#sterndrid

[bellafarallones2]

Merry Christmas! Here's some NSFW ot4 for @thiswasinevitableid. I've had a great year hanging out on Discord with you!

The lobby of Amnesty Lodge was glowing: a fire in the fireplace, stockings hung on the mantle, and the glow of the lights strung around the roof coming in through the open windows past gently falling snow.

The front door burst open, and in came the peak of an enormous pine tree, followed by Duck, supporting the middle section, and Barclay, carrying the thick trunk. The tree was eight feet tall at least, but the two men maneuvered onto its base with ease. A stream of others followed them into the room, Mama stomping snow off her boots, Dani and Aubrey and Jake Coolice and Moira and Ned “Santa’s Little Helper” Chicane.

“Alright, tall guy,” said Mama, and handed Barclay the star to go on top. Even six feet tall as he was, he couldn’t quite reach the top.

“Can someone get me a stool?” he said, grinning. Aubrey booed. “Alright, alright.” Barclay slipped off his bracelet, grew an extra foot, and topped the tree. Everyone cheered, and he stepped back to stand with Duck as Moira started untangling the multicolored strings of lights.

“When they chose that tree I thought, ‘there’s no way we’re getting that thing back,’” Duck said.

“It was a lot easier with you helping,” said Barclay. He stretched, twisting so his back emitted a series of cracking noises. “You know,” he continued, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “on Christmas Day I can usually convince Mama to put on a Santa hat.”

Duck chuckled. Then, remembering his own Christmas plans, his face fell. “I usually spend Christmas with his sister, but she’s in Brazil this year.”

“Everyone at Amnesty Lodge would be happy to have you join us for dinner.”

“You sure it wouldn’t be any trouble?”

“Of course! We usually have a pretty small celebration, but this year I think Ned will be joining us, and definitely Aubrey, since Dani told her there’d be mistletoe. One more won’t be any trouble.”

“I really appreciate it.”

Barclay hummed. “Are there any foods your family always eats on Christmas?”

“Christmas cookies.”

Barclay looked over seriously. “Who do you take me for, Duck? We’re decorating cookies right after this. Give me something more obscure.”

“Alright, alright!” Duck thought for a moment. “One of my aunts always made really killer potatoes au gratin when I was a kid, but I haven’t had it since she passed.”

Barclay looked thoughtful. “Hm. Well, it’s hard to go wrong with cheese.”

True to Barclay’s word, after the tree was trimmed he brought out trays and trays of cookies and containers of homemade frosting in all colors. Duck felt rather sheepish, glopping green icing onto a tree-shaped sugar cookie and throwing on some green sprinkles as Barclay used a piping bag with a narrow tip to individually accessorize gingerbread people.

“I wonder if Indrid would get a kick out of this,” Duck said, wondering if he was allowed to eat his creation immediately. “His drawings were real good. But maybe he only does it for, uh, for business.”

“Hm,” said Barclay, focusing. Soon he put aside the gingerbread men and started in on a whole ethnically diverse lineup of Santas. He gave them their red suits first, then put them aside and waited for the first layer to dry before adding their smiling faces. They all might be killed by an abomination any day now, but by God, Barclay was going to construct a utopia of sugar and flour.

For some reason some of the sugar cookies were shaped like butterflies, and Duck took one. There wasn’t much black icing - Barclay was just using it for Santa’s boots - but Duck spread it across the butterfly’s wings, then added some red.

“What kind of butterfly is that?” said Ned, leaning over the table.

“Oh,” said Duck. “I meant it to be a moth. Like Indrid.”

“He really is something, isn’t he?” said Barclay softly.

“Yup.” Duck surveyed his work. “Hey, it just occurred to me to wonder - y’all don’t celebrate Christmas on Silvain, do you?”

“No,” said Barclay, “but Mama likes it, and I’ve gone native.”

–

After all the cookies were decorated, Barclay loaded up one plate for Duck to take home, and another plate for Duck to bring over to Indrid’s place. Duck stopped over on his way, finding the Winnebago strung with lights.

As usual, Indrid opened the door a moment before Duck knocked on it and looked at him.

Duck realized suddenly that he didn’t know quite what to say. “I brought you some Christmas cookies.”

“Thank you,” said Indrid. “Would you like to come in?”

“Uh, sure,” said Duck, and followed Indrid inside. Indrid took the plate of cookies from him, unwrapped it, and froze.

“Are these supposed to be me?” he said, sounding amused. The cookies on the top of the pile were black-and-red butterflies.

“Yeah, everyone at the lodge got together to decorate them, and I just, I don’t know.” Duck gestured vaguely. “I’m not much of an artist.”

“Oh,” said Indrid. “Well, I’m happy to be your muse.”

“Uh, yeah.” Not wanting to dwell on just how often his mind wandered back to Indrid’s more monstrous body, Duck changed the subject. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around the park.”

“I’m afraid I don’t get out much.”

“That’s a real shame.”

“Maybe you could, ah, show me around sometime.”

Duck smiled. “I’d like that a lot.”

–

Barclay had cleared off two shelves of a bookshelf in the lobby of Amnesty Lodge, one over the other, and was setting out the ceramic nativity. The top shelf had a chorus of angels, all of whom looked very juvenile, and Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the three wise men, the innkeeper, a shepherd, and a selection of animals were on the bottom.

“Hello, Joseph,” said Barclay, without looking around at the FBI agent who had appeared at his shoulder.

“Hey. What’re you up to?”

“I can’t get the nativity to look right.” He swapped a wise man for a goat. “Some of them always look like they’re looking the wrong direction.”

“Can I try?” said Joseph.

“Sure,” said Barclay, and stepped aside. He watched Joseph study the display for a moment. “I know this isn’t your holiday.”

“I could feel you stressing about this from the other side of the room. If it’s important to you that it looks right, it’s important to me.” Joseph rotated the shepherd about fifteen degrees counterclockwise, so his gaze was aimed at Jesus rather than the goat. He moved Mary and Joseph from Jesus’s left side to His right. Then he stepped aside. “How’s that?”

Barclay moved a cow out of biting range of the Christ child, and stepped back too. “Perfect.” He could feel Joseph’s hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, Joe.”

–

Every year Joseph got overtime for working on Christmas Day. It almost made up for the fights he went through to get time off for Rosh Hashanah. When he was younger he’d seen some really horrible things, being the one on call when a local police department didn’t know what to do with an entire family’s apparent Christmas Eve murder-suicide. Now that he was in Kepler, though, looking for bigfoot, there wasn’t much he could do besides wonder whether bigfoot might celebrate Christmas. Every business was closed, and everyone he might have interviewed was busy celebrating.

It was almost dinnertime when he pulled into the Eastwoods Campground and RV Park, wondering about the odds of breaking his ankle if he tried to take a walk in the dark on one of the hiking trails there.

The only vehicle in the lot was an ugly brown box of a Winnebago with stained sides and a string of blue lights around the roof. While Joseph was sitting there, the front door opened and disgorged a figure Joseph guessed to be Indrid Cold, though the heavy winter coat made it difficult to tell. Maybe-Indrid carried a garbage bag down the steps of the Winnebago and tossed it into the dumpster at the edge of the lot before detouring to Joseph’s car on the way back.

Joseph rolled down the window. Yes, this was Indrid alright.

“Found bigfoot yet?” Indrid said. There was less mockery in his voice than most of the residents of Amnesty Lodge used.

“Nope.”

“I don’t suppose you’d like to come in and warm up?”

“I don’t want to interrupt your Christmas.”

“What?” Indrid looked around, the blue glow of his lights illuminating the sharp planes of his face. “Oh, I don’t celebrate. I just like the lights.”

“Alright.” Joseph rolled his window back up, took the key out of the ignition, and got out of the car. He double-checked that he’d locked the doors, as though someone might be interested in grand theft auto on Christmas in Kepler, West Virginia, and followed Indrid up the steps of the Winnebago and inside.

It was roughly the temperature and humidity of a greenhouse inside, and as soon as the door was shut Indrid stripped off his heavy coat to reveal a thin white tank top, sweatpants, and fuzzy socks. A floor lamp looming over the couch illuminated the lap desk and sketchbook lying on the cushion in incandescent-yellow. Sure enough, there were no Christmas decorations to be seen.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Indrid said as he put a new bag in the kitchen trash can and washed his hands.

Joseph settled on the couch. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything strange since we last spoke?” He’d interviewed Indrid about bigfoot before.

Indrid moved the lap desk and the sketchbook to the floor and sat down next to Joseph, folding his legs. “Hm. I saw a display of gingerbread-flavored Mountain Dew at Leo’s last week; that was pretty strange.”

“Blech.”

“If you mean in the way of bigfoot, though, no. Nothing strange.”

Joseph nodded. A thought occurred to him, of Christmases past. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”

“No,” said Indrid.

“Want to go get Chinese food?” Joseph asked. “I’ll buy,” he added hurriedly, when he realized he didn’t know what Indrid’s budget for eating out was like.

“Agent Stern, are you asking me on a date?”

Joseph hadn’t intended to, but Indrid’s voice was as pleasantly teasing as it always was, and he did have a very striking face. “Yes. Although if we’re that familiar you should just call me Joseph.”

“Joseph. You seem like a Joseph.”

“How so?”

Indrid thought for a moment. “Sturdy. Very reasonable.”

Joseph didn’t think he’d ever been called those things before. Sturdy made him think of Barclay, who never seemed sleepy serving breakfast at six o’clock sharp, who seemed strong enough to carry anything. And reasonable… he’d always thought of himself as rather neurotic. “Thank you,” Joseph said, and then realized that it might not have been a compliment. But Indrid was smiling.

“I would love to eat Chinese food with you.”

The nearest Chinese restaurant was a twenty-six minute drive from Amnesty Lodge, which Joseph knew because he went there at least once a week.

“You’re a big fan of accordion music?” said Indrid, amused, after five minutes in the car.

“I don’t keep a lot of music on CDs,” Joseph admitted. “But a few years ago I was in a restaurant and there was this performer with CDs for sale and I bought one, and I guess it’s been in my car ever since, and since there’s no radio in Kepler, it’s what I’ve been listening to.”

“Perfectly understandable.”

They sat at a table for two just inside the front window of the restaurant. Beyond the edge of the parking lot there was only darkness. Indrid was looking out at the stars, chin tilted up. “It’s like being in a spaceship.”

“Have you ever been in a spaceship?”

“No,” said Indrid. “Well, except in the sense that every planet is a vessel traveling through space, in which case I've never not been on a spaceship.”

“That’s a fun way of thinking about it.”

“Thank you.”

For a while they ate in silence. Then Indrid put down his fork and spoke again.

“Can I ask you about work, or is that classified?”

“Classified,” said Joseph apologetically. He was well aware of how much avenue for small talk his situation precluded. “You’ve never said how you spend your time, though.”

Indrid grinned. “That’s also classified.”

By and by they finished their dinners, and Joseph snagged one of the fortune cookies and cracked it open. “New loves are approaching,” he read out loud. “Huh.”

“What would you say is your love now?”

For some reason Joseph was more honest than he would have been with just about anyone else. “Finding bigfoot.”

Indrid laughed. “Maybe it’s telling you to get a new hobby.”

“What does yours say?”

“Today is a good day to buy stocks.”

“It does not.”

“It does!” Indrid pushed the scrap of paper across the table. Joseph picked it up and read it.

“Oh my god.”

“Maybe you got the one that was meant for me,” Indrid suggested. “And you’re supposed to be buying stock and I’m going to be finding new loves.” He popped the cookie into his mouth and crunched.

“You actually eat the cookie?”

“Yeah,” said Indrid with a mouthful of crumbs. “You don’t?”

Joseph shook his head. “Feel free to have mine.”

Indrid took it. “I like them. They’re uncomplicated.”

They finished eating and headed out. Indrid climbed into the passenger seat of Joseph’s FBI-issue car, and Joseph drove.

“Do you believe in fate?” said Indrid.

“Well,” said Joseph. “Different moments in time are just different locations in spacetime, right? So everything that is going to happen already exists, just not in a place that is accessible to us. You can call that fate, if you like.”

“Seems like it,” Indrid murmured.

“Do you believe in fate?”

“Yes. But if you don’t know what your fate is, then it amounts to the same as free will.”

Joseph pulled into the parking lot of the Eastwood Campground and RV Park and shut off the engine. Indrid didn’t move to get out, and Joseph didn’t say goodnight, or any of the other things he could have said to cue that the evening was over.

“I confess,” said Indrid. “I don’t know what to say to make this go further. But I do find you very handsome.”

Joseph touched Indrid’s face, gently. And he leaned over the console, holding Indrid’s face in both hands so he knew exactly where he was, and Indrid leaned forward too, and kissed him.

At this angle Joseph could see beneath Indrid’s glasses, but his eyes were closed.

Indrid pulled back. “Thank you,” he said. “This was a very nice date.”

“I agree,” said Joseph. Impulsively he kissed him again, and Indrid’s mouth slipped open easily under his.

“If you’d like you could come inside,” said Indrid breathlessly, when he finally pulled away enough to speak.

“I would,” said Joseph, not caring the least bit whether it was fate or not.

–

While Joseph and Indrid drove to get Chinese food, the other residents of Amnesty Lodge, plus Aubrey, Ned, and Duck, were just sitting down for Christmas dinner.

“Where’s the secret agent?” said Aubrey, looking down the table after everyone had filled their plates. “I thought he’d be here.”

“He’s Jewish,” said Barclay.

“Well, Havah Nagilah!” said Ned. “Just so long as he’s not here.”

Barclay still looked rather sour. “We made latkes last week. You don’t think he feels excluded, do you?”

“Barclay,” said Mama. “You know he’s hunting you, right?”

“He doesn’t know it’s me,” said Barclay. Then he smiled. “Anyway, Jake, weren’t you going to tell us what happened at the mall yesterday?”

After the dishes were cleared away, Barclay brought out a pecan pie.

“Any of y’all happen to like pecan pie?” said Mama.

“I do!” said Aubrey. “It’s kinda nauseating, but in a good way!”

“None of the sylphs like it,” said Mama. “Used to be just Thacker and me, and then for the last few years just me. I tell Barclay he doesn’t have to make it, but he knows it’s my favorite.”

“Well,” said Aubrey, “when Thacker comes back it’ll be the three of us!”

--

Sometime after New Year’s, Indrid and Joseph lay together in Joseph’s bed at Amnesty Lodge, Indrid’s hands tight in Joseph’s undershirt.

“What are you thinking about?” said Joseph finally.

“Duck Newton,” said Indrid. “I find him… terribly attractive.”

“Me too.”

Indrid giggled. “In that ranger uniform, he can punish me for breaking campground rules anytime.”

“Do you break a lot of campground rules?”

“No,” said Indrid. “Do you think I should? Would that get his attention?”

“I don’t think he’d scold you sexually.” Duck Newton seemed very committed to his job.

“Hmm.” Indrid was quiet for a moment. “What do you fantasize about?”

Joseph squeezed his eyes shut. “Both of you. And Barclay. Is that dirty?”

“Incorrigibly,” said Indrid, but he was smiling.

“I bet they both have big dicks. Not that you don’t seem like you do, but…”

“I know what you mean.” Indrid shifted, turning so his back was to Joseph’s front, and nestled up against him again. In this position Joseph wouldn’t be able to see him get hard.

“I never felt attractive when I was in college, but I wanted to be one of those people who could go out to a bar and have multiple people hit on me. Having threesomes, and all that wild stuff.”

“You are attractive. The only reason not to hit on you is because you’re intimidating.”

“You don’t seem intimidated by me.”

“You asked me out first.” Indrid breathed for a moment. “Do you think you could take all three of us at once? Duck, Barclay, and I?”

“Yes. I’ve never been accused of being an underachiever.”

Indrid squeezed Joseph’s hand. “You aren’t.”

“Hey,” said Joseph. “I’m glad you’re chill about me being into them. Doesn’t mean I’m less into you.”

“It’d be rather hypocritical of me, in any case.”

Joseph took a deep breath. “I know we haven’t done anything like that, but if you want me to jerk you off or something… What I mean to say is, I want to touch you.”

“Oh,” said Indrid, and drew Joseph’s hand downwards to touch where he was half-hard through his sweatpants.

“Turn around so I can see your face?”

Indrid moved so they faced each other on the pillow. “Thank you.” Joseph pushed his sweatpants down below his dick and laughed. “Do you always go commando?”

“No,” said Indrid, but he was blushing. He was cute when he blushed. His dick perked up right away in Joseph’s hand, and he honest-to-god whined when Joseph licked his palm before getting back to it.

“I would be up for something more than this,” Joseph said, “but you look so relaxed lying there I’m not going to suggest anything athletic.”

“Thank you,” said Indrid. He grabbed Joseph’s wrist and kicked off his pants entirely so he could spread his legs wider, on his back now. “Please kiss me?”

Joseph leaned over to kiss him, and kept stroking him off until his moans reached a peak and he came all up his own chest.

Joseph leaned back again. Fuck, Indrid looked good like this, breathing hard with his skinny legs spread.

“I’m not that good at handjobs,” Indrid said, pulling his shirt off.

“That’s alright.” joseph knew his anatomy was unfamiliar to many gay men. Something to work on.

“Sit on my face?”

Joseph blinked. “Really?”

“Didn’t you just say how relaxed I looked lying here?”

“I did. And I do want to see what you can do with that mouth besides flirt.”

Indrid squeezed his hand. “Then pants off, Agent; what are you waiting for?”

Joseph’s pants joined Indrid’s rumpled by the foot of the bed. Then he straddled Indrid’s head and gingerly lowered himself down, holding onto the headboard for support. Indrid groped his ass hungrily and went to work. Joseph cried out at the first touch of Indrid's tongue to his dick - he hadn’t done this in a long time, and he’d forgotten how good it was, having a hot wet mouth to grind down on while he held onto the headboard for dear life.

Indrid said something unintelligible, and Joseph lifted himself up. “What was that?”

“Want fingers inside you?”

“Oh yes please, start with one -” Indrid’s fingers were narrow, but they were long, and somehow he unerringly found the perfect spot to press. “Another one. More - oh right there yes!” Joseph pressed his hot forehead to the cool wood of the headboard and rocked his clit against Indrid’s tongue with three of Indrid’s fingers inside him and came, so hard it took him a moment to peel his fingers from the headboard.

Finally he collapsed down on the mattress again. Indrid was breathing hard, and smiling contentedly. His glasses were still on. “That was fun.”

“You never take those things off, do you?”

“Nope,” said Indrid, giving Joseph a kiss that tasted of himself before settling into Joseph’s arms. (Indrid was much cuddlier than most of the cis guys Joseph had been with.)

There were strange things in Kepler. This Joseph knew very well. “Are you bigfoot?”

“No,” said Indrid. Something in his tone made Joseph stay quiet. “But you’re not far off.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not up to me. I’ve promised, to other people, it’s not just me, it’s, it’s complicated.” A deep breath. “I can’t tell you.”

“Can you show me?”

“I can’t let you see me. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t have to take pictures or tell my supervisor or even write it down at all. I’m just curious, I want to know.”

Indrid breathed. “If you let me blindfold you, you can touch me.”

“Yes. Indrid, please.”

“I could use your own tie.” Indrid got out of bed to look, and Joseph watched him, his long legs and soft penis, the sinewy lines of his chest. “You’re sure about this?”

“Yes.”

Indrid found a tie in the closet. “If you want this off at any point just tell me, I need to… put my disguise back on.”

“I don’t want you to have to disguise yourself around me.”

Indrid leaned down and kissed him, and Joseph took the blindfold out of his hands and put it on himself. Indrid exhaled and adjusted it, so Joseph was plunged into complete darkness. And then Joseph couldn’t feel Indrid touching him anymore. “Indrid?”

“I’m right here.” His voice was the same, which was a relief. And Joseph groped forward and felt something warm and soft, and buried his hands in it and rubbed the fibers between his fingers. Feathers?

He ascertained that Indrid’s body was much, much, bigger like this, his torso turned barrel-like, all covered with thick feathers except for the hard joints at his elbows. “Put my hands on your face,” Joseph demanded. “I don’t want to stick my fingers in your mouth too hard by accident.”

“But hard enough is just fine,” Indrid teased, and Joseph felt claws on his wrists as Indrid guided him. A long, thin tongue came out to lick his fingers as Joseph felt his lips. Not much of a nose. And Indrid’s eyes, when Joseph rested his fingertips on the lids, were huge.

“May I touch you too?” said Indrid. “If you’re not too alarmed by me.”

“I’m not alarmed by you, but I’m not any different than I was.”

“No, but I still enjoy touching you.”

“Alright, then.”

Indrid rested his hands at Joseph’s hips. And… more hands, on Joseph’s thighs. On a hunch, Joseph reached around Indrid’s torso and found that his form extended in the back, and Indrid gasped a little when he touched the feathers there. Then he rounded the top of Indrid’s head and found two delicate protrusions.

Joseph’s hand stopped. “Can you see the future?”

Indrid laughed. “Clever thing, you are.”

“You aren’t going to distract me from this with compliments.”

“Fair enough. Yes, I can.”

He was going to have to ask questions about that. Many questions. But maybe not right now. “What’s your dick like?”

Indrid laughed, surprised. “Would you like me to get it out?”

“If you’re going to fuck me with it, I think you’d have to.”

“If I’d known this would excite you I’d have taken you like this sooner,” Indrid teased, taking Joseph’s hand in one of his and rubbed Joseph’s knuckles against a place low on his belly, so Joseph could feel a seam in the flesh and then the member emerging, already slick. Joseph could only barely get one hand around the base.

“You’re big.”

“Thank you.”

“Can I ride you?”

“Yes.”

Joseph lifted himself up, and Indrid helped guide him back down again, until the tip of Indrid’s cock brushed his hole and he gasped. Only because he was still wet from Indrid’s tongue earlier did he have any hope of fitting it in. But he was wet, excited by the strangeness of the creature beneath him and the thrill of being right that Indrid wasn’t human after all, and so he sunk down onto a cock so big it seemed to knock the breath out of him.

“Good?” said Indrid breathlessly, keeping his hips relatively still.

“Yes,” said Joseph, already rubbing his clit. “If you’d like to fuck me properly, go right ahead.”

Indrid growled and Joseph found himself flat on his back, claws pricking his inner thighs as Indrid spread his legs and fucked him. “If you don’t cum from this you can find out what my tongue feels like in this body,” said Indrid, before swiping said tongue down Joseph’s cheek.

Joseph very much wanted to, but he was already touching himself, he couldn’t help it; he whimpered and came anyway, his orgasm rolling over him before he could stop it. “Oh, Joseph, yes, tighten up around me,” Indrid gasped, the same voice Joseph knew so well, before he was coming too, the volume of his spend more and better than anything Joseph had ever felt.

--

It was past eleven, which was basically 3am by Barclay’s standards, and he was drinking eggnog spiked with rum.

The kitchen door opened and Duck came in, freezing when he saw Barclay standing there. “I think I’m in love with him,” Barclay said by way of greeting.

Duck closed the door behind him.

“I’m in love with Joe.” Barclay’s hair was loose around his shoulders and he was wearing a bathrobe over his undershirt and boxers. “I normally don’t fall for the humans who want to shoot me.”

“You don’t know he wants to shoot you,” Duck pointed out.

“Mama thinks he does.”

“She might be overly cautious. And I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

The door opened again, and Indrid slipped inside. His hair was an absolute mess. “Hello,” he said. “Can I have some eggnog?”

“Yes, your excellency,” said Barclay hollowly and went to get a glass.

“I can fix it for myself,” said Indrid. His hand stopped Barclay’s on the handle of the cabinet door. “And you don’t have to call me that.” He poured himself a glass of eggnog from the carton on the counter and drank. “Now I’m on Earth, you can treat me however you like.”

“Yeah?” said Barclay. He advanced on Indrid, backing him up until his hips hit the kitchen counter.

Barclay, alone among the residents and visitors of Amnesty Lodge, had seen Indrid as court seer. The other sylphs were too young, or too old, and the humans had never even been to Silvain, not seen the grand staircase with a huge red stained-glass rosette in the wall behind it, not seen Indrid Cold’s dark head looking like the dark center of the flower as he descended the stairs. Not heard the click of his gold rings on the handrail, the whisper of his spreading wings. Barclay had only ever glimpsed him from a distance, as part of a crowd of plebians the court seer had no reason to remember. Indrid’s human disguise, skinny and unimposing, was almost unrecognizable as the beast he truly was.

As Indrid tilted his head, though, and the light glinted off his glasses, Barclay saw him.

“You’re drunk,” said Indrid after a few moments of silence.

Barclay backed up instantly. “Yes, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“No, no, it’s alright.” Indrid reached out for Barclay’s hand and caught it, folded Barclay’s fingers between his own, the glass of eggnog forgotten on the counter. “I don’t mind. Really. Here, here, I know what’ll cheer you up – I can tell you – Joseph likes you. Very much.”

Barclay pulled away and laughed.

Duck spoke up. “’Drid, what are you even doing here? Did you –“

“-walk? No. I, ah.” Under the pressure of Barclay and Duck both looking at him, he buckled. “Joseph picked me up. We, ah, we’ve been sleeping together.”

Barclay pushed down his jealousy. The cup of eggnog he’d been drinking was empty, so he went to the sink and washed it. The familiar motion made him feel a little more like himself. He dried the cup with a dish towel and returned it to its place in the cupboard. “I’m going to bed,” he announced, and swept out the door.

“I didn’t know you went for humans,” said Duck once it was just him and Indrid standing in the kitchen.

“Occasionally,” said Indrid. “I’m going to go check on him.” He refilled his cup of eggnog and took it with him as he went to Barclay’s bedroom, though he’d never been there. He knocked on the door. “It’s Indrid.”

“And this is Barclay.”

“I know. I’d like to come in and talk to you, if that’s alright.”

“Go right ahead.”

Indrid went inside. Barclay’s room was dark and narrow, dominated by a bed that had to be huge to fit Barclay’s body on it. The man himself was lying face-up beneath the sheets, his eyes open and staring at the ceiling.

Indrid put his cup of eggnog down on the side table and lay down next to Barclay, on top of the covers.

Barclay’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “Why did you make your disguise look like that?” he said, finally. “And why do you live in a trailer? You could be rich. You could be clearing out casinos. You could be back in Silvain!”

“I like it better here,” Indrid said simply. “I have enough money not to have to stress out about money, and I don’t need more space than a trailer. It’s easier to clean than a whole house, anyway.”

Barclay sighed.

Indrid reached across the blanket, almost to Barclay’s hand, and Barclay closed the distance. Indrid rubbed his thumb across Barclay’s skin.

“Thank you for sharing your eggnog with me,” Indrid said softly.

“Of course,” said Barclay.

Then Indrid breathed in, sharply, and squeezed his eyes shut. Barclay looked over, and his first guess as to what the seer was seeing was correct. The end of the world.

–

The apocalypse may have been halted, but dinnertime would march on, and so Joseph found Barclay in the kitchen. “Hey,” he said cautiously, shutting the door behind him.

Barclay dropped the spoon and rushed over, taking both of Joseph’s hands in his. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said.

Joseph looked up at him. At bigfoot. “Can I kiss you?” Barclay kissed him, and he could feel the scratch of Barclay’s beard against his face, and it was perfect. “I’m also glad you’re okay. Did I say that?”

“No, but I got the idea.”

“You’re bigfoot.”

“Yes.” Barclay did not flinch away.

“Indrid did a very good job of keeping that secret. He did let me, uh…” Joseph looked away. “I know that he’s mothman.”

“He let you see him?”

“No. But he fucked me. I was blindfolded.”

Meanwhile, Indrid was sitting on the floor outside the kitchen door, back to the wall, knees folded up to his chest. The sound of footsteps made him look up. Duck Newton was standing there, looking down at him.

“It was close, wasn’t it?” said Duck.

“Very.”

Duck sat down next to him, with all the noises one would expect of a middle-aged man getting himself down onto the floor. Gingerly, Indrid leaned his head onto Duck’s shoulder, and Duck tugged Indrid into his arms properly. Duck’s hand slid up into Indrid’s hair, Indrid’s hands closed in Duck’s shirt, which was warm from his skin.

“There are some futures where you kiss my forehead, and I’d like it if you did so,” said Indrid.

Duck laughed a little. “Alright, magic eight ball,” he said, and kissed Indrid on the forehead.

The kitchen door opened, and Joseph and Barclay came out hand in hand. Indrid felt Duck tense.

“It may be helpful to say at this juncture,” Indrid said, “that sylphs are generally not monogamous.”

“And neither am I,” said Joseph.

“Oh thank god.” Duck looked up at Joseph, and then back at Indrid. “Does that mean I can kiss you?”

[bellafarallones2]

harvestmen

college au, rated T, I guess Indrid/Stern?

During harvest time, when the sun set early, the cornfields along Route 6 were pitch black. Ravenous black. Drawing Joseph’s eyes in, as though there was something to see, before he forced himself to look back at the road. Some things were just unknowable.

The headlights of the combines still out harvesting cut alarmingly narrow slashes of light through the darkness - Joseph didn’t think he’d have the nerve to operate a huge, sharp-toothed machine in the darkness.

The bottom of a hill shortened the distance illuminated by his headlights, and Joseph slowed. A halo of light appeared over the top of the hill, the headlights of a car coming the other way refracted off the dust in the air. Ghostly, holy, could be anything. Some things were just unknowable.

--

Last Saturday Joseph had eaten dinner in the dining hall, arrived alone and sat optimistically at one of the long tables with a plate of meatloaf. Soon his optimism was validated when his friend Barclay appeared, with another person Joseph didn’t recognize. “Hey, Joe,” said Barclay. “Mind if we join you?”

“Go right ahead,” said Joseph, moving his plate closer to himself to clear more space on the table.

“This is my friend Indrid,” Barclay said as he sat down across from Joseph, and Indrid sat next to him. Indrid was tall and thin, dressed in a rather flamboyant pink-and-yellow sweater against the autumn chill, hair the dirty silver of snow in March. “He’s visiting from home. Indrid, this is Joe.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Joseph. “You’re visiting and Barclay’s making you eat dining hall food?”

Indrid seemed to have raided only the dessert station. “No, I insisted. Isn’t that how you meet people here?”

“I’m not the person to ask. Parties, maybe?”

“Yeah,” said Barclay. “Oh, speaking of parties, I was telling Indrid about the guy I hooked up with last night - I woke up in the middle of the night and there was this… noise? And I don’t know, I guess I was still a little drunk or something but it freaked me out. And I almost convinced myself someone was trying to break in until I got up and turned on the light and saw that it was just he had a hamster in a cage on his desk that I hadn’t noticed and of course it was running in its wheel at ass o’clock in the morning. And of course the guy woke up because I’d turned the lights on and asked what the hell I was doing and I had to tell him I’d been scared by his hamster. That was embarrassing.”

“You hadn’t seen the hamster when you came in?” said Joseph.

“No!”

“You work quick.” Indrid smirked.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Do you have any fun hookup stories?” said Joseph to Indrid. He didn’t have any himself. He’d only recently crossed the line from butch man to trans man, and gotten on T last year to find that suddenly he had a sex drive and also that he might be gay. His new attraction to men now felt different than the comphet crushes he’d had in high school, like he might like a boyfriend as long as he was their boyfriend too.

“I do,” said Indrid slowly, studying each of the others in turn. “Once I hooked up with mothman.”

Barclay snorted out a laugh. “Oh yeah? How’d that go?”

“He laid eggs in me. It was pretty nice.”

“I think that means mothman’s trans,” said Joseph thoughtfully as Barclay stifled his giggles in his glass of water. “Female insects are the ones who lay eggs.”

“Maybe,” said Indrid. “I didn’t ask.”

–

That halo over the hill could be anything. Holy, ghostly, just the headlights of an oncoming car, but cars usually weren’t that wide, weren’t ringed by blinking orange lights like the bell of a jellyfish, didn’t illuminate a perfect circle of ground beneath them.

Joseph slammed on the brakes. The UFO landed on the concrete in front of him, seemingly silent, and a gangplank lowered, leading up to the glowing square of a door. And then what?

Joseph, ever considerate, pulled slowly into the shoulder of the road and shut his headlights off before he got out of the car. He stuffed the car key into his pocket from his sweaty hand.

The gangplank was sturdy underneath his feet, textured to prevent slipping. The orange lights around the roof of the spaceship pulsed thoughtfully.

He found himself in a round, brightly-lit room that reminded him, more than it perhaps should have, of a dorm room. There was a desk and a dresser and a bed, messily made-up. Most dorm rooms, however, did not have the control panel with dozens of buttons and switches and levers. Or the creature standing in front of it. Six strange spindly limbs, a moth’s fuzzy torpedo body, huge antennae with many parallel lobes extending off the main shaft like driveways on a suburban street. The mothman pressed one of the buttons, and a door slid out of the floor to close the opening Joseph had just come through. A few more buttons pressed, and Joseph felt them rise into the air.

“Is this an abduction?” said Joseph.

“No. I’ll bring you back to your car whenever you like. I just figured you’d rather not block the road in the meantime.” His voice was familiar but unplaceable.

Joseph looked more closely at the control panel. The words were in an unfamiliar language, not anything on earth, and even the pictograms were not from the standard assortment that multinational car companies agreed on.

“I won’t let you drive it,” said the mothman lightly.

“Probably smart of you.” Joseph turned to look at him and took a deep breath. The mothman’s eyes were impenetrable, but then again so were a human’s.

Somehow people did this. His roommate hooked up with people they met at parties, somehow bridging the gap of explaining their transness all the way to taking their clothes off.

“I want to have sex with you,” Joseph said.

The mothman chirred. “Then take your clothes off.”

Joseph undid the top two buttons on his shirt no problem. “Bed?”

“I think so.”

Joseph crossed the room and eased himself onto the bed, surprised at how deeply he sank into the mattress. A dorm bed this was not. And then the mothman was on the bed too, crawling up between Joseph’s spread legs.

“I don’t really have the mouth to kiss you,” said the mothman apologetically.

“It’s alright.” Joseph’s fingers stilled on his buttons. He felt terribly exposed, even though he’d shown more skin than this in the gym.

Joseph slowly drew his knees together. “...I can’t do this.” How was this possible? How could he be brave enough to step into a UFO without a second thought but taking his pants off in a perfectly consensual situation was too much?

“Okay.” The mothman pulled back.

“Sorry.” Joseph redid his buttons with shaking hands. “I just, I get nervous, I don’t know how to have casual sex.”

“If you figure it out, let me know.”

“But you, but…”

“Ah. Yes. That.” The mothman reached out one spindly hand and picked up a pair of red sunglasses off his desk that looked tiny against his huge form. They barely fit over his head, but as soon as they were on his body shrunk to fit. And there was Indrid, Barclay’s friend Indrid who Joseph had eaten dinner with, with a ratty friendship bracelet around his wrist and his knees pulled nervously to his chest. “I may have been…. joshing,” he said. “When I said I’d slept with mothman.”

“Indrid?” said Joseph.

“Yes,” said Indrid. “That’s me.”

Joseph sat up, his shame subsumed by curiosity. “I have so many questions for you.”

Indrid smiled shyly up at him. “I suspected you might.”

[thiswasinevitableid]

Big realization. I was thinking about the OT4 and their dynamics when it hit me: Do Stern/Duck, Stern/Indrid, and Indrid/Barclay have individual ship names? I throw around Indruck and SternClay in my mind, when I’m trying y to workshop a concept, or explain to friends. If the fandom has these on hand, I would very much like to adopt them. Thank you!

I've only ever seen "Inclay" for Indrid/Barclay, and nothing for the other pairings that I can remember.

(Sterndrid? Duckstern? AgentDuck?)