Chapter Twenty-Seven
Antonio
Antonio pulled Declan back into his arms as soon as they made it upstairs, holding him bruising tight. Whatever was causing the spiraling torrent of misery and distress, Declan needed to know that someone had his back.
“What is it, Murderpunk?” he asked, trying to think through the reverberating despair. “Talk to me.”
“I’m fucking done,” Declan rasped, shaking in Antonio’s arms. “Bloody hate this. I can’t. I–”
What the hell had triggered this? Tsuri and Nae? Someone Declan had seen that Antonio missed? It’d been feeling so good. Better than it had in too long, and now Declan was breaking down and Antonio didn’t even know what he was supposed to be fixing.
“We’ll leave,” he offered, running his fingers up through Declan’s hair and pressing him closer. “Go back to the garage. I'm sure there’s a wisp down there who can take us.”
Declan shook his head, took a shuddering breath like he wanted to speak, but said nothing. Well, there went Antonio’s only fucking trick. If Declan didn’t want to go back to the garage, he had nothing left to offer.
“Breathe for me,” he murmured. “We’ll figure this out. Do whatever you need. I’ve got you.”
It took time. Minutes passed while he tasted only Declan’s misery, felt it like it was his own despair. The world gone heavy and inescapable, a rat running on a burning wheel.
“It’s not–” Declan said at last. “Is this what’s left for us? The only time we’re almost happy, when we’re even together properly, is when Hyacinth throws a party like this?”
The bitter truth, yes, burned Antonio’s tongue, but he didn’t say it. A day in sunshine after too long in the cell, and that was what had Declan shaking. Knowing that it wouldn’t last. That they’d be locked in again soon enough.
“I can be around more,” he offered. It was all he had to give. Himself, for what that was worth. Declan loved him. It was worth something. “Can–” Say it. “I don’t need the garage. Can tell Angela to sell it. Be here all the time.”
He meant for it to help. But Declan shook harder and all Antonio could taste was ash.
“That’s not– Bloody voids, Antonio.” A flicker of heat, in Declan’s words. Of anger. Antonio would take anger over guilt and despair any day of the week. It didn’t last. “How long before you’d hate me? Before I’m just another ‘fucking fae’ to you?”
“Never. Jesus Christ, Murderpunk.” And he knew that it was true, but it stung, that Declan didn’t. “Love you. All of you.”
“All of me except what I’m made of.” Declan’s laughter wasn’t. “I don’t blame you. We see every day why I’m your exception. Why you hate the bloody fae.”
The floor dropped out from under him. Every low revealing a new trapdoor, and the two of them just kept fucking falling.
Exception. Hate the bloody fae.
It wasn’t true. It wasn’t fucking true.
Antonio bit it back, that first, fierce denial, held on until they hit bottom. Again.
Was it true?
No.
Declan’s soul lived under his skin and that was what he was made of. The rest, Faerie…
Yeah. Maybe. Once. When it’d just been a memory, a nightmare. Hated plenty about Faerie still. Mostly hated how fucking powerless he was. But not like Declan thought. Not in a way that made the sluagh a damned exception.
“I don’t. Swear to the fucking voids, I don’t.
Maybe at the start, it was like that. Before I met people.
Learned shit. I was a fucking idiot.” How did he explain?
Antonio clung tighter, like that would somehow help.
“Look, I hate what you’re fighting. What we’re fighting.
The system. The way they treat me. The way they treat you.
And yeah, I hate being fucking powerless, always.
Moving through a world that doesn’t want me to touch it.
But that’s– It’s like iron. You don’t hate it. It just hurts.”
Declan went still in his arms, and Antonio didn’t know whether that was better or worse than the shaking.
“You mean it?” he asked, sounding so damned fragile. “I’m not– I don’t doubt your word. Just…”
Christ, he wanted to kiss him. Touch him. Anything to show that he meant it. That it wasn’t the way it’d seemed. Except it had been, and they’d never talked about it. Left it there, this sickness.
They were talking now.
“I mean it,” he said fiercely. “I love you, Murderpunk. Love you and your fucking aspect and what you are. You’re not a damned exception. Swear it.”
“Oh,” Declan said, so softly that Antonio shouldn’t have heard. But he did.
“And that’s why the rest doesn’t matter,” he added. “This is your world. It’s part of you. And it’s broken. If I have to give up the garage to help you fix it, that’s worth it. You’re worth anything, Murderpunk.”
He’d thought, hoped, it would help. Instead, Declan crumpled in his arms, more limp than clinging. Guilt joined the misery, a torrent of it, feeding the spiral of despair, snuffing out the brief flicker of understanding they’d started to build.
“I can’t– I won’t, Antonio.” Words between sobs, and Antonio’s shirt wet with them. “We can’t win. Throwing matches at our feet. Burning ourselves instead of the bloody system. I won’t let you give up the one good thing you have.”
His Murderpunk. His fierce, defiant, incredible sluagh, who refused to accept his world as it was. With each new revelation, of Faerie fading, of babies discarded or left, he’d only grown more determined. A cause bigger than himself, and Declan willing to burn for it.
Until now.
“You’re the good thing I have,” Antonio answered, knowing the words were wrong but needing to get them out.
“You’re miserable.”
“We’re both miserable.” Pick up the fucking spoon and choke down the glass. “I never expected to like it.”
“Then let’s stop.” Declan held on tighter, still shaking. “Let’s just stop. Step down. We can’t win. Not like this.” His voice cracked as he said it. “Can’t win, but we can try not to be so bloody unhappy.”
The shift in Declan’s emotions, from misery to relief to defeat, was almost too rapid to track, each bleeding into the next and nothing really leaving. A pyre of dreams, burning.
“We’ll do whatever you need,” Antonio said. Because it was true. Anything. For Declan, he’d do anything. “You want to stop, we stop. But this is where you’ve been fighting to get. This is what you wanted me for. I told you I’d stand behind you, and I meant it.”
Declan pulled away from him then. And for all Antonio wanted to hold on tighter, he didn’t. Story of their fucking lives.
“I wanted a bond for this,” Declan said, with a hollow laugh. “You, I just wanted to keep talking to. I’m sorry for being bloody selfish. You’ve done everything, and I just– It’s all so much worse than I thought it would be.”
A tightening spiral of trapped pain. Antonio was supposed to be good at fixing things. You couldn’t fix the whole fucking world. That was the problem.
“I–”
Declan’s breath hitched as he grabbed his shirt, fishnet splitting as he tore off his tops with a vicious tug, leaving them draped at the base of his wings.
“How gray am I?” He asked, voice breaking on the last word, eyes on Antonio. “I know they're not bloody black anymore.”
Look at my skin. Do you understand what you’re seeing?
Antonio did.
Skin like cracked porcelain, except it wasn’t. Declan’s marks weren’t merely faded. They were gone. White and white and white.
“A sluagh with only their nails, wrists, and eyes blackened is not long for this life.”
Why hadn’t he noticed?
The answer was brutally simple. He’d not seen because they lived in two separate worlds. Because it hurt too much to want Declan, to touch him as he had, so he’d simply … stopped. Because he was a raging asshole.
Declan had been dying. And Antonio hadn’t even fucking noticed.
“Christ.” His voice cracked on the word.
Declan glanced down, stared blankly at the colorless expanse of his skin.
“Oh. That makes sense. I’d thought you’d tell me if…”
Thought he’d tell him. Notice. Take better care of him than this.
“Get over here,” Antonio said, voice rough, not so different from how it’d sounded at much better times. Funny how grief could sound almost like passion. “I’m sorry. We’ll fix it, okay?”
He dragged Declan back into his arms, breathing him in: smoke and flowers and ink. His bond. His soul. Wasting away and Antonio had almost let it happen, locked in his own pathetic sulking.
“I'm sorry,” Declan echoed.
“You don't gotta apologize for shit.”
“You've done so much and I promised– I'm sorry it wasn't worth it. That I couldn't. The bloody Council’ll grind us down until there’s nothing left. I thought I could. I swear.”
Antonio was caught in stunned silence, utterly lost. How had Declan gotten it so wrong? How could he think that any of this was his fault?
“Worth it? Fuck, Murderpunk. You fought, showed ’em all they couldn’t keep you out. That’s worth something.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” Antonio knew shaking the man wouldn’t help, so he settled for kissing his hair and squeezing him that much tighter. “You got an unseelie and a human on the Council. Even if we fuck off tomorrow, no one can change that.”
“They still hate us.”
“Yeah,” Antonio admitted. “They do. Hate us more, I think, every time we show up. I don’t see that changing.”
“Then let’s stop.” Declan’s voice was just this side of pleading. His hand found Antonio’s, soft and cool as he laced their fingers together. “Quit the Council.”
“Declan…”
“We can live in your perfectly nice flat. I can find a graveyard nearby; they're bloody everywhere. You can keep your garage. Do what you love and still have me.”
Christ, how was he supposed to say no to Declan taking his hand and offering him everything he wanted?
A way out. A life better than any he’d ever lived.
And then what? Faerie continued fading, unseelie babies smothered in their cribs?
Declan surrounded by iron, away from everything he knew and everyone he loved.
Why was it so hard for them? Bo and Everil didn’t struggle like this. But Everil didn’t like people. And Faerie loved Bo.
What’d Bo said? Pick one thing. But the rot was everywhere.
He held onto Declan, the sharp, needle bite of his nails settling and familiar. Tried to think. To breathe.
Two choices, and neither of them right.
Or, maybe…
“Meu paix?o, I see this place like no one else does. Get to see how people really treat someone who can’t fight back. See, fuck, spiders no one’s noticed. Been through enough to figure he’s got a reason to hide.”
“You’ve seen the worst of us,” Declan said. “Over and over again. I never meant for that.”
Antonio shook his head. He was still getting it wrong, but he knew Declan would keep listening until he found his way around to the words he was looking for.
“Yeah, people have been shit to me. And to you. But not all of them. Aultyr, Zyr, your family, Teth and Wyte. Hell, Hyacinth, even if his brother’s a prick. He made all of this for you.”
“I know.” He sounded so tired now, the barest thread of hope in the bond flickering in and out of existence. A flame that couldn’t quite catch. “But I’m not willing to give up us for them.”
“Me either.” He hadn't known, until he said it, how true it was. For Declan, sure. But if Declan didn’t want it, then he’d not slit his throat for anyone else. “But they’d take your side. Our side. Don’t need to stay on the Council for that. We can find a different way to fight this.”
“Then let's do that,” Declan said, and there, at last, he could hear that fierceness. “Leave the Council. Rally the troops and start a…”
Hope and guilt. Determination and grief.
“What is it?”
“I don’t want this to be a war. I know what that looks like.”
Declan never talked about it, not directly. He didn’t need to. Antonio felt it, when he talked about his friends back in Belfast. His dead human friends.
“That’s not our decision,” he said. Gentle as he knew how, which wasn’t very. “There’s shit we know about what’s happening that only a few do. First step is to gather people we can trust. Share it.”
A slow nod. Declan’s shoulders straightened, wings flexing.
“We already have the Solstice Kings in our camp,” he said, like the clever, rebellious, dangerous man he was. “There are others whom I can call on once we leave the Council.”
“Yeah. Show the Monarchs what you’re capable of when they don’t have their boot on your neck. Council’s not exactly punk, anyway.”
“That should’ve been my first clue,” Declan said. “Joining the establishment isn’t very anti-establishment. New plan, then?”
“New plan.” He looked past Declan then, down toward where fae danced and laughed in Hyacinth’s dream of a nightclub. “Can it still start with a party?”
“We’ll still need to make connections. Think on who we want to nominate to take our seats.” Declan leaned back, just enough to smile up at him. “And see what sort of nasty trouble we might get up to, while we’re at it.”
His lips brushed Antonio’s shoulder then, so he could feel that smile.
Christ, this felt so good. Felt good after weeks of nothing feeling good.
Declan close, his lips at Antonio’s shoulder, talking about a future that wouldn’t slowly destroy them both.
Giving up, yeah, but giving up something that’d hurt and trying for something better.
Finding a path where they might do some good and not burn up in the process.
“Think that sounds more than alright,” he said, kissing Declan’s hair and stroking his back. Bare skin under rough fingertips. “Christ, Murderpunk, I’ve missed you.”
“I missed you too, mo chuisle,” Declan said. “New plan. And we hold to what's us. You’re what keeps me afloat, Antonio. My pulse. To the bone.”
To the bone, and Declan wrapped close. Declan, who’d been dying, and Antonio hadn’t even noticed.
It wouldn’t happen again. Antonio wouldn’t let it. Which meant no more bullshit sulking and staying back. No more focusing on what he couldn’t be for Declan.
What he was could be more than enough if he did it right. Declan’s bond. The man who held his soul and had a duty to safeguard what’d been given to him. Who had to do more than stand by and wish things were better.
He’d make things better for both of them. And he’d do it in the way only he could, by loving Declan fiercely, keeping him afloat, calling him on his bullshit. Holding him to the bone.
“Gonna do a proper job of that,” he murmured, and wrapped his fingers around the base of Declan’s wing, cool skin and smooth bone, fishnets and fabric. Warmth and heat. “Not let us get ground away by anyone. You and me first, and the world after. Starting now, yeah?”
“Stars, yes. Starting now.”