The debriefing was lengthy, but the results were acceptable. Thairn and Illa had accomplished their missions--the wizard school was up in flames, the Morleys were in upheaval, and the fae knew a hell of a lot about Gabriel and the Morleys both now. Thairn and Illa had gone above and beyond. They'd gotten the pro-faerie Mickey into a position of power, even if it wasn't the top position, and won the favor of the anti-faerie Gabriel. Their superiors would have preferred they brought Magdalena in for interrogation, but assassinating her was nearly as good. And Thairn had reams of information for the Technology Office on the different potions and other magical items the Morleys had access to, including an extensive knowledge of their faerie imprisonment methods and a thorough description and diagram of every wing disabler the wizards seemed to have invented. Illa had plenty to contribute to those reports.
Their next assignments would be apart. The DOOR didn't have enough faerie agents to make the two of them a permanent team. They had a little time to pack Rhett's neglected apartment, and they'd put in a request for vacation time that should go through soon, hopefully.
They opened the door to the empty apartment. There wasn't much to pack. Illa's knives in the kitchen, because he'd made himself a couple of meals. The toiletries in the bathroom. The secret photographs were still in the suitcase lining, and they unpacked and repacked those, so Thairn could take hers with her. She lingered a little on the old photograph of Don, wondered what he would say. She couldn't really remember anymore, not enough to know. There was no photograph of Mickey to add to the collection. Maybe she could get one, someday.
At least she could still feel his heart.
She passed Illa's photograph of himself and Shandra back to him, but he shoved it back into her hands.
"Dear?" Thairn asked.
"I'm fine." He wasn't.
"What..." She looked. Remembered. "The wing bindings."
He nodded, clenched fingers against his knees. "I know that photograph gives you... envy. But, could you keep it for me?"
It didn't, really, not anymore, though perhaps envy that Shandra had been able to bind him for happier reasons than Thairn. But, she nodded, and put it with her other photographs.
Illa packed his clothes. Gabriel had returned them, though some was damaged, and all of it bore memories. The brass collar, especially, he found himself sitting with a while. It had protected him for so long, but now he couldn't bear the thought of wearing it. And yet, he still wanted to be Thairn's.
He found her, working on boxing up his book collection. "Thairn."
He could see the hesitance in her response. The too-loud way the book in her hand bumped against the edges of the shelf. He'd learned to read so much off of her.
He forced himself to go straight to the point. "I would love it if you bought me a new collar."
She froze.
"Please."
She leaned her head against the shelf. Took in a long and shaky breath. And then, all careful poise, "I'll be gone for a few hours. If that's alright?"
"Of course."
When she came back, she had him wait, standing behind his cushion. Eyes closed. He heard shuffling, metal clinking. A rustle of clothes and a warmth of presence as she came near him.
"Open your eyes," she said.
He did, and in her hands was a golden torc shaped like autumn leaves. It clearly wasn't meant for this use, but it was so perfectly her that it caught his breath.
"Yes," he said. "Please."
She pressed her thumb into one leaf, looked at him with doubt and uncertainty and pain writ naked across her face. But then, she straightened her body, shoulders back. Enough to wordlessly drive him down to his knees, his cushion, in front of her. As if he were being knighted.
Or owned.
She opened it along its hinge, wrapped her hands around the back of his neck with it held in them. Soft velvet lined the cool metal, touched his skin, sent prickling goosebumps down his nape.
It clicked around him, and it wasn't... it wasn't the brass collar. It was gold and autumn leaves, that last touch of her protection before he left for Gabriel's, mornings cooking breakfast and sitting at her knees. He sighed, felt released, anchored, all at once. He leaned his head against her thigh, and she took his weight, ran fingers through his hair, and his throat was tight with feeling. Everything, and at the end she was there, and he was still hers, and it still felt right to be that.
"You belong to me," she said.
He felt a pleasant chill at those words. "Yes."
They packed the rest, and she told him what to wear, the first day of his next assignment. No "be a dear", she knew that phrase had been poisoned. And in the evening, he cooked for her, sat at her feet to have dinner. Leaned against her knee and felt that golden sunlight a little longer.
In the night, she ran fingernails down his skin, hard enough to mark him in red lines, and he cried out, and it still felt good, that touch, that pain from her. Succumbed to it until his whole body was alive with sensation, sensitive and aching and wonderful.
He watched her as she hurt him, her face painted in layers of concentration, desire, tenderness. When he pushed to get more of her touch, it took away years in the set of her jaw and the weariness of her features. He wanted that, to see that, to have that, to make her feel that.
She finally took off the new collar when they went to bed. And then held him, protective and possessive, foreheads touching. He let himself rest in the feeling of her presence. When they slept, he dreamt of her, and had no nightmares at all.
In the morning, Thairn gave Illa the torc to pack, instructions to wear it when reading her letters. Gave him a set of her pajamas, black silk. Promised they would find a way to talk to each other when they got word back about the vacation authorization. There was no dread, this morning, when he cooked their last breakfast together, when she sat at the table and petted his hair. No thick knot of worry when she picked out clothes for him to wear, when he dressed her, when he brushed out her hair. There was still clockwork to it, and it still settled both of them to do.
They lingered in the doorway before she headed for Widdershins, her hand stroking his cheek, last touches. There was so much to do, so many people to be, but for just this moment, they could be Thairn and her Illa.
And that was wonderful to be.
It wasn't the easiest thing to arrange a vacation by bureaucratic requests, coded letter and dead drops next to Widdershins points, but they managed it, after a few months. Illa and Thairn had gotten the same vacation days, but they'd be separate for the first several days of that--Illa had things to take care of at home, in Faerieland.
The vacation spot was an unusual choice. A small town in Georgia called Peach Blossom, which had barely any hotels and no attractions for tourists to speak of. But he had said this was one of the few places where he had friends outside of work, where he had a good excuse to go. "He" being, of course, Mickey Morley.
Thairn stood in front of the door to the suite, holding the keycard and feeling two hearts race. Excited and riddled with nerves, all at once.
Thairn slid the keycard into the door, and the lock shone green. The wards on the door, a shadowy rainbow ready to block out everything and invisible to the regular humans, let Thairn pass without hesitation.
Mickey was there. Leaned back on a cushioned chair, trying to pretend to be nonchalant. But Thairn could feel the lie of it, could feel the way Mickey's heart fluttered at the opening of the door.
"Now you really are Romeo," Mickey said. Thairn was in the beginning stages of a new posting, with a new identity as a young man named Tobias, and had the glamours and clothes to match.
"I hope you don't mind," Thairn said, in Tobias's voice.
Mickey twirled his cane, set it aside and came to Thairn, dipped Thairn back in a greeting kiss, and their hearts were both pounding again. It was his half of everything Thairn had missed these past few months.
Thairn got his things down, his jacket off, and then he was pressing Mickey into the wall, affection with no need to bridle it, no need to control his voice to be anything, just Mickey's body against his--hers--whichever--and Mickey's hands running down from here to everywhere, love and lust and finally. It was over for both of them far too fast, but there was promise of more. There would be more, they had weeks here before they had to part again.
They cleaned each other up in a state far too fond to be called embarrassment, though they definitely laughed at themselves. Dropped off Thairn's things near the extra-large king bed and ended up diving into it, an old feeling like those times of solace and discovery in Mickey's bed at the school, but with no more constant underthrum of deadly tension. There was leisure, instead, for Thairn to run hands down Mickey, to have Mickey press his ear against Thairn's chest to hear Mickey's own heartbeat, which sent Thairn into a fit of giggles that Mickey insisted was obscuring the sound most inappropriately.
"So, Juliet," Thairn asked, "did you ever find your dagger?"
"Oh, don't talk to me about that. You replaced my heart with a magnet, I swear."
"Not Lucía's zombie, I hope."
"No, she's been behaving, about as much as you could expect Lucía to behave. We actually got her working on a treatment for grace addiction, now that she's a little more motivated to get deadly life magic off the streets. The potion she came out with is part of my excuse to come down here."
"You said you had some old friends here, but I thought they weren't connected to the mob?"
"They're not, not really. But my friend's younger sister got hooked. She's been off it for a while, but. Never know when you're going to relapse, right?"
"I had a hard enough time quitting cigarettes. I can't imagine."
"You used to smoke?"
"Back in the day. It's been decades."
"You look great for someone who was smoking decades ago."
"Well, we don't age the same way you do. Or did, rather. I would bet you're going to age differently."
"I'm going to wait until everyone notices and then claim I have a portrait in the basement."
"That's the spirit. Speaking of appearances, do you mind if I take off my glamours?"
"Of course. It's the rule."
"The rule?"
"One rule, for our vacation: Here, together, we can be anything we want to be."
Could they, really? Thairn felt almost like he could believe it, when Mickey said it that way.
Thairn made a flourish of it, stripped off his glamour keys in a show for Mickey. Whose eyes drew over Thairn's body, his whole body, with an appreciation Thairn could feel in the beat of Mickey's own heart. Skipping over nothing, though they did linger long on Thairn's wings.
"Would you like to touch them?" Thairn asked, spreading his wings wide.
Mickey laughed, and it sounded like he was laughing at himself. "Sorry if I'm fetishizing. I think they're fascinating. And yours are beautiful."
"Seeing as I'm terribly vain about them, I can't say I mind."
"Vanity? That just so happens to be one of my favorite vices."
Thairn snorted and shook his head. Turned so Mickey could touch his flared wings. And it was good, to feel Mickey's hand there, curious and playful and confident. To trust him like that, when those wings could be so fragile. Enough that Thairn assented when Mickey proposed trying to figure out if magical massages were a possibility. Thairn laid out on his stomach and let Mickey carefully thread his fingers through auras, an odd feeling for Thairn like having his hair stroked, strands smoothed into place and pulled free of knots. Soothing, surprisingly so.
"Does the heart make it any different, do you think?" Thairn asked, as the massage stretched out into sunlit languor.
"Aunt Greta says it does, though I haven't learned how to feel it out yet. Maybe if Rhett let me compare."
"Your aunt can see it?" Thairn should perhaps be alarmed, but the sky hadn't fallen yet on either of them, and he'd expected something of the like, knowing her powers.
"Yeah." Mickey set a thread adrift in a floating, disconcerting way. Corrected, pulled it back into place. "She doesn't like it. She says it looks like your magic is infecting me, like part of me is missing."
"Which isn't wrong."
"No."
Thairn folded his arms under his pillow, propped himself up a few inches. "How much does she know?"
"She doesn't know the exact details of the spell. I've convinced her it's the protection you promised for me. She can still feel her end of the bargain, so she thinks you still have your end." He drew his fingers down her, like bringing guitar strings to resonance. "Do you?" Said nonchalant, but his heart raced, putting the lie to that ease.
Thairn's mind began to weigh the options already, to set up the ploys and plot the gambits. What would make Mickey trust him better, what answer Thairn could best use as leverage...
It nauseated him. As if he'd brought something profane into their sanctuary, with just the thoughts. They'd fallen for one another as liars and tricksters, but was that how he wanted this to continue, between them?
He let go those webs unwoven. And spoke truth to fondness. "No." It felt like leaving himself unwarded, but he pressed on. "The succession ended, I can feel it. I don't know what the magic picked as its close, Magdalena's death or Lucía's fall or Gabriel's rise, but I have no oaths bound to protect you any longer. Greta did not word her side of the bargain with as firm an end, that's all."
Mickey's hand fell still. His heart pounding.
"I was hoping you'd say that."
Thairn lifted his head, turned to look at Mickey. Reached back and brushed fingers along Mickey's knuckles. And felt ready trust there, in how easily Mickey returned the touch.
"You don't have to keep my heart safe," Mickey said. "You don't have to be here with me. But you are."
Thairn had the answer here, then, as to whether the honesty was worth it. "I care about you."
"I know," Mickey said. All affection in his soft voice, his gentle hands, his warm eyes. "That's the best part."
"What are the other parts?"
"That this is real. Though, I guess that's part of the best part." Mickey stroked a knuckle along Thairn's cheek. "That I can trust you. And that..." Mickey hesitated.
"Dear?"
"That there isn't any magic pulling at you, to make you accept me."
"I don't think it would work that way."
"Oh, trust me, I can come up with the convoluted logic."
"Well. You don't need to." Thairn kissed Mickey on the tip of the nose. "Speaking of which, I have a surprise for you."
"Oh?"
Thairn delved into his luggage, got out the little box, wrapped in gold foil with a purple ribbon and bow.
"Oo, early Yule." Mickey accepted it, set the sticky bow atop his head, and tore open the wrapping until it was little confetti shreds. It was a clothing box, and inside, a frilly apron.
"Do you like it?"
"It's perfect! I'm going to leave off all my other clothes and bake us muffins in it."
"Won't you burn yourself?"
"You can kiss it better."
Thairn shook his head, laughing, even as Mickey did exactly what he'd said he would do, stripped off all his clothes and put on the apron and went to the kitchen to bake. (The hotel was a home suite, with a small kitchen and fridge for longer stays.) Thairn, dressed, set up at the kitchen table to enjoy the view. Heavens, he loved having lovers cook for him. When Illa arrived after his several days back home, Thairn would have to have the two make something together, just so Thairn could enjoy watching. And eating it, but that wasn't even the best part--they were.
The muffins turned out better than expected--Mickey said he'd been getting recipes and pointers from the family cook for years, so that explained it, because Thairn until now had never seen a single Morley cook for themselves. Mickey didn't burn himself while cooking, though he did singe his fingers on a too-fresh muffin, and Thairn kissed it better and didn't let go his hand after.
They chatted over the muffins, a little family politics, a little about Thairn's new assignment, not enough to betray too many confidences. They switched fast from that to building castles in the sky.
"But how are the members of the fluffy puppy cabal going to cast if they can't hold wands?"
"Well, why do you think dogs like carrying sticks around so much?"
"I suppose."
"What about you, how's your village of lovers going?"
"This hotel suite isn't exactly a mansion cottage, but I think it's a start." Thairn squeezed his hand. "Thank you for not being another tragic romance."
"I am more than happy to oblige you by not dying messily, trust me."
"Well, you're not allowed to die neatly, either."
"As you command, good sir." He gave a little bow.
Thairn flung a muffin crumb at him.
"Speaking of commands, how are you and Rhett? I heard from him while we were planning this, but not enough to know much. And should I call him 'Rhett', or is it 'Illa'?"
"You know his name?"
A wry grin. "I am a genius."
Thairn gave him a skeptical look.
"Great-Aunt Greta told me. She wanted to warn me as much about my protectors as that lingering oath will let her."
"Can't blame her, I suppose. He'd probably prefer 'Illa'. He and I are... good. Really good. He and I only got a couple days together after we left you, but they were enough to know."
"To know what?"
"That he still wants me as his dom, after everything that happened."
"Sounds fun. I guess that engagement's not so involuntary anymore?"
A flinch Thairn deliberately didn't hide. Illa hadn't brought up his desire to get out of it since the succession... but he hadn't declared that he wanted it now, either.
"Ah." Mickey read the flinch easy, as Thairn had known he would. "I'm sorry, then. I'd offer to take over the marrying you bit, but I don't think that's an option."
"I think both our families care far too much about us passing down our magic for that."
"What? No tiny little half-fae?"
"You really should have attended my class, if you think that's a possibility."
"Oh, don't worry, I know. I'd be busting out the condoms if I thought that had a chance of happening."
"Don't want children?"
"Don't want mine to have to deal with what all Xav's been put through. But I'll have legitimate ones, one day."
"You don't sound happy about that."
"It's... complicated. Kids sound great, I love the little troublemakers, just... they'd have to grow up in my family, you know? It's a mess."
"I know that feeling far too well. Mine will have Illa, at least."
"And mine will have whatever human girl I get arranged to. Or someone who can get pregnant, I guess they don't have to be a girl. Someday. Eventually. I have the wonderful blessing of a long life ahead of me to put it off for."
"It's a useful thing to have, let me tell you. Illa's certainly made use of it."
"Worth the wait?"
"Heavens, yes. The sounds he makes... ah, that might delve too far into his privacy."
"Then I shall have to rely on my vivid imagination."
"Imagining Illa? Are you attracted to him?"
"He's scrumptious. You have good taste."
"Mm. That would be a sight."
"Alas, I don't think my ardor is returned."
"He is one for casual nonsexual kink."
"But not sexual?"
"No, I don't think so. Maybe if you were friends with him for a while. He takes to those feelings at a different pace, he's told me."
"Maybe. We'll check back in a few decades, I guess." Mickey took another pinch of muffin. "I'm not even sure how to begin to ask if his orientation is pointed my way. I'm not usually out to anyone, it's just a question of if they like men."
"Well, he does casual kink with any gender, and he likes me. Though I suppose I haven't been a man around him since we started--"
"Kinky not-sex?"
Thairn flushed, grinned, covered his face. "I'm new to this. I'm not used to being new to anything. At least the dancing isn't new."
"Dancing?"
"We dance together. It's a delight."
"But it's not new?"
"Oh, no, we used to go out in the 20's... we'd go swing dancing. We'd practice at home, and then we'd go out and dance with the women in the clubs, and it was glorious."
"Great-Aunt Greta told me, about how she met you two at the swing revival night."
"I loved that. We finally got to dance together in public, though I had to learn to follow, and it's just... it's like flying, it's beautiful."
"You'll have to show me sometime. I don't think there's exactly clubs in Peach Blossom, but I'm sure we could set something up."
"I would love that."
"You know, I was right."
"Oh?"
"You really are beautiful when you're in love."
"Flatterer." But Thairn found himself smiling, his heart aglow.
They put away the rest of the muffins, though by partway through, Thairn was banned from touching them anymore, because he couldn't stop himself from grabbing Mickey's bare ass. He looked good under that apron, Thairn's apron. Very good. After Mickey took over putting away the muffins, Thairn took over kissing Mickey's neck, rubbing hands over his body, pressing him into the side of the counter.
"If I didn't know any better," Mickey said, rubbing against Thairn's jeans, inviting, tempting, "I'd say you had ulterior motives."
"Oh? But you know better?"
"Yes, so clearly what you want are my delicious muffins."
Thairn caught Mickey's hips with his hands, pulled Mickey back to rub Thairn again, firmer. "Do I, now."
"You can't resist them." Mickey twisted enough to kiss, and at the touch of his lips, Thairn could feel his whole body heat and relax, sink into desire.
Mickey gave himself readily to it, too, leaning into Thairn's arms, reaching back to glide fingers down Thairn's neck as Thairn caressed Mickey's body beneath the apron. Thairn hooked a leg around Mickey's just to hold him even closer, to tangle them further. To feel him, warm and here and miraculously alive. Still wanting each other, even when they no longer had any gambits to pursue.
Thairn set grazing teeth along Mickey's earlobe, pressed closer against him--and noticed something that made Thairn huff amusement into Mickey's ear.
"What?" But there was mischief, not innocence, to Mickey's voice.
"You're making my jeans wet."
A full grin then. "I thought I might warm things up, before you got here."
"Presumptuous, are we?"
"I got to have fun either way, didn't I?" He bit his lip, ground back against Thairn. "I know you want me."
Thairn reached around, felt the outline of Mickey's cock beneath the apron, ran his hand over it just enough to make Mickey give a pleased whimper.
Thairn had come prepared, too, had a condom in his pocket, something he preferred for this kind of topping. Got it out, tore it open as Mickey oh-so-helpfully pushed Thairn's jeans and briefs both down his hips. Thairn got it on, wondering how much Mickey had prepared, how much he should control himself. But at the first brush of Thairn's cock against Mickey's ass, Mickey huffed out in pleasure, pressed himself over Thairn's head. Not as tight as their first time, enough room to feel that liquid glide alongside all that pressure.
Mickey was half-collapsed in Thairn's arms now, pushing back, taking Thairn in, further, further. Guiding Thairn's hand to stroke him while he did, with all the wanton freedom of desire.
Thairn grabbed hold of the counter for stability, mouth on Mickey's neck as Thairn thrust his way inside, dizzied by the ease of it, the ability to lose himself in it. No more plots to weave, no more information to mine, nothing but his desire for the person he held in his arms, the pleasure of Mickey's body, the high of his touch.
And Mickey was saying his name, his real name, "Thairn, please, you feel so good, Thairn--" and it felt so right to hear that from his lips, to be so clearly wanted for who he was instead of the people he pretended to be. That Mickey wasn't the only one, that Illa did, too, didn't make it any less special, just expanded the joy of it.
The world dissolved down to the pounding of both their hearts in Thairn's chest, to Mickey's tight heat, the firm cock under Thairn's hand and the salt taste of Mickey's skin under Thairn's mouth. Mickey was wet at the tip and Thairn caught that, ran that slickness over him and heard the cries it produced, the begging, Thairn's name.
The apron caught it when Mickey came. Thairn pulled out, shaky, wanting more, but not sure if or how Mickey wanted to continue.
The wizard lingered a moment in Thairn's arms, stretching along Thairn in satisfaction, then turned and sank to his knees in one fluid motion, pulling free Thairn's condom to touch Thairn's cock with a bare hand, and putting his devilish mouth to work between Thairn's legs, where everything was wet and sensitive and aching for attention.
That was the thing about Mickey, he didn't mind touching everything, and there was freedom in it, a ready and natural acceptance to it, and Thairn loved him for it.
Loved him, too, for the way his mouth pulled at Thairn's lips, for that penetrating tongue, for the eager curiosity with which he tested and sucked until he found just the spot to turn Thairn's knees weak. Mickey wrapped his mouth around the base of Thairn's shaft, letting his fingers supplement where his tongue had been, mixing sensations and blurring the borderlines without the slightest hesitation.
The internal orgasm clenched Thairn around those probing fingers, turning it all electric until it was near too much, Mickey's knuckles tormenting him as Mickey's tongue slid up his shaft, lips surrounded his head. It was Thairn's turn to whimper and plead, now, to feel the longing for a second release stretch out.
Thairn wasn't sure he could take anymore, and he wanted to take so much more, "Mickey, dear, please--"
Mickey's mouth pulled tight around Thairn, and that was enough to drive Thairn over the edge into quivering orgasm, letting go the counter to tangle hands in Mickey's soft hair, body bent over in ecstasy.
Thairn found himself kneeling to the floor after that, to kiss the taste of himself from Mickey's mouth, for all he didn't usually care for such things, to press Mickey's head against the cabinet as if they weren't both spent. But Mickey took it, gave as good as he got with it, his eyes alight with tender affection.
They could have this. This was theirs.
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