Chapter Twenty
Declan
Fingers at his waist and arm. Antonio smiling for the first time since before breakfast. Hesitant humor as they found their footing, ground steady.
Fantastic cars and long drives.
A familiar, acid tang, burned on Declan’s tongue. Just enough time to think oh no, and then the world twisted, crumpled around them. Once the vision triggered, there was no stopping it. No looking away. No them in any way that mattered.
Sepia washed reality. A sparse flat, worn in and threadbare. There’s a couch and an aged, scuffed coffee table on walked-thin carpet. A kitchen beyond, the counters littered with old takeout containers.
The kitchen’s not important.
What’s important is the skinny redhead on the couch, anxious and eager by turns. Or maybe that’s only something you imagine. You know why you’re seeing this. Watching him. You can’t do anything but watch. Nothing but take in the spread on that coffee table.
You see a lighter, a spoon, a small twist of a bag. A water cup. There’s a strap for a thin arm that would be pale, if not for the red-brown haze that coats the world.
He’s still breathing. Still moving, too. You see his hands, made for detail work, sure on his tools. That metallic click click click of the lighter is his doing, as is the sigh of flame that follows.
The hiss of heating metal. Laughter, distantly, from outside in the hall.
He’s alone in the flat, playing with things best done with friends.
Friends who can do more than watch in helpless realization at the slide of a needle into his vein.
The act itself isn’t shocking. You’ve seen it before. But you know why you’re seeing it now.
You aren’t here to watch.
Bliss, as it hits him, his features go soft. He tips his head back against the couch, lips parting.
You’re here to witness.
His body slumps, dead weight on flat cushions. His head lolls, unsupported, eyelids heavy. Not quite closed.
Minutes of silence, and you have no choice but to stare into that glassy, sightless gaze.
The world came back in full color between Declan’s tight, shallow breaths. The rigidity of deathsight faded as quickly as it came. Thirty seconds lost. Thirty seconds and so much more than that.
No screams. No fight. Not this time.
Just a man, quiet, who meant something to Antonio. A friend. Former lover, perhaps. Someone who mattered enough to be seen.
“I’m sorry.” Declan’s face settled into a careful, concerned mask, all level empathy. “He’s a friend of yours?”
Is still. The red-haired man had time before he used. The vision had been too faded to be sooner.
Antonio clutched at him, his hands on Declan’s waist and arm turned bruising. Those lovely dark eyes burned with the suffocating anger roiling through the bond. Always anger, when the realization hit.
That was why bonds had time stipulations. Why sluagh were shunned and allowed themselves to be.
Antonio wouldn’t lash out at him. Wouldn’t flinch the next they touched. Wouldn’t say Murderpunk and mean monster.
Declan believed that. He had to.
“That asshole.” A snarl. Hurt, buried under it, dark and sharp. “He fucking knows the shit that’s out there. Fuck. Fuck.” The anger twisted into something plaintive. “Why wasn’t anyone there? He fucking knows.”
Why would he, instead of how could you, and it was distant enough from other reactions that Declan managed to bite back panic. This wasn’t about Declan.
Declan and his dramatics.
“I don’t know, mo chuisle,” Declan murmured. He brushed his free hand against Antonio’s cheek. When had he started to shake? “I don’t know.”
“Shit. No. ‘Course you don’t. I’m– Fucking Reece. Christ. I just talked to him. I should have– Fuck.” He let go of Declan’s arm to rub, furiously, at his eyes. Fiery still, no matter how fragile he sounded. “I just– I need– Fuck if I know.”
The tears were worse than his anger. Declan itched to pull him in, stroke his hair until he broke against Declan’s neck. Anything that might help. They had spoken of getting wasted.
Antonio would see it again. Soon. See and see and see. Selfish. Not reminding Antonio was selfish. Worrying about his own place in Antonio’s affections was self-absorbed and miserable of him.
“It’s alright not to know. I’m so sorry for your loss, Antonio.” He curled his hand over Antonio’s jaw. Allowed the other to card through his soft brown curls. “I… You’ll see everything again, if I stay near.”
Declan’s voice shook, damn him to the voids. Words and hands, breathing unsteady despite his best effort.
“No.” Hard and cutting and Antonio’s hand tightened again on Declan’s waist.
Broken. All of it. Himself. The world. Declan’s voice when he whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Stay.” Softer but no less urgent, and he turned his face into Declan’s palm. Leaned into him as if Declan weren’t the creature who had caused him this pain. “Don’t make me sit with this alone.”
Don’t make him sit with this alone, but subject him to seeing his friend die, over and over. If he didn’t pull away, Declan knew, he knew, that Antonio would flinch away from him whenever Declan drew near. Love him and hesitate anyway.
Disappear for a century. Return only when given no other choice.
Declan would break. Crumble with no hope of being put back together. He trusted Antonio now, trusted he knew his own mind, just as the sluagh knew people didn’t realize what it did to them, seeing death after death after death.
No one else trusted him like that.
Either choice, Declan would become Antonio’s monster. Abandonment or slow torture.
Antonio kept his face against Declan’s palm, trusting him. Trusting he wouldn’t leave him to face his grief alone.
“Antonio.” It was all Declan could say.
That sickening dam inside of Declan’s heart broke, shattered apart the way he would after hours of Reece’s death had played behind Antonio’s eyelids.
When Declan lost what he loved because of what he was.
Antonio’s name, and ugly, wrenching sobs, fueled by centuries that left him held up only by Antonio’s tight grip, half crumpled and shaking.
Self-pitying, pathetic dramatics.
“Breathe.” The word came firm and sure, as Antonio dragged Declan fully into his arms. “Focus on me, Declan. Feel me?”
Solid warmth at his cheek. A hand at his back, stroking down his spine, as the other curved at the back of his head, fingers playing through his hair.
Sun-bright concern, metallic and spreading.
Safe in Antonio’s arms with the scent of leather and copper.
The only place Declan wanted to be. And he was to lose it all, for not abandoning Antonio like he should.
Antonio tucked him in closer. “I can handle this, hear me? You know I mean it. You know. Been through worse. I’m not going anywhere.”
Gasping sobs eventually quieted into the trembling relief of a lanced wound. Fear’s stinging song still rang clear but failed to echo in the face of Antonio’s grief and care.
“I should tell you to leave,” Declan managed eventually, rasped raw, still shaking, the words half hiccups. He curled closer anyway, wings tucked in toward the safety of Antonio’s touch.
“You did,” Antonio murmured, voice just above a whisper. “And I told you it wasn’t fucking happening.”
Gentle words. Patience. Love. It hurt the way only Antonio’s kindness could.
“I don’t– I didn’t–” Hitched breaths and Declan, trembling, held close to keep from being scattered to pieces. He curled in closer, anyway. “This isn’t…”
“What usually happens?” Those words, he kissed just above Declan’s ear, hands tighter still. When Declan nodded, short and jerky, he asked, “Kelpie the usual?”
Declan shook his head, the slightest of movements. “Everil, at least, kept his claws to himself.”
“Shit. I– You were there with me. You saw what I saw. And now–” Antonio swallowed, cut himself off with a swell of sadness Declan knew too well.
He leaned in again when Declan dared slide his hand up, card his fingers through those messy curls.
“I’m not alone with it. Seeing means not trying to picture it later. Painting it worse.”
Truth, there, in that. Convulsing and blood-flecked spittle was worse. Crowds of people nearby, no one caring or paying attention, that too, was worse. The memory of an acquaintance, sobbing and miserable, doing as Reece soon would but with intent still tormented Declan’s dreams.
“I saw what you saw,” Declan agreed, unsteady voice matching Antonio in volume. Hushed. Low. “You’re not alone with it. No sitting with this on your own.”
I won’t leave you to suffer in the wake of fae magic. I’m here.
“I know. Know you wouldn’t do that to me.”
How could he, when Antonio needed him? Leave him to be alone in his grief, with no one to hold on to, to hurt with? Declan knew what that felt like.
“Never.” As close to a promise as he could make it. Declan settled closer, slowly coming back to himself, sagging against Antonio’s chest. “When I ran about more, we’d raise a glass. Would that still be appropriate?”
Eleven in the morning, but they had a maximum of three minutes before Antonio was struck with another vision. They’d made promises to one another about moments like this.
“Fuck. Yeah. Like to be on my way to drunk before that hits again.”
As they moved apart, Declan drew Antonio’s face down and kissed the drying salt from his cheeks. Antonio shuddered, eyes closing. Bittersweet relief and grief, all of it a messy, human tangle. And still, he wanted Declan near, as if Declan were the safety he needed.
“Wasted when things are shit, as promised. Our own Irish wake. Sit with me?”
Antonio all but collapsed onto the loveseat by way of response, dragging Declan down to him. Declan curled against him, Antonio’s arm a heavy, comfortable weight over his shoulders.