Arrivals

"The face in the mirror can be fixed. It's the one underneath that stays."

The wheels hit the tarmac with a jolt that shuddered through the cabin, followed by the roar of reverse thrust pressing me gently against my seatbelt. Through the window, Adelaide Airport rushed past in a blur of grey runway and distant terminal buildings, the landscape flattening as we decelerated into taxiing pace.

South Australia. The state I'd grown up in, left behind, and rarely thought about in the years since.

The aircraft swung toward its gate, and I studied the terminal through the window. Modern, functional, unremarkable—the same glass-and-steel architecture that airports wore everywhere. I'd passed through here a handful of times over the years, always in transit, never lingering. It held no memories worth dwelling on.

But that made it useful. Sentiment clouded judgment. This was just infrastructure—a building full of doors, most of which people walked past without ever truly seeing.

The seatbelt sign chimed off, and the cabin erupted into the familiar choreography of arrival. Overhead compartments clicking open, passengers rising and stretching, the shuffle toward the exit beginning before the aircraft had fully stopped. I remained seated, watching the procession, in no hurry to join it.

Let them go first. Let the aisles clear.

When I finally stood, the cabin had half-emptied. I made my way forward, nodding to the flight attendant at the door, and stepped into the jet bridge.

The air changed immediately. Drier than Tasmania, carrying a bite that felt different from Hobart's damp winters. Adelaide cold was sharper, cleaner—the kind that came with clear skies and low humidity. I'd forgotten that particular quality until this moment, the way it caught in the throat.

The terminal swallowed me whole.

I moved with the flow of passengers toward the baggage claim I didn't need, letting the current carry me while my eyes worked independently. Scanning. Assessing. Every airport had them—the overlooked spaces, the invisible infrastructure. Maintenance corridors. Staff-only doors. Cleaners' closets. The places travellers walked past a thousand times without registering their existence.

The perfect places for a portal.

I peeled away from the main passenger flow near the baggage carousels, adopting the purposeful stride of someone who knew exactly where they were going. Confidence was everything in spaces like this. Walk like you belonged, and most people assumed you did.

A corridor branched off to the left, signposted for toilets and baby change facilities. I followed it, passing the bathroom entrances, continuing toward where the public space began to shade into something less polished. The floor tiles changed—same colour, but more scuffed, less frequently replaced. The lighting shifted from warm retail ambiance to flat fluorescent practicality.

A door marked "Staff Only" stood closed on my right. I kept walking, noting its position, filing it away. Too visible. Too much foot traffic from the nearby bathrooms.

Further along, the corridor bent around a corner, and the foot traffic thinned to nothing. I was alone now, the sounds of the terminal muffled by distance and architecture. Another door appeared—unmarked, slightly recessed, the kind of door that existed to be ignored.

I tried the handle.

Locked.

I moved on.

The corridor terminated in a T-junction, one branch leading toward what looked like administrative offices, the other curving back toward the main terminal. I took the second option, looping around, building a mental map of the airport's hidden anatomy.

A service door stood ajar near the junction, propped open with a yellow cleaning bucket. Through the gap, I could see shelves lined with supplies—paper towels, industrial detergent, the heavy-duty cleaning equipment that kept public spaces presentable. A janitor's closet.

I paused, checking both directions. The corridor remained empty.

The door opened wider at my touch, hinges silent. The closet was larger than I'd expected—perhaps three metres deep, crowded with shelving and equipment, but with enough floor space to stand comfortably. The smell hit immediately, that sharp chemical tang of industrial cleaners.

This would work.

I stepped inside, pulling the door most of the way closed behind me, leaving just a sliver of light from the corridor. The space was dim but navigable. I reached for the Portal Key—

Footsteps.

I froze, hand still in my pocket. The footsteps grew louder, accompanied by the squeak of wheels—a cleaning cart. Coming closer. The rhythm steady, unhurried, the pace of someone doing a job they'd done a thousand times before.

The sliver of corridor light narrowed as a shadow passed. The footsteps stopped.

Right outside the door.

I pressed myself against the shelving, heart hammering, mind racing through options that didn't exist. There was no explanation for my presence here. No story that would hold. A man in civilian clothes standing alone in a janitor's closet—the questions would come, and then security, and then everything would unravel.

The door swung open.

He was slight, middle-aged, narrow shoulders beneath a high-visibility vest that seemed a size too large. But his face—his face was unexpected. Strong jaw, dark eyes, the kind of features that belonged somewhere other than pushing a cleaning cart through an airport corridor. His hair was greying at the temples in a way that suited him, and when his eyes found me in the dimness, they held an intelligence that made my stomach tighten for reasons that had nothing to do with fear.

His expression cycled through surprise, confusion, the beginning of suspicion.

His mouth opened.

I didn't think.

My body moved before my mind could catch up—some instinct older than reason, older than planning, taking over completely. I grabbed the front of his vest and pulled him toward me, my mouth finding his before either of us could process what was happening.

The kiss was clumsy, desperate, a collision more than a connection. I felt him stiffen against me, his hands coming up to my chest—to push me away, surely, to shove me back and demand an explanation or shout for help—

He didn't push.

His hands stayed where they were, pressed flat against my chest, trembling slightly. I could feel his heartbeat through his palms, or maybe that was my own pulse echoing back. The moment stretched, suspended between disaster and something else entirely.

Then his fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt, and he pulled me closer.

The shift was so sudden it knocked the breath from my lungs. His mouth opened beneath mine, tentative at first, then hungry. The taste of him—coffee, something faintly sweet—flooded my senses as his tongue found mine. Behind me, I heard the door swing shut, felt his hand leave my chest to reach past me, heard the click of the latch engaging.

Darkness. Near-total, save for the thin line of light beneath the door.

And heat. God, the heat.

He pressed me back against the shelving, bottles rattling, his body flush against mine. I could feel him through our clothes—the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the tension in his thighs, the unmistakable hardness pressing against my hip. My own body responded without permission, blood rushing south, my cock stiffening against the confines of my jeans.

This wasn't the plan. There had been no plan. Just instinct and adrenaline and the particular madness that descends when survival instincts tangle with something far more primal.

His hands found the hem of my jacket, shoving it back over my shoulders. I let it fall, heard it crumple somewhere behind me. Then his fingers were at my shirt buttons, fumbling in the darkness, and I found myself helping him—undoing them from the bottom while he worked from the top, our hands meeting in the middle.

The shirt fell away. Cool air hit my bare chest for only a moment before his palms replaced it, sliding up my stomach, over my ribs, his touch leaving trails of heat in their wake. I reached for his vest, yanked it over his head, heard it land somewhere to my left. His shirt followed—buttons scattering, fabric tearing slightly in my impatience—and then we were skin to skin in the chemical-scented darkness.

He was warm. Warmer than I'd expected. His chest was smooth save for a sparse trail of hair that led downward, and I found my hands following it without conscious thought, tracing the path toward his belt.

His mouth left mine and found my neck, teeth grazing the sensitive skin below my ear. A sound escaped me—something between a gasp and a groan—and I felt him smile against my throat, pleased with himself, emboldened.

I should stop this.

The thought surfaced like a bubble through mud, sluggish and easily ignored. Jamie's face flickered through my mind—Jamie in Clivilius, having no idea that I was pressed against a stranger in a janitor's closet with my shirt on the floor and my cock aching against my zipper.

His hand found me through my jeans, palm pressing firm against the bulge, and the thought of Jamie scattered like smoke.

"Fuck," I breathed.

He squeezed gently, fingers tracing my length through the denim, learning my shape. His other hand worked at his own belt—metal clinking, leather sliding—and then the rustle of fabric as he shoved his trousers down his hips. I heard them hit the floor. Heard him step out of them, kicking them aside.

When he pressed against me again, I could feel him properly now—hard and hot against my thigh, only the thin cotton of his underwear between his skin and mine.

This was too far. This was so far beyond what I'd intended that I couldn't even see where the line had been.

But his hand was still on me, working at my button now, my zipper, fingers slipping inside to wrap around me through my underwear, and my hips were moving without my permission, pushing into his grip.

The shelving dug into my back. Bottles toppled somewhere behind me, landing with muffled thuds. He pulled my jeans down far enough to free me properly, his hand closing around bare flesh, and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out.

"I've wanted—" he started, voice ragged.

I didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to know what he'd wanted, or for how long, or what story he was constructing to make sense of this. I kissed him again, hard, swallowing whatever confession he'd been about to make.

His hand moved on me—firm strokes, practised, knowing exactly how to build pressure without release. My own hands found him, pushed his underwear down, wrapped around the hot length of him. He groaned into my mouth, his hips bucking forward, and we fell into a rhythm—hands working, mouths tasting, bodies pressing closer in the darkness.

The heat was unbearable. The closet felt like a furnace, the chemical smell mixing with sweat and something muskier, more animal. His breathing grew ragged against my neck, his strokes growing faster, more urgent. I felt myself climbing toward something I hadn't authorised, something that would complicate everything further—

He pulled back.

In the darkness, I heard him drop to his knees. Felt his breath, hot against my stomach, trailing lower. His hands found my hips, steadying me, and I knew what came next.

No.

The word didn't reach my mouth. It stayed lodged somewhere in my chest, tangled with all the reasons this had to stop—Jamie, the portal, the mission, the man who had no idea what he was kneeling in front of.

His lips brushed the head of my cock, and my hand shot to my pocket.

The Portal Key emerged, familiar weight against my palm. My other hand found his shoulder—gripping, not gently—and I twisted us both around, positioning him with his back toward the door.

He mistook my urgency for enthusiasm. "Yeah," he breathed, reaching for me again.

I activated the device.

The colours erupted behind him, purple and blue and green swirling into existence, casting his face in shifting light. His eyes went wide—confusion first, then something like fear—and his mouth opened to form a question he'd never get to ask.

I shoved him backwards.

He stumbled, off-balance, arms pinwheeling. The portal swallowed him mid-fall—that wall of impossible colour consuming him completely—and then he was gone.

Silence.

The portal shimmered before me, opaque and humming, its colours casting dancing shadows across the cluttered shelves. On the other side—Clivilius. The drop zone. A half-naked stranger sprawled in the dust, with no idea where he was or how he'd arrived or what had just happened.

I stood there, breathing hard, jeans still undone, my cock still hard, my body still thrumming with thwarted release. The heat hadn't dissipated. The wanting hadn't stopped just because I'd made him disappear.

That was the worst part. My body didn't care about the moral catastrophe I'd just created. It only knew that something had been building and nothing had been finished.

I dragged a hand down my face, trying to think through the fog.

I'd done it again. Displaced someone. Sent another life spiralling into chaos because it was convenient—because I'd panicked, because I'd made a stupid decision and then made it worse, and then made it worse again until the only option left was the nuclear one.

Close it. Close the portal and walk away.

His clothes.

The realisation hit like cold water. His trousers lay crumpled at my feet. His shirt tangled with my jacket near the shelving. The high-visibility vest draped over a bottle of floor cleaner. His shoes. His belt with its buckle still unfastened. His underwear, stepped out of and abandoned in the heat of the moment.

If I closed the portal now, he'd be stranded in Clivilius completely naked. No identification. No explanation. No way to survive the questions that would come from whoever found him first.

Fuck.

I couldn't go through. Couldn't face him. Couldn't explain what I'd done or why, couldn't look into his eyes and see the betrayal there—the recognition that whatever he'd thought was happening had been a lie, a manipulation, a weapon.

But I couldn't leave him with nothing.

I gathered his clothes in a bundle, hands shaking, my own jeans still hanging open, my body still uncomfortably, inappropriately aroused. The fabric was warm in my hands, carrying his scent—soap and sweat and something else I didn't want to identify.

I threw the bundle through the portal and watched it disappear.

Then the cleaning supplies. An armful grabbed blindly—spray bottles, cloths, the heavy-duty bin liners. Something, anything, to make his sudden appearance seem less inexplicable. Evidence of purpose. A fiction no one would believe.

It didn't matter. Nothing I did now would make sense to him.

The supplies followed the clothes through, and then I deactivated the portal.

The colours collapsed. The closet door reappeared, ordinary and unremarkable. The only light came from the gap beneath the door, a thin line of fluorescent white against the darkness.

I sagged against the shelving, chest heaving, and tried to comprehend what I'd just done.

I'd kissed a stranger to avoid detection.

I'd let him undress me. Let him touch me. Touched him back, stroked him, felt him hard and wanting against my palm.

I'd been seconds away from letting him put his mouth on me.

And then I'd pushed him through a portal to another dimension, naked and confused, because I didn't know how else to end what I'd started.

My cock was still half-hard. That detail felt obscene now, evidence of something I couldn't quite name. I tucked myself back in, zipped up, and leaned my head against the shelf behind me.

Jamie.

The name surfaced, but it didn't land the way I expected. There should have been guilt—sharp, immediate, devastating. Instead, there was just... distance. A vague awareness that I'd crossed a line, without the corresponding weight of having crossed it.

When had Jamie stopped mattering the way Jamie used to matter?

I didn't have an answer. Didn't want to look for one.

I'd wanted him, though. The stranger. That was the part I couldn't rationalise away. In those heated minutes, I'd wanted him—wanted his hands, his mouth, the release he was offering. It hadn't been pure manipulation. It hadn't been entirely strategic. Some part of me had been right there with him, chasing pleasure in the dark.

And then I'd disposed of him like evidence.

Another name for the Book of Kin. Another life I'd disrupted. Another person who would have to rebuild everything because I needed a convenient solution to an inconvenient problem.

Except this one would remember my face. Would remember the taste of my mouth. Would know exactly what I'd done before I sent him tumbling into another world.

I retrieved my shirt from the floor and pulled it on. My hands were steady enough now to manage the buttons, though it took longer than it should have. My jacket followed, its weight settling over my shoulders.

The Portal Key went back in my pocket, warm and innocent, giving no indication of the chaos it had just enabled.

I cracked the door open, checked the corridor. Empty. The cleaning cart still sat where he'd left it, abandoned mid-shift, waiting for an owner who would never return.

How long before someone noticed he was missing? How long before the security cameras showed him wheeling his cart toward this corridor and never emerging? How long before this closet became a mystery that no one could solve?

I slipped out, pulled the door closed behind me, and walked.

The cleaning cart sat where he'd left it, directly outside the closet door. A beacon. A timestamp. When security reviewed the footage—and they would, eventually, when he failed to clock out—they'd see him wheel that cart down this corridor and never return.

Unless the cart was somewhere else.

I grabbed the handle and pushed, the wheels squeaking softly against the polished floor. The bathroom was only twenty metres back. I walked with purpose, with the confidence of someone who had every right to be moving cleaning equipment through an airport corridor.

No one stopped me. No one even looked.

I parked the cart inside the men's bathroom, positioning it near the row of sinks as though its owner had simply stepped into a stall. Then I turned to the mirror.

The face that looked back showed exactly what I feared. Flushed cheeks. Swollen lips. I turned on the tap and splashed cold water on my face, again and again, until the colour began to fade. Straightened my collar.

The face in the mirror now was almost normal. Almost innocent.

That was the worst part. I could look like someone who hadn't just done what I'd done.

I dried my hands, checked my reflection one final time, and walked out past the cart without a backward glance.