Tinker awoke with a hard-on the cat couldn't scratch. That got him feeling pretty chipper; after all, he wasn't a teenager any more. Hmm, bit of a waste, he thought dreamily, being all on my lonesom… What!
Tinker leapt out of bed, grabbing at a pillow for modesty. The head on the other pillow turned languorously towards him.
"I have seen one before," said a sultry voice.
Tinker went bug-eyed. He couldn't place the gender and was bloody damn certain he hadn't gone to bed with… with that. Tinker stood frozen in disbelief—a tableaux vivant of caveman meets cabaret.
A slim body stretched out under the rumpled quilt showing off long, perfect legs. Cupid-bow lips pouted. "Now, Tinker, you can't pretend we've never even met."
Oh, off and on like, he thought, feeling things fall into place. The displaced quilt had also exposed a pulsing red heart pendant on a flat, almost boyish chest. The sigil radiated magic like pulses of tropical heat, it radiated…
"Desire!" Tinker exclaimed, and clutched the pillow tighter. There's no point asking how it gets in, love laughs at locksmiths. He passed over the kimono he used as a robe. "Could you at least be female for a bit? Someone might pop in and I've my reputation to think of."
Desire laughed throatily. "Well, you certainly are developing one. But for once I'll be discretion itself." A modest cleavage now showed in the décolletage of the kimono. Subtle facial changes: fuller lips, higher cheekbones and larger, liquid eyes that kept changing colour. Desire is never the same twice. Endless, one might say, in her variety.
"Do you want my head on a plate now," Tinker muttered, stumping downstairs to the kitchen, "or are you going to dance for it?"
Desire's gyrations were always making perfectly reasonable people lose their heads. What did Oscar say? "I can resist anything, except temptation". Desire had flesh by the short and curlies while her brother, Dream, monopolised the unconscious. She was one of the major personifications and not what you'd want to wake up to.
Tinker got some strong tea made, giving his hands something to do besides shake. He didn't offer his guest any; Desire always took whatever she wanted.
What she wanted was very much on Tinker's mind. Thankfully his current squeeze, Sarah, was away on some family matter. She wouldn't have appreciated waking to a threesome, especially with a hormone-hopped hermaphrodite.
"It's not about you, Tinkerman," Desire said, raising an espresso that had appeared in her manicured fingers, a gold-tipped black Russian cigarette smouldering in the other hand. "It's about Di Di."
Di Di being Desire's bi-polar little sister. Her lost self-delight had been recently restored by a lucky wish-gift from Tinker. She'd been delirious for years, so his gift had created a family debt. Endless debt wasn't good, and only a lifetime to clear it.
"No problemo," he said. "The dreamster squared up with me already."
"Unlike me, my brother only offers illusion," said Desire with a dismissive wave. "Besides, it was a sororal debt." She smiled. "However, I'm glad to inform you that my gift has discharged it."
Tinker took a long swallow of his bergamot-scented tea. He had one of his bad feelings coming on. The gifts of Desire were like the hell-twins, Agony and Ecstasy; they came wrapped in razors. So, what present could she possibly have given? Then it hit him--below the belt.
"Sarah!"
Desire exhaled a languorous, latakia-rich cloud. "Won't be coming back."
"Christ Almighty!" Tinker's throat suddenly tightened. "N… not dead?"
"Let's leave my big sister out of it, "she demurred. "Just say the desire has left Sarah."
Sarah was young enough to be Tinker's daughter, and old enough for his mid-life crisis. She'd brought him back to life with her youth, her wild energy a match for his years of hard exercise, like new wine in an old bottle. Innocence for experience was a fair trade, but all too often a fleeting one. He'd gone in eyes open.
"What have you gone and done?" Tinker growled.
Desire flicked ash. "Discharged a debt. Paid in passion. Delightful while it lasted, no?"
Tinker wanted to break something, preferably that perfect, composed face.
"Fucked me over with an illusion, you mean," he rasped.
Desire was affronted. "I am real enough to burn the topless towers and sway empires. I only offer the ultimate physical commodities." The gold tip hissed like a cat as she stubbed it out in her empty cup. "Sarah never so much as faked an orgasm; all was real as flesh may feel. It's over, that's all."
Yeah, sic transit gloria veneris. Tinker fumbled with the kitchen table's hidden drawer and grabbed a ready-rolled herb from the stash. After a couple of clumsy sparks it lit. He'd be needing a harsh toke to handle this boot to the balls.
"I'll believe it when Sarah tells me to my face," he said defiantly. Desire was the least trustworthy of her family and a notorious trouble-maker.
"She's writing it now." Desire switched to an all-too-familiar voice. "'Dear Tinker, You're everything a girl could want, and more. Way, way too much more, and that's the problem.'" Desire stopped, noticing him draw down hard on the joint. "Shall I continue?"
"C… course you will," Tinker choked out. "Just a source of endless pleasure, right?" Like anything mortal could restrain her needs.
"'I can't tell you this in person. I've tried, but my body wouldn't let me,'" Desire continued, Sarah's voice licking from her lips. "'I'm not strong all over like you. Fact is, I'm just plain scared. I've seen things you tried to hide, overheard you talk about places I can't even imagine, met people… at least I think they were people… made my skin crawl.
"'At first it was so exciting, like that bloody great bike of yours. Then everything got too fast, too serious. It's not anything you did, it's you. You're just too… too big for me and I wouldn't want to change a bit of you, even if I could. But I have to be me yet, I can't grow strung-out in your shadow. I can't be a vessel.
"'I know you can find me anywhere, talk me into anything you want, but please don't. I need to figure out what's happened to me.
"'I'll always remember you. I'm so sorry it had to be this way. I'm so sorry.'"
Tinker's face had set like Mount Rushmore, but his brain was whirring.
He stretched, shrugged, and then cleared his throat. "Well now, ain't that the way those May/September matches seem to go? Truth to be told, Desire, I reckon you did me a favor there. Such a softie when it comes to the dump, you see." He nipped out his roach, and returned it to the drawer. "Ah yes, poor little Sarah couldn't tell magic from tragic. Hell, even real life was a pea under the mattress for little Ms. Princess."
Now it was Desire's turn to stare at him.
"Oh, she could shift her arse around in the sack like a choirboy, but you miss an adult conversation afterwards and passion soon wears out its welcome."
Colour rose to Desire's alabaster-smooth cheeks. "You… you were intending to reject my gift?" she spluttered.
"Hey, you're the one shutting up the sweetie shop," Tinker protested. "Ta very much and all, candy is dandy but it gets stuck in yer teeth. Kid's stuff really, outgrown it."
He got up, stretched lazily, and set a pot to boil on the gas stove. "Must be signifying a time for change. I think I'll do an oil and filter on the Vee after a nice, healthy breakfast." He turned to Desire, almost as an afterthought. "But say, what kind of host am I? Fancy a bowl of honest Scots oats?"
Desire made a sour face. "I give those to my horses."
"And fine horses they must be then," said Tinker, looking absently out the window. "Fine day for a ride too, think I'll take a spin over to Magic John's. Give him a giggle, like. He's always lecturing on at me that a man of power has to keep the emotions in their place."
Desire rose haughtily. "It would appear I have no place here," she enunciated, dropping the temperature several degrees. "My pleasures are quite wasted on old men."
"And youth on the young," agreed Tinker, stirring oats into the merrily boiling water. "Mind you," he said over his shoulder, "one does get so tired of the limitations of the flesh. I really don't know how you can take it, forever like."
The door slammed shut. Desire was gone, and he could be sure that she wouldn't be bestowing him any of her favours for a while.
Tinker finished cooking his porridge and carefully turned off the gas. He sat down, but made no move to eat.
Presently he began to cry, and couldn't stop.