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Ciaran had been looking at himself in the bathroom mirror for at least an hour, leaning against the counter and inspecting his face. He felt too heavy. The marble counter dug into his hip as he leaned on it, and his hands seemed clumsy and numb. He turned his head this way and that to check his reflection—touching the small points of his ears, peering into his pale green eyes, scrunching his face at the freckles on his nose and cheeks. Everything was in place, but it still wasn’t right. Red blood ran from his forearm to pool on the smooth countertop, the result of cutting himself with Trent’s safety razor to test the color. That was still wrong. The magic was still wrong. He had tried every simple magic he knew from teleportation to illumination, and nothing had worked. It was as if his battery had run out after four thousand years.
Trent leaned against the bathroom door and tilted his head. “Are you done? What are you expecting to see?”
“Hoping something will jump out at me,” Ciaran murmured, then he sighed and pushed away from the counter, stumbling slightly at the unexpected momentum of his weight. “I’m a bit foggy,” he said. “I feel fine and not fine. I can’t feel the iron in my blood anymore—blood that apparently is red now.”
Trent clicked his tongue at him and stepped forward to lift his bleeding arm. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He snatched a hand towel from the ring on the wall and held it to the fairy’s cut.
“I don’t know; that’s what I’m saying!”
Trent sighed. He glanced up at Ciaran’s puzzled face and reached to touch his cheek, turning his chin up to look him in the eyes. “I’m just glad you’re not dead,” he said softly, and the fairy chuckled.
“It’ll take more than that to kill me. Apparently,” he added with a laugh.
“So what do we do now? Are you fine or are you not?”
“I don’t know.” Ciaran shook his head. “I want a nap.”
“So have a nap. I’ll have something for you to eat when you wake up.”
The fairy nodded and slumped himself back to the bed, pulling the blanket up over his head to block out the light from the fan above him. Trent clicked it off on his way out of the room, but he left the door open so that he could listen for any more coughing. He had a sick feeling in his gut; he didn’t know what the spell had done to Ciaran, exactly, but it was clear that he wasn’t himself. Could magic change what a person was? Was he even a fairy anymore?
Trent paused in the kitchen, the thought stopping him in his tracks. That wasn’t possible, was it? But he was heavy like a human now. He bled like a human, and the iron didn’t seem to poison him anymore. He couldn’t use his magic. If the spell had been meant to kill him, was it possible that it had half killed him? He glanced back at the open bedroom door with a frown. It didn’t make any sense, but not much had since the fairy had shown up in his apartment. Illusions and hunters, witches and spells, not to mention the completely nonsensical developments between the two of them personally—none of it should have been happening in the real world. If Trent could believe that a fairy had been staying with him for the past week, that he had finally stood up to his father, that he had said the words “I love you” aloud to another living person and meant them, why was it impossible for that fairy to then have become human because of a vengeful witch’s magic spell? It seemed to make perfect sense in the context of what Trent’s life had become .
Trent hadn’t had time to fully comprehend the depth of his decision to enter into a romantic relationship with someone who was apparently immortal. If Ciaran really was human now—or a close enough facsimile—the realization that he might grow old was sure to be jarring. It would be a huge adjustment for him. Trent stood at the kitchen counter and looked down at the plastic dome covering what was left of Ciaran’s chocolate cake. He probably shouldn’t be eating that anymore. This was assuming that Trent’s suspicions were in the least correct, which he fully expected they wouldn’t be. He knew absolutely nothing about the way magic worked, and he was prepared for Ciaran to laugh at his idle theories. At least the fairy seemed as puzzled as he was in this case.
He ate some leftovers out of the fridge while he waited for Ciaran to wake up, and he was startled by the sound of the fairy crashing into the dresser in the next room. Trent rushed to him, but Ciaran was already supporting himself with both arms flattened against the top of the dresser. He was breathing heavily, and he was still just as pale as he had been the night before. He was functioning, but not recovering.
“Shut up,” he said before Trent could comment. “How do you function like this? I feel like I’ve got anvils strapped to my feet.”
“How do I function while obeying the laws of gravity?”
“Didn’t I say shut up?”
“You asked me a question.”
“Well who told you to answer it?” Ciaran snapped, glaring over his shoulder at the younger man. He turned grumpily away from Trent’s offended scowl and gave a small huff, winded by the exertion of his shout. He released the dresser once he was sure he was steady on his feet, and he stalked by Trent into the kitchen. He needed to eat something. That was why he felt so weak, surely. He needed to eat, and then he would feel better; then he could think and figure out this problem. He squeezed an inch of honey into the bottom of a glass and filled it with milk, downing the whole cup in a single breath. He took the entire cake with him to the sofa with a fork and dropped heavily into the cushions while Trent watched him from the doorway.
Trent considered taking the moment to tell Ciaran his theory, maybe even suggest that he not eat half a chocolate cake in a single sitting, but he was less inclined to be helpful following the fairy’s outburst. He watched with his arms folded across his chest while Ciaran devoured the cake, counting the seconds in his head until the other man gave a pained groan. He pushed the cake to the edge of the sofa, frowning at it as though it had betrayed him as he curled up on his side.
“I don’t know if you should be eating so much cake, by the way,” Trent offered helpfully.
“I don’t know if you should be talking,” Ciaran countered. He buried his face in the cushion and held his stomach.
Trent sighed through his nose and stepped over to him, setting the cake aside to sit near the fairy’s head. “I think maybe that spell changed you. I mean...actually changed you.”
Ciaran grunted into the sofa without looking up.
“Is it possible that you’re...not you anymore? That you’re not what you were?” When the other man only gave a rough cough as an answer, Trent reached out to lightly touch his hair. “I don’t know anything about magic, but you seem very human to me.”
Ciaran rolled over onto his back, frowning upside-down at him. “Human,” he murmured. His brow furrowed, and he stared up at the ceiling in silence for a few moments. “That spell the witch used—I’ve heard it’s supposed to destroy your spirit. Maybe it worked after all, and without my magic I’m...this?”
“Your spirit? As in, your soul? Do you not have a soul anymore?”
“I’m not sure what a soul is ,” Ciaran said.
“You said before that you feel like you’re missing something. What are you missing?”
Ciaran paused, and his fingers lightly brushed his chest over his heart. “Something,” he mused. “Things that were close before seem far away. I’m missing...I can’t remember what. It’s like there was so much of me before, and now there’s only this. Only right now.”
Trent did his best to hide the worry in his voice. “Do you...still feel the same things you did before?”
Ciaran looked up at him for a moment and then sat up to face him. “You’re asking how I feel about you?”
Trent scoffed in an attempt to appear cavalier. “How should I know how it’s affected you? Just tell me now. It won’t change anything, but I deserve to know. ”
The fairy narrowed his eyes skeptically, and he touched Trent’s cheek to draw him close, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to his lips. When he broke away, he looked into the younger man’s dark eyes with a faint smile. “There’s only this,” he said again. “Only right now. So there’s only you.”
Trent sighed at him, shutting his eyes and letting his forehead fall lightly against the other man’s. “You really need to decide if you’re going to be sweet, or if you’re going to be irritating,” he muttered.
“Why?” Ciaran chuckled. “Have you made that decision yet?”
Trent pulled away from him, their fingers lacing on Ciaran’s lap. “So what do we do now?”
Ciaran gave a small sigh. “I don’t know how to fix this. If it even can be fixed. But I can’t go on this way.” His shoulders hunched, and he released Trent’s hands to cover his deep cough. He could feel the younger man’s hand on his back as he weathered the coughing fit, and when he pulled his hands away from his mouth, his palms were spotted with red. He could taste the blood on his lips, a metallic tinge that was unfamiliar to him. “I need to see someone who can tell me what’s wrong with me.”
“You have someone in mind?”
“Maybe,” Ciaran muttered. He frowned down at his bloodstained hand. “I’d hoped to avoid it forever. I suppose that was foolish.”
“Avoid what?”
The fairy shook his head and sighed through his nose. “I need to go home.”
Trent’s brow furrowed. “Home?”
“To Tír na nóg. Where my people are.”
“You need to go...to fairyland?”
Ciaran sighed. “Yes. To fairyland.”
Trent paused, watching him for a few moments. The other man was trembling slightly as though he was cold, and every breath seemed to be difficult to draw. He was right. He couldn’t carry on like this. And Trent had made him promise to take him with him, wherever he was headed. He reached out to touch Ciaran’s hair and leaned forward to touch a kiss to his temple.
“Then I suppose it’s a good thing my passport’s up to date.”