Christian was bored.  There was no other word for it.  Howard was out (on a job) and was probably stuck wherever the job site was, glaring at his two guards and demanding back-up.  Christian sighed, gazing out the window, tapping his fingertips against the glass and no doubt receiving glares from Kevin who was on the phone with his wife.
They were in The Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas, five men cramped into two too-small adjoining rooms, slowly driving each other crazy.  Nick, blessedly, had given up with the Gameboy and its unbearable pinging noises.  Alex was on Christian’s bed, hunched over a notebook engrossed in stringing together overly-deep Gothic poetry.  And Kevin was talking to his wife.
Christian sighed again.  He was less than content with watching vicious winds whip up spinning columns of sand, but he didn’t want to call Anne, either.  The cycle of bored silence broke when Alex let out a frustrated growl and slung his notebook across the room, narrowly missing Nick’s head as the boy stared blankly.  Alex got up off the bed and began to prowl the length of the room, lupine stride filled with leashed energy.
“I’m gonna do Shakespeare,” he announced suddenly, halting mid-pace.
Nick was startled out of his blond daze when Alex struck a pose and began a soliloquy from Julius Caesar.  Kevin shot him an evil look, so the younger man lowered his voice, but as Christian turned to watch tumbleweeds fly by, the raspy tenor voice was an incessant undercurrent.
Christian tried reciting Latin verbs in his head (amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant) but it did no good to drown out Alex and Kevin.  Surely it was more than an irony, that bone-thin tattooed and pierced girl-watcher spouting graceful lines of Shakespeare like the most sophisticated of English aristocrats.  Maybe it was criminal.
Christian managed to drown out the babbling fools and surrender himself to a sort of restless stillness.  Restlessness was a prickly heat wriggling under his skin, but he refused to give in to it.  He was beginning to drive the worminess away when he felt added uncomfortable heat between his shoulder blades.  He turned.  Nick was staring unabashedly, pencil poised over an open sketchbook.  Christian resisted the urge to groan.  Nick took great joy in drawing Christian in various poses – and always with fairy wings.  Silver wings with too-fine detail.
Christian was often more than insulted.  Okay, so Chris Kirkpatrick of *N Sync was often one of Santa’s elves, and that was pretty funny, but Christian as a fairy was not.  Wizards didn’t have blue robes printed with stars and moons, witches didn’t have pointy hats or broomsticks, angels didn’t have wings, and neither did fairies or pixies, for that matter!  Elves weren’t short.  They were tall and lanky and graceful.
Alex had moved to the other room by now, and was Romeo, rather loudly so.  Kevin was waxing plain mushy with Kristin over the phone, the whole “No, I love you more” deal.  Christian did want to puke.
Gazing out the window, the storm was vicious, the wind howling, werewolf and banshee running the streets in their own wild hunt.  The streets of the town had long since been deserted.  Christian shut his yes, blissful.  Wind was so powerful, so strong.  The thousand voices of the air were bidding him come play.  Fading out of human form and sweeping through the room as a cool gust before slipping under the door in front of three clueless humans wasn’t an entirely good idea.
Nine hundred years old and still sharp as a tack, Quislai, he told himself.  But it would be amazing, swept up among the twisters in the dance of dervishes that was part of nature since the dawn of time.
Nick was the first to crack.  “I’m bored,” he whined.  Three pillows were flung at him.  Nick threw them back, a scowl marring his usually adorable face.  Ah, if the teenie girls could see him now.  Kevin flipped his cellphone shut and set it aside, pushing his sleeves up past his elbows and brandishing his pillow.
Christian secured two cushions quickly, grinning.  Things were about to get un-boring, and fast.
Alex leapt into the fray.
“Geronimo!”
Boredom ended.