I woke up when the elevator moved, although I hadn’t been aware of falling asleep. I considered standing up, but it seemed too much work and besides the floor felt so comfy. I wondered if I should worry that if the elevator was moving, maybe Xavious was after me or maybe he had called the cops on me for assault. I just didn’t have the energy. The elevator came to a stop, and a blonde head peeked in. It was a very handsome head, attached to a tall body, although the entire body wasn’t in the elevator yet. The guy had just stuck his head in for a look. He blond hair curled around his delicate face with a beautifully sculpted mouth. He was almost too pretty and too perfect. What saved him was his detached dreamy expression, which changed to quizzical confusion when he saw me.
“Hey, man, you all right down there?” he asked, and his voice was musical and not very deep.
“No, I’m drunk,” I told him. There was something likable and not very threatening about him, probably because he was boyishly pretty.
“It happens. It happens,” he said and nodded a bit and asked like he cared, “You need, like, some water or anything?”
“Some water would be great right now,” I said hopefully, “Do you have any?”
Maybe I would luck out, and he’d have water, a toilet, twenty dollars for a cab ride, or a bus schedule in his back pocket.
“Not on me. I’m sorry, but you can come back to my place for some. You don’t even have to come inside. I’ll bring it out to you.”
He looked at me and smiled in a kind way. It was such a thoughtful thing to say I almost cried in relief. “Can you give me a hand up? My legs aren’t working.” I held out a hand to him.
“Sure,” he replied in a cheerful voice and put a hoof into the elevator. It was a large hoof and solid like a horse's, not cloven like Xavious’s. It seemed at odds with the well-formed, elegant pale hand he held out to me. He was wearing a tee shirt with a cartoon picture of a robot boxing a t-rex. It didn’t match the brown fur of his horse's body at all. The horse part of him was just as handsome as the man part, although in a different way. He had been checking out the elevator to make sure it was empty. There was no easy way to fit all of his mass in there, even though the elevators were the size of service elevators instead of standard passenger ones.
He pulled me up with a firm, gentle touch.
“Aww, man, I totally spaced. I have a pizza guy downstairs waiting for me. Do you mind coming down with me to pick it up? The guy’s down there waiting.” The poor centaur—what else could he be—looked embarrassed.
“It’s cool. I should probably get going anyway,”
He was giving me an easy out. It wasn’t like I could move the elevator without him anyway. He let go of my hand, and I sagged against the side of the elevator and considered throwing up.
His honest face almost glowed with well-meaning concern.
“Are you sure? You look crossfaded. You can come back up and have some pizza and water. I don’t want to stop you from going. It just seems like kind of a bad idea.” The elevator door tried to close on him again and beeped its annoyance.
“I’ll stay for the pizza,” I said and tried not to fall over. I didn’t mention that I didn’t have a way of getting home until the buses started running again in a few hours.
“Cool. Can you come forward and stand by the key reader while I squish in?”
He withdrew from the elevator while I waited, hoping he would come back. He backed into the elevator and almost blew my mind. He was huge. He wasn’t a particularly big horse or a gigantic looking man, but combining the two together made for a huge being. His horse part was only chest high at the withers. His human body grew out of that which put his head well over the height of a human man. His tee shirt covered where his human body joined the horse body. His fur shone. I wanted to reach out and pat him. I liked horses although I had never ridden. There was a very faint pleasant horse smell around him. His coat was an even brown down to his shiny black hooves. As he backed in, he sat down, and I had the briefest glimpse of his penis before the centaur sat on his haunches and bent his forelegs to kneel in the elevator. On his knees, he was still taller than a human man.
He keyed the elevator to the first floor and got off first after unfolding. He politely held the elevator door for me, and I staggered after him. He clopped across the spacious lobby. The guard nodded to him when the centaur greeted him by name.
The guard opened the door and let in the human looking pizza delivery man who seemed entirely nonplussed by the centaur, greeting him by name. “Mike! My main man, how are you?”
Mike, the centaur, and the pizza guy exchanged a complicated handshake. Mike replied, “All right, all right. Thanks for coming out in the cold. I appreciate it.”
Mike handed the pizza guy a few bills. They chatted for a moment longer, and then it was time for Mike and me to wedge ourselves back on the elevator. The smell of the pizza filled the small space and covered any faint horsy odor that could have possibly come from the creature next to me.
We got to his floor, and the elevator let us off with a cheerful ding. The carpet here was just a dense as it had been on Xavious’s floor. The hallways were probably just as wide, too, but walking down them with a small horse they seemed smaller to the point of claustrophobia. There were only two doors on each of the two halls that split off from the elevator, so I wasn’t surprised to find the layout of Mike’s apartment matched the design of Xavious’s. That’s where the similarities between the two spaces ended.
Every light in the apartment was on, and the blinds shut tight on both levels of windows. The scruffy looking white leather couch wasn’t pointed at the windows at all, angling instead toward the TV that hung from the wall on the other side. Next to the TV and against the window was a massive bean bag chair. It was the size of a full sized bed, and I could only imagine it was where Mike sat. In front of the couch and bean bag chair was a coffee table covered in books, cups, and a massive bong. There wasn’t a bar in this room. A table, with chairs only at three of its sides, and laundry filled the space. More cups and dishes, at least one old pizza box, and more papers covered every available surface other than the bean bag chair.
“Make yourself at home,” he said and clopped into the open kitchen. The endless clutter continued into the kitchen with more piles of pizza boxes and cups. The mess managed to stop just short of filthy, and the floor wasn't visibly dirty. Other than the table, couch, and bean bag chair there was no other furniture. I wandered over to the couch, pushed a pile of folded tee shirts out of the way and sat down. The sound of rushing water and clinking plates came from the kitchen as he washed dishes. It reminded me I needed to pee.
I leaned my head back on the couch and pressed both my hands over my eyes. I asked, “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Sure. It’s in the spare room at the other end of the hall.” He poked his head out of the kitchen to address me and pointed toward the other hall leading off of the main room. His apartment was set up just like Xavious’s.
“Do you need help getting there?”
I swung my head forward and looked at him. Though dizzy and hung over and still drunk at the same time, I thought I could just about manage the short walk to the bathroom.
“I don’t even feel like throwing up anymore,” I told him, which was the first thing that popped into my head. “I guess I’m still drunk though.”
He laughed and went back into the kitchen. Getting off the couch took more concentration than usual, but once I was up it wasn’t too hard to stagger my way to the guest room. The hallway was completely bare, and the room itself was occupied only by boxes and a ridiculous number of bookshelves. I’m all for book ownership, but the bookshelves were two deep in places, with the books shoved in tightly. Not just up and down, there were books wedged above other books and piled on the top of the bookshelves. The bathroom was bare and unused. It didn’t even have toilet paper.
The lack of toilet paper was unfortunate but made sense. There was no way Mike could fit in here. I wondered what the bathroom, his bedroom, looked like. Did he even use toilet paper? Did I want to know the answer to that? I was pretty sure this whole building was set up for members of the magical community to live. When I finished peeing and washing my hands without soap, I took a look at Mike’s bookshelves and was very amused by his eclectic taste. He had everything from Leaves of Grass to the Star Wars book series. He actually had quite a lot of those.
I walked back to the living room and sat down. Mike handed me a slice of pizza and sat on the beanbag chair. It was large enough that he was able to fold his horse front legs and his horse back legs under him and settle his body on it while his human top half slouched a bit. I wondered if he was able to sit down comfortably. He set the box of pizza down on top of the collection of junk on the table and reached over to the side and pulled out a massive bong.
He balanced the bong on his forelegs and loaded the stem with weed. I suppose there was some outside chance it was some secret magic thing, but it sure smelled like weed to me. He took a giant bong rip, filling the bong with smoke, removing the stem, clearing the smoke, and holding it in his lungs for a minute before passing it to me. I waved the cloud of smoke away.
“None for me thanks. I’ve had enough fun today.” I wasn’t a huge pot smoker, and I was pretty sure if I smoked up now, I would black out.
“Oh, good call,” he said and packed himself another one. I sat there, ate my pizza, and watched him. He noticed me watching him and said, “Sorry to smoke you out like this. I have stomach issues, and it helps me eat.”
I wondered if the stomach issues were due to his being half horse or just due to a diet I suspected was pretty much exclusively delivery food based. Since he didn’t volunteer the information, I didn’t ask.
“Thanks for the food. You totally saved me tonight,” I told him.
He was eating pizza and lounging as best he could on his giant bean bag sofa. His upper body was much longer than his lower one.
“Do you live upstairs? I thought I knew everyone in the building.”
Embarrassed, I said, “Ah, no. I’m just a human. I went home with someone in the building, and it didn’t go well.”
“Who?”
“Xavious,” I said and screwed up my face.
“Ooooh. It went that kind of not well. Are you okay?” He looked worried enough that he lowered his pizza and inspected me.
“Yeah, I’m okay. I mean mostly. It wasn't a lot of fun, and I’m going to be hungover for days, but I got out of there,” I said shrugging. I took another slice of pizza from the box on the table. It was good pizza, from the best pizza joint in the city. I didn’t even know they were open this late, let alone that they would deliver.
“Why were you even there? You don’t seem like his usual prey?” Mike asked and resumed eating.
I sighed and said, “Because I’m dumb?”
“Really? You don’t seem dumb. Not that I know you very well, but in the short drunken time I’ve known you, you’ve come off as having at least average intelligence.”
“I met Xavious on Cinder and went home with him. Oh, and drank a shit ton of booze he bought me and a couple more drinks at his house,” I explained.
“Oh, okay. Now you’re starting to sound stupid. You knew he was a satyr right? He has to list it in his profile or whatever.” He was frowning at me like I was slow.
“He did. I just didn’t really understand what that meant. Like I guess I thought they were more enlightened now? They haven’t been demigods in a really long time.”
“Demigods? Ha! More like minor magical nuisances. They’re never going to learn or improve. At best we can contain them. They’re one of those creatures that have to be dragged out of the dark ages kicking and screaming because they enjoyed the dark ages.” He waved his pizza slice to emphasize his point and stretched out a foreleg. It was odd to see his lower half move with his upper half. I experienced such a mental disconnect when I first looked at him. At first the man half of him just seemed haphazardly glued onto the horse part, but now that I had a chance to look at him I could see the grace in his design.
I thought about Xavious and said, “He’s a creep.”
“Now you look a little smarter.” He smiled in a kind way, and it didn’t feel mean.
Proud of myself, I told him, “I stabbed Xavious with a cork screw,”
“You stabbed the bastard child of a wine god and a goat with a corkscrew? Are you for real?”
I could tell he didn’t believe me. I laughed and said, “Yup, right in his furry ass.”
Then I winced awkwardly because, of course, Mike had a furry ass, too, but he seemed to think it was funny, or at least he laughed.
I shook my head. “It’s been a weird night.”
“Sounds like it.” Mike reached down to the table where the giant bong was and picked up a remote. He pressed a button and music filled the apartment. It had the sound of a guitar-heavy jam band. It wasn’t my style, but it fit the kind of day I was having. Sitting down and relaxing, I realized how tired I was. I finished my pizza and curled up on the bit of uncluttered couch I was sitting on.
“How long have you lived in this building?” I asked, trying to stay awake.
He shrugged and said, “Only a few years. It isn’t that easy to get an apartment that has been modded to meet my needs.”
He didn't explain what part of the apartment was modified.
I started to yawn again. I wasn’t as drunk. Now I had the awful feeling of being awake while I was getting hungover. It was a terrible feeling, but the couch was comfy. It was warm, and I was full. The next thing I knew I snapped awake in a darkened room with a strange blanket over me. It took a few moments for my brain to remember it was Mike’s living room. He had covered me up with the blanket and left me on the couch with a water bottle next to me. In the dark, I made another trip to the bathroom and back. I lay on the couch feeling like I was dying. The room was dark and unfamiliar. I wasn’t comfortable sleeping in my clothes, but I wasn’t comfortable enough at Mike's to take them off. I thought about going home, but I still couldn’t use the elevator, and taking the bus would make me throw up for sure. Just thinking about it made me gag. I crawled into the guest bathroom with the blanket and the water and lay on the cold floor until I fell asleep again.
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