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When Techno wakes, it’s to the smell of coffee in the kitchen. He melts more than gets out of bed, the tenuous hold he keeps over his glamour even more thready in the mornings, then works to press himself back down into some approximation of human. He’s gotta be at court by seven thirty, and that’s without the travel time involved.
He pads out of the bedroom into the cramped main room of his apartment, the bit he calls the “kitchen” but which serves as everything that isn’t either bedroom or bathroom, frankly. Does it all. Phil stands in the sunlight and jerks his chin at the coffee pot — Techno’s colleagues give him shit for it, but he cannot afford the espresso machines they all seem to swear by, okay — and says, voice rough around the edges, “Morning mate.”
“You sound so chipper,” Techno observes, which gets him a laugh in response. He’s not really sure when Phil started spending more nights than not on Techno’s couch, only that it involves him getting coffee in the morning and Phil, well — Techno’s not actually sure what he gets out of it. He’d say presence, connection, whatever the fuck, but Techno’s at court most days and Phil’s off doing whatever reporting shit he does all day anyway, so that can’t be it. But it’s unfurled into a constant: Phil in his kitchen in the mornings, sleep-weathered and distinctly disgruntled, usually with shadows under his eyes.
Techno pours himself a cup of coffee, throws Phil a glance like I dare you to say shit as he adds milk, but Phil’s looking away, eyes fixed out the window. It’s not much of a view, just the rooftops of a couple shorter buildings and, far below, a little basketball hoop — but the sky’s spectacular today, Techno will admit, a sort of burnt peachy colour this close to sunrise and shot through with clouds. Phil watches the sky go by and Techno watches Phil, painfully aware of the boundaries of his form, the beating fragile flesh of him, the blood beneath.
Phil carries a sort of grace to him, always has, coiled up through his body like the haunches of a wild thing before the leap. Techno looks at him for a moment longer, then turns away, feels his own body beat against its borders.
“I gotta head out,” he says, setting down his empty mug. “Hey, thanks for the coffee.”
“Always,” Phil says, in that way he’s got, easygoing and lighthearted but still with an intent undercurrent, like he means everything the word could possibly mean and doesn’t even think anything of it. “Don’t commit, uh, perjury, or whatever it is you do all day.”
Techno snorts. “You know I don’t get to talk to ‘em.”
“Too fuckin’ early to be remembering what your actual job is,” Phil says, running a hand over his face. Techno hears it rasp faintly against stubble. (Evidence of growth — of the beating heart beneath — Techno’s form doesn’t change unless he wills it to, and for a moment the bottom of his stomach plummets out from beneath him, sings of distance. But Techno’s spent as much time living a human life as he has being anything else, and he reels the guilt back, swallows it down, gazes at his coffee.)
“Glorified admin,” he says, taking Phil’s cup and maneuvering around him to stick them both in the dishwasher. “You know. Survived my JD and all I got was this receptionist job type beat. Hey, don’t do libel, or whatever it is you do all day.”
“You motherfucker,” Phil says, but it’s so, so kind.
Techno closes his eyes against the sting in his chest, closes the dishwasher as gently as he can manage, holds out an arm to Phil, an invitation. “I gotta get dressed,” he says, “but, uh.” Phil knows what he’s asking and goes, hugs him for a brief fierce moment, mortal body against glamoured shell like for just a moment they’re both real.
Techno draws away first, lets Phil slip through his fingers again. Metaphorically speaking. No fingers involved. Gods and Courts, Techno feels incoherent, feels unmoored without the pressure. “See ya,” he mumbles, and it comes out low and brusque. Phil’s smile flickers bright and quick over his face again, though; he knows what Techno means.
Techno has had a hundred names, none of them real. He has nothing true he can give to Phil, Phil who is quick to laughter and quicker to fury, Phil who moves through the world like he owes it nothing and has decided to give what he can anyway — Techno’s name, his real name, is something he can only express with his eyes closed, his glamour shed, his mind pressed close to someone else’s. An abstract mental thought-sign, a hundred images at once, none of them alone enough to snare Techno into a pact; it had been a clever working of the Feywild, that one. He’s only shared it once. Heard it said a thousand times since, with silent speech.
Techno touches his transport card to the reader and shuffles his way through the station gates, head down, shoulders up, mundane. He’s not a changeling. Not when it comes down to it. But it’s the closest name he has for what he is — a fae thing living a human life and then another, the dying-and-coming-back not typical to the changeling schtick but the walking-amongst-iron, at least, a familiar part of that score. It’s never bothered him much that he’s something almost unique — isn’t anything fey also queer, separate from anything else like it, in one way or another? But it’s been a long wait, this time. Normally they find each other before twenty-five. The absence at his side doesn’t quite feel hollow, because Techno’s weathered it long enough to know that empty space almost as much as he knows the thing that fills it — but it’s a reminder, and one he’s starting to get a little goddamn sick of, more each time he takes the fucking train to the fucking mortal court and fucking sends fucking emails to solicitors.
Ugh.
Here’s the thing. He sees shadow-on-feathers-on-shadow in most things now: the way someone laughs, or a sort of fierce joy that has held a carefully kept space in Techno’s chest ever since he’d first seen it in those uncanny fey-green eyes, or the moment before a bird takes flight, where it’s poised between the earth and the sky, the fey and the real. Techno doesn’t like to assume, likes to let blade-like-sound-through-silk come to him — he’s been wrong before — but sometimes it’s hard not to hope. To gaze at each person who drifts in and out of his life, human or fae alike, and wonder, Are you hiding him in the back of your mind? Sometimes they don’t altogether remember what they are until they see each other, their natures nestled in the vessel subconscious until they draw each other out into the light — but Techno had known all along, this life, this change.
He wants to say he’d know silhouette-on-the-hill anywhere, wants to say he’d know him blind, or however the Miller quote went. He can’t; he’s not an idiot. Possibly the one thing more powerful than fey perception is fey glamour. Techno sways back and forth with the movement of the train, knows this particular section of track well, the rhythms of it familiar, and watches the people crowded into his carriage. Each of their lives beats brightly within them. Each of them could be him, any of them. Techno unfurls his gaze idly into the fey, surveys the carriage like that; he can make out one particularly clumsy glamour, some changeling new to their form, near the doors furthest away from Techno. Just for the hell of it, he lets his presence flare briefly through that second layer of perception — it’s not quite sight — and gives them a wry smile when their head darts up, eyes wide, frame tense.
He likes saying hi to the babies sometimes, watching them fumble their way into their fey side. Techno has been fae, true fae, since before they were even little clumps of stubborn belief given in place of a human babe; still, he likes them well enough. There’s a kid interning with one of the magistrates who Techno is, like, ninety per cent sure is a changeling too — something about his signature — but Ranboo either hasn’t worked it out himself yet, or had done so long ago enough that his glamour is smooth around the edges, absolute. Techno should go talk to him sometime.
He shoves his way through the crowded carriage at his stop and changes to the tram, feeling a wry, half-sad twist to his own stomach. He’s allowed a little melancholy, as a gods-damned treat. Still, the motions are easy to follow — emails, calendar, swiping into court, listening to barristers quarrel about availability for a mention for almost half an hour before finally offering up some dates from the court listings.
When a verdict comes early, he texts Phil, Hey, I’ve got an adjournment until two, want lunch? Phil’s usually free this time of day, and sure enough, he gets a reply back soon enough in the affirmative. They like to swing through one of the million overpriced cafes in the city — a new one each time, to broaden their caffeine horizons or whatever — and then go duck into one of the university libraries, no matter that neither of them are technically students there any more, because Techno has had enough breakdowns in the law library over the years that he figures he’s allowed to drop in and say hi to his old favourite crying shelves every once in a while.
Something stirs in the back of his mind, a tension or trepidation he can’t put a name to. But he tucks it in to die. He likes Phil, has enjoyed Phil ever since they met at some gods-awful charity function and made the mutual decision to tap out and go for pizza; it’s not often that he likes someone this much, in that uncomplicated pleasant way where it’s just nice to be around them, feels right to stand beside them, where it’s just fun to go and get lunch together during work. Techno’s kind of picky when it comes to people. But he texts Phil back, now, finds himself smiling as he does: See you soon nerd, and an address to one of the coffee places they haven’t tried yet, and a little saluting o7 because he knows it’ll make Phil roll his eyes.
Techno’s fifth coffee is halfway to his lips when he feels it: the shudder through the air of will against iron, the presence of something not made for the city. The fear registers a moment later. Not his own, never his own — Techno knows fey things as well as he knows his own name — but things are dangerous when they’re afraid, and whatever creature has just stepped into the library is afraid in a way that bends the very air to voicing it.
“Phil,” he says, dreading having to say it. But the fear swells again; this only goes one way. Techno knows the score. Usually he’s alone when this kind of thing happens, can put himself unseen between the magic and the mundane, hold out his hand and play at being some kind of fuckin’ ambassador — but Phil is right by him, in his periphery, too close to run from. This is going to get very magical and very violent, very fast, if Techno doesn’t go do something about it.
He risks a glance at Phil, who last he’d looked had seemed very human, knees pressed against the low desk, typing through closed eyes every so often and then cracking one open to appraise the (generally unimpeachable) results. He’d been breakable, flesh — the cropped straw of his hair and the spark in his eyes and the sense of asymmetry to his face, but so mortal, no matter the cleverness. No matter the way he looked at Techno sometimes like he saw something more. But Phil looks back, worrying his lip with his teeth, and very deliberately closes his laptop.
“Techno,” Phil says, “don’t fuckin’ freak out on me, okay?”
To the mundane eye, nothing in the library has changed; there have been yet no screams to the human ear. But Phil holds himself differently, that same coiled poise he’d had when — well, when — Techno can’t place it, where he’s seen it before, but it settles over Phil now: a readiness to act. An acceleration even while standing still. He slips his laptop into his bag, shoves them both closer to Techno, and says, “I need you to trust me for a moment here, alright? You watch that.”
There’s space for a breath that neither of them take. Then Techno puts it together, with a sort of helpless joy that staggers him. Glamour curls in the air about them both, and it’s not just Techno’s — he traces it, now that he’s looking, to a form greater in size than either of their little glamoured bodies, to a looming dark shadow that might be wings. “Ah,” Techno says, and huffs a little laugh.
Phil gives him a disgruntled look with just a hint of impatience, and then pauses, confused by whatever he must see in Techno’s face in turn — and it’s weird that Techno can read him like this, has been weird this whole time when Techno’s not got the patience for it with anyone else, but is still right that same way it’s been. He grins, body unmoored from itself by that sense of relief, of — kinship, almost. Of course Phil isn’t stars-on-death, isn’t iridescence-on-blade-and-feathers, but he’s something like Techno, something fey if not quite fae in earnest, living in the city, just scrapin’ by.
Gods and their Courts — if that isn’t everything. “I should’ve seen that sooner, huh,” Techno says, and gestures very clearly with his glamoured, human hand to the rippling presence that looms unseen above both of them. He can feel it now, if he turns his senses to what’s missing in the room: not a lie, but the absence of truth, of wings.
“Oh,” Phil says. The quick tilt of his head to the side is — so familiar that it’s like a punch to the gut, frankly. Techno swallows against the absence. He’s not gonna ruin this thing he has with Phil, who’d been a neat mortal guy first and then, just now, had shown he had been fey all along — not gonna throw it away because Phil doesn’t have the grace to also be light-on-dark-water, song-of-parting-soul-from-body, who’d been by Techno’s side since the very beginning. But Phil’s here and now and Techno really likes him, in the way he seldom likes people, and he’s lookin’ back at Techno like he’s only just seen Techno, for real, in turn. “Well,” Phil says, and laughs, laughter-like-scythe-through-air —
Laughs like Phil, Techno corrects himself with brutal precision —
— “This is fuckin’ awkward, hey,” Phil says, his smile equal parts teeth and friendship. “Christ, Techno, we’ve both been pretty fucking blind.”
“Wilfully so,” Techno says, suddenly shrinking under the heavy weight that is Phil’s honest scrutiny, Phil’s eyes tracing the outline of his glamour. “Nice to meet you, I guess. Listen, are you gonna go deal with that, or should I —?”
“I’ve got it,” Phil says, quick and friendly, the same smile he’d given Techno when they’d ducked out of that awful charity function together months ago: it says oh, I get it, you’re just like me. Says let’s handle this together, hey? It’s so unexpected that it feels like — not sunlight, exactly. Something tells Techno Phil wouldn’t appreciate that comparison. But starlight, maybe, on a night with no moon. Just enough to light the path.
Techno’s been doing this on his own since he woke back up in this body, playing ambassador and witch and bridge between the fey and the flesh, no matter that he never really had the training to do it. (It’d always been more of a someone’s gotta step up, and you’re here, kind of deal. There were no witches left in the city in this era, no matter that this — standing between a frightened fey creature and the mortals it might slaughter, guiding everything back down into peace — was literally their whole fucking job.) It’s so strange, so welcome, to shrug, say “Be my guest, man,” to go back to his emails no matter that he can still feel that fear working its way through the library, a front of storm clouds on the horizon. Techno does not know when he began trusting Phil quite so implicitly, but — it settles onto his shoulders, familiar, easy. Phil can handle this. Techno’s got stupid legalese emails to send.
Phil grins again, shadowed by that great dark suggestion of feathers, and then turns to leave the room; it’s almost, almost —
For the first time, Techno thinks, or lets himself think, It could be him. He has known smile-like-bones-in-grave since he was nothing, since both of them were spun out of belief and cleverness and magic in the recesses of the Feywild. He has happened upon stranger-in-dark-night in every lifetime since, growing within a human body until his true form broke its boundaries, moving amongst the humans until he finds him — and Phil bears those wings, and Phil-the-journalist with Phil’s quick-sharp-laugh is something fey, his true form a forgotten suggestion against the backdrop of the world. Techno watches him leave the room, thinking, What if it’s you?
But what if it’s not, he reasons, guilt squirming in his stomach. Phil’s Phil. Techno doesn’t make friends like these often, especially not those who fall into that strange place with him so easily, a relationship which could be a different thing each morning but goes bone-deep no matter the season. Abruptly, Techno considers that he does not want to demand Phil be anything other than what he is.
Laughter-like-scythe has always come back to Techno, will always come back to Techno. And Techno’s waited for him almost thirty years already, this time around, playing at a life like a good little changeling. He went to law school, gods-and-courts’ sake — can imagine the eye-roll that would get him, the wave of fondness draped about both of them like wings. Techno misses him fiercely, that fae creature who is everything Techno is not and half the things he is besides, who is made out of the same fabric and has been by him since the beginning of them both — but he’s patient. He will not love him any less. And Phil is here, and real, and brilliant. And maybe, maybe, it’s him.
The presence of wings. The shadow of feathers. Not enough to be sure, but just enough to hope.
Phil slips back into the study room three quarters of an hour later, unruffled and almost seeming sated, a little gleeful. “Oh, come on, really,” Techno says before he can think better of it — now that he’s seen it, it’s hard not to make out the edges of that glamoured trueform, the shape if not the details. “Please tell me you’re not one of those guys who thinks the easiest way to get ‘em to chill out is by fucking them.”
“If it works, it works,” Phil says, grinning, unrepentant.
Techno rests his face on his laptop keyboard, probably drafting an illegible stream of letters to some poor barrister who’s emailed through their outline for the PCC hearing tomorrow. Problem is that Phil’s — kind of right, anyway. Mostly when there’s real danger it’s because some changeling doesn’t know the limits of their own body yet, is afraid of their new form, is taking it out on anything human around them without even realising; sometimes it honestly does work to touch them, help them feel it, and then, well, one thing leads to another. “We’re so not qualified for this,” he says. No doubt a witch would look down their nose at them for handling it that way, but there are no goddamn witches any more, so the fae that are still here have got to do what they’ve gotta do.
“Nah,” Phil says, easy, familiar. It occurs to Techno that they haven’t really talked about it, only done that mutual looking respectfully thing at the shape behind each of their glamours; still, it’s effortless to commiserate now, to fit Phil into that place in his head where he puts the rare few other fae who choose to stay in the city longer than they have to. Phil adds, with that sharp teasing edge that still delights Techno anew every time he hears it, “I think you pressed send with your ear, Tech.”
“Fuck me,” Techno grouses immediately, sitting upright. He does not think about the way Phil’s eyes linger on him after he’s said it — not even as though playing off the accidental innuendo, but more wondering. A funny sort of hope to the edge of him, as Techno looks back for just a moment, flinches, fixes his eyes on his court email and prays he can find the un-send button before it times out.
Techno, a sort-of changeling straddling the fae and the real, knows how to hold two things as true at once. Here’s what happens, then: nothing changes and everything does. They are different and the same. Phil comes over for dinner one night and makes soup, and Techno gazes at him and thinks about how they’re both play-acting as mortal men and about how nothing has ever been more real, more important. The food sits warm and heavy in Techno’s belly. The belly is not his, is not even real, and yet he feels the sated comfort of it, an echo of the quick bright smile Phil flashes his way.
“It’s good,” Techno says, by way of answer, dragging another wedge of bread through what’s left of the broth.
Phil’s glamour is stronger tonight, more cleverly wound. Techno can barely make out its edges. He looks at Phil and sees the mortal form of him: freckles scattered down his shoulders and upper arms, the drape of a flowy sleeveless top around his upper half, his hair tied back into a low bun to show the shaved undercut beneath. Techno knows now that it’s not real; he kind of wants it to be. Phil-the-journalist had been funny, and kind in a sort of understated, hands-off way, where he’d just let Techno be, not pried, not demanded anything of him. Techno — law grad working as an associate in the County Court, he tells himself, because this self, this glamour, gets to have Phil-the-journalist, gets to touch him and believe that the skin-on-skin is something real — liked him so much. Likes him so much. Not love, not the all-consuming for-you-the-world loyalty rooted in his very core, not the way he loved and loves and will love stars-reflected-in-scythe —but he wanted and wants to be around Phil, to sit beside him while he sends his stupid emails, to have him stay over in Techno’s bed rather than on the couch.
Phil looks back at him, glamour perfectly woven right up until the moment it isn’t — Techno sees it fray at the edges. Or — no. Not fray, because that would imply some loss of control, some breaking — but it begins to unravel, until the workings of it are more easily picked apart, until there is a shape beneath it, visible in the way that a chair with a sheet thrown over it is visible by the way it changes the drape of the cloth. Phil’s human smile curves its way across his lips, and he quirks a brow — still glamoured, really, Techno tells himself. Anything else he can see is —
— is wholly deliberate, let’s be fuckin’ real here, Techno reminds himself. This man, this fey thing, is not an idiot; he knows that about Phil, knows it about whoever the fuck it is that sits underneath Phil’s skin. Techno says, wry, “You tryin’ to show off for me, or are you just getting lazy?”
“Two things can be fuckin’ true at once,” Phil says immediately. His voice is light, unfettered — teasing in a way that glimmers with light, like stars on water at night, their glitter distorted and reflected anew — but there’s a steadiness in the way he looks at Techno, an intention. Techno might almost think it was a declaration if he didn’t know better.
“Ugh,” Techno says, and pushes his bowl away, standing from his chair to hover at Phil’s side, uncertain of his welcome. They’re always touchy, but this feels — charged, somehow. Different. Just the same. “Quantum physics,” he says out loud, and Phil doesn’t demand his thought process or anything — just laughs again, thunks his head against Techno’s trunk once and then just rests it there, smiles into his stomach. Techno reaches an arm around him, splays his fingers across Phil’s bare shoulder. There’s a spark of static where glamour meets glamour.
Phil breathes into Techno’s torso, reaches up to rest his own hand against Techno’s hip. “Sometimes, Tech,” he says, with just enough of a laugh in his tone that Techno knows Phil would let him pretend they were both joking, if he wanted, “I really fucking wonder if you’re trying to get me to fuck you.”
Techno lets that sit in his chest for a moment, with a prickle of emotion he struggles to name. “What, by sayin’ quantum physics?” he demurs. Phil leans back a little to look up at him, and Techno’s grip tightens for a moment on his shoulder; when Phil deigns to raise a brow, Techno laughs, says, “Yeah, maybe that’s fair.”
“Look, tell me if I’m reading this wrong,” Phil says: easy, honest. “I’ll never bring it up again, mate, no worries, no questions asked. We can go back to whatever the fuck we’ve already been doing.” Above them yawns a conspicuous arc of empty space — too empty, trying too hard to convince mortal eyes that it’s empty, an empty space shaped like feathers. Techno glances up at it, away from Phil’s eyes and his glamoured form, and sees the barest hint of shadow.
He chews on his lip, mulls it over. Most people would want him to jump to an answer — but Phil’s not most people, never has been, even when Techno thought he was fully just some guy he wasn’t most people. “First of all,” Techno says, dragging it out, feeling out the words as he says them, “it’s a no on the whole never bringin’ it up again thing, I wanna make that clear. But not —” He grasps for the words, a way to give name to the waxing and waning, the phases of his attraction, the seasonal shifts. “I kinda — the vibes of what I’m after change day to day,” he says, and Phil makes a noise under his breath, like I’m listening. “Like, what I want us to be. Sometimes it’s, like, can we be completely asexual lovers, keep things totally PG13, y’know? And then sometimes I’m like —” Techno laughs then, mostly caught off guard by how comfortable he feels, how much he’s just letting himself say. “Sometimes I’m like, damn, wouldn’t it be kinda pog if we were friends with benefits. Like, full 180, yes sex, no — holding hands and gazin’ sappily into my eyes.”
“Sure,” Phil says. He’s grinning, in the low lights of Techno’s apartment, glamour dancing around both of them; Techno wonders what he looks like, himself, if there’s some fraying going on on his part as well.
He gathers himself, sweeps his hand down the satisfying length of Phil’s bicep, more to soothe himself than to feel Phil up — still, two things can be true. “And then sometimes I’m like, hey, Phil, please fuck me into the ground while telling me you love me and stroking my hair, y’know?”
“Sure,” Phil repeats, his eyes creased with his smile and stained fey-silver. He pulls away from Techno to extricate himself from the chair, and Techno gazes after him helplessly for approximately three seconds too many before going to grab the empty soup bowl; Phil beats him to it, slides it out of the way and gets to his feet in one quick moment, says, “I made the mess, I’ll do the dishes.”
“You’re literally a guest,” Techno says.
“You keep telling yourself that,” Phil says over his shoulder, halfway to the sink.
Later, Phil presses a glamoured shoulder against Techno’s own, the two of them touching on the couch — amicable, gentle, the presence of Phil’s form filling the room but not quite unveiled. (Techno doesn’t want to ask. Beside the unspeakable rudeness of it — he thinks he might be past that hurdle anyway, the way Phil’s practically flaunting it, as if challenging Techno to ask — he doesn’t know if he wants to see, wants to know. Something about Schrodinger — as long as Techno doesn’t know what Phil’s unglamoured form looks like, he can fill in anybody he likes. Can almost believe that Phil is someone else, someone Techno has known since the dawn of himself — time runs differently in the Feywild — rather than someone Techno has known since a charity event and a pizza date and a few months in the city.)
Phil says, quiet, “You good, Tech?”
“Stellar,” Techno says reflexively, grinning, then winces. (He can’t remember actually lying to Phil before, didn’t know it would slip out with such ease; he thinks he might have never tried.) Techno rolls his shoulders, tries to settle into his glamoured form more wholly. It’s hard, with the sensation of Phil’s wings looming over the room, an invitation or a challenge or — or something, reminding Techno of what he is, beneath his belief-spun flesh. Techno says, the words clumsy on his lips, “Just — missing someone.”
A moment later, it occurs to him it’s probably bad form to admit to the guy you’re all but cuddling with that you’re thinking about someone else — but Phil only smiles, and it’s not that flash of teeth he gives in laughter either. It’s something slower, more considered, almost wistful. “Yeah,” Phil says, and slides an arm around Techno’s midsection; the sensation is impressively real, tactile, a weight that translates from Techno’s body to his self with startling ease. Like a wing thrown over Techno’s true-fey form. Phil knocks his forehead against Techno’s shoulder, then says, “I’ve got a — a couple people I’m missing. Left one back in you-know-where.” His voice is thick with a sort of careful weight, like he’s considering each word. “She’s a queen, so she doesn’t come through, and I — but I’m hers, y’know.”
Techno thinks of blade-beneath-cloak, thinks of the oath he had taken to Death, queen of her shadowed court, and wonders. “Yeah,” he says, then quiet, almost searching, “I had a friend like that.”
Phil looks at him then, looks hard, and Techno wants to squirm away from his gaze — hates being seen like that, the weight of Phil’s stare like something burning. His hold on his glamour feels tenuous. And Phil’s lips part, and Techno thinks, maybe, maybe — but can’t be sure, can’t swear to it. What would he be, if he looked at Phil, this quick beautiful fae thing, and saw only someone else? Who would he be, if he called Phil by someone else’s name?
Feeling as though he’s failed some test, but unable to weather that stare, Techno looks away.
Phil’s breath hisses through his teeth — and the breath is unnecessary, and the teeth are glamoured, and the sound is a clever translation into the real-world around them. For a moment, guilt lingers so thick in the air that it’s nigh tangible. Then Phil says, his tone so light that it’s painfully deliberate, “Funny, that,” and reaches up, tugs Techno towards him, kisses him carefully, gently. Just for a moment. Barely a brush, lips on lips — and Techno’s throat is a tight tangled lump of some feeling he cannot name.
He reaches back for Phil, kisses him again, not so much because he’s really into lips touching lips at the moment but because it’s easier than words, the way to say I love you, I want you, however and whenever you’ll have me that’s closest at hand. He doesn’t want to put words to it. Doesn’t think he could do it justice — not with the ghost of iridescence-on-feathers settling on his shoulders, not with the shadow of Phil’s wings arching over them both. Phil pulls away after a long moment, tilts his head, gazing at and through Techno as though searching for some truth there — but must be satisfied by what he finds, because he moves closer to Techno now, kisses him again, again. They move together on the couch, neither of them deepening the kiss — Techno tastes only glamour, hates that he can almost see through it, wants to let it be enough.
He says, feeling faintly wretched, “I really like you, Phil.”
“Not my name,” Phil murmurs, with a choked wet laugh. His hand is splayed across the nape of Techno’s neck, faintly possessive like scruffing a kitten, his fingers teasing through the hair that drapes over both of their skin. It isn’t even real. But the sensation soothes him, and Techno presses against it, closes his eyes.
“Not mine either,” he says, as though it’s news to either of them.
This time, they fall asleep in the bed rather than on the couch — not tangled together, but Techno finds himself settled by Phil’s presence, by the shadow of wings on the walls.
When he wakes, Phil’s already gone, but he’s left a note — and there’s coffee in the kitchen, and leftover breakfast in the fridge. Techno regards the cold omelette as though he’s been handed a bouquet of flowers, and feels his own glamour tight around him, stifling, and thinks, I miss you.
He means Phil, and he means pilgrim-under-storm-front, and he means certainty. And then he wraps himself back up in flesh and goes to work, and for the first time he does not see his eyes in every face, does not see his teeth in every laugh — only looks at the boy on the tram, or the woman at the bar table, or the bailiff he sees every Wednesday when they’re on the same courtroom as Techno, and thinks, You’re not Phil.
Months are weeks are days, and all of them pass; today, the world is holding its breath, the sky shuttered with cloud but not quite stormy, breeze stirring the hot, muggy air. Techno glares out the open window, coffee mug in hand. For once he’s up earlier than Phil, and the coffee’s a little burnt because he’d gotten distracted halfway through putting on the pot, and the touch of the Feywild upon the world hangs low and close to the ground like the warm breath of a living thing.
When Techno opens the window, the city, its concrete and metal, smell like petrichor and jasmine; impossibly, wattle blossoms and dandelion seeds dance on the air, even this high up. Glamour sits thick and intoxicating on Techno’s tongue. It tugs at the edges of his own, this ambient power — he could look like anything, wear any face, dance in circles in Fed Square. He feels his grimace and the way it tugs at his flesh, a little too lopsided to be a convincing human mouth, and drags the window shut before he can get any stupid ideas.
At least it’s a Saturday. All he needs to do is check if the transcripts from the hearing yesterday have come through yet, pass ‘em on to the right people — nothing he needs to do face to face — and then he can go deal with whatever’s come undone this time, spilling fey portals through the centre of the city. Techno drags a hand over his jaw, mostly to remind himself that the hand and the jaw are still there, then downs his mug in one bitter gulp.
He spends a few minutes sitting at the kitchen counter with his laptop, fidgeting as ambient glamour leaks through the closed window into the apartment — closes it, having done what he needed to, just as Phil emerges from the bedroom looking simultaneously half-asleep and blisteringly, stunningly awake. Phil’s glamour is the most tangled Techno has ever seen it — his eyes gleam fey-silver, his teeth are too sharp, there’s something off about his proportions. He’s beautiful in the way a well-kept knife is beautiful. Want swells sharp and sudden in Techno’s chest, and he says, scrambling for something, anything, to joke about, “Lookin’ good.”
He doesn’t know what Phil sees when he glances back at Techno in return, and tries not to guess — only focuses on the careful tapestry of his human body, the shape and weight it’s supposed to carry. Phil’s eyes glow bright enough that his skin looks faintly backlit. “We should probably go fuckin’ handle that, mate,” he says, and even his voice is unglamoured — it strikes into Techno’s mind rather than filtering through the ears he’s built, each word closer to a thought-symbol-impression than a collection of sounds.
“I was waiting for you to get up,” Techno says, trying to make himself believe it. Phil wrinkles his nose at the scent of the lie — an acrid thing filling the room between them, the glamour thick enough to give it substance. “Sorry. Uh. I didn’t want to — I was gonna go on my own.”
“You don’t want me to see what you’ve got beneath that,” Phil says bluntly. He rolls his shoulders; the shadows of wings move behind him. “Look, Tech, I’m never going to — I won’t make you show me anything. I wouldn’t do that to you. But I just — I want you to know that I’m not going to give a shit, whatever I see.”
“Yeah,” Techno says, throat tight. “Yeah, okay.”
“Anyway,” Phil says, and gratitude swells hard and uncomfortable in Techno’s chest at the diversion; Phil crosses the room to pour himself coffee. Techno watches his glamour reassemble itself as he goes through the motions. He knows the sensation well, of winding yourself back into place, using a familiar touchstone as the spool on which the glamour is spun — but it’s jarring to see it on someone else, the process of it. He watches the feathers all but erase themselves from the eaves, the proportions of Phil’s form reassert themselves. Only then, of course, does Techno realise he’d noticed the feathers at all.
He waits long enough for Phil to down that first mug of coffee, and then the two of them take to the city — crammed in the metal lift, its cold bite sharper than usual in comparison to the glamour roiling thick and omnipresent outside of it. Where Phil steps, weeds drag themselves upwards through the cracks in the footpath, then wither as fast as they’d grown. Techno does not want to know what’s happening in his own wake. They follow the trail of the Feywild to the centre of the city, the path as easy to tread as the way home.
There is a fairy circle written along the railways. Techno finds it first, a little toadstool pert and flush with life on the stone steps of the station — everything in his body, his real body, screams threshold and demands that he not cross it. Another reason to uproot this thing, then; Techno’s gotta take the train to his court on Monday. “Phil,” he thinks more than says, but somehow it must work its way from his lips or his soul and into the world, because Phil turns towards him, the arch of his wings swaying towards Techno like the turning of a heliotrope to the sun.
“You always were the best at spotting this shit,” Phil says, fond enough to break a lesser fae.
“Yeah, yeah,” Techno says, kneeling to have a better look at the thing. No doubt it’s sprung up all the way around the city loop — fairy circles love to find rings that someone’s already made for them and coloured in with belief, knowledge. Millions of people tread the city loop each day, know its shape; it’s prime pickings. He unfolds himself, then — at first a little higher than he should be, before he remembers to cram himself back into human proportions — and says, “Wait. What did you say?”
This close, with this much glamour sticky and sweet in the air, he thinks he can taste what Phil’s feeling — at first an idle hesitance, and then the cold, familiar shock of guilt, like the slamming down of a portcullis, like the plunge into an icy lake. The colour does not drain from Phil’s face, because Phil has very carefully spun his face into its customary shade — but Techno feels the joy go out of him. Phil says, then, or thinks — either way, it’s thick with shame, embarrassment — “Techno, Tech. I’m — I’m so fucking sorry.”
Techno takes a second, breathes in some stillness. There’s a crowd, of course, it’s the middle of the city — but they flow around and about Phil and Techno, effortlessly diverted. Their glamours are temperamental today, made so by the thick fey presence in the air, but powerful. So Techno stands on the footpath. Something is tugging at him, like the edge of truth, and he lets the shape of it grow inside him for a moment.
“It’s okay,” he says, first, trying to show Phil he means it. Then, not quite wondering, he says — “What, I remind you of someone?”
Phil swallows. Glamour ripples around them, but Techno gazes through it — he’ll see what Phil wants to show him, no more, no less. He can almost see the twist of Phil’s embarrassment writ through the air. The silence is a kind of answer — Phil glances away, then back at Techno, rueful but wry, and then says, brisk and upbeat, “Well, let’s — d’you think this is all around the city loop, probably?”
“Oh, course,” Techno says, abruptly reminded that Phil is not, in fact, inside his head.
Phil makes as if to move away, then hesitates, probably when he spots the way Techno’s rooted — gazing at him, wondering. Techno looks back. At every shape of him — the warm lean shape of Phil’s body, the looming rippling thing beyond it, their shared half-laugh of a grimace. It could be him, Techno thinks, could be you, and tastes the shape of the words. What would he do if it was, if Phil were that peal-of-blade-like-bell fae thing that Techno has always known — if they had always been the same? Laugh, probably. A soft kind of settling joy. Techno can almost feel the weight of it, one mote of warmth and then another, drifting one by one to rest upon his shoulders like the ground beneath a shaken blossom-branch. What if he’s not, Techno thinks.
If he’s not, then — then Phil, brilliant impossible fey Phil, will know Techno thought he might’ve been some other guy, and there’ll be a moment where it’s really gods-damned awkward, and isn’t that where they already are? When Phil had said you always were — and cut himself off. And Techno had let him, had said It’s okay as a matter of first recourse. Hadn’t minded overmuch. And if Techno — asked, wondered, and was wrong, then Phil — would stay, Techno realises abruptly. Would shrug and smile and say something like sorry to disappoint, Tech, and they’d go on. And he’d still come home to Techno’s in the evenings.
Techno chews on the inside of his cheek, reminds himself of the flesh there. “Phil,” he says, “it can wait a sec. Come here?”
There’s a question in Phil’s eyes, but he comes without asking it: down the steps one at a time, then stepping gingerly into Techno’s space, far enough away that he won’t touch Techno without meaning to, close enough that he could. Techno looks down at his glamoured body, up at the suggestion of him, and thinks we’d be okay, thinks I trust you enough that we’d be okay.
He does not know. He isn’t sure. But abruptly it comes to him like this: there are a thousand ways in which Techno could be wrong, and he thinks he could weather any of them with Phil at his side. Phil, who slots in place with Techno like something that had been cut away from him to begin with; Phil, just as he is, as glamoured as he’d let Techno have him. Techno’s stomach roils with something like vertigo, but he trusts the fall.
“I think it’s you,” he says. “And I think I’m who I remind you of. And I think I — wouldn’t mind too much if I’m wrong, you know.” He takes a breath to fortify himself, adds, “Either way, it’s you. That’s good enough for me.”
Miller was wrong, of course — Techno wouldn’t know him blind, not with glamour in play, not when their very beings were spun out of belief and want and dream. But Techno thinks he’d like him blind, would love him blind. Doesn’t need to recognise him to warm to the peal of his laughter, the dry curve of his humour, the shape of his lips; Phil had made him food, and Techno, knowing he was fey, knowing they both were, had taken it and eaten it and said thank you. Techno, knowing and not knowing what Phil was, had let him cross his threshold regardless.
Phil’s skin is gold and his eyes are lit with that uncanny silver. Something too complex to unpick flits across his face and flees, and Techno watches its path, feels as though he is holding a breath he doesn’t need to take. “Tech,” Phil says, or forms the shape of, equal parts aloud and wordless — and the name presses against Techno’s glamour, tries its shape.
Techno steadies himself against the sensation, the great and terrible feeling of it, the tug of a name that means too much to him to entirely be a lie. It presses against the edges of him, ruffles his glamour like stroking against the grain of something’s fur. This name has sway within him, but not power. He hadn’t cared for the pseudonym until he’d heard it from Phil’s lips — not the first time, or the second, but gathering more weight each time Phil drew breath in its shape. Now it drags at his edges, almost like a question.
Phil, in a voice made of shadow and starlight, says into Techno’s mind, I didn’t want to push you. I didn’t want to press. But —
Techno closes his eyes, feels the world unraveling around him, feels the shape of his tusks against his lips. No one is looking too closely today; the fairy circles had made sure of that. But Phil looks closely, and even blind, Techno can feel the weight of his gaze. Techno knows his voice, and always has. It’s remarkably simple, in the end: all Phil had to do was say a single unglamoured word, and Techno would have known him.
It’s you, Techno says. He reaches out, his glamoured form still but his true form moving beyond it, for that string that runs between their chests — a sweet blinding current of truth and hope and fear and belief, the linking together of them like the echo and its answer, like bloodshed and what follows in its wake. The link swims back into life, or wakes up from a long sleep, or runs between them anew; all of these things are true, because Techno has wanted them, or believed them, or hoped. Here is the truth: whatever had happened to it before, the current runs brilliant and swift between them now, and always will.
Techno offers that wordless thought-sign, Phil’s name that is not a name, more than Phil, more than truth: silhouette-on-the-hill, gleam-of-blade-beneath-cloak, stars-on-steel-on-shadow. The taste of it swells between them. Phil laughs aloud — in his mortal body, delighted; it takes Techno a second to remember how to open the relevant pair of eyes — and says, “I’d hoped. I wasn’t sure.”
Techno reaches for him, both glamoured and true — just to have him, to hold him. “Phil,” he says back, with tongue and lips and breath. The name settles between them, sweet and well-worn. He feels the way it tugs at Phil’s edges, spilling feathers into the air around them, gazes at the way they catch the light.
“I didn’t want to say anything,” he says. “In case you weren’t. Cause I —” Because he really liked Phil so gods-damned much, learning him anew. There is love so deep in his bones that it aches, but there is also that lighter, broader thing, that delight at a kindred spirit that swells to fit the whole of his chest. He knows Phil for what he is now, for the laughter-like-bones-in-grave beneath his flesh, and gazes at both of his forms at once. Each of them loved, Techno thinks. “What have you done to me, Phil,” he adds, using the name, aiming for despair, “you’ve made me sappy.” To the ear, it comes out flat and deadpan. Only Phil is privy to the starburst in Techno’s chest, the burning-bright fellow-feeling too complex and amorphous to name.
Gods, Phil says. He presses against Techno — his true shape against Techno’s own, only half-tangible with glamour so thick in the air, but Techno curls his fingers into the feathers just for the way he knows it will make Phil tremble. And Phil does shiver, gratifyingly, but then he doesn’t stop. Techno swallows, tries to press closer against him, to say without words that he is real, present, he promises. He’d make an oath if he thought Phil would ever want that of him. He knows he’ll never have to.
“You’re fuckin’ braver than me, Tech,” Phil says after a moment, his words hanging in the air. “I didn’t want to fuck this up with — with you, if I was wrong.”
Techno laughs. I wouldn’t call it brave, he says. Just — realised it’d all work out. If I was wrong. It’s too raw and close to put words to, but he offers that moment of understanding to Phil, and feels the wordless press of Phil’s mind against him in response. Phil’s love is a low-humming ember of a thing, almost quiet until it flares with violent and sudden fierceness into a blaze. Techno has known this sensation in every age since he was born. He thinks, I should’ve seen it — at once he can trace the echoes of it to the shape of Phil’s laugher, the way he’d always looked at Techno.
He thinks, I couldn’t have seen it. He thinks, It doesn’t matter. I see it now.
(“I guess we — we have a fuckin’ circle to uproot, hey,” says scythe-through-storm-clouds, dragging himself back to his flesh with visible difficulty. Techno has never minded doing it, but Phil’s always been a little more uncertain — hates turning his blade on his own kind, especially here in the metal city where they’ve all gotta stick together as best they can.
Spill-of-sunset-over-horizon nudges scythe with gentle and teasing rebuke, says, “Someone’s got to do it.” It would turn the city inside out if left unchecked, eat mortals by the dozen. “Lesser evil.”
“Shut it,” Phil says, familiar, his mind elsewhere as they follow the trail into the train station. He glances over at red-sheen-on-blade with absent affection, says, “Would it kill fuckin’ witches to do their fuckin’ job,” mostly just to watch the way love breaks, like sunset through clouds, into Techno’s eyes as Phil says it.
“Shouldn’t take too long,” says Techno, says arteries-strewn-across-earth, with that wry imitation of ego he has always enjoyed to adopt. “Between you and me.”
“Nah,” scythe admits, reaching glamoured and hidden for his hand. “Still. It’s the principle of the thing.”)