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Crowley had been a pillow-shucker as a kid. If he slept near an encased pillow, you could expect it to be naked (and potentially missing some feathers) by the next morning.
It should have been no surprise that the denuding of things would extend to people whenever he started sleeping beside someone. Yet, it did surprise him the first time it happened. And, it continued to surprise him.
The warm morning sun began to chase away his dreams, tinged with the very excellent edible that he had split with Beelzebub the night before.
Now, he found himself curled tightly around the slumbering Lord of the Flies, both hands firmly clamped on their tits. He needed to disentangle himself before--
“IT’S BEEN one week since you looked at me, cocked your head to the side and said, ‘I’m angry!’”
The CD player was connected to a speaker system that ran through the carriage house and attached orangery. The Barenaked Ladies had started a chorus of meowing, mewling, barking, squawking, and swearing.
The swearing came from Captain Pete, the foul-mouthed, half-wild parrot that came and went through the vents on the orangery. In spite of the heavy velvet curtains, Crowley knew that he was sitting on the railing of Beelzebub’s balcony, screeching at the French doors. “Nice tits, darlin’!”
“Thanks, Pete,” Beelzebub grumbled, sitting up and greeting Crowley with a sleepy, “G’mornin’. Where’s my shirt?”
“Dunno,” Crowley replied, honestly. Beelzebub’s bed was a sea of black cotton. And all around that bed were heaps of black clothes that they’d peeled off the day before.
“Gotta piss, then I’ll get the milk. Let’s get started.”
“Yes, m’lord.” Crowley yawned, and began singing along. “Hold it now and watch the hoodwink, as I make you stop, think. You'll think you're looking at Aquaman.”
He collected the mewling rubber tub (black, 18 gallon capacity) from the side of the bed. Six kittens stared up at him, blinking stupidly as he sang to them. He pulled the heating pad out of their tub and followed Beelzebub outside. The speakers in the orangery were top quality outdoor speakers from a restaurant that was going out of business. Beelzebub’s tunes followed them.
The Lord of the Flies grabbed up a sack of birdseed and cast out a few handfuls. Birds and squirrels dashed to the seed as it bounced across the pavers below.
“I summon fish to the dish, although I like the Chalet Swiss. I like the sushi 'cause it's never touched a frying pan,” Beelzebub sang, voice still thick with sleep.
Crowley walked behind them into the orangery, and then down the wrought iron spiral staircase. They’d dug it out of scrap, and with the assistance of Sergeant Shadwell, had sandblasted and repainted it. Around and down, to the main pavilion of the garden. The scent of the fruit trees and the flowers drew Crowley in. He felt himself relax. Nothing could be further from his parent’s minimalist, modern home--even though it was, technically, right next door.
He walked past the deep farm sink that had been installed in a beautiful little glass alcove. The alcove was trellised, and the trellis dangled unbloomed jasmine. When it exploded in little golden flowers, the heady scent of it filled the whole orangery.
Crowley’s steps mixed with the mechanical tick and whirr of several feeders as they opened to the hungry mouths of Beelzebub’s menagerie.
He (only half in jest) often referred to Beelzebub as the Disney Prince of Hell.
“Fuck me sideways!” Captain Pete screeched as he landed at one of Beelzebub’s feeders.
“Ever regret teaching him that?” they asked.
“Every goddamned day,” Crowley replied.
He set down the tub of kittens on the cement bench that he’d spent his last two hours of consciousness sprawled across last night, high and happy, debating relative time with his equally high cousin. They’d spoken about Alice, and how time must have passed for her after she ate and after she drank. What her world must have been like, and what it would be like to shrink down to the size of an angel on a pin. Jefferson Airplane and The Spin Doctors had accompanied them in their meanderings. Heads right beside each other, watching the stars spin through the orangery’s glass, his feet dangling off the bench. Beelzebub curled up, pressing the last bite of brownie between his teeth.
After leaving the tub on the bench, he followed Beelzebub to the citrus trees. They each took one of the lemon trees, and emptied their bladders.
Beelzebub reached out and touched one of the lemons. It was large and heavy on the tree. “Lemonade soon,” they said.
“And it shall be returned to the trees once we’re done with it,” Crowley agreed, shaking himself once, twice, and tucking back into his pajamas.
They returned to the kittens as the song changed. Crowley grabbed Beelzebub by the wrist and danced, poorly, to the synthesizer and the meows. They went all the way around the bench and tub, some pagan ritual to honor the little beasts who most definitely knew this song and were mewing quite loudly for their breakfast.
Crowley and Beelzebub looked down into the tub and sang to the babies, “I wanna see your pussy. Everybody says it's nice. Can I come and visit? I'll be at your house tonight...”
Beelzebub stretched, without any shyness or modesty, in the morning sun. It occurred to Crowley (as it often did) that there was an expiry date on seeing one’s cousin half naked, and that expiry date was when said cousin developed tits.
They yawned, rolled their neck, and sighed. “First day of summer,” they grunted.
The kittens managed to squeak almost in unison.
“Alright, alright. Be right back,” Beelzebub said, standing on tiptoe and kissing Crowley on the cheek. The chorus kicked up, and Crowley heard Beelzebub belt, “Show me your pussy! Show it to me!”
The door closed behind them, and Crowley couldn’t hear them singing anymore.
Crowley sighed. He was not ready for the first day of summer. He sat next to six kittens in a tub, and sang a filthy song at them. That did help. A bit.
Beelzebub returned with warm bottles and an A&P bag of old towels. They’d found another black A-shirt.
“Let’s get started,” they said, sitting on the other side of the kitten tub on the stone bench.
One by one, they drew the kittens out and rubbed their back ends to help them eliminate. Then, they stuffed bottles into their faces until they were round as little dumplings and nearly asleep.
Three females, all calicos. Two black males. And one white male. The females were named Red Light, Neveah, and Britney. The black males were named Pothole and Da Boot. Those were kitten names, not permanent names. Beelzebub picked names based on things that annoyed them, in the hopes that they wouldn’t end up keeping the kittens.
The white one wasn’t named yet. White kittens might be deaf, but he was too young to tell. Beelzebub kept all the disabled animals that they raised.
Grover, a very big and very stupid and very loving mutt, loped up to Crowley and the tub. He sniffed inside once, then sat down at Crowley’s knees. Crowley scratched behind Grover’s floppy brown ears.
Grover was one of his and Beelzebub’s first rescues. He was a grease-stained puppy shivering in the gutter of St. Charles Avenue, with one forepaw that looked like hamburger. He’d lost the leg, but fortunately, nothing else. He was nearly ten years old. Big dogs age poorly, and Grover was already silver around the muzzle. He couldn’t make it upstairs anymore.
But he still loved them both and was incredibly tolerant of kittens.
“Show me yer dick!” Captain Pete squawked.
“You’ve seen it,” Crowley replied. “Wash or dry?”
“Wash,” Beelzebub answered, standing up and moving to the alcove with the sink in it.
Crowley heard the squeak of the faucets and the gush of water. He collected the tub of kittens, who also knew that sound. They began to mewl, but they were too round to put up any kind of fight.
Grover loped after him, sniffing at the mewling tub. The Mortal Kombat theme played. Appropriate.
It had been Madame Tracy who had demanded that Beelzebub be allowed the old carriage house. She was smarter than most of the adults that meandered in and out of their lives. She looked at Beelzebub, and saw them for the clever and neglected child that they were, and made the demand. James, Beelzebub’s father, was a lobbyist for Christian interests, and that pretty much ensured that his home hosted a merry-go-round of child predators--both the opportunistic and preferential varieties. Beelzebub needed a door that locked, and a big dog.
They got a door, and they got Grover. Grover, who was a middling guard dog. Loud of bark and lacking bite.
However, once they’d finished the carriage house, and the attached orangery, Crowley had unofficially moved in.
Madame Tracy had seen his bruises. She wasn’t stupid. She knew that he’d move in as soon as he had a place to be.
His and Beelzebub’s mums were twin sisters--identical, English, and high fashion models in their teens. Linda (Beelzebub’s mum) was mostly Sapphic, excepting her husband. She seduced those proper Christian wives that showed up to James’ parties.
Alice (Crowley’s mum) was a contract attorney with the maternal instinct of...well, whatever creature had no maternal instinct. A seahorse, maybe. A very image-obsessed seahorse.
His father, Alexander, was a violent psychopath, and one of those attorneys that make problems go away for the very wealthy. His most recent case was a (drunk) client who mowed over a little girl while speeding home from his mistress’ house. The firm also handled the divorce, and his dad’s client managed to come out clean from that one, too.
Whatever. His parents were free to be drunks and social predators as long as he could stay well away from them. The carriage house that they’d built with Madame Tracy’s assistance, and a pirated copy of the whole “This Old House” series--it was technically Beelzebub’s, but now housed both of them and all of the animals that they saved.
The song changed to “Possum Kingdom” by the Toadies. Beelzebub pulled out a kitten, the nameless white male, and dipped him under the warm water.
The kitten howled.
“It’s alright, you flea magnet,” they murmured, scrubbing the kitten down with eucalyptus-mint baby shampoo. “Calm down. I haven’t drowned you yet.”
Flea season was bad that year. They hadn’t had much of a winter, and so the flea eggs hadn’t died.
“How many?” Crowley asked, opening a cabinet and pulling out the fluffy white towels he’d need, and the little basket with the empty pimento cheese jar, the flea comb, and the candle. He pulled a new rubber tub out, and a fresh towel for the bottom.
“Five of them, so far,” Beelzebub replied.
Crowley kissed their bare shoulder as he reached around them, filling his jar. “Rough season.”
“Yeah. Well, we expected it.” They sighed and rinsed the squalling kitten.
Crowley retired to the little glass-topped café table in the rear of the alcove, lighting his candle, spreading his towel, preparing the new kitten tub, and waiting. Beelzebub finished with the first kitten and handed him to Crowley. Crowley dried him with short, brisk strokes. He began to comb through the fur at the kitten’s face and neck. He caught a flea, held the comb over the candle until the flea popped, and then dipped it into the water to cool it.
Repeat until kitten had no more fleas. Then, the next kitten, and the next.
By the time that they were done, the kittens had slipped into a milk coma. Crowley blew out the candle and rinsed his glass of dead fleas. He returned his supplies to their closet as the song changed. “Comatose” by Lisa Hall played.
“We’re on time,” Beelzebub said. Their playlist measured the time of their morning.
Crowley nodded.
“Breakfast?”
“Yeah. Let’s.”
Crowley took the tub of kittens, and Beelzebub the empty tub. They shoveled the wet towels into the tub, and then the kitten-piss rags when they passed the bench. The bottles went on the top.
Grover followed them to the door, and Beelzebub tossed him a treat. He caught it in his mouth and loped off.
They dropped the tub of dirty rags in their small mudroom, beside the washing machine, and stepped into the kitchen. Crowley followed. Breakfast smelled amazing, and Crowley wondered if he still had a bit of his cousin’s fine edibles in his system as he sat at the table.
Like everything else in the carriage house, breakfast was mostly automated. The slow cooker had gone all night, and so breakfast was a hard scramble with vegetables, cheese, and sausage. Beelzebub had, as they were retrieving towels and kitten milk, slipped a pan of cinnamon rolls into the oven and started the coffee. They pulled those out and made two plates.
“Gameplan for today?” Beelzebub asked, levelly, as they set Crowley’s plate and flatware in front of him.
“Survival.”
Beelzebub shrugged, “Sounds right.”
They made the coffee. Unlike Crowley, who had met puberty in a parking lot and beaten it down at twelve, Beelzebub was still growing. They were a prodigious eater. He took them out to buffets for the novelty of watching this little thing eat as much as a grown man.
The CD changed. “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young played.
“Are you still buzzed?” Beelzebub asked.
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
“It is...” they murmured. “The money is so good, but I hate this job.”
“Who’s on with you?”
“Dagon,” they replied.
“Good.”
Crowley wasn’t going to tell them to cheer up. He knew he was the lucky one with the right connection. He was working the information desk. He could be working retail.
But Beelzebub’s money didn’t come from their meager Hot Topic paycheck. It came from the acid that they sold from behind the counter. Nobody noticed the comings and goings of a Hot Topic.
Their manager, a (frankly gorgeous) young man named Lucifer, knew and was a customer. All of the relevants knew, and approved--at least tacitly. The owner of the mall, a hippy who sold his soul to capitalism, bought from Beelzebub. As long as they didn’t get caught by someone worse than Shadwell (who was being surreptitiously micro-dosed by Madame Tracy, Beelzebub had told him), all was well.
Breakfast went fast. “Breathe” by The Prodigy played.
“Shower,” Beelzebub said, picking up plates and cutlery. They went to the sink and started rinsing dishes.
Crowley went to the shower in the mudroom. Beelzebub had a good water heater, with point-of-source at both showers, so they never ran out of hot water.
After a fairly boiling shower, he dressed in his uniform. He wore women’s Dickie’s work pants because they looked better on him. A button-down black blouse that he’d ironed and starched. His name on a gold pin.
After that, he went upstairs to collect their laundry from the previous day. Beelzebub was still in their walk-in closet, probably selecting their clip-on facial jewelry for the day. He went back to the mudroom to start the first load. Whites--kitten towels. Then he took the coolers (“CROWLEY” on one, “DE VILLE” on the other) and went back into the kitchen.
The dishwasher was going. He opened the refrigerator and began to pack the coolers.
Beelzebub stuck their head into the kitchen. “Did you want to visit the Bentley?”
We do every damned day. Crowley thought. But he said, “Yeah...”
Beelzebub nodded, once and sharply. “I’m up to my lab and then I’m ready.”
“Alright.”
The Bentley was in Bentley Jail. Alexander Crowley had actually obtained a boot and locked it onto the Bentley. That left them with the Beelzebug, which had a certain charm. But Crowley missed his car.
He’d been in the wrong parish and that was his first mistake. He’d been out with Beelzebub, flashed a fake ID to get them both drive-through daiquiris at New Orleans Daiquiris. That was mistake two. He was turning into the parking lot of Jefferson Variety, looking for fabric for Mardi Gras season, and turned onto a bicyclist. Third mistake.
“Christ!” Beelzebub had exclaimed when it happened.
They’d both launched themselves out of the car to collect the bicyclist. It was, of all people, Anathema Device.
“Anathema!” Crowley shouted. “Wait...what are you doing all the way out here?”
Anathema held out her pendulum as if that was explanation enough.
“Are you serious?” Beelzebub asked.
“I don’t know where it was leading me...” she’d said. “It’s my fault. I wasn’t looking.”
“Shit, are you alright?” Crowley had asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine...oh no!” She pointed and Crowley followed her finger.
JP saw them. The squad car was ambling up. Jefferson Parish Police were the most dangerous gang in GNO.
Beelzebub looked down at their daiquiri, which they’d brought with them.
“Cheers,” they said, and started to down the whole thing.
Crowley growled something unintelligible and grabbed his cup out of the car. He made eye-contact with the pig while he drained it, earning him a bad case of brainfreeze.
“Did you just drink a whole daiquiri?” the cop asked when he finally got out of his car.
“Yep. Sure did. You saw me do it.”
“WHY?”
“You’re gonna breathalize me, right?”
The cop’s face dawned with realization. “Fuck.”
He couldn’t get Crowley for DUI, because he’d seen him down the alcohol after he’d gotten out of the car. Crowley knew it, and the cop knew it.
“Hey, this was my fault,” Anathema said. “I wasn’t watching. I was following my pendulum.”
She held up her crystal on its chain, as if it was a legitimate excuse.
“I know her,” Crowley said. “I can buy her another bike. That one was a piece of shit, anyways.”
“It. Was. Vintage!” Anathema protested.
“It’s only vintage if you keep it up,” Beelzebub replied, dryly.
“I need to see some ID. On all of you,” the cop said.
“I gotta call my attorney,” Crowley said, flipping his cell phone open.
Beelzebub handed over their ID, as did Anathema.
“Anathema Device...is that your real name?” the cop asked.
Anathema nearly lost her words in her pique. Nearly. “Excuse you?”
“Wait ‘til you see mine,” Beelzebub laughed.
“Dad?” Crowley said, after his father picked up.
Beelzebub stopped and watched. Anathema did, too.
The conversation was brief, and quiet. Crowley hated that, the quiet. It meant that the impending loud was going to be bad.
He hung up the phone. “I can buy her another ruddy bike,” he said.
The argument after that statement was fuzzy, probably from guzzling a daiquiri. By the time Alexander Crowley arrived, Anthony Crowley was zip-tied, sitting on the curb beside his diminutive cousin (not zip-tied), and Anathema, who was zip-tied for threatening to hex the cop.
The cop couldn’t get Crowley for driving while intoxicated, nor drinking underaged. It’s not against the law to drink underaged in Louisiana.
It is illegal to purchase alcohol underaged. Beelzebub lied sweetly about a nice man who’d bought them both drinks and not knowing at all that it was alcohol. So they’d gotten off, scott-free.
Probably for the best, as Crowley liked having a place to crash that wasn’t full of screaming adults with a penchant for rearranging his face.
Alexander reminded the cop that hexing WAS illegal, but THREATENING to hex was not. The cop let Anathema go, but he did not look happy about it.
What the cop could (and did) nail Crowley for was reckless endangerment and driving without a license. Alexander took the tickets quietly, and called a tow truck. Once the Bentley was hoisted onto the flatbed, Alexander loaded all of them into his very posh BMW. He drove Anathema home, and the ride was as silent as a funeral.
Anthony’s funeral, to be specific.
Once Alexander dropped Anathema off, he ripped into his son. He never started screaming around witnesses, but he didn’t count Beelzebub as a witness.
Beelzebub sat behind Anthony, and slipped a hand around the seat, where his father would not see. It found Anthony’s forearm, and braced him against the worst of his father’s tirade.
He didn’t remember much of it, but he thought the words “useless” and “worthless” and “stupid” made up most of it. The rest was flailing and swearing.
That night, a thunderstorm broke over New Orleans, and Crowley showed up to the carriage house with a split lip and a black eye, swollen nearly shut. Blood was still trickling out of one nostril.
Beelzebub drove him to Charity Hospital, where he got excellent care from doctors who knew better than to call the police. The next day, while his father was at work, he and Beelzebub packed his things and moved him next door. Officially.
Not that his parents paid much attention to his comings and goings.
His mother and father were not talking, because Alexander had already promised not to hit Anthony anymore after “The Wasp Incident”, nine years prior. For that reason, it took them a month to realize that Anthony had moved out. That’s when the medical bills showed up for the pre-op appointments with a very capable plastic surgeon, one who didn’t ask many questions.
After the surgery, he’d started working for the GAP, got fired, sued them--making far more than his father’s required “fees”. But Alexander thought he had not learned enough about responsibility, so he got him a job with one of his clients. Mall Help Desk Jockey, and Head Holiday Decorator--but Crowley himself had gotten THAT gig.
Beelzebub started manufacturing LSD and selling it from the Hot Topic. The money was very good, and they were going to need it to get out of their shitty parents’ homes.
Eventually, after a bribed judge and a court date, Alexander made those tickets go away. But he had already forced Crowley to get a job to pay his attorney fees. Alice agreed, but she demanded that Alexander put the money in Crowley’s college fund.
Which he did.
In the end, the Bentley that he’d rescued from his father’s rough handling and customized with every modern convenience--the one that he’d restored, and picked out his favorite part of the night sky on the ceiling of in fiber-optics--that Bentley was booted at his father’s house.
Once a week, Crowley picked the lock on the boot and drove it around the block. It was in Bentley jail until his next birthday, in December. Then, he’d be legally able to drive.
But he went and visited it every day.
“Ready to go?” Beelzebub asked, coming down the stairs from their lab.
From the speakers, Apotheosis’ version of “O Fortuna” blared.
Crowley grunted his assent. He picked up his cooler and a tub of sleepy kittens. Beelzebub grabbed their own cooler and the black military medic’s bag full of kitten supplies. They punched in their code at the door, arming the security system. The music stopped.
“Right on time,” Beelzebub mumbled.
Crowley and Beelzebub used the hand gate between the two houses, and he sighed when he saw it. So lovely under the old magnolia tree. He ran a loving hand over the hood, pausing to thumb over the hood ornament.
He spent a few moments in silent contemplation of the Bentley’s beauty.
“I’m so sorry...” he whispered to the car.
Beelzebub laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “C’mon. It’s time.”
He slid his cooler and the tub of kittens into the back seat of the Beelzebug, then climbed in the front and clicked his seatbelt on.
They drove in silence, content to let the CD player in the Beelzebug drown out the road noise. As a concession to Crowley, Beelzebub had added both CDs of “The Best of Queen” to the CD changer. Freddy Mercury made most things better.
Eventually, the outline of the mall appeared in the hazy summer morning.
“How is it still there?” Crowley asked, through the hand that he’d laid across his mouth and dragged down. “How has it not been struck down by a meteor or something?”
“Further proof that God doesn’t love us, and the devil’s no help, either,” Beelzebub replied as they turned the car into the parking lot.
Crowley groaned as they parked under the spreading branches of a live oak, and pulled the parking brake.
“Let’s go, Crowley,” Beelzebub said. “It’s the first day of summer, not the end of the world.”
The CD changer cued up the rapid-fire drum of REM as Michael Stipe declared, “That’s great, it started with an earthquake--”
“Oh, shut it!” Beelzebub said and turned the car off.
The kittens mewed drowsily from their tub, and Crowley thought that Mr. Stipe might just be right.
And he felt fine.
