The plan to infiltrate the Morleys kept coming together. The new glamour arrived for Thairn. It was still obvious to Greta's eyes, but she deemed it enough to trick a normal person and enough to trick someone with most levels of Sight. Thairn had Illa test it with touch, and after running his hand down her back and over her wings, he stared at the glamour a while, then at his hand, and called it good.
"It feels smooth," he said, shaking his head. "Like you really have a human back."
He tested the front, too, with a touch likely intended to be clinical. It felt, all the same, achingly intimate, resonating as it did with both fantasies she struggled to keep sealed away and with new-wrought memories of his careful touch as he dressed her in the mornings. She had abstained from the latter such scene since the Sleepless Dream, but she wanted that still, that ease it brought them both so effortlessly. When she was shed of glamour and clothed again, she made an offer with all the controlled grace she could muster and, with his assent, gave him nails and teeth until his eyes went unfocused and his breath came in little moans. Until she had no more thought of anything but him, and this.
It took too long for Thairn to realize what Illa was planning for his infiltration. What he intended by the glamours he ordered, the background he requested for his identity, the membership rolls he wanted filled out with his new name. She'd seen Gabriel's file, noted the preference, but she hadn't thought about it the way that Illa had, not snagged onto it. She'd been expecting a route through friends of friends or relatives of the deceased or magical artifacts smuggling. But Illa was going straight for the heart. It was almost as if Thairn were planning the mission for herself. It bore her hallmarks. Get in close, gain Gabriel's trust. That it involved Illa being beaten to within an inch of his life, well, that was Illa for you.
"What will you do when you can't consent?" Thairn asked Illa, dropping the file next to him as he sat at the desk writing up another requisition. This one was for emergency healing magic, which they like as not were not going to get, because the damned stuff could only be stored in objects by a few enchanters in the whole fae world, so it was usually far beyond the budget of the DOOR.
He looked up, swallowed. Like he'd been expecting this, expecting her to figure it out. He hadn't told her. Why hadn't he told her?
"I've been thinking about it," he said.
"Because you can't, you know. I put you in that place, you've told me yourself. Once you're under--" and she crushed a violent impulse to demonstrate, to show him, "--you can't say no."
"I don't have to go under to handle this mission."
"And if you do anyway?" Nearly against her will, she had a hand on the chair he was sitting in, found herself shoving her way into his personal space. She took a breath, made herself pull back. She'd never been like this before. But, before, he'd only done his kink as a side amusement, never put himself into situations like this. Before, it had been allies, not enemies, who put a collar around him and bruises on him. But this... more conclusions clicked for her. He wasn't just trying to get close to Gabriel through a session or two.
"You want to be one of Gabriel's kept men, don't you?" she asked.
"I've done the research, Thairn. It's the best way in, if I truly want to get close to him without getting involved in the gang's territorial fights."
"And if you're discovered as a faerie? He can't even hit you with a flogger without hurting your wings--"
"I'm getting my glamour tied to wing shields."
"You can't cast right if you're wearing those."
"I can still do song spells, and I can remove the shields if I need to."
"Half the tools he'd want to use on you are iron or steel."
"If it doesn't break the skin, and it's just brief impacts, I can deal with that."
"How do you--" Right. "I suppose you would know. But if you are discovered?"
"Then I have a second cover--I'll say I'm after the Morleys and trying to get information from him about them. He doesn't like them, he might ally with me on it. And if I need to win his trust by 'betraying' the faeries, I've got an auth list from up top of information I can drop him."
Dread struck her then. "What if he just decides to kill you?"
"We have reconnaissance from gangs he used to belong to. He used to capture faeries and use them as servants. I expect it would be the same. Worst comes to worst, Greta can bail me out."
"If you're revealed as a faerie, they aren't going to trust her."
"They don't know about her Sight. They just know she'll take people who cross the Morleys and pass them to the Wingless."
Thairn clung to that chair a moment longer. Forced herself away, to keep it together. To accept his judgment. He'd been doing this job as long as she had. Longer, because she'd taken a break for a few years to work with the Technology Office.
"Fine. Let's at least come up with a better plan for your mental state than 'I hope I don't fall into that place in my head where I can't say no anymore'."
He stared at the file, ran hands over the pages. "I have an idea about that." Voice came out quiet, enough for her to realize they'd both been half-shouting.
She let her voice drop back to normal tone, felt her fear for him like a tautness in her chest. "What's your idea, dear?" Rested against the side of the desk, tried not to cling.
"During the Sleepless Dream nightmare..."
Heavens, the one thing harder to contemplate than this.
"...you dreamt your own collar on me, and it helped get my head in the right place. I was thinking, that maybe if I went into this under your collar, my head cued to obey what you're wanting out of me and not what Gabriel wants..."
You're going to make me responsible for this, she didn't let herself say.
"...that it might work, that way."
She'd watched him risk his life way too many demons-damned times, and she'd barely felt a worry. They'd talked by letter, partnered casually, and she'd always known, with a bone-deep certainty, that he'd come home at the end of the day. Same as she would, diamonds in this world of crumbling coal.
But now, the death knell of inevitability rung inside her, this feeling like, I'm going to lose you, and you won't come back, this fear like, Don't make me be the one who sends you there.
"We should see if it all works, first, don't you think?" she asked. "The shields, your glamour. This idea about me collaring you, you being able to use that to not go too far under."
"Makes sense. Do you have something specific in mind?"
"There's BDSM clubs here in New York, right? Dungeons other than the one we're going to drop you in? We go, we find doms for you to experiment with. If you can't keep your head about you for that much, then we figure out another way in."
He took that in, nodded. "Sounds good." Pushed away the paperwork, rubbed his forehead. "It's a good idea, Thairn. Thanks. I've got my head too deep into this, I should've... obviously."
She crossed her arms and tucked her hands beneath her elbows to resist the urge to touch him, to pull him under right now.
"Look some up," she said. "We'll get started once your shields and glamour arrive."
He nodded, and she went to find something else to do. Anything else to do.
They still hadn't spoken about the actual dreams inside the Sleepless Dream, nor what any of it had meant.
The shields and glamour arrived far too quickly for Thairn's tastes. Shouldn't they have taken longer to reinforce, to make sure the glamour wouldn't break if the shields were damaged? Had they spent enough time on it to protect him?
That her own glamours bore no such protections did little to reassure her.
She tested his glamours once he'd put them on. Just like hers, it really did feel like a bare, smooth back. They tried impacts at home before daring to risk the public dungeons. The shield held up fine under hands and canes and paddles, the illusion of skin reddening beneath each blow. Well-programmed. Damn it all.
She checked his wings over, after he'd had a moment to recover. No damage beyond a few burst capillaries, which she kissed better.
"How do they feel?" she asked.
"Sore, but not bad."
She ran fingers down the cuticle. "Do you like it?"
He went pink. "I think so."
"I wish we'd discovered that for more pleasant reasons." She sighed. "Nothing for it but to take you to the dungeons, then."
"Are you alright? With this?" He had his hands clenched over his knees, like he was waiting for some blow, and not the pleasant kind.
"I'm worried. As I've told you."
"Other than that?"
That you're making me responsible for this? "What do you mean?"
"I know you had... envy, over Shandra."
Oh. Was that what he thought this was? "I'm not jealous over Gabriel, dear. I feel nothing about you having to deceive someone for a mission. I'd hardly expect you to turn a disapproving look my way if I have to seduce someone for my own infiltration."
He took a long while before he answered. "Of course."
"Dear?"
"After this... I won't be able to see you for a while. Do you want me to only do kink play with you, or...?"
"Oh. Oh, no, of course not. We need to talk if--it might hurt me if you wanted someone else to collar you. But if you wanted something like you used to have with Harry, or just casual strangers... that's fine, dear." A pause, and, "Other kinds of relationships are fine, too. I know you feel those ways, sometimes." And for some reason, the thought didn't spark nearly as much envy as the idea of a collar.
His shoulders sagged in clear relief. "Thank you."
"You've never spoken to me of jealousy, but, is there anything you'd want of me?"
"Anything, even like what you had with Don. I don't think you'd be you, if you stopped falling in love over me."
The memory came, then, of sitting at a different couch in a very different apartment, looking at a coat that would never be worn again over a chair forever missing its owner, pictures on the mantel of a man Illa had never met. But Illa yet bore the stories of him all the same, the ones Thairn had asked Illa to bear. And still, it seemed, had nightmares of finding her after that relationship's bloody end, near-dying of the wizard who had killed him.
"Perhaps it would be easier on me," she said, "if you deprived me of my enamorations."
"I think that would just be a new pain for you."
"Likely." She pressed her fingernails into her skin, to ward off the memories. "Would you mind if I held you for a minute? Before we go out."
He nodded consent, and she took him into her arms. And pretended, for a moment, that there was neither past nor future.
The first club had a store in the front, and Thairn bought Illa a collar of polished brass, strong and solid enough to be used for play. He drew her into the club's dressing room, where they waited until it emptied. Looked up at her, all his other body movement gone still. Waiting.
She drew the curve of her finger beneath his chin, tilted it up so their gazes could meet. Held those eyes until he breathed out, long and slow, his body relaxing with it. He bent his head, and she turned her hand to caress his cheek. Took up the collar and locked it around his slender throat.
Goosebumps prickled over his skin. She ran her fingers down them, felt everything so right and so wrong all at once.
"Mine," she tried.
"Yours."
Everything she'd wanted. And nothing like the way she'd wanted it. But if this could offer him safety, if she could use this to protect him, then she'd damned well better do this the best she could.
She hooked fingers into his collar, pulled him up against her. Ran her hand, possessive, through his short hair, let her long nails whisper threats and promises both down the back of his neck.
"Mine," she said again, and this time she let the word have none of her hesitation.
He shivered in her arms, and this time the response was whispered in a soft huff of breath against her cheek. "Yours."
There. Yes. That felt right.
She had him guide her into the dungeon proper, since he was more familiar than she with places like this, for all they'd been given a brief tour. They crossed the threshold from the fluorescent-lit and quiet shop to dimmed lights and sharp sounds. Whip cracks, screams and moans--a mélange that would have chilled her, were she not watching Illa close enough to see a strange ease flow through him.
"You feel safe here," Thairn said.
Illa nodded.
She gave the place a second look around, letting her constant threat-seeking fade from the forefront. Enough to notice humans cuddling on the couches. To hear the giggles and squeaks of a curvaceous woman beneath paddles and pinches. And to witness the joyous grace of a winch-suspended hirsute man, a carefully-tied network of ropes holding him safe as he flew free.
Illa led Thairn to what he preferred best, the wall of a cage with bars far enough apart to let his glamour-hidden wings rest in the gaps. She guided his hands to splay back, and lost herself more than was sensible in the feel of his blood-warm wrists beneath her hands, the glide of the rope as she pulled it through repeated coils, its yielding press against her fingers when she tested the tension.
Illa's relaxation had completed into a calm and trusting silence. His eyes attentive to her and only her, as if everything else were mere background. It made her want to kiss him, but he didn't want that, so instead she slid the collar down just enough to bare his neck and bit him, feeling his breath catch in his throat, his body tense and go liquescent.
Hers.
She mingled caresses and blows, protection and pain, carefully within what he'd asked and accepted of her. Brought him to a place where his bindings were holding him up more than they were holding him down. A place, perhaps, past "yes" and "no", "red" and "green".
Now, to test it.
She pressed her hand against his throat, enough nearly to choke, and he just sighed. Made threats to do things to him, and got nothing but those attentive eyes.
She wrapped the rope through the bars, knowing it lay now over his wings. "I'm going to tie this."
He nodded, bowed his head into her chest.
Before they'd come in, she had asked if he consented to have his wings bound here. He'd said no. Gabriel might do it by accident, while Illa was undercover, but from her it would hold a very different meaning. One he wasn't ready for.
She tied the first lark's head around his body, capturing his wings. His muscles twitched, as if to flutter them, but that was all the fight he had against her.
She un-looped the rope. Began work on releasing him from the bars. But when he sagged into her arms, she didn't send him off to the couches to rest free of touch and come back to his own head. Instead, she forced him to straighten.
She turned to the interested observer who'd begun watching their play some time ago. A Black, stout human man. He'd been the one topping the winch suspension. And he looked at Illa in a way she knew too well from the mirror, from Harry long ago, from others.
She threaded her fingers around Illa's new collar and brought him forward.
"That was a pretty sight," the human complimented.
"I do try," she said. "What's your name?"
"Adam."
"Thea." They shook hands. "This is Ian."
Illa bowed instead of shaking hands, and Thea could see the light it struck in Adam's eyes.
"Would you like to borrow him?" she asked.
"May I?"
Thairn nodded, as did Illa, and Adam ran his gaze down Illa's bony frame, lingering on the rope marks, the scratches from the knife.
"Want to talk to me about what you like, Ian?" Adam asked.
Illa looked up at Thairn for answer.
"Tell him what you like," Thairn said, her voice clear, precise. "If you don't want something, tell him so." She touched Illa's face, nudged him to meet her eyes. "You will, won't you, Ian? Be a dear."
He nodded, leaned his head into her hand. A happy little sigh escaped her. He had better come out of all of this alright.
"Nothing breaking the skin," Illa said, and it startled her to hear him lucid. He touched his collar, looked at her. Shut his eyes and shook himself. "Nothing sexual."
Adam smiled, kept his hand on Illa. It shot a dose of panic in Thairn, but she pushed it down. For this first trial, she'd be here to watch. This was a public dungeon, not the place she'd be sending him if all this went well.
"What is it that you do want, then, Ian?" Adam asked.
Illa looked at Thairn, shook himself again. "Do you do canes?" Illa asked Adam.
A grin. "Yeah."
They went off, and Thairn arrayed herself to observe. She'd seen the aftermath of Illa's scenes with others before, but she'd never actually watched someone with him. What if she'd been wrong, in their talk about jealousy? What would she feel, seeing this? Adam bent Illa over a spanking bench, tied his wrists and ankles to the anchor points. Even angled the setup so Illa could look at Thairn, if he wanted. Good. Adam drew out his cane, a whippy starter, and Thairn tensed as Adam prepared to strike the first blow--
Smack, and Illa sighed out.
Thairn felt desire light aflame.
Illa was just as gorgeous with someone else striking him as he was when Thairn did it. A better view, even, of the way his whole body responded to blows that sang before they hit, the way his skin flushed. Adam struck marks up Illa's legs and down his glamoured back, and Thairn found her attention rapt for more reason than the need to protect him.
Illa kept to her orders. Stopped Adam when the ropes dug in too tight, got the man to retie them. Looked at Thairn sometimes, with those false brown eyes. She met them, let her control hold. Next, they'd have to try this without eye contact, without her nearby at all. And maybe with someone less respectful, because Adam was trying his best here, and she'd no guarantee of that from Gabriel. Once Illa went into deep cover, she wouldn't be there to keep him safe.
She pushed down her fears, tried to just enjoy the sight of him. He came back to her striped red and beautiful, and obediently told Adam his aftercare needs, instead of leaving them unspoken the way he'd told her he tended to. He was smiling, the way he didn't in most of the rest of his life, and if she could only half-smile back, if her fingers ached for a cigarette even though she'd quit the habit decades ago, well.
She had to protect him the only way he'd allow.
On the third night of dungeoneering, they hit jackpot with a pushy top who ignored the dungeon code of "Yellow" (pause and check in) and "Red" (stop now) and pushed Illa all the way to "Mayday" (someone help!). But he did it, he called it, and the dungeon monitor and Thairn had both come to the rescue.
And if Thairn got time alone with the woman afterwards in a dark alley, tossed a pin through a grate so it could be seen and not reached, and hissed into her ear, See a pin and pick it up, All the day you'll have good luck. See a pin and let it lay, Bad luck you'll have all the day. ...well, no one was going to know that, were they?
As they walked to the subway, Thairn barely kept at bay the urge to hold Illa as close as she could. He needed her not to touch, so he could recover. He'd told her that. She knew that. So instead, she crossed her arms to temper the urge, the wind whipping through her sweater.
"Are you alright?" she asked him.
"I will be. There's been worse. There will be worse."
"Give me names, and I'll have a word."
He snorted. "We're busy. And most of them are dead."
"I hope you did it."
"Time did."
Her boots dragged against the concrete, the words striking her still. For a moment, she was back in the nightmare, surrounded by corpses. And then back in the street with Illa, who was never going to die, not even from these goddamned mobsters, and she pushed herself on.
"Well, if any of them have zombies, I'll kill them again."
Were they just going to pretend that his being able to keep his head enough to call for help would suffice? He was going down there to be slave to this undead mobster. No amount of making sure he stayed this or that level of lucid was going to make a damned bit of difference. If he said "no", no one was going to listen. If he called for help, no one was going to help.
Never mind that she was planning deep cover herself. That the Morleys and their deadly games might be no safer. It was different somehow. He was planning to be hurt.
It pulled all the wrong muscles for Illa to take the wing shields off. Hurt to stretch his wings, to feel the tear open further. Shields weren't perfect. Take a too-hard blow at a too-off angle... it like as not would have injured his back if he hadn't had wings, or at least punctured the skin. At least now, he knew how to shift to make sure the shields took the blows. The woman had kept hitting him, after all.
He sat on the bed, held his wings out for Thairn to come heal. Felt the bad kind of vulnerable, helpless in the wrong way. Thairn's anger wasn't directed at him, but it twigged the obedient part of his brain wrong, for all that he'd obeyed her just the way he was supposed to.
But Thairn's touch betrayed none of that anger. Her long, fine fingers came gentle to his wings. Her lips pressed warm against the injuries.
She wouldn't be here to heal him, soon.
Afterwards, she held him half-lightly, arms tentative across his shoulders. He let himself lean into it, let her hold him, and wondered what would be left of this when he came back.
She mouthed words into his hair, words he couldn't hear, words she maybe wasn't willing to say in a way that he could hear, but in them, he felt a line of affection and worry and tenderness and ownership.
Hers. Yes.
On their last day, Illa woke in their bed too early in the morning, body switching from too-warm to too-cold all at once. He was wearing Thairn's black pair of pajamas, silken as they all were, surrounding and enclosing him with distracting sensation.
He cast the morning luck spell and tucked the pin into his luggage. Their bags were packed already for their new, separate lives. The things he properly cared about would go into storage. The books. The photograph. He'd almost entrusted that image to Thairn's care, to keep in the lining of her luggage, but he knew too well that it might compromise her if the wizards discovered it.
She hadn't collared him yet for the morning, the way she'd been doing lately, but he started on cooking breakfast, anyway. He didn't cook for breakfast every day--they mostly got by on toast and jam--but it would get him into the right headspace, the one he intended to enter and not leave for who knew how long. And hopefully, if it all went like their experiments, it would keep him from being put under by anyone else.
How likely was it, really, though, that he'd fall sway to this gangster without the help? Kink required trust. Spying required none. But it assuaged Thairn, and even Illa preferred the sense of safety it lent him.
They were low on ingredients, since they were moving, but he put something together with the last dregs of parmesan and their last few eggs, mixed in the vegetables they'd otherwise have to toss, enough for a frittata. He set her portion on the table, his on the floor, and knelt by the bed to wake her.
"It's today already, isn't it?" She reached for him, ran her nails through his hair. Lips not quite reaching a smile, a weariness in her eyes. He had nothing he could say to comfort her.
She sat up in bed and got his collar from the nightstand. The smooth brass pressed into his skin as she clicked it into place, but the ease he usually felt at that wasn't coming. He trailed her to the table after she cast her morning luck spell, sat on the cushion next to her, and ate breakfast with the back of his head against her hip.
He barely tasted the frittata. She muttered something about it being good, but there was no heart to it. She gave him the plate to wash with the food half-untouched, and his was more prodded-apart crumbles than eaten by the time he gave up.
She laid his clothes out for him as he did the dishes. Putting them on settled something in him. She'd done his packing, too, picking out what he'd bring and leave, something to secure her touch and command on what came next. Set aside in the suitcase were the clothes he'd wear the first night at Gabriel's dungeon, and those she'd picked most carefully of all.
There was something clockwork in getting the lay of his lapels just right, the tie arrayed the correct length, the vest buttoned to perfect propriety. The snap of the fabric clicked something over in his head, and soon he was calmer than he had any right to be.
He helped Thairn dress, brushed out her hair, did her makeup. She'd have to do it all for herself, soon, and she complained about it with enough drama to entertain them both.
After the last wing of eyeliner was brushed into place, she laid her hand against his cheek. "You're already there, aren't you?"
He leaned into that hand, nodded. It solidified something in her, he could see it. All at once, her eyes went from tender melancholy to something harder, confident. He'd seen changes like this before in her, when they did this interplay of dominance and submission, as if his belonging to her gave her strength.
"Let's get you ready to go," she said, and that smile held teeth.
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