Chapter 3: Conduction
The towering silence of the upper floor was a living thing, thick with the scent of old paper and lemon-scented polish. Sunlight fell in dusty, slanted columns through the high windows, illuminating galaxies of drifting motes. Meil loved this shift, the Tuesday afternoon lull where the only patrons were the ghosts of long-dead authors and the occasional student who’d wandered too far from the science section.
He was reshelving a cart of returned histories, his movements smooth and practiced, the soft thump of each book finding its home a satisfying percussion in the quiet. Nate was a warm, hidden weight in the breast pocket of his soft chambray shirt, a secret pulse against his heart. The fae had been uncharacteristically still for nearly an hour, lulled perhaps by the rhythm of Meil’s gait and the deep quiet.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Nate’s voice, a whisper only Meil could hear, vibrated against his chest. “It’s all ‘Monographs of the Late Tudor Period’ and ‘acid-free bookmarks’ in there. Dreadfully boring.”
Meil’s lips twitched. He slid a heavy volume on the Battle of Bosworth into its slot. “Some of us have to work for a living,” he murmured, barely moving his lips. “Not all of us can survive on honey and starlight.”
A tiny huff puffed against his skin. “Starlight is terribly overrated. It’s mostly cold. And your honey is from a supermarket. It’s an insult to the craft.”
Before Meil could formulate a rebuttal, it began.
It started as a simple shift of weight in his pocket. Then, the faintest, most deliberate scrape of Nate’s hand against the fabric of Meil’s shirt, right over his sternum. A familiar, affectionate gesture.
But this time, a bolt of pure, undiluted sensation, sharp and sweet as a lightning strike, lanced through Meil’s body.
He gasped, a sharp, audible intake of breath that echoed in the silent stacks. His hands, holding a biography of Elizabeth I, clenched white-knuckled on the spine. The sensation wasn’t just touch. It was as if every nerve ending on his torso had been suddenly stripped bare and wired directly to a live current. The soft brush of Nate’s tiny palm wasn’t a caress; it was a cataclysm.
“N-Nate,” he hissed, his voice strangled.
Nate went perfectly still. “Meil?” His whisper was laced with concern, then a dawning, mischievous understanding. “Oh.”
“What did you do?” Meil breathed, his whole body taut as a bowstring. The ordinary feel of his clothes—the gentle abrasion of his shirt collar, the waistband of his trousers—was suddenly a symphony of overwhelming input.
“A little… amplification,” Nate said, his tone shifting to one of fascinated curiosity. “A thanks-for-the-honey, even-if-it’s-inferior spell. I thought it would just be a tingle.”
He moved again, an experimental drag of his fingertips down the center of Meil’s abdomen, under the shirt.
Meil saw stars. He sagged against the solid oak shelf, the cool wood a stark, grounding contrast to the fire racing under his skin. A low, helpless moan vibrated in his throat. Every minute shift of Nate’s body in his pocket sent cascades of electric pleasure arcing through his nerves. It was excruciating. It was exquisite. He was trembling, his professional composure dissolving like sugar in hot water.
“You have to stop,” he whispered, utterly desperate. “I can’t… I’m at work.”
“But you’re so much more interesting like this,” Nate purred, his voice humming against Meil’s frantic heartbeat. “All that calm librarian steadiness, just… melting.” To illustrate, he traced a slow, tiny circle on Meil’s skin.
Meil’s knees buckled. He caught himself on the cart, the metal handle digging into his palm. The sharp pain was a welcome anchor. He fought to draw a normal breath. The silence of the library, once comforting, was now a terrifying auditorium for his every ragged gasp.
Footsteps sounded on the parquet floor below, approaching the staircase.
Panic, cold and sobering, sliced through the haze of sensation. “Nate, please,” he begged, straightening up with a monumental effort, shoving the biography onto the cart with a clatter.
The tiny hands withdrew. The unbearable hypersensitivity faded a fraction, dialing down from a roaring inferno to a simmering, all-consuming burn. It was still there, a live wire under his skin, but he could think. Barely.
Mrs. Henderson, a kindly octogenarian who came in every Tuesday for large-print romance novels, crested the stairs. “Meil, dear, could you point me to the new Clara Bell offerings? I think I’ve read everything in the ‘H’ section.”
Meil turned, hoping his smile didn’t look like a grimace. “Of course, Mrs. Henderson. They’re right over…” He had to walk. Putting one foot in front of the other felt like a herculean task. Every step sent a jolt through him, the fabric of his clothes rubbing against the sensitized skin of his thighs. He led her to the display, his voice surprisingly steady as he listed the titles, all while screaming inside.
Nate was a statue in his pocket.
As Mrs. Henderson browsed, humming contentedly, Nate shifted again. Not a caress this time, but a deliberate, slow crawl. He was moving, using the inner seam of Meil’s shirt as a ladder, descending.
Meil froze mid-sentence. Nate’s progress was a slow-motion avalanche of feeling. The whisper-soft tickle of his passage across Meil’s ribs, the minute pressure of his tiny feet on the plane of his stomach… it was an exquisitely detailed torture. Meil’s knuckles were white where he gripped a shelf. He finished his sentence on a shaky exhale.
“Are you quite alright, dear? You look flushed,” Mrs. Henderson said, peering at him over her rhinestone glasses.
“Just a bit warm today,” Meil managed, his voice thin. “Sun… direct sunlight.”
Nate had reached his waistband. He paused there, a searing point of awareness. Then, with impossible, agonizing slowness, he slipped a hand beneath the fabric, his fingers dancing along the sensitive skin of Meil’s hip bone.
A full-body shudder wracked Meil. He coughed to cover the sound that threatened to escape. “I’ll… let you browse,” he choked out, and fled, leaving a mildly concerned Mrs. Henderson behind.
He stumbled into the dim, narrow aisle of the Restoration Poetry section, a dead-end corridor rarely visited. He braced his forearms against the shelves on either side, head hanging, breath coming in ragged gulps. The spell was in full force again, a storm of sensation focused entirely on that infinitesimal point of contact. Nate’s touch was no longer just skin on skin. It was a laser, etching pure, shivering pleasure into his very bones.
“You,” Meil gasped, “are a menace.”
Nate’s laugh was a dark, delightful shimmer against his nerve-endings. “And you are a masterpiece in high definition.” He moved his hand again, a millimeter to the left.
Meil’s vision spotted. A keening sound, thin and desperate, escaped his clenched teeth. His body was no longer his to command. It was a instrument tuned and played by a six-inch virtuoso. Surrender wasn’t a choice; it was a physiological fact. He was shaking, a constant, fine tremor of absolute overload, pinned against the bookshelves by nothing more than the devastating focus of his lover’s attention.
“They’ll… they’ll find me,” he whispered, the words slurring together. “Collapsed… among the metaphysical poets.”
“Let them,” Nate murmured, his tone shifting from playful to something darker, more possessive. “Let them see how well you are loved. How thoroughly you are known.”
The hand under his waistband stilled, simply resting there, a brand of impossible heat. The hypersensitivity began to recede, not vanishing, but softening, dispersing from a single white-hot point into a gentle, glowing warmth that suffused his entire lower body. It was the difference between being struck by lightning and standing in a sunbeam.
Meil sagged, boneless, his forehead coming to rest against the cool spine of a John Donne collection. The aftershocks still trembled through him.
Nate extracted himself, climbing back up with careful, tickling steps until he was nestled again in the pocket, his tiny face peeking out over the edge. He looked up at Meil, his expression a mix of wicked satisfaction and deep, undeniable affection.
Meil looked down, his hazel eyes wide, his face still flushed with the ordeal. “You,” he repeated, but the anger was gone, replaced by awed exhaustion.
Nate reached up a miniscule hand and patted the curve of Meil’s jaw. “You are remarkably durable for a mortal. And now you smell like fear, sweat, and 17th century sonnets. It’s intoxicating.”
A laugh bubbled up from Meil’s chest, weak but genuine. He pushed himself upright, his legs still feeling like wet clay. The memory of the sensation was tattooed onto his nervous system. He had to finish his shift. He had to walk out there, face Mrs. Henderson, maybe even help the new intern. The world demanded normalcy.
But as he smoothed his shirt, feeling the warm, smug weight in his pocket, he knew a fundamental shift had occurred. The quiet library was now a landscape charged with secret potential, every shadow a hiding place, every whisper of fabric a promise. Nate had rewritten the rules of the day, and Meil, his body still humming a sub-audible song of surrender, walked back into the light to finish his work, carrying the thrilling, terrifying secret close to his heart.
The rest of his shift was a masterclass in sustained, quiet agony. Meil moved through the library with a forced, mechanical calm, a flickering smile plastered to his face. Every action was filtered through the lingering hypersensitivity Nate had ignited. The scratch of a book’s binding against his thumb was a sharp, focused pleasure. The slide of his cotton shirt across his shoulders as he reached for a high shelf sent a wave of sensation crashing down his spine.
He was a live wire disguised as a librarian.
For twenty blessed minutes, Nate slept. The warm, steady weight in Meil’s pocket was a profound comfort, a return to normalcy. Meil used the respite to check in books, his breathing gradually deepening, the frantic edge of his nerves softening into a mere glow. He almost convinced himself he’d imagined the earlier intensity.
Then, a tiny stir. A soft, sleep-filled sigh vibrated against his chest. Nate was awake.
Meil froze, a stack of periodicals in his hands. “Don’t,” he whispered into the silence of the returns desk.
“Don’t what?” Nate’s voice was pure, innocent mischief. He stretched, a minuscule movement that Meil felt as a delicious, full-body ripple.
“You know what.”
Nate hummed. His wing, a delicate, translucent blade of blue, unfolded just enough to brush against the inside of Meil’s shirt. It was a feather-light graze along his ribs.
Meil’s breath hitched. His grip on the magazines tightened. The sensation was different this time—not the electric shock of before, but a deep, resonant thrum that bypassed his skin and vibrated directly in his bones. It was less sharp, more potent. A low, addictive heat began to pool in his belly.
“See?” Nate murmured, his wing tracing that same line, again and again. “I can be subtle.”
“You’re going to get me fired,” Meil breathed, forcing his hands to sort the periodicals by date. His movements were jerky, uncoordinated.
“You’re doing your job perfectly,” Nate countered. The wing stilled, but the magic didn’t fade. It simmered, a constant background radiation of feeling. The weight of his own trousers against his legs, the press of the chair seat beneath him—it was all amplified, transformed into a continuous, low-grade thrill. “You’re just… enjoying it a bit more intensely today. No one needs to know.”
A student approached the desk, a confused frown on his face. Meil’s professional smile snapped into place, a mask over the riot happening beneath his clothes. His voice was a miracle of steadiness as he directed the boy to the microfiche archives. All the while, Nate began a slow, circling massage against his pectoral muscle with one tiny, determined foot.
It wasn’t torture. It was euphoric attrition. Meil felt his focus dissolving, his thoughts smearing into a warm, pleasant haze. The drone of the HVAC system became a symphony. The blur of text on a passing book jacket was a cascade of color. Nate was tuning him like an instrument, tightening each nerve until the whole world sang.
“I can’t think,” Meil whispered helplessly once the student left.
“Good,” Nate said, his tone one of deep satisfaction. “You think too much. Feel instead.”
And Meil did. He floated through the next hour, a puppet with senses afire. He navigated a conversation with his supervisor about the upcoming book sale, his answers coherent but distant, as if he were speaking from the bottom of a warm, shimmering well. Nate varied his methods. Sometimes it was just the persistent, heated press of his body through the fabric. Sometimes it was the lightest scrape of a fingernail, a line of fire drawn across Meil’s stomach that made his knees weak.
The magic would ebb, allowing Meil a few minutes of shaky clarity, before Nate would stoke it again with a lazy, deliberate motion. It was a game, and Meil was the board, the pieces, and the prize all at once.
The final bell for closing rang, a shockwave of mundane sound piercing Meil’s sensory dreamscape. He startled, knocking a pencil cup. It clattered on the desk, a jarring return to reality.
“Finally,” Nate yawned, withdrawing his influence so suddenly it felt like a loss. The world turned flat, muted. The ordinary feeling of his clothes returned, now feeling oddly like a shroud, a dull blanket over his vibrant, awakened skin.
Meil’s hands trembled as he powered down the computer. He gathered his things with slow, deliberate movements, his body feeling both wrung-out and hyper-alive. The silence of the closed library was now cavernous, expectant.
He stepped out into the cool evening air. The streetlights had just flickered on, casting long, distorted shadows. He walked without direction for a block, the events of the afternoon crashing over him in a series of visceral, stolen memories: the shelf against his forehead, Mrs. Henderson’s concerned glance, the unbearable, perfect focus of Nate’s attention.
He stopped under a bare-branched tree, his breath misting in the twilight. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt, sliding a finger into his pocket. Nate stepped onto his offered fingertip, his wings giving an iridescent flutter in the dim light.
They looked at each other, the magnitude of the day hanging between them in the quiet street.
“You,” Meil began, his voice rough with spent emotion.
Nate tilted his head, his bright eyes unreadable. “Me.”
A laugh escaped Meil, part exhaustion, part wonder. He brought his hand closer, until Nate was level with his face. “That was cruel.”
“It was a gift.” Nate reached out, his hands impossibly small, and placed them on the curve of Meil’s lower lip. “You let me see you come apart. You trusted me not to let you fall.” He leaned forward, pressing a microscopic kiss to the skin. “And you didn’t.”
The simplicity of the statement undid Meil. His eyes stung. He was laid bare, more than he had been in the dark of their bedroom. This was surrender in broad daylight, with his clothes on, surrounded by the ordinary world.
Nate’s wings buzzed, a sound like rustling silk, and he lifted from Meil’s finger to settle in his usual place in the messy waves of his hair. He nestled there, a tiny, possessive weight. “Now take me home, librarian. Your shift is over. Mine,” he whispered into Meil’s scalp, a promise and a threat, “is just beginning.”
The walk home was a blur of sidewalk cracks and humming streetlights. Meil’s skin still buzzed with the phantom memory of Nate’s manipulation, each gust of night air feeling like a rough hand on a fresh sunburn. He carried the silence between them like a precious, volatile artifact, afraid any word might shatter the charged understanding Nate had woven into his nerves.
His keys jangled, a too-loud sound in the quiet hallway of his apartment building. The lock turned with a solid thunk, a sound of finality. He shouldered the door open, stepped into the dark familiarity of his living room, and closed the world out.
As soon as the latch clicked, Nate launched from his hair. He zipped through the dim air, a streak of faint blue luminescence, and landed on the back of the worn armchair. He stood there, arms crossed, wings a tense blur behind him. “Clothes,” he commanded, his voice no longer a whisper but a clear, ringing order in the silent room. “Off. Now.”
Meil didn’t hesitate. The librarian’s careful composure fell away like a shed skin. His fingers, which had trembled sorting periodicals, were now steady as they worked the buttons of his shirt. He shrugged it off, let it fall to the floor. His trousers followed, then his underwear, each article a whispered concession. The cool air of the apartment raised goosebumps on his flesh, a stark contrast to the internal heat Nate had kindled hours ago.
He stood there, naked in the faint light from the street, completely exposed. Not just his body, but the raw, singing need Nate had carved into him. He was still hard, a persistent, aching testament to the unfinished symphony of the afternoon.
Nate surveyed him, a general inspecting a conquered land. “On the bed.” He didn’t move, just issued the directive. “On your back. As you were in the stacks, but without the fear of discovery. Legs apart. Arms out.”
Meil walked to the bedroom, his bare feet silent on the floorboards. The sheets were cool and rumpled from last night’s sleep. He lay down, the mattress sighing under his weight. He spread his arms wide, fingers grasping the edges of the mattress. He let his legs fall open, presenting the vulnerable heart of himself to the darkened ceiling, to the small, powerful creature in the other room.
He heard the soft buzz of wings. Nate flew in, hovering for a moment above Meil’s supine form like a hummingbird over a vast, pale flower. He then descended, landing with exquisite lightness on the center of Meil’s chest.
The touch was a live wire. The hypersensitivity, dormant during the walk, roared back to vicious, exquisite life. Meil cried out, a sharp, unfiltered sound that echoed in the quiet bedroom. It was a hundred times more intense than in the library, unfettered by fear or propriety.
“Quiet,” Nate murmured, but it was a fond sound. He walked down Meil’s sternum, each step a seismic event of pure sensation. “This is my canvas now. And I intend to take my time.”
Nate’s journey was a slow, deliberate torment of pleasure. He used not just his hands, but his wings, the soft brush of them against Meil’s skin sending shivering aftershocks through his system. He traced every scar Meil had—the silvery line on his thigh from the bike accident, the pale dash of the appendix scar on his lower abdomen—not with pity, but with a possessorship that made Meil’s breath catch. “Mine,” Nate would whisper against a stretch of unmarked skin, his voice vibrating into the bone. “All mine.”
When Nate reached his belly button, he paused. He looked up the long plane of Meil’s body, meeting his desperate, glassy eyes. “Do you remember the shelf?” Nate asked, his voice conversational. “The poetry?”
Meil could only nod, a jerky movement of his head.
“You held on so tight,” Nate mused, dipping a finger into the shallow hollow of Meil’s navel. Meil jerked, a grunt punched from his lungs. “Your knuckles were white. You were trying so hard to be silent, to be good.” He shook his head, a tiny, disapproving motion. “You don’t have to be good here.”
Then Nate moved lower.
He didn’t go to Meil’s aching cock, which stood rigid and dripping against his stomach. Instead, he went to the sensitive skin of his inner thighs. He used his whole body, rubbing against it like a cat, the tiny, firm pressure a maddening counterpoint to the wild need clawing at Meil’s core. Meil’s hips bucked, involuntarily, seeking friction, finding only air.
“Please,” Meil gasped, the word torn from him. “Nate, fuck, please.”
“Please what?” Nate asked, stopping his movements. He was a statue of cool curiosity perched on Meil’s trembling flesh.
“Touch me. Please, just… god, just touch me.”
Nate considered this. He walked, with infuriating slowness, up the length of Meil’s hard cock. The sensation was beyond anything Meil had words for. It was a line of white-hot, pinpoint fire drawn along his most sensitive nerve. Meil screamed, a raw, ragged sound that scraped his throat. His back arched off the bed, muscles seizing.
Nate reached the tip. He placed both tiny hands on the glistening head, spreading the pre-come with a deliberate, slick motion. The touch was minute, exact, and utterly devastating. Meil sobbed, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. He was spread eagle, completely vulnerable, every inch of his magically sensitive skin singing a chorus of brutal, unbearable need. Nate owned every note.
“You are so fucking beautiful like this,” Nate breathed, a reverent obscenity. “So completely broken open for me.” He leaned down and, with impossible gentleness, pressed his open mouth against the slit.
The world dissolved into a shockwave of pure sensation. It wasn’t the feeling of a mouth, but the intent behind it, the intimacy of the act magnified a thousandfold by the spell. It was worship and degradation all at once, a sublime violation that unmoored Meil entirely.
He came with a violence that was almost painful. It wasn’t a release; it was a seizure. His body bowed, a tense arc suspended in the air for a timeless moment before collapsing back onto the sheets, utterly spent. Pleasure roared through him, a tsunami erasing all thought, all sense of self. He was nothing but a vessel emptied by Nate’s will.
When the world swam back into focus, he was shuddering, weak, covered in the evidence of his surrender. Nate stood on his heaving stomach, wiping his face with a satisfied smirk.
The hypersensitivity faded, leaving Meil’s skin feeling normal, but utterly, profoundly known. He was a map Nate had memorized by touch, taste, and sound. He lay there, wrecked, tears drying on his temples.
Nate fluttered up, landing on the pillow beside Meil’s head. He stroked a damp strand of hair from Meil’s forehead. “There,” he said softly, all the earlier command gone, replaced by a bone-deep tenderness. “Now your shift is over.”
Meil turned his head, his lips finding Nate’s tiny body. He kissed him, a slow, exhausted press of gratitude. He didn’t have the words. His body had said them all. The room held their shared silence, a comfortable, saturated quiet. Outside, the ordinary world continued, unaware of the small, fierce magic that had just been wrought in the dark. Inside, Meil drifted towards sleep, Nate curled once more in the hollow of his throat, a possessive, living jewel. The memory of the library, the shelf, the unbearable pleasure, was now a story written in the very fiber of his being.