Chapter Twenty-Two #3
Love and grief and old hurt, knotted tight and weathered, the rot nurtured by everyone who saw it.
Years upon years, names and faces different but still the same.
They would blur, after a while. And Antonio, brought up on that, on love with conditions he could never quite meet, swallowed the pain until he was left only with the choice of blue or black ink.
Declan couldn’t fault him for it.
“You chose your own path, mo chuisle. Other hands may have shaped the start of it, but you rewrote the story. Blue or black ink, and you reached for lilac.” Declan turned his head to brush a kiss over Antonio’s hair.
“The cruelest thing you said to me was offered in kindness. Not malice. You pulled back your barbs when I flinched despite your hatred for my kind, then wished me luck and called me a murder punk. How could I not show up? Dug into bone and marrow, even then. And I’m so, so glad you picked this path when it became time to make that choice. ”
Thank you for seeing me. For finding me safe enough to reach for.
Antonio didn’t answer. He shook in Declan’s hold, breathing ragged and arms tight around Declan’s waist. He held on and on until his hitched breathing steadied.
Sunlight broke in sparse rays, warmed and tentative.
Declan breathed in the sunbaked earth of him, kissed his hair, metal at the back of his throat instead of corrosion, and waited.
He would keep Antonio as safe as he could, here.
“I’d pick you every time,” Antonio said, at last, his voice tight and only somewhat shaky. Declan’s shoulder only slightly damp. “Every fucking time.”
“And I you,” said Declan, whose voice was not all that level, the rasp more than simply a sluagh’s aspect. Antonio’s hair, too, was only a little damp. “Every time.”
And he would. Even with everything. The rejections.
The shinigami’s claws buried inches into his body.
Antonio’s clutching fear, as much as Declan wished to banish it.
Centuries like today, laughing parties and ruthless, unconcerned violence to remind them both why the only fae Antonio cared for was Declan.
Being that one for him. He’d choose all of it, every time, so long as there was Antonio.
“I’m … a little fucked up. Fine. Just, a little fucked up.” Distaste rippled between them, quickly muffled with Antonio’s tight grip and the press of his forehead just that much harder. Safety. “Give me a plan, yeah? Something to do. Don’t like feeling sorry for myself.”
Declan held on with just as much strength. Today, rest. Tomorrow, preparations. It was a start.
“Tonight should include oaths,” he said slowly.
“If you are amenable. For now, we sit like this a bit. Finish our beers. Shower, before we sleep, and eat, if either is hungry. At some point during the evening, oaths. Then we rest, and wake up some point after sunrise.” Another kiss, brushed against hair and a bit of ear and he tried, very hard, not to think too hard on just how big things had become.
“I have an idea of tomorrow’s plan, but what do you think of tonight? ”
“More oaths, Murderpunk?” Antonio sounded so tired. “Only got the one soul to share.”
“I told you, groups are only fun if everyone’s on board.
” Declan wasn’t about to share Antonio’s soul with anyone.
“But, as your bond, I would very much appreciate it if you would swear to open and work in your garage a minimum of three days a week as long as we’re on the Council.
Preferably set days, and not the day of the week we have dinner with your family. ”
“Been talking to Angela?” Antonio asked, with a bitter not-laugh. “You’re more important than the fucking garage.”
“Voids, no.” Declan scratched his claws gently through those mussed curls. “If you have an oathsworn schedule, they’ll not be able to strongarm us into constant parties each day, all day. And you are more important than those pricks and their parties.”
A quiet sigh from Antonio, as he leaned into the touch. “Why do I get the feeling my working at the garage doesn’t say shit about you getting out of these parties?”
“Wyte will likely be at some of them. We’ll terrorize the other guests with our petty, cutting remarks and good looks.” A beat and, softer still, “Please, Antonio? I don’t want to be the reason you lose this. I don’t mind parties.”
“You're the reason I still have anything, Murderpunk. But I get it. We can make it an oath.”
It was Declan’s turn to sigh, relaxing into Antonio’s embrace. He wouldn’t be the reason Antonio lost the place he fought so hard to build.
“Thank you. We’ll still have most nights, the other days. And another oath, for the weekly family evenings? I’ll swear as well. We made it through that bloody dinner, I think we’ve earned it.”
“No kidding. If it weren’t for Mara…” Antonio shook his head against Declan’s neck. “Dinners, too. Long as Michael holds his tongue. Heard enough of his shit.”
“Agreed. We don’t even need to specify which family. It can be just the two of us, if Michael decides to be a bastard.” Declan pressed a kiss to the curve of his neck. Just to touch. So long as they had this, they would be okay.
“That’s a start.” Antonio curled in closer, and Declan followed suit. “Tomorrow the Council?”
Tomorrow, Declan would need to resist the urge to burn the whole of the Council to the ground. But, perhaps, that wasn’t the best thing to say to a man who’d just killed for the first time. Antonio took care of Declan so often. Declan would do whatever he could to offer the same in turn.
“Tomorrow, we speak with Wyte and his bond, Teth.” Declan slid his fingers under Antonio’s collar, tracing the lines of the horseshoe he didn’t need to see to follow.
“They’ll speak for us; we have a precedent from Zyr.
Once they do, we issue a formal request to the Council.
Florian will deliver it. Then, we rest. Eat when we’re hungry.
Retreat to our room. Sleep, and wake when we wish to. ”
Smoke and leather. Bloody flowers. Declan didn’t know how he’d lived without the sun-warmed love in his soul, the lingering metal in his mouth and leather on his bare skin, the world filled with thumping bass.
“Wyte’s your buddy. Pretty dude with the ears?”
“Aye, that’s the one. He’s a bit cheeky.”
Antonio finally lifted his forehead from Declan’s neck. “Tell me more about him. You and him and Hyacinth go way back, right? How the hell did that happen?”
Tell me a story, Antonio didn’t say. Make the monsters go away.
Declan could do that.
He smiled wryly, curled his hand over Antonio’s cheek just for the pleasure of the man leaning into it. Taking what he could from the moment.
“Once upon a time, there was a pooka, a sidhe, and a sluagh. Two had an interest in bright lights, fun times, and big, strong men, and the third, a taste for chaos.”
He did what he could to take those monsters away.
Told the tale of two young seelie and one unseelie who didn’t want to mope at home, stumbling together in the early nineties queer scene.
Not quite accidents, wisps being wisps, circling toward one another in the mortal realm, and a Gate, wondering what a clump of them were doing together.
Parties and odd friendships and infatuations in a time that hurt as much as it comforted. The three of them hiding away from the lives and responsibilities that awaited them in the world they were born to.
Tomorrow, they would face the frightening weight of politics beyond Declan’s previous experience and Antonio’s worst fears.
Before that happened, the least Declan could do was give him something sweet, murmured soft in the only place they wanted to be, and hold on to the knowledge that so long as they had these beats in time, together, they would make it out alive.
They could do this. He could do this. He would.
He needed to.