you don’t get much sun, or you’re
a nude sunbather,” blurted Alex, dragging his attention away from Geoff’s
dusky pink nipples to his grinning face.

“The former,” he said, snagging a
pair of underwear from the hook and slipping them on, giving Alex a very nice
view of his arse before hiding it all away again. “Not a lot of sun down
here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Me, neither,” said Alex, gesturing
to his own body, though he did take Geoff’s cue and snag his underpants from
the pile while he was at it. He did turn and give Geoff the same show, since he
considered his arse one of his best and most oft-hidden assets, but he was
blushing at his own boldness when he turned back.

“I like you pale,” was all he said,
but Alex could see the interest in his eyes had sharpened another degree.

“Someone has to,” said Alex with
resignation that was only a little bit true, and they both began to get properly
dressed again, though Alex took a bit longer, given the complexity of his
clothing. He liked the watch so much he didn’t much mind the waistcoat and
jacket, but he never would learn to like cravats, so he left it off this time,
stiff collar hanging open and the tie pin wrapped in the silk and stuck in a
pocket of his jacket. “There, now I look properly debauched,” said
Alex with a wink.

“If I wasn’t worried about your
reputation,” said Geoff, opening the door back into the main infirmary
hallway, “I’d show you what properly debauched really looks like.”