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Camille wants an in with the Seelie Queen, and for her, as always, that means orchestrating a series of convoluted, manipulative power plays that hinge upon someone else doing her dirty work. Lucky for her, Raphael hasn’t felt clean in going on twenty years, always some speck of grave dirt clinging to his fingers.
She’d waited until he was hungry, of course. So he’d remember where his survival comes from. So he’d feel like he owes her something. She’d opened the fridge for him, poured the glsss herself, and asked as the first swallow hit his mouth. He’d nodded, of course; he knows how this works. She’d wiped a drop of blood from the corner of his lips and licked it off her finger, and he hadn’t flinched.
Raphael still doesn’t know the big picture of Camille’s machinations, or even the broad strokes. What he does know, what he needs to know, is that a Seelie will be at a party this weekend—not at Pandemonium, but some underground Mundane place—and he needs to find faer and find out what fae knows, how Camille can lock her claws around whatever object she’s after, something that’ll grant her an audience or serve as a bargaining chip or generally fuck up someone, somewhere’s shit. So, late one Friday night—the equivalent of brunch time, for him—Raphael hands a few bills to the scrawny guy acting as a bouncer in some alleyway that wouldn’t’ve given him goosebumps even back when he had a sympathetic nervous system to speak of but now does make him want to wash his hands a minimum of three times.
Raphael scans the room, something closer to a house party with a cover charge than a club, and tries to determine the best mechanism of blending in. He hopes Magnus knew what he was talking about when he said these jeans would “fit the vibe”: there’s more distress involved than he’s intentionally gotten this close to, well, ever, whether fabric or feelings. Also, the pockets are fucking tiny. He wasn’t trained for this, is the point, isn’t used to hiding in plain sight as a result of anything other than people’s inability to notice him. The intentionality chafes, bares an unexpected ineptitude. He grits his teeth against his lack of expertise and works on becoming one with the peeling posters on the walls, or something.
Spotting the Seelie, it turns out, is the easy part. Fae is ethereal, practically glowing against the backdrop of unaware partygoers, a Blake painting come to life to show up everyone else’s outfits. The room is dark, hazy, multicolored lights flashing at odd intervals; Raphael is sure to have a headache tomorrow, undead physiology be damned, but the Seelie looks natural as anything and out of place for it, like a river winding through the heart of downtown, turning the New York street into a canal.
Raphael clings to the shadows and keeps an eye on faer conversations, trailing faer from room to room for over an hour until fae disappears into a tight knot of people and emerges gliding directly toward him. Raphael’s only sign of surprise is a biologically unnecessary blink.
“If you’re going to keep following me,” the Seelie says, “we might as well dance.”
Raphael swallows past his startlement. “I don’t—do that.”
“With a man?” The Seelie raises an eyebrow, but there’s no judgement in faer tone. Raphael isn’t sure if it’s actually absent or simply well-masked.
Raphael shakes his head, though. “With anyone.”
The Seelie inclines faer head. “I won’t offend your choice by calling it a pity,” fae says, and this more than anything—faer noticing his typically overlooked presence, faer invitation—surprises him. Endears him, he would say, if he were a very different person; prompts his curiosity to mix itself into his caution, at least, as it is, but even that is a dangerous cocktail to sip, Magnus would tell him with a wink.
It would be strategic, he reasons. He needs to capture something like faer trust in order to get any further, now that he’s been made.
“People usually take it to mean something it doesn’t,” he says, and measures out the length of nerves he’s willing to show, bares them like fangs and counts backwards from ten. “Not to me.” He lets himself shutter again with a breath.
The Seelie’s eyes don’t move from where they are fixed on Raphael’s face. He can’t remember if he’s seen faer blink. “I try not to make assumptions,” fae says, and it’s more disdainful than Raphael was expecting, shot through with a warmth that assures him faer condemnation is not intended for him.
Raphael nods once, a little too sharply. “I wish more were in your company,” he says, more vulnerable than a stake at his chest and unsettlingly thrilling.
“You’re the only company I would have tonight,” fae says, looking at him with the suggestion of a smirk, but it doesn’t smart or make nausea bubble in his gut the way Raphael is accustomed to. Instead, he laughs, one sharp note, and there is nothing relenting about it when he holds out a hand.
“You know bachata?” Raphael asks. His raised eyebrow makes his skepticism friendly; if he were displeased, he’d keep his face still.
“If we’re wagering whether I’ve been to a greater number of clubs than you in the past century, I’ll take that bet,” fae replies, some immortal emotion teasing at the corners of faer mouth, a subtle satisfaction that manages to fluster Raphael rather than leave him crumpling under the acrid bite of betrayal.
Still: this might’ve been a decade or two removed from the dances he learned from his Dominican neighbors growing up, but Raphael lives in the dark, not under a rock. “Just keep up,” he says, stiff in the unfamiliarity of his trust, and the Seelie grins.
“I assure you,” fae says, closer to his ear this time, faer impossibly soft hand in his own, “that will not be a problem.”
Fae isn’t wrong: it’s obvious from the first step that this is going to be good, some inarticulable understanding sparking between them as the Seelie reaches for his other hand, too, and their feet start to weave in tandem. Raphael generally avoids thinking of things like chemistry, but that’s the best word he’s got, ironically forged through the Seelie’s explicit disinterest in treating the dance as an audition for his bed, or worse, a foregone conclusion. Amargue, this used to be called, bitter music, and Raphael is a bitter man grown into an even more bitter monster; some days, it is the only part of himself he can recognize. While Raphael has always felt that he wears his distrust stiffly, though, the Seelie makes it look elegant, a place fae is clearly used to dancing across, something hardened like petrified wood in faer expression.
Fae is wearing an outer garment, the gauzy fabric almost too ethereal to be described in as earthly a term as an abaya, and it swirls around them as Raphael guides faer body into a turn, the wind of some other world made tangible for the length of a breath. Que nos lleven a la hoguera, the song goes, a bit too close for comfort, and Raphael sets his jaw, but he can’t fully pretend he’s not enjoying this, not while studying the air between their bodies, how its currents shift and swell.
“You are here on Camille’s orders, are you not?” the Seelie asks when they’ve come together again, hips a perfect inverse of each other in their calculated sway. Raphael raises his eyebrows in a question—there are, obviously, a lot of clans in New York—and the Seelie gazes back, bemused. “I would not be very good at my job if I could not recognize her second-in-command.”
Raphael flexes his jaw, looking away even as they are joined from thigh to chest. The reminder of his status stings enough on its own; the contrast between the title and the reality of his treatment is worse.
The Seelie leans faer head forward with the ease of a reed swaying in the wind, bringing faer mouth in line with his ear but far enough away from his face that he doesn’t tense. “Raphael Santiago,” fae says, smooth but precise, and Raphael does not sigh, but only because he doesn’t need to breathe.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Raphael says, a hint of a bite to it but more dry than threatening. He can recognize when he’s been outplayed, no matter how much he grits his teeth against it. He spins faer out with just a twitch of the muscles in his wrist, lets go of faer hands for a few beats to clasp them again with renewed relief, a feeling he pours into the movements of his shoulders and hips rather than letting it get anywhere near his heart.
“I am called Meliorn,” the Seelie says then, cool as a brook melting through an icy mountain, and Raphael recognizes the name where he didn’t the face: the Queen’s lieutenant, the closest thing, perhaps, to his mirror image in the Realm. Raphael wonders how many nights Meliorn has spent counting his teeth. “I don’t suppose you would do me the favor of disclosing your sire’s pretensions in return,” fae adds, eyes narrowed in a composed sort of amusement as they whirl past one another, clasped hands crossing between their backs before they complete the turn back where they started.
Seremos protagonistas sin que nadie nos dirija, the speakers insist, and Raphael huffs on principle. Tomorrow morning this will be his job once more; tonight, he’s sick of keeping Camille’s secrets. “Something called a portal shard,” he says, his fingers gliding across the span of faer shoulders, and Meliorn inclines faer head.
“And what would she offer in return?” fae asks, and Raphael shrugs smoothly.
“She won’t say. Not to anyone but your Queen.”
Meliorn hums. Raphael watches faer throat work, out of appreciation rather than desire, and lets his feet carry him back, then closer than before. He brings his hand up to lightly—flirtatiously, he would say, if he were a different man or perhaps a man at all—rest a hair’s breadth away from the sculpted sharpness of faer face, the suggestion of touch more potent than the real thing.
There is, it appears, not much more to say; Meliorn will either arrange the audience or fae won’t. Raphael focuses instead on the contract and release of Meliorn’s muscles, trying to anticipate each move earlier than the last. When the song ends, Meliorn raises an eyebrow, and Raphael doesn’t even nod, just again holds out his hand.
From the outset, this time is more intense. They are two strings of the same instrument, vibrating in perfect complement; Meliorn indicates for him to turn with only some implacable quality of faer hand at his waist, just offset from his stomach, or by reaching diagonally between their bodies to rest at Raphael’s opposite shoulder as Raphael is already flowing to face away from faer. Every move is sharp, precise, decision-making sliding between them like a current of electricity, like blood from one organ to the next.
Raphael lays a hand at the small of faer back and fae leans into and over it, chin tipping up to continue the proud curve of faer spine, and makes a swift half-moon sweep with faer upper body, an arc drawn from Raphael’s palm at the center as the sharp point of the compass. Meliorn’s hair cutting through the hot dense air of the dance floor is pure magic, distilled and concentrated and now cast to flutter across every onlooker in the room like the first snow flakes of the season. Raphael feels, maybe for the first time, his otherworldliness as something beyond a curse or a tragic act of violence or a fact he’d better accept—he feels like Magnus on a good day, sculpting an exaggerated paternalistic sigh for those who’ll never get this, the moment where the world unfolds from the smooth wave of Meliorn’s body to reveal a kind of safety he never thought possible. Faer thigh presses between Raphael’s legs, torsos so close they’re effectively just hugging with footwork, Raphael’s cheekbone brushing against Meliorn’s tattoo, and it is a step on a dance floor, a level platform: no escalation impending, no translation imposed.
Ay, recházame, Prince Royce sings again, Es que no puedo aceptar tu amor, and Raphael thinks unbidden of how much more repulsive Camille’s unending list of grunt work will feel, knowing he could be doing this. How much harder it’ll be to take her hand, knowing there are ways a body can move against his own that do not make his stomach turn—knowing that it has less to do with the body or the movements than the intent—
Space between them now, they grasp each other’s forearms as they turn, tight and exacting. Raphael feels more controlled in Meliorn’s arms than he did silent in a corner; it is a terrifying miracle.
When Meliorn spins him through the final notes, it isn’t all that fast. Raphael still feels dizzy.
“May I?” Meliorn asks, and Raphael eyes faer for a dazed, threatened moment until fae gestures at his necklace. Raphael nods, not moving his eyes from Meliorn’s face, and though fae is panting, he doesn’t breathe as fae reaches slender fingers out to touch the charm of his cross where it nestles in the scorched hollow of his sternum.
“I have no respect for your superior, Raphael Santiago,” Meliorn says after a moment, letting the symbol fall from faer fingertip back to his chest. “But I cannot say the same of you.”
Raphael watches, face carefully impassive. “Tell Camille to clear her schedule,” fae says, already turning away. “The Queen will be in touch.”