Romance short. An enchanter who usually likes his isolation gets a new postman.
4k, rated M, M/M. Just some sweetness, teasing and some back-and-forth, a lot of affection, and a cat, too! Adapted from a TweetFic.
Bryn Carson was a master enchanter, and he lived in the woods a little way outside of the village. There were a few other houses scattered along the stretch of the road, but his house was over a stile and up an obfuscated path, so no one ever bothered him.
Truth be told, the path was more than simply obfuscated. It was not just disguised by trees and overgrown bushes — he’d laid a lot of his own enchantments to make the way forward invisible or seemingly unpassable, and to make other paths more appealing.
It was simply a bit of extra insurance, that was all.
It was not that Bryn didn’t like people, because he did: he liked people, nonetheless, on his own terms, and a lot of the work he did was very subtle and delicate, and could be dangerous if he was interrupted or the surfaces upon which he was working were jarred.
People knew him in the village, and he went down into the pub every few weeks or so and chatted with the people there, but all of his post was delivered Poste Restante.
That was, of course, until they got a new postman.
Bryn didn’t even clock what the noise was at first, because he’d never heard it before, and he glanced up from the filigree he’d been working on and listened, thought perhaps that the cat was pushing something over until he saw that said cat was fast asleep in his basket.
And then it came again — a knock.
A knock on his door.
Setting down his brush, he pulled his dressing gown more tightly across his belly because his pyjamas were comfortable but really quite threadbare, and certainly not fit to be seen by other people.
He stood for a moment on the other side of the door, brushing himself down, vaguely wondering if this could somehow be a sort of dream, and then opened it.
The man on his doorstep was tall and square, with a strong jaw and a broad chest, and instead of the thick fleece coat he was used to seeing the local postal workers in, he wore an old-fashioned postal jacket with a high, round collar and epaulettes on the shoulders. He was wearing a cap, too.
The postman’s hair was straight and such a bright red that it seemed as though it must be dyed, the colour of red paint; his eyes were red too, rimmed at their edges with gold. He was smiling.
“Mr Carson?” he asked.
“Call me Bryn,” said the enchanter, very slowly.
“Alright!” said the postman cheerfully. He held in one hand a parcel wrapped with paper and string — fabric Bryn had ordered earlier in the week — and a sheaf of letters in the other. “You don’t have a telephone,” he said.
“No,” said Bryn. “I use the phone in the Geese and Gender when I need.”
“Of course,” said the postman.
Bryn looked past him down the long path, thinking of the dozens of the failsafes he’d set in twenty years to keep his privacy and his isolation intact. The postman’s eyes shone.
“You’re new,” said Bryn.
“No,” said the postman, and smiled a little wider. He had dimples. “I’m quite old. But I wanted… a change of pace.”
“You’re fae,” said Bryn.
“Yes,” said the postman. “But I’ve lived with humans for some time. Aren’t you supposed to take these?”
Bryn did, putting the parcels on the side table. There weren’t many fae in the area, and those that lived nearby were on the other side of the border, lived very firmly on faerie land in faerie territory. People weren’t particularly prejudiced, that Bryn had noticed — no more than usual.
“No name tag,” said Bryn, arching an eyebrow.
“I thought they’d try to insist, you know,” said the postman with a merry little laugh. “They didn’t even ask — such enlightened people. You can call me Farrow, if you’d like to call me something.”
“Farrow,” Bryn repeated.
“I enjoyed your little obstacle course,” he said, gesturing behind him.
“It’s not an obstacle course,” said Bryn, narrowing his eyes slightly. “It’s a deterrent — it’s meant to keep people from coming up to the house when I’m working, as you just have.”
“It was very fun,” said Farrow, putting his hands into his pockets as he turned away and went down the steps. “I look forward to the next one!”
Bryn stared after him as he went, rendered mute, and slowly closed the door behind him.
“Prrrbt,” said Valentine, winding his way around Bryn’s ankles, and Bryn automatically bent at the waist to scratch the top of his head.
“Yes, I thought he was very strange too,” said Bryn distractedly, and brought his post back into his office.
That afternoon, Bryn and Valentine took a walk down the path, and he found that like a deer gently picking its way through the underbrush, Farrow had disturbed absolutely nothing in his journey up to the house.
Bryn’s enchantments remained in place.
Shaking his hand at the strangeness of it — but Bryn in his life had known fae here and there, whilst studying his art, and he knew that most fae seemed quite queer by nature to outsiders like him — he brought Valentine home, and they ate lunch together until Valentine fell asleep in his lap.
Farrow continued to deliver his post, because when Bryn went downstairs his letters had been pushed through the slat and were scattered over the welcome mat.
It was quite a strange change of pace.
Two weeks later, one of the letters was in a beautiful, spidery script, written by a man clearly unused to using the Latin alphabet when he wrote.
“Dearest Bryn,” wrote Farrow, “are you frightened I will defeat your challenges with such ease as to embarrass you?”
It made Bryn laugh.
He was surprised — he did laugh from time to time, but people in the village did not tease him, as a rule. They greeted him very politely, with all due deference. He had enchanted almost all of their houses, after all, and done enchantment on their furniture, as he had for their parents, and their parents’ parents.
Everyone was always very kind, but he was apart from the village except for a handful of the other more elderly folk he met in the pub, and when they joked, it was mutual, gentle jibes, not outright provocation like this.
This, a handsome young(-looking) man taunting him so blatantly, this was —
Bryn chuckled with the letter in his hand.
He hesitated as he considered it, because he really wouldn’t like anyone else to get caught up in any complicated traps he might lay, but in all the years he had lived in Little Harken, no one had ever come a few steps up the path, let alone all the way up to his door.
He had time.
Bryn had finished his work for today, enchanted the cupboard panels commissioned from him, finished the complex enchanted bottles for the safe transportation of certain unstable alchemical elements… Yes. He had time.
He pulled on his wellingtons and got to work.
* * *
Two days later, Farrow knocked on his door, and when Bryn went to answer it, he had to stifle his laugh. Farrow’s hat was smoking slightly, and there were smears of ash on his jacket and his face. Covered all over with scratches, he was breathing heavily.
“Have fun?” asked Bryn.
“I had no idea you were so inventive,” said Farrow breathlessly: when he laughed, his eyes turned entirely gold for a moment before the gold retreated back to his iris rims. “And punitive!”
“You asked for a challenge.”
“You gave me one,” said the postman.
“I was going somewhat easily on you, truth be told,” said Bryn, and Farrow giggled, bouncing on his booted feet. It was a remarkably sweet motion, wholly innocent, for such a big man.
“Oh, please don’t,” said Farrow. “It was very good fun.”
“Farrow?”
“Yes, Mr Carson?”
“Bryn.”
“Yes, Bryn?”
Bryn looked two fingers in the front of Farrow’s jacket, pulling him down to Bryn’s height so that the two of them were nose to nose. Farrow’s clothes smelt faintly of lavender, and up close like this, he held his breath, looking at Bryn with great anticipation shining in his eyes.
“Farrow,” said Bryn softly, “I am more than willing to play this little game with you, but if any damage comes to my post, I shall be very punitive indeed.”
Farrow laughed his little laugh again, and then nodded his head.
“I couldn’t allow any harm to come to your parcels and correspondence, Bryn. It would go against my duty as courier.”
“Then the next path will be very difficult,” promised Bryn, and let Farrow go.
Passing him his letters, Farrow said — sounding really quite grateful, and quite excited besides, “Thank you.”
* * *
Some weeks later, when Bryn was in town, June from the post office said, “I hope Farrow hasn’t been bothering you, Mr Carson.”
“Not at all,” said Bryn. “He’s quite a delight.”
June blinked. “Oh,” she said. “Hasn’t he been… coming up to your house?”
“Now and then.”
“I thought you preferred to collect everything.”
“It’s been surprisingly convenient,” said Bryn. June seemed a little stiff, uncomfortable. “Why, have you had complaints?”
“Well,” said June. “No, no, he’s not done anything, he’s just… friendly.”
“Little Harken is a small village,” Bryn reminded her. “We’re all friendly.”
June’s smile was weak and somewhat forced, and Bryn frowned slightly.
“He’s a very pleasant young man,” said Bryn, somewhat more coldly now. “And very polite.”
“Of course,” said June hurriedly, and just as hurriedly, she moved away from him.
Bryn was in a poor mood as he left the post office, where he’d been buying string. When he saw Farrow’s van on the street, he watched for a moment as Farrow knocked on the butcher’s door, offering a cheerful smile to accompany his delivery.
Mr McGinty, scowling, took the parcel, and then shut the door.
Bryn could actually see the ever-so-slight slump of Farrow’s shoulders before he turned back and came up the path again. Those shoulders perked up anew when he laid eyes on Bryn.
“Hullo, Bryn,” he said brightly.
“Shwmae, Farrow,” said Bryn, watching Farrow’s smile widen. “Won’t you join me for dinner after your shift is through?”
Farrow’s eyes lit up and he beamed, all shining gold and deep dimples. “Oh, yes,” he said quickly, eagerly. “At your home?”
“Or at the Geese and Gander,” said Bryn. “I wouldn’t have you make the journey up the valley side for no reason.”
Farrow hesitated.
“My home it is,” amended Bryn.
Farrow’s smile was softer, this time, and he gave a neat bow of his head. “Are you as young as you look?” he asked, and Bryn stopped, raising his chin. He actually looked rather anxious for a moment, his eyes seeming abruptly quite dull in their colouring, in line with the fall of his face. “If I’ve misstepped — ”
“You haven’t.” He stepped closer, and lowered his voice to say, “I’ve a century over my belt. A good deal more than that, actually.”
“I can bring wine this evening,” said Farrow. “Faerie wine.”
“Do,” said Bryn, and squeezed his shoulder — he had to reach up to do so — as he passed. “Say seven?”
“Seven,” said Farrow.
Bryn chuckled. “Seven o’clock,” he said, looking back at Farrow’s playful expression.
“Yes,” said he.
* * *
When Farrow arrived that evening, his hair was slightly singed, and he had a bruise on the side of his jaw, but he was otherwise untouched. Most importantly, the bottle of wine under his arm was entirely unmarred.
“Let me have a look at that,” said Bryn as he crossed the threshold, gesturing for Farrow to shut the door and follow him further in.
Farrow let himself be led through to the kitchen, and obediently he tipped his head back so that Bryn could rub a healing paste over the new bruise. It stung and then soothed: Farrow winced, but then sighed in relief.
“That one was easier than usual,” said Farrow.
“Perhaps you’re getting better at them.”
“Perhaps you wanted to keep the wine intact,” said Farrow, and Bryn laughed, tugging gently on a strand of charred hair and making Farrow laugh.
“Perhaps indeed,” Bryn admitted, unashamed.
“You are a vegetarian?”
“No.”
“Oh, good. A lot of humans seem to be vegetarian. You are human?”
“I certainly am,” said Bryn, moving to wash his hands. “But human sorcerers do tend to live longer than our counterparts, for the same reason fae humans do.”
“More magic,” said Farrow in romantic tones. “How curious that it flows through you, sustains you, as it might one of us. Do you feel in some ways arrested, your process of maturation slowed as it is?”
“I’ve never thought about it,” said Bryn, taking the duck out of the oven. “I wanted to say, Farrow — The people here took some time to warm up to me too, you know. Used to be that no one would say a word to me.”
Farrow glanced up at him, even as Valentine hopped up to sit at the table with him, his front paws on the surface and his back paws on the chair. He leaned his head into Farrow’s side and encouraged the postman to scratch his ears, which Farrow did.
“They naturally disliked that you were a Cymro,” said Farrow, and Bryn chuckled.
“They disliked that I was a sorcerer who carried the air that I did. I was trained in fae enchantment styles, and carried an air that sat ill with them. They distrusted me — children used to come and look in my windows, throw stones at my roof. That’s why the path is the way it is, although most of them know me too well to do that now. Their parents hardly recall what they used to do.”
“None of the children have said anything to me,” said Farrow quietly. “No one has said much of anything to me, except you. No one has been unkind or explicitly… But nonetheless, I am made to feel unwanted.”
“It may pass,” said Bryn. “It did for me.”
“May implies you think it may not.”
“I wouldn’t have you withstand it if it troubles you,” Bryn said, setting glasses onto the table. “But you’re cheerful, mature, skilled, if your ability to circumvent my security measures is any indication. And yet here you are, a postman.”
“I do beg your forgiveness, sir,” said Farrow very seriously to Valentine as he took his hands away from petting him and focused on uncorking the bottle of wine, beginning to pour it.
“I like my people,” said Farrow. “But I quarrel with members of my family, and I lack the strength to mark those quarrels as I ought.”
“Mark them?”
“Oh,” said Farrow, gesturing dismissively with one hand. “I ought debate publicly or engage members of my family in duels or tests of skill, or… It does not do, that I should disagree but not be willing to defend my position. But I so hate to quarrel with anyone.”
“What’s the quarrel about?” Bryn asked, swilling his wine in his glass as Farrow leaned into Valentine again, pressing his chin against the top of the cat’s head. Valentine was purring like an engine.
“Nothing important — literature, horticulture… Most of all, a small property dispute between two cousins of mine, and I’m on the wrong side. It’s not even my land.”
“From what I’ve heard, property disputes are a serious matter,” said Bryn.
“I’ve heard the same,” said Farrow. “I just don’t agree.”
“And your last life amongst humans?”
“Too loud, too lifeless — a city. Human cities are so different to fae ones.”
“You like the village?” Bryn asked.
Farrow’s dimples showed in the warm evening light, and he glanced down at Bryn’s chest. The gaze lingered — Bryn was wearing one of his tightest jumpers, one that wasn’t often worn in company. “I like parts of it,” Farrow said, gaze flitting up to meet Bryn’s, and he huffed out a sound of amusement.
“You’re being very transparent, Valentine,” said Bryn as they sat down to eat and the cat leaned the whole of his body into Farrow’s side.
Farrow kissed him on the top of the head, and then gently elbowed him off when he leaned for a taste of Farrow’s plate.
“You named him for the saint?”
“No, no, for the politician,” said Bryn. “I had three of them from the same litter — Lewis, Valentine, and Williams, but I’m afraid Lewis had a heart murmur and Williams died a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Farrow said. “You don’t want to get another?”
“Oh, no, Valentine gets a bit territorial — he likes people, but he’s not so comfortable with invading feline forces. I tried to foster a little last year to violent results, and still bear the scars.”
Farrow laughed.
“This is a nice house,” he said. “If you didn’t build it, I know that you must have taken it apart to enchant it. I feel the magic running down to its very bones.”
“I did build it,” said Bryn.
“You aren’t married?”
“You can feel the enchantment but not the man chained in my cellar?”
Farrow peered at him, his mouth falling open, until Bryn smiled: his eyes shone so brightly the gold in them appeared almost to be molten, and he hid his laugh behind his hand.
“It surprises me,” he said. “That you should be unmarried.”
“I’m afraid I’m not most people’s idea of a spouse.”
“Most people are fools,” said Farrow, and then shyly turned his head away, so that for a minute or two they ate in silence.
“The wine is lovely,” said Bryn.
“Good wine should be shared,” said Farrow. “Even if anyone else in Little Harken wished to share it, I don’t know that they could.”
“It’s strong,” said Bryn. “Most of the village don’t use magic — they have basic home enchantments, some trinkets, potions where mundane medicine won’t do, but this isn’t a tremendously magical area. Part of their reticence with you is caused by that — most of them have never met anyone fae. The most they know of the fae is the deadlands near to here.”
They talked over dinner, about everything and nothing — about cats, about the fire in Llyn, about Wales and England, about magic, about enchantment… About post.
“… just think it’s a beautiful concept,” Farrow was saying, his chin on his hand as he watched Bryn put plates on the rack to dry. “We don’t have this,” he said, gesturing around vaguely with his big, handsome hands. “We pay a messenger to deliver our correspondence, or enchant it, or send it with travellers going the right direction, if we have no means to send it directly with magic. A post office…” His sigh was dreamy.
They were both drink.
Not extremely, not dangerously: Bryn felt warm and cheerful and loose-limbed, and perhaps that was why he welcomed it when Farrow fell into his lap and wound his arms around Bryn’s neck.
His breath was hot, his lips soft, when he kissed the side of Bryn’s jaw.
Bryn knew that he shouldn’t, but he still turned his head to catch Farrow’s mouth, and when they kissed it was slow, languorous, and perfect. How long had it been since Bryn had kissed another man? Ten years? Fifteen?
Farrow kissed him as though they had all the time in the world.
He was heavy in Bryn’s lap, a solid weight, and when Bryn slid his hands up underneath his shirt Farrow sighed at the hands on his back, curled one hand in Bryn’s hair as the other cupped his cheek, and kept kissing him.
It was beautiful, for a while, and Bryn felt as though he was floating in it, as though he was lost in it, until Farrow’s hand slid for the buckle on his belt.
“Ah,” said Bryn against his mouth, and gently caught his wrist. “No, I’m sorry, bachgen, I don’t like to — ”
When Farrow let out a noise, it was a relieved one. “Oh, good, I didn’t want to stop kissing you,” he said, and cupped both of Bryn’s cheeks to kiss him again.
They kissed for a long time, until it was black as pitch outside and the fire needed more fuel, and Farrow said against his lips, tone beseeching, “Let me sleep with you?”
“Oh,” said Bryn, feeling something wrench in his gut. “Oh, Farrow, I’m sorry, I don’t, ah… I don’t.”
Farrow looked down at him unhappily, his hands warm on Bryn’s cheeks. “You don’t sleep?” he asked.
Bryn, awash in the next wave of drunken feeling, laughed in his relief, and then said, “Oh, no, cariad, I’m not laughing at you,” as he cupped Farrow’s cheeks, because the poor thing looked distraught. “Yes. Yes, alright. If you like.”
It had been a long, long time since he slept with someone who wasn’t a cat in his bed. More than fifteen years — far more, even than thirty.
Farrow stripped off his clothes as Bryn put on a set of pyjamas, and then looked at Bryn in dismay.
“May I touch your skin?” he asked.
He had a beautiful body. Gold was smattered here, too, swirling through the skin in places, in curving lines around his rib cage, swirling outward from his navel.
“Oh,” Bryn said, and he hesitated, touched the cotton of his pyjama shirt, tugged at its hem. “Yes, if you like.”
They laid side by side, kissed for some while longer, and Bryn touched Farrow’s hips, his back, his thighs, grasped at his arse; Farrow slid his hands underneath Bryn’s shirt, squeezed at his sides, pressed his fingers into Bryn’s shoulders.
When they slept, Farrow wrapped himself around Bryn’s body as though he meant to linger there forever, and only slightly ceded his claim to Valentine, who let out a sharp complaint at not being allotted his usual portion of pillow.
Bryn laid with Farrow breathing against his neck, and Valentine purring like the little engine he was on the other side.
They slept like that come morning.
* * *
“It is your day off, isn’t it?” asked Bryn, and Farrow laughed, pressed his face against Bryn’s chest, shoving his nose between the two flaps of his shirt, nuzzling against the hair on his chest.
“Mmm,” said Farrow.
“Good,” he said. “Then you won’t be late.”
“I don’t like it either,” said Farrow.
It was still very early in the morning, dawn cresting the horizon and sending golden light cascading in through the windows. Valentine laid on his back, basking in a patch of sun beside them.
“Like what?”
“Sex,” said Farrow. “I’ve had it. A few times. It always seems like such a lot of mess for little in return.”
Bryn laughed at that, kissing the side of his temple.
“This is what makes you a poor husband?” asked Farrow.
“That among other things. I like my own space.”
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
“Property despites,” Farrow said, somewhere between sage and sleepy, and Bryn pressed their noses together. “I thought you might be angry when I came up your path, that you might despise me. I thought you might tell me to go away and never come back.”
“Were you hoping I would?”
“If you wanted me to,” said Farrow softly. “It’s worse, everyone meaning it but never saying it with their words.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” said Bryn, “but I’m afraid I’d rather you stayed.”
Farrow laughed, falling onto his back, and all the gold in him shone at once, out of his eyes, the swirls on his chest, his belly, coiled around his thick thighs. “Kiss me, Bryn,” he said. “Won’t you? Please?”
“Well,” said Bryn. “If you’re going to be so polite about it,” and did.
FIN.
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