Author's note: Ahem. Well. I guess I just raised this story's maturity rating somewhat…
"Home, sweet shower," Jenny said happily as she stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in a big, fluffy towel. Her naked feet made little splish-splash sounds against the concrete floor.
Jameel was sitting by the fireplace, stripped down to his underwear and wrapped in three different blankets, trying to warm himself up without the aid of the hot shower that Jenny had so cruelly monopolised for the last half hour. He had gotten to the point where he would be willing to concede that, all things considered, the marrow of his bones most probably had not frozen solid, but beyond that he made no commitments.
"I completely agree," he said. "Can I have it now?"
"Yes," Jenny said, plopping down next to him in front of the fire. "But you won't like it. The only reason why I came out was because I'd used up all the hot water."
Jameel, who had been about to get up, slumped down again.
"You have no heart," he declared tragically. "You are an evil fiend bent on my destruction."
"I'm sure you'll muddle through somehow," Jenny said.
Jameel gave her a dark look, but after a moment it turned to amusement and he gave off a snort of laughter.
"What?" Jenny said.
"Oh, it's nothing, really." Jameel smiled wryly. "It's just so weird to see the human you."
"Oh." Jenny grimaced. "You ran out of Glamour, huh?"
"I was running on fumes already," Jameel said. "The last of it faded on the bus here."
He looked around the dark, bare room. Without the Glamour, the Freehold of the Solitary Tower was just a two-story house which might at some point – some quite distant point, during a time when open fires had been the cutting edge of heating – have been the proudly owned home of a person of limited means but which hadn't been used for much in the way of ordinary habitation lately. Jenny's furniture and clothing – and the latter was laying all over the former, hinting at a pathological inability to be tidy – was an odd assortment of old and new, cheap and expensive, broken and whole. There were wires and tubes running around the walls, providing electricity and water, and it couldn't be clearer that they were a recent instalment of people who had made no effort to blend it with the house's original design.
Strangely enough, it was actually sort of cosy. Whatever else Jenny's home was, it definitely had personality – every single thing in it looked like it had a long and interesting history. But it wasn't the kind of place where you expected a Sidhe to live.
For that matter, Jenny didn't look like a Sidhe anymore. She was a girl in her late teens with shoulder-length brown-blonde hair, broad shoulders, muscular built, perfect poise and – Jameel guiltily forced his eyes away from the edge of the towel – a magnificent pair of breasts. Definitely pretty, certainly worth a second look, but not a radiant being of unearthly beauty.
She hadn't changed, of course – it was just that he couldn't see her as she really was anymore. For the first time, he wondered if the famous Sidhe self-confidence came from that fact. No matter what they looked like, every Sidhe knew that they were, in a fundamental sense, amazingly attractive – so what did it matter if they might, in a dull, ordinary, mundane sense be average-looking and have zits? Anyone who didn't see their glorious beauty was someone whose eyes weren't working properly, and why should they care about what such a person thought he saw?
There was possibly some sort of lesson in that, but Jameel was too tired and cold to be able to concentrate on learning it.
"Well, I'm sure Josey will re-enchant you as soon as you ask him," Jenny said neutrally.
"I guess," Jameel said. The idea of going back to the Glade of Dancing Leafs and asking for his first payment as court Soothsayer didn't appeal to him. He was almost sure that no one had seen him free Jenny, but almost didn't feel like a sufficient defence against Old Josey's spears and spells. "Unless they've figured out that maybe I'm not as much of a rat as they thought I was."
"Have you felt the oath snap back at you?" Jenny said.
Jameel shook his head. To be honest, he wasn't sure – between being frozen half to death and gong cold turkey on the Glamour all at once, he was feeling all sorts of unpleasant and unfamiliar things, but he had a general idea that an oath backlash was hard to mistake for anything less dramatic.
"Then they don't know," Jenny said. "Or at least they can't be sure. Besides, if you're right about them wanting to use you for something underhanded, they'll pretend not to suspect anything either way. If they do grab you and throw you in the Pools, then you can be sure that they really did want to make you court Soothsayer."
"That's not terribly comforting," Jameel said.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Jenny said cheerfully. "Did I give you the impression I was trying to be comforting?"
Jameel winced.
"So say that Josey doesn't throw me in the Pools for helping you," he said, "and Broch doesn't throw me in his dungeons for swearing fealty to Malenna. How about that team-up?"
"You and me?" Jenny said. "Forming our own conspiracy to find the truth, defeat all evil-doers and put the rightful heir, whoever the hell that might be, on the throne? Bad odds, imminent danger, every hand against us, all but certain death?" She grinned widely. "I think that's just what the doctor ordered."
"I'm guessing you're still not trying to be comforting," Jameel said dryly.
"Pretty much," Jenny said. "I'm serious, though. I'm in. At this point, I think I either do something incredibly stupid and heroic, or I stumble into the Undoing. And I'd literally rather die." She glanced at him. "I'm not sure what your motivation is, though."
Jameel sighed and shrugged.
"Oh, what choice do I have?" he said. "Broch doesn't give a shit about me, so if I stay loyal to him either Josey or Jax will get me. Josey is probably planning something devious and trying to use me as a chess piece to be sacrificed for the greater good. If I stay with either side, I'll probably get killed. I figure my best bet is to try and manufacture a third side of my own, one that will care if I live or die."
"Or you could run," Jenny said gently.
"I've tried that. It doesn't seem to work." He hesitated, but when it came right down to it saying the next part was a lot easier than he had thought. "Jax wants me to kill you."
Jenny gave him a startled look.
"Oooookay?" she said carefully.
"That's his condition for letting me get off the hook with him," Jameel said. "I kill you or he kills me, he says."
"Makes sense," Jenny said, deadpan. "That fits with the Shadow Court's whole 'corrupt the world' mission statement."
"You're being weirdly calm about this…" Jameel said.
Jenny shrugged.
"Well, I figure that if you're telling me, it means you're not planning on doing it," she said. "Which is nice."
"Of course I'm not planning on doing it!" said Jameel, and told himself that there hadn't been a moment, not the tiniest instant, when he had seriously contemplated going along with it. Ran the thought through his head in a panic, yes, but actually had a moment when he might have decided to do it? Certainly not.
He told himself that, and wasn't sure if he could believe it. He found himself actually envying the stupid Fiona Sidhe. They might do things for all sorts of reasons, not all of them especially honourable, but they'd never do something just because they were scared shitless and wanted to save their own hide.
"So what's the plan?" Jenny said, and Jameel realised with a mix of shame and relief that she clearly thought the issue was played out. "We want to fight the power. Works for me. Where do we start?"
"Well…" Jameel scratched his chin. "I think we should do exactly what we set out to do today, before the Wildlings turned up and distracted us. We need to find Big Brian. I mean, he's at the intersection point of everything that's going on, isn't he? He pretended to work for Broch, he's really working for Josey, and he's a Thallain – tied to the Shadow Court pretty much just by existing. Also, he's pretty dumb. We should be able to get the truth out of him."
Jenny nodded, her expression business-like.
"We'll ask around," she said. "Start by hitting the Noisy Tomb again, then move on to the smaller Freeholds. Someone will have seen Brian. Ogres aren't exactly inconspicuous. And then, once we've pumped him for information?"
"Then we'll see," Jameel said.
"In other words," Jenny said, "we're going to make it up as we go along?"
"Pretty much," Jameel admitted.
Jenny beamed.
"I'm liking this adventure already!"
Jameel groaned.
"You would."
"I need new gear first, though," Jenny said. "I want Sauraq back, but that can wait. But I need to have some kind of sword and armour before going after bad guys. A knight's only as good as her equipment, and between Jax and Josey, I'm down to a teensy little knife."
"Okay, so you spend the morning visiting some Nocker armour-smith," Jameel said. "I spend the morning studying for the midterms. Then we meet up and go Brian-hunting."
Jenny smirked.
"I can't get over the fact that 'interfere in a civil war and put the rightful heir on the throne, saving my own life in the process' comes right after 'cramming for midterms' on your list."
"Well, it counts for sixty percent of my grade," Jameel said gloomily. "You're lucky you never had to go through higher education. It's murder."
"Oh, I don't know," Jenny said. "At least your tutor won't stripe you with the flat of his blade if he thinks your fencing skills aren't all they should be yet. So you're heading home, then?"
"Yeah." Jameel hesitated, then groaned. "No! Damn it, I can't – my wards will have expired, and I'm all out of Glamour to put them back. Jax can sneak in in the middle of the night and rip my throat out if he likes." He grimaced sheepishly. "Don't suppose you'd consider enchanting me before I go…?"
"Hey, I'll do you better than that," Jenny said. "You can stay here for the night. The Solitary Tower is a small Freehold, but it's got enough Glamour to replenish two people overnight." She grinned. "If you're out of juice, I'll fill you up."
"Thanks," Jameel said, relieved. "I appreciate that."
Jenny gave him a slow, naughty look.
"I'll expect you to return the favour, though," she said.
Jameel shrugged.
"Sure, I guess," he said. "What do you want me to do?"
"I told you," Jenny said. "I want you to return the favour." The mischievous look was still on her face, but it was starting to get a strained come-on-get-the-joke-already quality to it. "I want you to fill me up."
Jameel tried to figure out what the hell she was on about.
"Well, I don't actually have a Freehold," he said. "And Kinain can't do that musing thing you lot do. I'm not sure how you expect me to…"
Jenny drew a long-suffering sigh, her expression saying that she was surrounded by philistines.
"I was here using the term 'fill me up' as a euphemism for sex," she said. "I was, in fact, suggesting that we spend the night making love to each other. And why doesn't anyone get my double entendres?"
Jameel stared.
"I mean, it's not like they're so terribly subtle or anything," Jenny said.
Jameel stared.
"Did the entire male half of the species get struck by terminal literal-mindedness when I wasn't looking?" Jenny said, shaking her head.
Jameel stared.
Jenny slowly moved her hand back and forth in front of his eyes.
"Uhm… hello…?" she said. "Are you still there…?"
"Is… is this a joke?" Jameel said. "Because if it is, it's not funny."
Jenny winced.
"It's not a joke. It's a sincere, heartfelt offer. Is it so hard for you to believe a girl might be interested in you in a naked full-body sense?"
"Considering that the only time that's happened so far, the girl was a servant of the Eternal Winter and just let me screw her so she could turn me evil?" Jameel said.
"Good point," Jenny admitted. "But come on, you can't let a little thing like that mess you up." She reached out and stroked his cheek. "I mean, you're smart. And you're funny. And you care about your family, and you were willing to break an oath and suffer the consequences because you thought it was the right thing to do – hey, I am Seelie, you know. Honour's sexy."
It dawned on Jameel that this was for real. No joke. No conspiracy to damn his very soul. No bizarre case of mistaken identity. Jenny meant it.
"What about Bob?" he said, because he was an idiot and a self-destructive freak who secretly wanted to ruin his own life.
"I'm not in the mood for Bob tonight," Jenny said. "I'm in the mood for Jameel." She grinned. "If that's too casual for you, you can always say no."
Jameel's libido piped up and threatened armed rebellion if he even thought about saying no.
"Uhm… yes?" he said in a strained voice. "Yes – yes."
Jenny kissed him. Her strong fingers burrowed themselves in his hair.
"The kid was right," she said when drew back, leaving him gasping. "This stuff's like silk."
"Thank you," Jameel said dumbly, his voice sounding muffled. The memory of the kiss was still like a solid thing in his mouth, warm and tingly and sweet.
Jenny got to her feet, pulling him up with her. Her towel slipped and she was naked in the firelight, and Jameel realised that he had been insane to think she was less beautiful without the Glamour. Jenny was a goddess. Jenny was perfect.
She kissed him again and again, quick, sure brushes of lips against lips. She pulled him with her as she stepped backwards, and he followed, trying very hard to run his hands over every inch of warm, soft skin that he could reach. He was vaguely aware that Jenny was acting kind of like she was in a duel, manoeuvring for position, testing his defences, and that was insane and stupid and scary and somehow it made him so aroused that it hurt.
Jenny pushed him down on the bed and helped him out of his shorts, leaving him as naked as she was. She reached for something on the bedside table, and before he knew it she had slipped a condom on him.
"You practice safe sex?" Jameel said, because the self-destructive idiot part of his brain had yet to give up.
Jenny made a face as she lay down on top of him. She was surprisingly heavy – she was shorter and slimmer than him, but so much of her body was hard muscle.
"Yeah, and I put on armour before rushing into battle, too," she said. "I'm a hothead. Not an idiot."
Jameel couldn't argue with that. And a moment later, when Jenny had guided the suitably armoured part of him into her, all interfering thoughts mercifully went away and he managed to focus completely at the situation at hand.
He was clumsy and awkward and he knew it, but Jenny knew exactly what she was doing, and he gratefully fell into her rhythm, matching her thrust for thrust, slowly at first and then faster. He stroked Jenny's hips, her thighs, her breasts, kept his trembling hands moving the way Minnie had said that he should, and dear God, what he wouldn't have given not to have to think about Minnie right now, but it was all he had to go on.
After a while Jenny's breaths became quick and ragged, and finally she gave off a long, drawn-out moan and went limp on top of him. For a few moments, she was a still, heavy weight pushing him down into the mattress, and he had time to wonder if she'd fallen asleep, and if so, would it be wrong in some way if he tried to finish anyway, because he really didn't think he could stop at this point. But then she looked up, her ruffled hair falling around her face, and grinned mischievously at him.
"Your turn," she said, and started moving again. Jameel lay back, inactive, barely responding anymore – it was okay, he thought, she was done, he hadn't messed up too badly, now he could just relax and just… let it… happen… oh God, Jenny, Jenny, JENNY…
When he was finished, she rolled off of him and drew a content sigh as she flopped down by his side.
"Well, that wasn't too shabby for our first time," she said.
"No…" Jameel gasped, wondering whether his heart would slow down soon or whether it would burst, and not caring overly much. Then he lifted his head and gave her a startled look. "Wait, what? Our first time?"
"Uh-huh," Jenny said.
"Not our one and only time," Jameel said. "Our first time. As in a time that is followed by an undecided number of subsequent times."
"Sure," Jenny said. "And if you don't nod off, we can get to work on some of those as soon as you've…" She glanced slyly down the length of Jameel's body. "… recharged."
Jameel's head slumped back down to the pillow again. He stared blankly at the ceiling.
God? he thought. If this is your way of making up for – well, for pretty much my entire life so far – I just want to say… good job. Keep it up.