Illa Sh'rettgratti arrived at his newly-assigned apartment to find an envelope taped to the door. Addressed to Ian Falson--his new identity--and Thea Falson--his partner Thairn Aurvo'sha's. Inside were details about the lease, the rent, the rules. Actually from the building management, then, instead of a coded drop from his superiors. He unlocked the door.
The studio apartment came pre-furnished in a mismatched clutter of whatever the Department of Offworld Relations had had on hand: a red velvet couch here, a green plastic dining table there. The books Illa had bribed them to move were piled in stacks in one corner.
With the door locked behind him, away from the human world's prying eyes, he was at last free to take off his glamours. He unclasped the earrings that made the tips of his ears--and the earrings themselves--invisible. Dug his contact case and bottle of solution from his coat pocket, removing his contacts with motions so practiced he didn't even need a mirror. The contacts were itchy, but a damned sight better than what they'd made do with when the DOOR had first assigned him to Human--nearly 80 years ago now. His red irises were commonplace in Faerie, but they stood out here. And since he was assigned to pretend to be human, he couldn't afford to stand out. Even if most humans didn't know about fae.
He shed his coat, hanging it on the rack by the door, and unclipped the glamour from his shirt. Finally able to stretch his wings. He was used to hiding them--wings like his only came on grasshoppers in Human--but keeping them closed so long still left him feeling constrained and cramped.
He took a second look around the apartment. Only one bed. Should have suspected when the higher-ups had fixed him and Thairn with the identity of a married couple.
He could picture the rationale now. Illa and Thairn would be fine with it, they were betrothed, right? Never mind that it was an arranged marriage he wanted no part of. Perhaps the higher-ups wanted to make it harder to run ruinous personal relationships on the side. One bed, and a cover to keep as happily married? Less chance Illa would find another irate dominant to collar him, or Thairn another star-crossed love story set to kill him.
No, Thairn was "her" this round. Thea, remember? The humans would get tetchy otherwise.
Illa headed for the kitchen. The pantry would be empty--he assessed what cooking tools and flatware they'd cobbled together, found a place for his ceramic chef's knife, started in on a grocery list. Same routine as ever, and falling into it soothed the nagging feeling of his bare neck.
The door clicked. The scent of perfume preceded her: amber, sandalwood and vanilla. Thairn--Thea--flowed through the entrance in a fall of golden hair and a swish of red knit fabric, wheeling a suitcase behind her and looking for all the world like she'd strolled into a luxury hotel and owned every brick.
"Any tea?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Empty pantry."
"Grocery list?"
"Yeah."
"Darjeeling and gingerbread cookies, if you would." She took a look around the room, hesitating at the single bed. A frown, a not-quite-covered flinch. "Which of us is taking the couch?"
"I didn't think about it."
"You don't mind sharing a bed with me?" Her voice neutral, in a deliberate way.
He sighed. "I mind. But it's higher-up doing the imposing, not you. We can share." He'd have to change his habit of sleeping nude, but that was a given in a studio apartment, anyway. No privacy anywhere, unless you counted the curtain around the toilet.
Her fingers curled, as if in recoil, but she nodded.
They both added a few more things to the grocery list, and Illa glamoured back up and left for the market soon after. Leaving Thairn alone in the apartment they'd be sharing. She started in on unpacking and tried not to... to think too much.
Clothing. Illa had the easier end of that, for certain, since he'd been able to keep pieces from his last identity. Thairn switched around too much, had had to sort through a box of stored women's wear to find what was still in style. It would be a relief to wear it all again. She could swear the distinctions between what one human gender was allowed to wear and another became more arbitrary by the day. Makeup, she'd have to buy new. The rest had all expired. And a manicure, soon, that would be nice. She'd missed manicures. She made sure to take up only half the closet, even if she expected Illa's clothes would occupy less space than hers. Had to be polite. She was tired of invading where she wasn't wanted, when it came to him.
Damn them for the bed. For the "marriage". As if she didn't have to fight too hard already not to be, not to want...
At least he'd wanted to share this mission with her. At least they were good enough friends for that. And she'd box everything else away if it meant keeping that friendship.
Clothes were done too soon. What housewares hadn't been taken care of by the DOOR or by Illa's shopping list were few to find, too. His books, then. The endless collection of vampire novels had grown even larger. She sorted by author and stacked them one by one on the shelf, letting slick covers slide between her fingers, trying to focus only on that. It got to a point where she could, thoughts drilling down to weighty thunks as each one fitted into place on the shelf.
But then one rasped instead, and something slipped out between the pages. A photograph, like the kind they weren't allowed to keep. (Thairn had several, tucked away in coat linings and secret pockets of her luggage.)
Illa's eyes. That was the first thing she saw. The real ones, crimson, not the muddled brown of the contacts he wore. A black collar, pulled towards the camera. A leather length of leash. A harness of rope around his chest. If Thairn judged the lay of it right, it went around the other side and bound his wings against his body. She could picture it in every unseen detail. The slight bend against the pressure of the rope, the unconscious flutter of struggle they'd make whenever he breathed.
And there was a hand, far darker than Thairn's bronze, tangled in his short hair. Probably another, unseen, holding leash and camera both. Illa's gaze, those eyes as incandescent as Thairn had dreamed... directed towards the owner of those hands.
This did not belong to Thairn.
The door thumped. "Could you come out and help me with the groceries?" Illa's voice.
She examined the book pages to find the right indentation, to put the photo into its proper place. He was at the wrong angle to make out what she was doing. She could stuff the picture in the book and shelve it before he ever saw a thing.
What was more an invasion to him? To have found the photograph? Or to lie to him about it?
He never did seem happy when she decided what was best for him.
She put it back, anyway, went to the door and took an armful of groceries from him. More raw ingredients than she would have bought for herself, but he'd always been a fan of cooking. He'd been the one to teach her some of the basics, even.
He didn't say much as they put the groceries away, though he might have told her what he planned to make, if she prompted. There was something companionable to the silence, though, and the lie of having a home together whispered dear. Even just in the easy way he took the cold foods from her to load into the fridge as she unpacked the bags. She squeezed the pantry goods into an empty cabinet, felt his presence by her side. And wanted... but she'd always wanted. And he didn't.
She might as well tear apart this illusion, before it got to her any further.
"I started unpacking." Her gut twisting already.
"Thank you." He glanced over behind them both--a studio apartment meant all her work was visible. "You didn't have to do the books."
A frisson of dread. "Is it okay, that I did?"
"It's fine. You know what I read."
"Mmn." Say it. Say it. Just say it. Just tell him, just say it. He already knows you know about him, just not that you've seen this.
He was looking at her strangely, now, and she realized she hadn't actually set the bread down. She found a spot for it, put it away. Breathed.
"Might I suggest better places to store photographs than books?"
His movements stuttered, but there was no tension to it. "You found a photo in a book?" Genuine confusion in that tone. "It might just be one of the ones from a used bookstore. Not mine."
"No, this is... definitely yours." I saw you. I saw you stripped down, I saw the way you looked at her or him or them or whoever it was, please don't hate me for seeing you-- "What book?"
She watched his face for some kind of anger, betrayal. But if it was there, he hid it well.
"Inkwells and Incubi."
A twitch then. "I must have forgotten to return that."
"To whom?"
"Shandra. The spirit channeler I was partnered with last assignment." He pressed the fridge door shut. "What kind of photo was it?"
"Bread and milk." A euphemism in their native language, Fan. It stood for magical enslavement--or, as in Illa's case, kink that didn't necessarily involve magic at all. "The kind you should probably hide better, dear."
He nodded, hand grazing the side of his neck in a distracted way. It made her think of that collar, pulled taut against his skin. Was he thinking of it, too?
"I'll go put it somewhere else," he said.
She nodded. Found the box of Darjeeling to occupy her hands, but couldn't help but watch out of the corner of her eye as he went to the shelf, took out the book. The photograph.
"Does she know what that means?" she asked.
"That I let her take a photo?" A thud, as he put the book back. "I didn't even know she'd kept it."
"The wing-binding."
"Ah. The harness."
"Does she know?"
"She knew it was my hard limit for a while. But not why, no." Again, he grazed his fingers against his neck. "She knew the collar meant she owned me." In the kink sense. He'd never be so foolish as to involve magic. "That was enough."
"Does she own you no longer?" she asked.
"She broke it off. We... didn't work together, after a while."
"What happened?"
"We argued over stupid things," he said.
"I know how that goes."
He pressed the photo tight between his fingers. Went to the luggage to find a better place to put it, silent now. Thairn focused on setting up the Darjeeling. The furnishers had left a faded kettle in gaudy flower print, and she filled it up and set it on the stove to heat.
The photo was away soon enough. "You know," Illa said, as if searching for a safer topic, "I think that's why they assigned us to be 'married'? Keep us out of trouble somehow."
"Mm. Hard to bring anyone home here. Perhaps they thought we'd be jealous."
Jealous. Maybe that was the word for the ice in Thairn's gut at the sight of that photo, the relief at the news of that relationship's demise. It felt petty, that notion. She wanted Illa to be happy, and he was no less in love with her beneath the bindings of some human domme than without. But, somehow, it seemed like it would be more bearable if she had some chance with him at all. Perhaps the word was "envy."
"It is harder to keep cover," Illa said.
"Oh, nonsense. Humans do all sorts of things, with or without their spouse. Perhaps we'll get closer to our targets by talking them into spouse-swapping."
"No, thank you. I haven't studied the file yet, but isn't the woman in an affair?"
"See? All the better."
He laughed. "No."
He came up next to her to pull a mug out for himself, loaded a satchel of Darjeeling into it. Nearly brushing against her. Drawing an ache sharp in her, a longing that drew her hand close to him.
She hesitated. "How much affection are Thea and Ian going to show?"
He stiffened.
She dropped her hand. "We can figure that out later."
They couldn't even have the lie of affection, could they?
Once the tea was done, Illa went to the "study" they'd demarcated with the bookshelf and a desk, taking his mug with him to look at the file for Greta Holloway and Eric Wilkinson.
It took only minutes. "That's thin." Illa set down the papers. "The Morley mob's involved in the Conclave--didn't we used to get a lot more intel from there?" The Conclave was the local magical creatures' self-government. Mostly ceremonial. Deeply corrupt. There'd been rumblings once upon a time about giving the fae a seat, but that had been decisively voted down. It was for Human-worlders only. Even if non-magical humans were also barred and mostly kept from even knowing the Conclave--or magic itself--existed.
"They've locked down security for the wizarding contingent, unfortunately. The DOOR still has an in with the vampire contingent, but whatever it is that Greta does, it doesn't involve the Morleys' dealings with vampires."
Illa flipped through the pictures. Greta, appearing at nearly every Morley affair for the past several decades. As if she were important. But they had nothing on her?
Landed on another picture from the file. Not Greta, and not recent. A photograph of a corpse with faerie wings, pinned like a butterfly on display. The last faerie who'd tried to infiltrate the Morleys, a changeling.
Eerie, the way the photograph made the incident feel real, as if it hadn't been before. Illa had vague memories of when it had happened. It was right around when he'd started work for the DOOR. It had changed all kinds of security protocols, echoed through their work for ages. And, apparently, had screwed their ability to gather intel on the Morleys.
He'd never thought of it in such stark lines as this corpse in black and white, the slackened face, the taut-stretched wings. The features faded just enough by time that they could be anyone's, if he looked at it wrong. That it could remind him of a phone call silent but for breathing, of blood on a white carpet.
But Thairn was here next to him, and that was long ago.
Thairn separated out the baggies of glamour jewelry, handing Illa his pack. She flickered through appearances. And then back to herself, blonde and bronze and narrow-faced with contour makeup to smooth the cheekbones, no glamour. Wear a strong glamour for too long, and it burned in, got harder to take off. For changelings, who were secreted into Human as infants and lived their lives in glamour, it was their curse. They could never know their true faces, nor see their wings. It took longer for wings, thankfully, which was why the corpse in the photograph had still had them. Too much magic there, to burn readily.
Glamour burn did have its uses. He had one glamour tied to a ring that he wore continuously to fade the scars left by one too many brushes with death. Or, at least, to fade their appearance. Because he still had a swath of skin over his ribs that didn't stretch right, a patch on his leg where the nerves had gone numb, and taut scarring that left the edge of his upper lip permanently out of place, for all someone looking at or touching any of it wouldn't notice a thing.
Did Thairn still have the old scar, he wondered? Perhaps there'd been new ones since. Hard to know. It wasn't something they talked about.
There were a lot of things they didn't talk about.
"I'll track Wilkinson, you'll track Holloway?" Illa proposed.
"Well enough. They gave us Bo Peep tracers."
"Perfect. Though, I saw in Greta's appendices, the previous agents had difficulty keeping those tracers on her. Maybe for her, we can do something more mundane?"
Thairn nodded. "I can work out her schedule, see who's close to her I can talk to." She looked at the file, frowned. "Even a mundane approach might be more difficult for Greta, if she's mostly doing Morley business."
"But if you can get an in with the Morleys..."
"Then maybe we've potential for future work." She tapped her fingernails against the table. "I do so love wizards."
"Do you mind if I change in front of you?" Thairn asked, just before bed. "I don't want to squeeze behind the toilet curtains or climb into the shower just to get into pajamas."
"Go ahead."
Illa cast an idle glance over as Thairn stripped. There was a bit of a show to it, but that was true for everything Thairn did. Between her family and the job, he could see why. What surprised him, though, was when Thairn undid her bra to reveal what looked like flesh-and-blood breasts, and began applying what smelled like adhesive remover to the edges.
"Are those a new thing?" he asked.
"Somewhat. When were you last stuffing?"
"Not since the '40s, you know that."
"It's really been that long?" She tilted her head. "I like these better, even if the glue irritates my skin when I wear them too often."
"Glamour burn?"
"The glamour turns off when they're covered, and most of it's on the prosthetic instead of my skin, anyway."
"Ah."
The glamour flickered once she got it all the way off her skin, stopped making them look quite so biological. They chatted as she worked about the new techniques and forms. By the time she'd taken off her earrings to reveal her grasshopper-like wings, as golden as he remembered, he felt comfortable enough to change for bed himself.
She pressed her lips together. "I can look away, if you want."
"It's fine."
She'd likely seen it before, during his embarrassing childhood nudism phase, if nothing else. He wasn't much for caring about nudity, anyway. He rummaged through the clothes he'd brought, but came up short. He hadn't packed expecting a single bed.
"Ah," he said. "Um. Do you have extra pajamas?"
"You don't have any?" An unreadable look. "Sure." No invitation to sleep without them.
"You're less... pushy than you used to be."
"You didn't want me to push." Her hands clenched for an almost-missable second as she sorted through her clothes. "So, I don't."
"Thank you," he said, and meant it.
"You're welcome." She offered up the pajamas. "I'm sorry. For the way I've been in the past. It's no way to be to anyone. Much less someone I care about. Even less someone engaged to be my fati, and I don't think I understood that before."
"But you won't help me ask them to end it?" Because he'd asked, before, and she'd always said no.
A flinch. "It's not... if you found a famia you preferred, maybe." Which she had also said. "But they're going to make us each marry someone either way, and I don't want you to end up with someone..."
"Else?"
"...someone who won't stop pushing, even if you want them to." A sickened expression. "I know what I won't do. I don't know what whoever they'd pick might."
That caught him dead still. She'd never explained it before. He'd never asked her to explain it before. He'd always been certain he didn't want to know the answer.
"I didn't know you were trying to protect me." He wasn't certain he wanted that protection. He was certain he wanted more choice in that protection. But.
"I'm trying to protect me, too." A wan smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "I know what you won't do. And I know what I would like doing, if you wanted."
"You still feel that way about me?"
She swallowed with a visible motion in her throat. "More now, if anything." Her hands ran over the piled fabric. "Maybe I hide it too well."
Questions rose to mind, everything from Why? to Doesn't that hurt? What to say? "Nothing" seemed the wrong answer. "I'm sorry" did, too.
After too long, he asked, "What would you say, if you weren't hiding?"
"Oh, a million things." She pulled out the pajamas--red silk the shade of his lower wings. "And they'd all make you uncomfortable, I'm sure."
He accepted the clothes, feeling the silk glide over his skin, so decadent it almost distracted. And, for all he'd said she didn't have to, she did look away, left him his privacy to change. Gave him as much room as she could manage on the bed, too, when they both got in.
He found a comfortable side of his body to sleep on, one that didn't pull the scars over his ribs too strangely or cramp his wings. Listened to the sound of Thairn's breathing as it evened out. Pushed some of the covers over so he wouldn't overheat.
Let his thoughts wander.
He could feel that photograph still, as if it had burnt his fingers where he'd touched it. Shandra had kept it. Maybe before they'd fallen out. When had he borrowed that book?
Just thinking about that photograph, that expression, that moment, seared him with the loss of it all. At least Thairn was here, for all the evening's discussion had proven that things were still fraught between them. Still, her response to the photo earlier--cool, collected, understanding. She'd listened, and she hadn't dismissed it as the wrong kind of relationship, just related it to her own experiences, for all she didn't have the same types of relationships he had. Though Thairn had dropped hints, in the way she responded to learning new things about Illa's preferences, that she wouldn't take his style amiss.
Unbidden, the image came of Thairn holding a collar, of her precise touch, placing it on him. The thought didn't bother him, somehow, the way he'd have thought it should, especially right after a talk about the engagement. He touched his bare throat, felt it like longing. The borrowed pajamas felt nearly like a collar, in a way. Something of Thairn's, wrapped all around him. And the way she'd spoken, her trying to protect him...
But he didn't want Thairn like that, not usually. What if he only wanted it because he no longer had it from Shandra? It would be a cruel thing to do, to endanger their hard-won friendship on a rebound. To give her hopes he might have to dash.
He pushed the thought of it away, and did his best to fall asleep.
Illa picked up the phone. Heard the ringing clunk of a dropped receiver. On the other end, breathing, barely audible. He listened for too long as it faded, slowed. Set it down. And began to run.
He sped dizzying circles around the Widdershins point, slipped across worlds. The whole journey a blur of will o' the wisp light and brief glimpses of forests and white, endless halls. All in the hope that the bare breath wouldn't stop before he made it.
Back in the human world. Standing in front of a door. It was cracked open, the wards flickering. He pushed through.
His boot slid on something both slick and sticky. He looked down to see a trail of browning crimson, drips and streaks from the foyer tile to the white living room carpet. This time with a green table instead of dark wood, a red velvet couch bare of flannel blankets. Off enough that he could remember. But remembering wasn't enough to stop the dream.
He followed the trail of blood, body moving automatically. His eyes landed on the receiver first, as it lay on the floor. He tried to will his gaze not to turn to what lay next to it, because he already knew. But he looked, inevitably.
A gut wound, the skin around it rimed and blackened by frost. A dream-added detail--he'd only learned afterwards that it had been a wizard's ice magic. Manicured fingers, fruitlessly holding back blood that no longer flowed. Blonde hair. Glassy, golden eyes.
In the real world, he'd made it just barely in time. Carried her across worlds to be healed.
In the dream, he never did.
Illa woke up to the dark of the studio apartment, covers half-kicked-off. His heart still pounding too fast, adrenaline shaking through him. The eerie feeling that came with waking from nightmares late in the night, as if the waking world were itself half-dream.
But he was wearing Thairn's silk pajamas, wrapped around him like some strange embrace, oddly reassuring. And he could hear her steady breathing, the slight drifts of air as her wings fluttered in slumber.
He sat up a while, just to watch her be alive.
It took a couple of weeks to get a sense for their targets' patterns. Greta's Bo Peep tracer did indeed disappear almost as soon as Thairn had planted it, and Greta's patterns were complicated. The woman ranged all over the city and went on constant trips out of town. When she did meet with people, the meetings were often warded. A few lined up with profiles they had on the Morleys' Conclave connections. Several of the people had teenage children--was that a connection? Maybe it related to the suspected recruitment program. Other times, she seemed to just be wandering around, only to stop and stare at something seemingly mundane, and then take notes.
Eric was easy. His tracer stayed in the pocket of his favorite suit coat without being discovered. He managed a night club that Illa was certain was cover for something else, given what he could observe of the patrons and the off-kilter ratio between how many people went in and how many people came out. Hidden entrances and exits, maybe? Most of Eric's daytime activity seemed to be errands. Things for the bar, groceries. Medical supplies in disproportionate amounts. And scuffles, occasionally, with Malachi Morley and his enforcers. If Eric had some kind of alliance with the Morleys through Greta, it didn't show in these encounters. For all the file had them as lovers, the two's lives rarely intersected.
But then, Illa found it.
He came back late from his discovery to an apartment fragrant with a floral scent. Thairn was propped up on the couch with a cup of tea, tiny roses floating at its brim, sorting through a neat stack of files and notes. She often did that, at least when he wasn't gone the whole night, and she'd often go to bed shortly after he got back. Like she was waiting up for him. There was something about it that made the tension loose from his neck as he stepped through the doorway, to home.
She moved some papers so he could sit next to her on the couch. Shifted the grip on her tea so that both hands clasped the mug.
He took the seat she'd cleared. "Good news."
"Oh?"
"Eric's tracer disappeared."
"That's good news?"
"Guess who he met with just before."
"Greta."
"Yes."
"Finally. Where do they meet?"
"The new swing revival night at Eric's club. 'Savoy Saturdays'."
A fond look stole across her face, before she covered it with a sip. "We never did get the chance to dance in public, Reg."
It gave him a grin, hearing the codename from their first assignment together, decades and decades ago. "You'll have to learn to follow, Teddy."
"I'm sure I'll be perfect."
"You always are." The thrill of it.
Thairn had asked before, how intimate Thea and Ian should be. The answer?
They should dance.
In the old days, they would have used a record player. But the furnishers had included a blocky gray PC and a subscription to AOL. A trip to Napster, and a half hour later, they had a song. They turned up the speakers, cleared a space, and began to dance.
Thairn-as-Thea adjusted to Ian's height beautifully--she had two inches on him without the heels--and Thairn-as-Teddy kept blending following into leading, seamless and joyful. Dancing was a whirlwind, spin and step and dip halfway to falling, wings nearly brushing the floor. The stiff awkwardness he usually felt at her touch was gone now, stolen away by the rush of the dance, the bright rhythms of the one song they'd managed to get.
A final spin brought her into his arms at the end of the song, and they were panting together, every breath in unison. If it felt like this all the time, if it were this easy all the time...
"Want to play it again?" Illa asked.
"It would be my delight."
The brass and drums began, and they lingered in the song together a while longer.
Internal Links:
Home Page
Series
Book 1
Spoiler Corner
External Links:
Ko-Fi
Art Gallery
Twitch
YouTube
Dreamwidth
Image Credit:Favicon (little icon on the browser tab) licensed from automotive.stocks on Deposit Photos
Copyright Statement/Fanworks Policy: Unless otherwise indicated, all works of fiction posted here belong to me. I offer revocable permission for readers/listeners to create non-commercial fanfiction and non-commercial fanart, as long as it does not reproduce substantial portions of my work, does not claim ownership of my work, and does not involve claiming to act/speak on my behalf. I reserve the right to revoke or modify this permission at any time, including by actions such as updating this statement, through direct contact, etc. If you want to create commercial derivative works, please reach out to me to inquire about arranging a license agreement. (Statement last updated 2023/03/12.)
Privacy Notice: This site takes IP logs that are deleted monthly. As far as I'm aware, this site does not capture or store any other user data. (Notice last updated 2023/03/12.)