Chapter 18

Haunting

hey went farther up the 6 line than Aix had been before, and Aix got to observe the population distribution a bit, though there wasn’t enough information to see a pattern, yet. René kept getting greeted, and kept introducing Aix as Our New Witch, and Aix kept chatting with everyone—because he couldn’t just not, he was chronically lonely, and polite, and he liked chatting with everyone—and he kept waiting for it to go bad, to go wrong, for him to get overstimulated or tired, but he didn’t. He got hungrier, but he had emergency snacks and a small water bottle, and so it was okay.

He learned that the werewolf pack lived farther out in the suburbs, and were mostly white. He learned that they were not nice, and nobody liked them, which was quite startling because Aix had never met a werewolf that wasn’t likeable, before. He met a few more of the knockerfae, a stunningly gorgeous black vampire whom even René only addressed as ‘Mistress’, and a nervous fox family that had moved to Baltimore only a month ago, and hadn’t met René yet. They had a couple babies, and Aix (who adored babies, and hadn’t seen any in years) cooed over them delightedly.

They were only one stop from their destination when a sidhe got on the train. By then, the car was half-full, and so there was an audible tense silence as the sidhe stepped through the doors; Aix looked up on reflex, and couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

A face he’d only ever drawn years ago. A face he thought he’d made up. Garnet-red curls fell in a frothing cascade around glowing white shoulders, eyes perfectly the colour of a Crayola cerulean coloured pencil, high arched brows, sharp-edged and thin, pointed and fashionably hooked ears draped in fine gold chains, and perfect beestung Jessica Rabbit lips covered in actual gilt as smooth as though it were molten.

Aix couldn’t look away, but it wasn’t for the normal reasons.

‘Prince Garnet??’ almost echoed, hanging brassy in the air. The sidhe looked confused, tilting his head, and Aix felt a flash of embarrassment before he realised there was no reason Garnet would be able to recognise him. But he was coming over anyway, his clunky platform boots moving as lightly as ballet slippers, the chains hanging off his raver pants and the kandi bracelets all up his arms rattling and clinking musically rather than with cheerful but ordinary clacking. He sat down in the seat across from them, leaning forward and peering at Aix.

‘Have we met? I feel like we’ve met…’

‘Um. I. Not directly, I don’t think. Always wanted to meet you, but he kept evading it. We… might have talked on the phone once? In 2007?’

‘Oh!’ He said, gasping hugely and drawing back, eyes wide. ‘Oh you drew such a nice picture of me! I remember!’ He looked frightened. ‘Is…’ He got up and gestured for René to move over, and squeezed between him and the edge of the two-person seat, leaning very close to Aix to whisper, fearfully. ‘Is it gone?’

‘It?’

‘The thing. The thing that was eating my heart. Did you escape? It ate your heart too, oh… but you seem better now!’

That confirmed it. Auntie Sam had… well, you didn’t speak its name. Or think it too loudly. ‘Yeah, I escaped a few years ago. Got a divorce. I thought it had made you up. Glad to be wrong,’ Aix added quickly. ‘But um—oh, okay,’ he said, as Garnet was suddenly hugging him, practically sitting on his lap.

‘But you’re all different now!’ Garnet said, gesturing with one unfairly beautiful hand to Aix, managing to indicate in one sweeping motion the change of clothes, the chair, and quite possibly the last thirteen years.

‘I’d rather not go over everything from the past thirteen years, most of them were unpleasant. But I’m Aix now, and I’m the town witch, because I caused Ana Heeren’s death, and René is taking me on a date.’

‘Stars!’ Garnet said, as the train stopped. ‘I shall have to come visit more often!’ and he got off the train without another word, sort of flitting like a little butterfly. Aix felt unoffended—he sort of knew that’s just what Garnet was like, even though he couldn’t remember how or when he’d learned that.

‘You are full of surprises,’ René said, as the train started moving again. ‘I will not ask how you met, but it is quite auspicious you already know one of the royal court.’

‘I don’t know how much of what I know is true, though it seems like the stuff I do remember is,’ Aix said, thinking of the way Garnet had been dressed. ‘Does he like those little vending machines with sticky hands and bouncy balls?’

‘Oh yes,’ René said. ‘It made people like Ana underestimate his intelligence. As does the love of attending raves, and doing ecstasy.’

‘Living the dream,’ Aix said, admiringly. He’d always wanted to do the raver thing, just because the way they dressed, the dancing, the drugs, the preponderance of glow-in-the-dark and blacklight neon… it all seemed like a lot of fun. He’d even made a little androgynous raver character named Taylor when he was a teen, and daydreamed about when he’d get older and be able to drive and go dancing and have fun.

He never had, and sometimes he sort of grieved that; but now he knew of at least two clubs where he would feel comfortable getting up and dancing a little bit if a good song came on, even if he’d lost his taste for rave style specifically. Or rather, diversified, because of continuing to explore musical genres—something he’d started as a young teen wanting to see why all the adults he knew made so much of how terrible country and rap were.

‘Oh?’ René prompted, hearing Aix’s voice go soft and wistfully nostalgic.

‘I used to be very into the idea of going clubbing and just dancing all the time. I loved dancing, when I was little. Dancing and gymnastics were my favourite things to do.’

‘Oh la, chéri…’ René said softly, putting a hand on Aix’s. He wasn’t entirely certain why Aix could no longer stand for a few seconds, or walk more than a few feet—one did not ask—but to know that Aix had once been not just ambulatory but a dancer…. He knew from Dmitri that pity was rude, but his heart did break in sympathy. ‘I know what it is to be kept from what brings you joy,’ he said, squeezing Aix’s hand in his own gently.

‘Well,’ Aix said, cheerfully, ‘With enough physical therapy and assisted training, I can do aerial silks and swimming again, so,’ he shrugged. ‘I mean yeah it sucks, and I miss being able to walk four miles a day or do tap dance and a handspring, but eh. I have a lot of other fun things I do now, so it evens out. Nobody’s eight years old forever, you gotta deal with your body stopping being able to do stuff. And Dmitri promised he’d teach me old-style ballet when I was cleared by a PT. Not the jumps, obviously, but just some of the gentler stuff that stretches your hips and helps your posture.’ Saying all of it was necessary, or he’d spiral down into grief; and he was tired of grief. Being sad about what couldn’t be didn’t solve anything, and Aix had been a lifelong practiser of optimism.

‘He is a beautiful dancer,’ René said, not hiding his warm tones. ‘You know, when the pole came to be, and after I put one in the club, I invited him to try it?’

‘Oh my god,’ Aix said, beaming and leaning forward in delighted anticipation. ‘And? And?’

‘And he is English,’ René said, with a laugh that was as gay as it was petty. ‘ “A ballet dancer does not go about undulating against a pole like some kind of—of stray dog!” ’

Aix cackled, as much at René’s rather good impression of Dmitri as the story itself. ‘Oohhh god. Oh. Oh man. Victoria did say he was stroppy before she tamed him.’

René chuckled. ‘Ah, but it is fun to wind him up, you know. He blushes so prettily when you say filthy things to him.’

‘Oooh,’ Aix said, then, ‘I wish you’d say filthy things to me,’ fell out of his mouth without his permission, because he was not used to being taken seriously.

Oh fuck.

But Aix didn’t say anything, even though René let the silence go on for some time, and Aix just kept—looking at him. He didn’t know how to follow up with anything. He didn’t know other than making eye contact, and keeping it, and hoping to god¹ that René remembered what Aix had said about eye-contact being extremely deliberate.

René arched a gorgeous brow, his lips parting in surprise, before a slow curl of a smirk started to tug them over on one side, and suddenly he was On and Aix was wet.

‘Right here, petit?’ René managed to be heard despite murmuring low, his hand still holding Aix’s, but now his thumb was brushing softly against the inside of Aix’s wrist, and shivery pleasure was making tingles dance over Aix’s skin, as René turned a little more toward him, leaned closer, his eyes so intense, so gorgeous and depthless-dark….

‘I could you know,’ he went on, in a perfectly, seductively, villainously wicked purr, ‘no one would stop me. No one would dare… but,’ he said, remembering just in time that Aix was not yet brave enough to be shown off, ‘I think I would rather have you all to myself, perhaps after dinner….’

The train stopped, and René lifted Aix’s hand to his lips, brushing a kiss across those lovely knuckles. ‘This is our stop,’ he said, still in that same purr, still trapping Aix with his gaze—he didn’t have many lovers who enjoyed that particular power, but he’d already been gifted with knowing Aix was one of them. He only held it a few more moments, before getting up and releasing Aix as he let go of that pretty hand.

Aix did not take long to recover, for which René was glad, and was soon out of the train, wheeling over to the end of one of the carved wooden benches and putting the brakes down. René followed, sitting on the end of the bench.

‘I’m okay,’ Aix said, after the train had pulled out of the station again. ‘Just—processing.’ They brushed the backs of their fingers against one another lightly in a repetitive fidget, not really looking at anything, just staring off into the middle distance. ‘I haven’t—I don’t get pursued. Ever. So it’s a little. It’s not computing. That you mean it.’ Because I’m nobody, I swear I’m nobody, echoed in his head again—but at least he didn’t say it, this time.

René thought on how to answer, carefully. He touched Aix’s shoulder, over the layers of black fabrics, and said, ‘Well, I have all the time in the world to keep pursuing you.’

Aix smiled, looking up at him, and got out of the chair to join René on the bench, so he could hug him comfortably, wrapping his arms around René’s chest. René held him.

‘This would be easier if I were dressed to match you, I think,’ Aix said, after a moment, before pulling away, and thinking about that thought a bit, turning it over in his hands.

‘Oh? In panniers and corset and ficu?’

‘No, no,’ Aix said, on half a laugh. ‘In a suit, with a froth of lace at my throat.’

‘Oh,’ René sighed, ‘such a turn of phrase, cher.’

‘You just brought me to the brink of orgasm with like six words and a hand-kiss and “a froth of lace at my throat” is what undoes you?’ Aix teased.

‘Ah, but Domine never has poetry written for him, petit—he is the one that does the writing.’

‘Mmm, can I call you that? Domine?’

René raised his brows, glancing at Aix. ‘It comes with a rôle, petit. Do you want it so soon?’

‘I need it,’ Aix said, pressing closer. ‘Vanilla power dynamic is… weird and.’ He made a face, sticking out his tongue a little bit. ‘Icky.’

A gentle chuckle, and René’s arm went around his shoulders. ‘But you would rather do it dressed a pretty little fop?’

‘I…’ Aix sighed. ‘Yeah. I can’t—like, right now I don’t own clothes that do that, because for the past few years I haven’t really been…’ Aix trailed off, trying to figure out how to phrase it. ‘I’ve been too busy surviving to do sexual displaying,’ he said, as always feeling frustrated that the only way he could talk about this sort of thing was resorting to naturalist language used on things like birds. ‘I haven’t had the resources to produce sexual display plumage.’ And it took a lot of them—suits were difficult when you were fat, and doubly when you were bottom-heavy, and even worse when you wanted alternative fashion like steampunk or goth. A good suit was tailored. A better suit was bespoke. Neither were in Aix’s budget when he could barely afford socks, and he noticed when things didn’t fit him how they should, which was an unfortunate curse of having been brought up by affluent women who liked to sew clothes as a hobby.

But, the ugly part of his brain that he hated, that viewed people as a source of material needs (because he’d been poor so long, and usually charity was all he had to survive on), pointed out, but: René might buy him things. If he put out, René might buy him lots of things…. Aix pointedly ignored that voice. It was hard. It was frustrating, because he knew he could never be charming enough or social enough to actually have that work. Sooner or later—usually within seconds—the façade came down and everything was sabotaged before it began, because Aix could not lie to people.

He probably should have connected that with I’m A Changeling sooner than just now.

‘You shall have the resources soon, mon cher petit paradisier,’ René said, and did not miss how Aix seemed to react badly to it—from the sudden bite of fear in his scent, the promise had triggered some terrible memory, perhaps of someone before he had been forced to rely upon. Erastos had warned him of that, and René was not unfamiliar with boys who had been inflicted with terrible sugar daddies. ‘I know you do not believe me,’ he said, stilling but not pulling away, ‘that is wise. You are providing equal exchange already, these are not gifts.’

‘I’m a utility, and vampires are good at maintaining utilities,’ Aix said, which seemed to make him feel better, despite it sounding rather horrifically objectifying to René. But if it was what helped Aix, then René would remember. ‘You need electricity, you need water. You need a witch.’

‘I do. And I enjoy the care and keeping of submissive boys for its own sake, even if you weren’t a witch.’

That seemed to get through—the last of the tension drained from Aix’s shoulders, and he hugged René again. ‘God, I’m so tired of being traumatised,’ he muttered. ‘Like I’m not even upset by the trauma itself anymore I’m just. Tired. Of it.’

‘I believe that is a sign that it is healing,’ René chuckled. ‘It was for me.’

Aix smiled at him, granting another tiny moment or two of those big blue eyes shining at René, before they flicked away again, and Aix got up, going to sit in his chair once more.

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