BBB fic: Men And Foxes: A Bordertown Tale (Spencer/Mike Pedicone, AU, 1/3)
This is my Big Bang story! There are many like it, but this one is mine!
Featuring Spencer Smith as a halfie, Mike Pedicone as that guy most of you who’ve never heard of, and a whole new world to play in WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Men and Foxes: A Bordertown Tale
By stonedtodeath and iphignia939
SUMMARY: How Spencer Smith found true love and lost his fur. A Bordertown AU. [Spencer Smith/Mike Pedicone (The Bled); 21,141 words. Worksafe.]
AUTHOR’S NOTES: This is Mike Pedicone, drummer for The Bled. The Bled has, much like Mindless Self-Indulgence, toured with My Chemical Romance in the past and played Warped for the last several years. (See? We are *not* completely crazy. Nyah.)
This is Mike playing drums. This is Mike half-naked outside, being hot like burning, and this is a screencap of Mike taken from Google Images. Don’t ask me where, just look. NGGGGGH.
This is Spencer Smith. If you don't know who he is, this is possibly not the story you should be reading. (For the record, this is Spencer as a halfie. Kind of. Thematically. In that I'm not using my nonexistent Photoshop skills to give him pointed ears.)
Disclaimer 1: The Bordertown world was created by, and is copyrighted by, Terri Windling. The world, its landmarks and characters are used with her permission only. All rights to Borderland material are reserved by Ms. Windling and the authors of the Borderland books: Borderland, Bordertown, Life on the Border, Elsewhere, Nevernever, and Finder. (As this is a shared universe, all characters and situations in the Bordertown universe are subject to the whims and caprice of Ms. Windling, who seems uniformly awesome about the whole thing. A much longer and more detailed disclaimer can be found here.)
Disclaimer 2: Don't google yourself.
There was reality and there was reality; and some things were more real than others. - Neil Gaiman, “Anansi Boys”
Part 1: Spencer
Somehow, Spencer isn't at all surprised to find that there's a guy at one of the back booths, nursing his cup of coffee and fucking up his entire goddamn night.
He turns to look at Gabe. "You're sure I can't-"
"No," Gabe says, already shrugging into his hoodie. It's emblazoned with a giant gold lame cobra, which does not surprise Spencer even a little. If humans could have magical powers - outside of Ms. Wu and a few specific others, that is - he would say that Gabe's was to find any and all cobra-related pieces of clothing in the city limits, like some kind of tacky homing beacon. But Gabe has as much magic in him as Spencer has talent at spot-welding, so that's sort of doubtful. "Not my rules, man. We're closed to new customers, but you've gotta stay 'til he's ready to go."
Spencer pinches the bridge of his nose. "Please?" He's not begging, but it's close.
Gabe grins. "You're cute when you're desperate." He zips the hoodie up to his chin. "Sadly, I still have to say no. Word gets around we gave someone the bum's rush, we're both in for a world of shit."
"Gabe-"
"It's a cup of coffee. How long can he nurse a cup of coffee?"
"He's been here about two hours," Spencer says flatly. "So far."
"...oh." Gabe tries to look embarrassed. Tries to. "Um. Maybe someone will make an impression ball of the show?"
Spencer just shoots him a look. "What Soho kids go traipsing around with a fucking impression ball? And don't say Wentz," he warns, "because I love Pete, but sometimes he has more money than sense."
"Sorry," Gabe says, jamming his hat onto his head. "This is why I don't agree to do my friends favors." He leans over and kisses Spencer's cheek, too fast for Spencer to protest, and ducks out the front door.
Spencer sighs and wipes down the counter for what feels like the hundredth time. He doesn't even work at the Hard Luck, but Brendon's got a nasty case of the flu, and they can use the money. (Or, not money. The trading goods. Whatever, they can use it, they're down to canned beans and water. Canned beans and water. Honey, no.)
He washes the dishes Gabe left behind, and makes sure everything's set up for the morning crew. He checks the bathrooms for stragglers and general cleanliness - so far, so good - and neatens up the remaining booths. He reads ten pages of the Thomas Hardy he's studying for his Victorian lit class at the University Without Floors, and twenty pages of the shitty Laurell K. Hamilton novel he's reading for himself.
After all that, he steels himself to go over to the booth and ask, "Sir? Do you need anything?"
"Nah," the guy says, without looking up at him. He's engrossed in whatever he's reading, which is a good sign. In a person, anyway; in a customer, on a night when Spencer is working at job that isn't even his and is already running late for things he had planned, it kind of sucks. "I'm good."
Spencer, to his credit, does not immediately reach out and strangle him to death with Brendon's puppies-in-a-field-wearing-newsboy-caps apron. But it is close.
After a few more moments in which the only sound is the rustle of page on page, the guy seems to feel the weight of Spencer's shadow. He lifts heavy, straight lashes, and dark eyes look from beneath them. Unlike most of Bordertown's denizens, his scruff is neither two hopeful hairs or a skillful application of makeup. He curls up the cover of the book, showing a surprisingly sharp-edged illustration of a mouse with a nail in its heart. "It's an allegory."
Spencer blinks at him. He opens his mouth to ask, polite as he can, when he plans on leaving, but what comes out is, "An allegory for what?"
"What happens to you when you're just along for the ride." He smiles, his teeth bright and even. "Stay small, hide all the time, die anyway."
More blinking. "But if you're gonna die anyway," Spencer hears himself ask, "what's the point in needlessly getting hurt?"
"That's the nail." Strong fingers, stained with the blur of ink they've never quite figured out how to set properly despite much hair pulling and buckets of spelldust, open the pages. Panels of images, fine and clear as woodcuts and colored with far less skill, show the nail in a dozen places-hanging pictures, littering the floor, sitting unused in a toolbox, stinging a bare foot.
"Everyone's got one," he adds. "Sometimes it's useful, sometimes you don't even see it, sometimes it's a small pain. But if you're a mouse, it can kill you."
"Well, yeah, if it's to scale. The mouse is maybe three of those nails laid end to end." Spencer shakes his head. "...and I'm getting off-track. Do you want a refill?"
The guy grins again, sitting back. The overhead light gleams through short dark hair. He seems slightly self-conscious over the stool's squonk. "Okay...okay. If you'll-" quick breath "-have one with me." The way his eyes move is nervous, though it doesn't show, dark against dark.
"Fine," Spencer says, sighing a little. "Let me just-"
It takes a second for what the guy's said to hit his ears. When it does, Spencer stops and looks at him. His mouth falls open a tiny bit. "W-what?"
The guy straightens, scuffed boots hooking behind the ash column supporting the stool. Squonk. He rakes a hand over the top of his head, hiding his "Shit," behind it. "Forget it. I waited too long, right?"
"I didn't know you were waiting," Spencer says seriously. "You mean, like - like now?" He glances down at himself, in a ratty pair of jeans and a Cats Laughing shirt, and - oh my God - Brendon's puppies-and-newsboy-caps apron. God hates him.
"I spent fifteen minutes going, Is it still asshole to ask a waiter out? Did they edit that out of the Borderlands ed of Emily Post?" he blurts. "If you don't want to stick around work any longer than you have to, I-I heard there was a band at Danceland-"
"I'm not a waiter," Spencer says hurriedly. His face feels bright red, which stands out even more on him. Stupid halfie coloring. "I mean, I'm a waiter right now, because my roommate has the flu and I'm covering his shift. But I'm sort of...a student, I guess? In that this city doesn't really have a formalized, accredited college university, so it's mostly me learning whatever looks interesting at the University Without Floors and working as a clerk days, and oh my God I’m still talking."
The guy is still looking at him, but his entire face has undertaken a vital shift, like a haze filter on one of those movies they play on Good Tech Days at the Roxy. His eyes look wider, a space between his lips. "I'm Mike Pedicone."
"Spencer Smith." He wipes his hand on Brendon's apron and offers it. "And that's my real name. I have - not ID, I was born here. But you can ask people who know me. That's actually my name."
"I'm going to try not to tell you my name means anything cool," Mike says, wrapping fingers through Spencer's still warm from the side of his mug. He tips his head, studying Spencer's face. After a moment, he rolls his eyes slightly and makes the goal obvious--the elvish ear-check that's the savior (or doom) of B-town etiquette.
Spencer sighs and pushes his hair away from his ears. "Yes," he says patiently, "they're pointed. The fingers didn't give it away?" He lifts one hand and waggles them. They're not too thin or too pale, but they're just long enough that it looks strange on someone his height. Some of the kids he knew growing up were one way or the other - too human (blunt features and normal limbs but with an elvish cast to the eyes and ears) or too elf (long fingers, pale skin, pointed ears). He's not one way or the other. It's easier not to attract attention from any of the gangs if they can't tell what you are, is all. Not that it would matter; he's a halfie, he's bound to get shit from pretty much everyone, at one time or another.
"I'm sorry," Mike says at once, and he does sound it. "I should've just asked. Let me make it up to you?"
"It's okay," Spencer says. "It's classier than 'casually' asking where I'm from."
"I swear it was nothing more malicious than curiosity, but I still suck. Come on, come with me. The Mavens at Danceland. They're supposed to rip." He folds his hands over one another, as prim as a Catholic schoolboy, and blinks. "Please, sir. Please."
"I was supposed to see my friend's band," Spencer starts, the apology already forming in his voice. "They're-" He stops, thinks about it.
He really shouldn't. He's already missed half of Ryan's show; if he books it right now, borrows someone's bike on the way and rides hell-bent for leather the whole way, he'll...still come in at the end of the encore, when everyone's already started filing out. Crap.
Spencer bites his lip. "-they're probably already finished," he says, smiling at Mike. "Um. Let me finish up around here?"
"Shit," Mike says again, wiping his inky hands across his eyes. "No, you know what? I waited tables for years in Tucson. I can close up and you can go see his band. It's my fault you're late, right? Tell him you had a bad customer."
"I would've been late anyway." Not entirely a lie. If someone else had come in and stayed past closing, he would have been just as late. But it's a Friday night, so it's sort of doubtful; everyone has plans on Friday. Except him. "And it's my responsibility. I can't just let you close."
"Will he be worried if you don't show? I have a Warlock," he adds. "I could buzz out there and leave word. Where's he playing?"
"The Voivode Room, down on Chrystoble," Spencer says. "It's fine. He's there with his girlfriend. If I tell him it was a great show tomorrow, he'll say thanks." Ryan has eyes for no one but Keltie when she's in the room. It's really kind of sweet, especially after the slew of winners he tends to attract, but Spencer's not entirely convinced Ryan doesn't have her skin in a bag somewhere so she can't leave him. Seriously. Keltie. Way too close to “selkie” to be a coincidence.
Mike chuckles. "Young love. So do you need any help? Chairs turned up? Dishes washed? Sweeping up?"
Behind him, past the patchwork glass, a contingent of spellbikes floats, headed uptown. Their silence is as eerie as marshlights.
Spencer watches them go, then glances at the table. "Um. It's really just - I have to rinse out the coffee pot and put in a clean filter for the morning crew. Maybe two minutes, if you have to piss or something?"
"I may just have had enough coffee. You're not easy to ask out, you know."
Spencer looks at Mike, still blushing, and smiles a little. "If it was easy, there'd be no challenge." He moves too fast and brushes his lips across Mike's cheek, impulsively, then darts back out of reach. "Two minutes? You don't have to pee. You can wait for me at the door like a gentleman. Or something."
"I'll wait until the leaves all come down and cover me up," Mike says, and there's a certain fugitive softness in his eyes that saps the words of irony.
Spencer ducks into the kitchen, still smiling.
*
Halfway through the walk, Spencer realizes he can't shut up.
It's weird. It's weird in general, but it's really weird in this case, because Spencer, as a rule, is not chatty; and when he does talk, it's certainly not to total strangers, even if said total strangers sat in a booth for a couple hours nursing a cup of coffee and working up the nerve to ask him on a date. Not since-well. Not for a while now.
But here he is, yammering on about Bordertown.
"-of kids haven't grown up here. More and more, I think, since the city hasn't vanished and gone back to the World, but it's still not stable, you know, even with the Gate and the trains and stuff. Which is weird, because if we're stable enough to have currency, we should at least have more than a single generation of kids growing up here. Not that I'm a kid, Jesus, I'm 18, so-"
Oh my God, SERIOUSLY.
Spencer hauls himself in with an effort and feels himself flush. "And I'm talking like my string's been pulled! Um. Sorry."
"I like listening to you talk," Mike says, the constant smile that hovers in his eyes spilling over to his mouth. "I kind of wondered when I was watching you. You looked like you wouldn't talk to me. I'm basking."
"Wh-" Spencer blinks at him, frowning a little. "What do you mean, I looked like I wouldn't talk to you?"
"You have this closed way," Mike says consideringly, slowing to take in Spencer's face: his cool blue eyes, the way his lips press proudly. "I don't know. I'm not an elf, I'm not a halfie. I'm nothing special. You grow up here thinking that your human genome won't buy you shit."
“Not really.” Spencer wrinkles his nose. “It’s not - it wasn’t just humans. You ever see an elf light into a halfie kid sometime? It’s almost sad. They honestly feel bad for us, because we're not good enough. Like, racially. Humans, sure, some of them hate us, but with elves it's worse. They pity us." He tightens his hand in Mike’s, reflexively, then loosens it.
”Um,” he says again, flushing darker red. “Sorry.”
"Really?" Mike slows beneath the witchlight of one of the spell beacons they use to power streetlamps. It flickers the shapes of leaves on his face. "No-I don't know anything about being a halfie here. I guess we always think of it as-perfect, you know? Best of both worlds. Something special inside you, immortal blood. Like one of those adventure books."
"Not really immortal." Spencer wrinkles his nose. "I mean, I get hurt like anyone else. It's kind of - both? It's harder for me to get sick, but when I do, I'm out for weeks. I get injured. I get hungover when I drink too much, and I'm sort of allergic to cigarette smoke, and I can't fly." His sigh is wistful. "My little sister can. Lucky brat."
"Your little sister can-" Mike’s face shifts to tentative credulity. "No way."
"Barely." Spencer holds his fingers an inch apart. "She has to hit a magic updraft, and my dad's constantly freaking out that she’s gonna crack her head on the ceiling, but yeah."
"How does that work? With...do your parents..." Mike hesitates, his footsteps scraping to life on the wrinkled sidewalk again. Gravel grits under his sneakers. "Live together?"
"Uh, I hope so." Spencer raises an eyebrow at him (normal, boring, human eyebrows, thank you). "They're married, so."
"Hey, I don't know, okay? Most Bordertown kids don't exactly come from nuclear families."
"I don't expect you to." Spencer raises the other eyebrow, sounding amused. "We met, like, twenty minutes ago. You don't see me asking you questions about your family, do you? No. Because that requires appetizers. Appetizers at least."
Mike's arms fall, his eyes black pockets in the shadow of the tree. "Am I screwing this up already? Be straight."
Spencer stops and looks at him, startled. "I don't think so," he says honestly. "I don't know. It's been twenty minutes, like I said, and we've walked about three blocks." He shrugs. "But you have nice eyes, and your eyes go crinkly when you smile, so I'm cautiously optimistic." He tries to smile. "Plus, it's been a while since I flirted, so some of that's probably on me."
Mike touches his cheeks, testing the warmth in them. "Okay, good. Nothing unbearable yet. I can work with this." He flashes a smile. Spencer notices, distantly, that it makes his eyes crinkle, and tries not to start giggling. He is - no, dammit, *no*, he is *not* a seven-year-old girl with a unicorn Trapper Keeper. He is *not*.
Mike's laugh bubbles up in his throat, emitting as a squeak. Spencer stares at him, charmed. "Did you just *squeak*?"
"I wouldn't *squeak*," Mike says, eyes sparkling above the offended bar of his hand.
"You did! Just now!" He gives a little bounce. "You squeeeeaked."
“You lie! You lie! And they say faeries can't lie!"
"But I'm only haaaaaalf," Spencer sing-songs, grinning. His face might hurt tomorrow, but it's worth it for right now. "And neither half if lying, because the pretty man just squeeeaked-"
"Fine," Mike says, and gathers him in. The moon sets in Spencer's bright, pale eyes. "I squeaked. What do you win? Or do I win, for acquiescing?"
Spencer freezes for a second. It's been months since someone did anything more than playfully shove his shoulder; the motion is unfamiliar enough that it makes him stop. Then he looks at Mike - dark eyes, amazing smile, reads for *fun* - and makes himself relax. "You win," he says, smiling. "Within reason, anyway."
Mike's fingers loosen on his biceps. He can feel the shape of them as the blood flows in. "I'm sorry," Mike offers, reading the stillness in Spencer's face.
"Don't be." Spencer blinks at him. "I'm...I haven't dated anyone in a while, and I'm not particularly touch-y with my friends." He looks at Mike, hopeful. "That doesn't...that's not a no," he says gently. "Depends on what we're talking about."
"If we're dating, my touching you is okay, and if I'm your friend, it's not?" Mike holds it out like a hypothesis worth considering.
"Well." Spencer's quiet for a minute, considering.
"Clearly we're friendly," he finally says, "since we're walking down the street together on a Friday and neither of us is yelling at the other. But we're not *too* friendly because we just met. And we're not dating, because again, just met, but you *did* offer to buy me coffee, which is something people do on a date." He pretends to think about it, then takes Mike's hand in his own.
"This is good, I think," he says cheerfully. "For right now, anyway. We both reserve the right to renegotiate at any point."
"You're so logical, you could be my father. Without the creepy incestuous part," Mike adds with a hasty side glance. "Even though he wasn't a bad looking guy."
Spencer shrugs. "I don't see any reason to be all 'woooo, you're cute, let's be stupid.' Not just with you," he adds. "With anyone."
"Really?" He starts to walk again. It's so quiet in the street that he can hear the hiss of denim on denim. "I like that part sometimes."
"I have a bad association with it." Spencer fiddles with the strap of his watch. "I was like that with my ex. It...didn't end great."
"Fistfight in the wedding cake?" He looks at Spencer again, his eyes starring. "Out you with a skywriter? Sent your mom a scurrilous email describing your fetish for putting roach clips on your nipples and jerking off with a silk scarf while watching reruns of Knight Rider in your dorm room?" He catches Spencer's look. "It's hypothetical."
Spencer's laugh is quiet. "Not really. She was...you know, very nice girl. Ran away from the True Lands to rebel against her parents, the whole elf story in ninety seconds." He walks on the cracks in the sidewalk, less to hurt his mom's back and more to practice imaginary tightrope walking. "I got kind of pissed when she said she had to go home and marry this guy her parents had picked out for her, but that I shouldn't worry because she just needed to have kids with him for the inheritance. Wouldn’t change a thing with us.”
Mike slows to stare at him, starting to reach for the crossing shoulder and then letting his arm fall to his side again. He rubs the tips of his fingers across the pocket of his jeans instead of touching Spencer, rough where he'd stitched it. He'd bought the yarn and an upholstery needle with a jar of unbent staples, then sewn a row of glossy red Xs like barbed wire. "Guess there're some things the same everywhere."
Spencer stretches his arms out to keep his balance. He stumbles for a moment and yelps, catching hold of Mike's arm. "Sorry," he says, laughing a little. "What do you mean?" He turns to look at Mike fully and stops, blinking, eyes widening.
"Had the same thing with a guy."
It's not - it's easy to discount things, under weird sodium lighting or whatever the Hard Luck has. Past ten-thirty at night, *everyone* looks good, or at least interesting enough to walk down a street with. This is different. Mike looks like thoughts he's had half-awake, just coming out of a dream and rubbing sleep out of his-
"Really?" Spencer blinks again.
Mike strokes his palm across his head, stroking the shorn velvet like he would a short-haired cat. "Knew him growing up. Smart, hot, sweet. His parents wanted him to get married, and there was this girl..." He blinks hard, driving back the remembered pain with a force that feels unfair after all this time. "He invited me to the wedding. I came here instead."
Spencer stops balancing and looks at Mike for a long time. "People are stupid," he says flatly. "But I still got that beat."
"Yeah?" Mike moves on, so they're not standing beneath the saturated sweetness of a blossom-heavy orange; Spencer follows.
"I do," he says solemnly. "On her way out of town, we had this enormous fight. Seriously, it was about six hours. And just as I was telling her to let the Elfhaeme Gate hit her in her ass on her way out of town, she kind of..."
He winces. This part always sounds stupid. "Cursed me."
Mike’s hand spasms on Spencer. Fae curses, some of the most creative and impervious known, burning through every surface of reality like light through a filmstrip. "With what?"
"I think she cursed me. See, she did it in Elvish.” Spencer makes himself laugh. “My Elvish is about as good as my Japanese, which…I mean, except for saying ‘hi’ and a couple social niceties, I can’t speak it at all. But it’s - I haven't exactly dated since then. It just seemed...not a great idea." For no reason he could ever explain, whenever Brendon (or anyone else) asked him. His parents chalked it up to his seventh sense and agreed that it was probably a good idea to abstain for the moment.
"Do you know it was a curse? Have you been to Mrs. Wu or Milo or anybody?"
"It sounded curse-y. My grandma was pretty free with them, the one time I met her." He shrugs. "I went to Ms. Wu. She said whatever it was, it wasn't immediate, but I should keep an eye out for anything unusual. And so far, there hasn't been anything."
"’Keep an eye out for anything unusual’." Mike snorts. "Did she also tell you to stay in bed when there was a blue sky?"
"Anything unusual with me." Grinning, Spencer pokes Mike with his Converse.
They slow as they approach the White Cliffs of Dover, a block of office buildings co-op'd by a group of industrious humans, halfies, and elves and painted a uniform shade of ivory, so thick it might be chalk. A clinic, a bank, a restaurant, a greenhouse made of a gutted Airstream trailer that looks welded in among the stucco. The windows are covered by an exotic array of found metal-hubcaps, sewer grates, manholes on fist-sized spring hinges, portholes carted from God knows where.
The coffee shop is an igloo shape. He has no idea where or how it was made-from the top of a silo in an unimaginably distant corn-covered state? Part of a load lost as it headed to one of the poles with material for a research station? It, too, is ivory, painted with petals of color from the spell-lights housed on the eaves. "Like Tijuana on Mars," Mike says absently.
"I'll take you word for it. I've never been to either." Spencer glances at him. "What are we doing here?"
"Coffee." Three kids, two skinny elves taller than he is and a human so small and hairy he looks like a dog beside them, don't bother to get out of the way of Mike's reaching arm, but nor do they stop him from jerking the heavily whitewashed door out of its frame. It yelps, cracking free, and the row of Morris bells left by a Dancer on the top chink.
Spencer blinks, catching the door. "This is not coffee," he says slowly. "This is...I don't know. Kind of a health film. From Iceland." He thinks it's the igloo. Either that, or Taco Hell has something sort of ice-themed cousin. When Hell Freezes Over, or something a little bit twee.
"But the coffee is fucking great," he says, deadpan. "Fish flavor."
Spencer blows him a raspberry.
*
It's a dim and strangely luminous space inside, the ceiling disappearing past balls of feylight and the rustle of University students beneath it like pigeons on the steps of a cathedral. The stage is clear, draped in something black and glimmering, and past it a backdrop shivers green, flame, green. Mike can't tell, and never could, whether it's fabric or illusion.
Spencer stops and looks at him. "This isn't coffee," he accuses. "This is a club. You're aiming for a two-fer."
"There might be a show, or just poetry." Mike dusts his shirt anxiously. It's always a tense moment, when your choice of entertainment proves out or tanks like a dodo flight. "There's coffee! Look, coffee."
A nearby student, less out of sympathy than some Marxist gesture, thrusts a plain white china cup in the air. Viscous liquid sways for its rim, then recedes.
"I'm kidding," Spencer says, grinning, and leans in to kiss Mike's cheek again. He freezes when his lips touch skin, but doesn't pull back.
"There's no back room. I promise. Or if there is, they don't tell occasional patrons." He leans in and takes a quiet smile of Spencer as he withdraws, like a wind-caught rose.
"That's no fun." Spencer pouts a little. His cheeks, he thinks, are a little pink -- *kissing*! -- but it's not like you can tell. Dim mood lighting for the win, show and place.
"I promise to grope you under the table if we can snag one with a cloth."
"Maybe," Spencer says shyly, smiling at him. This time it’s his ears that go pink.
"If you want." Mike bends Spencer's head down with a touch of his hand and kisses hair so smooth, it's like a blade of ice. Melting too swiftly to feel it.
Spencer squeezes his hand, still smiling. "Um. Do you want a booth, or a table?"
"I want what's open," Mike says, laughing, and points to a table carved entirely out of what appears to be an enormous tree stump. It has a polished center as big as an evergreen stump. "I don't know if that's a tree or just looks like it, but what the hell. At least it's not cold."
Like most things in B-town, the tables are an eclectic set-some cast iron and some rickety wood, some wicker and some solid slabs of pine that look fresh-cut from a West-coast diner.
"It's not actually cold in here." Spencer pulls out Mike's chair for him. "I'm telling you, the igloo shape's gonna throw people." If anything, it's temperate bordering on warm. He unzips his hoodie.
Mike's eyes dart to Spencer. If one of his friends were here, they'd be laughing by now, knowing what he saw-the creamy blur of skin, the way the lights cobweb on his fragile cap of hair, his colorless eyes and full mouth and narrow white wrists thrusting from the sleeves of his sweatshirt. Enough an elf to have that skin, that strange quality of growing light, like he's a candle someone lit; enough human that Mike isn't awkward reaching for him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Leading him through the crowd, mostly seated and mostly sober at this hour but buzzing. Holding out an arm like he carved the table himself.
Pleased, Spencer steps closer. "Thank you," he says. "Oh! What do you want to drink?"
"Does anyone actually get coffee when they're saying they're getting coffee? I'll take a grasshopper."
Spencer looks over himself for trading stock, coming up with a Cats Laughing pin and a slap bracelet. The pin, he thinks, should be good for two cups of coffee, maybe-
"I have no idea what that is," he admits, undoing the pin. He takes off the bracelet too, just for good measure. "You want to stay and keep the table warm?"
"It's crème de menthe and ice cream. Oh-I asked you, Spencer, no." Mike pops off a button, reading Re-Elect Kennedy, from his shirt. Hunts through his breast pocket after a minute and follows up with a wrinkled wax-paper packet, pressing a four-leafed clover.
"Oh my God," Spencer says, exasperated, "here, just--take the slap bracelet, okay? You're not wasting a clover on me, are you high?"
"In case you need a tip."
"Clovers are not tips!" He's Bordertown born and bred, so World money is as confusing as Elf scrip to him, but he's pretty sure that's an excellent tip. Like, food for a week good.
"You're an idiot," Mike says, but he's smiling like there's money in it. "I'm not taking your bracelet. What kind of assholes did you date? Pay with the clover then, and tip with the button. Just shoo."
"You are a jackass," Spencer says, sticking out his tongue, and pockets both. He'll slip Mike both buttons later, since he insists on being a spendthrift, and use the bracelet as a tip.
He makes his way to the bar and gives the order - Mike's grasshopper, a coffee for himself - to a human bartender, who doesn't seem at all surprised to put liquor in ice cream. He waits for the drinks and looks across at Mike, sitting at the tree stump. Mike smiles, a white flash even at that red-weighted distance.
Mike couldn't be more different from Maja if he tried. For starters, he's a guy, not to mention human, but it's not just that. With that hair and the tattoos, he could be a member of one of the gangs; hell, he might have been, once upon a time. It's not like it's exactly polite to ask. Not before drinks, anyway. But he's calm, and nice, and he smells like fancy herb-scented soap and his eyes gleam. He's real, solid in a way Spencer's not used to, like he's the only thing in the room in focus.
Spencer likes focusing on him. He likes focusing on him a lot.
"Hey. Pretty boy with the ears." The bartender reaches out to tug the strings on Spencer’s hoodie, earning a start. “Drinks are ready.”
"Sorry," Spencer mutters, pinking again. He starts fumbling for his trade goods.
"'s no problem." The guy stares at Mike, eyebrow raising. "I don't blame you. Guy like that, I'd be distracted too."
Spencer grins and gives him the clover and the bracelet.
The other eyebrow goes up. "You're kidding me, right? That's - no, take the bracelet back."
"Can't," Spencer says, shaking his head.
"Then-here." The guy reaches up and takes off one of the charms on his bracelet, a small silver fox. "Take your change."
"Oh, no, I couldn't-"
"Look, we can either stand here insisting at each other all night, or you can get over there and give the extremely hot man his drink." The bartender smiles. "And if, by some wild chance, you happen to think it's not gonna work out, steer him over here and tell him to ask for Ross.”
Spencer smiles and carries the drinks back to the table. "Your grasshopper, sir," he says, putting it down with his best waiter's flourish.
"First sip," Mike says, and holds it up to Spencer, a frothy pale-green confection in a broad-mouthed glass. He points the candy-striped straw in his direction, wondering if it was diverted from some McDonald's outlet in Minnesota.
"Yeeeees?" Spencer blinks at him, setting his coffee down.
"Taste it."
"…Taste your alcohol and ice cream."
"It's goo-od." Mike’s expression couldn’t be more puppy-dog if he tried.
Spencer sighs, humoring him, and leans in, wrapping his mouth around the end of the straw. He closes his eyes, tasting it. Mike watches intently, a smile flitting beyond his remote face.
"Ith not bad," Spencer says after a moment, pulling back, licking the inside of his mouth. "Kind of. Wow. Kind of a kick."
"I hope you like mint," Mike says lamely a moment later. "It's-it's really minty."
"I meant the alcohol." Spencer blinks. "Wow. That's-two of those, I'm carrying you home." He starts to sit, then pats his pocket and remembers. "Oh! That's right." He holds the buttons in his hand and steps closer, sliding them into Mike's pocket under the table.
"Change?" Mike asks doubtfully.
Spencer smiles. "Maybe." He pats Mike's thigh once, enough to be friendly but not to be creepy, and slides his hand out.
"That's too much change," Mike says, but he cups his hand over the fabric anyway. He darts in before he can think better of it and kisses Spencer, going for the brass ring of his lips and happy with his cheek.
Spencer freezes for a second. It's not that he's startled, though he is, but for a second- He blinks and sits back, managing a smile.
Mike draws back like a cat that's stepped in water, the gleam of the overheads prickling his dark eyes. "Too soon? It was too soon, right. I'd say I'd sit on my hands, but you can't sit on your lips. Maybe a solemn promise. I could make it in the elf tongue, if you pronounced it like I had brain damage."
"No!" Spencer blurts out, too loudly. A couple of halfie kids at the next table peer over at them.
"No," he says again, this time in an indoor voice. "It was. It was nice. I wasn't expecting it, is all." He lets out a breath. "Or maybe I'm just starving. I haven't eaten since this morning." He sips at his coffee.
~Think of something, idiot,~ he curses. ~Something to talk about, you're *dying* out there.~
"There should be someone-" Mike lifts up in his chair, sees one of the waiters, distinguished by his glowing white t-shirt where he walks beneath the spell-powered blacklight bulb suspended in the room. He makes the 'next' sign. "Here, take a look at the menu. All the tables have them lacquered on." In unfortunate silver script, but there.
Spencer cranes his neck to read it, then gives up and scoots closer to Mike. "Stupid lighting," he mutters faintly, squinting.
"There's supposed to be a spell that activates the fuckers," Mike mutters, "but the guy who did the scripting got deported to the Fair Lands and nobody remembers it. Here." He reaches into his pocket and strikes a match, safer than lighters in this part of the world. He lets his shoulder touch Spencer's, feeling his own daring in the pit of his stomach.
"Um, that's not gonna-" Spencer reaches out and cups his hand around the match, feeling around in his pocket. He usually keeps a couple around in case of emergen-bingo!
He takes out a thick twist of paper, the length of his wrist to the tip of his index finger, pre-treated with spell ingredients. Touches it to the flame, relaxing when it catches and holds halfway down. The fire doesn't advance on the paper, just holds in place like there's some kind of unseen barrier. As far as Spencer knows, there might be. He eases it closer to the table so he and Mike can see.
Mike hasn't been here forever, but he's lived long enough to recognize the signs of magic. "Neat trick."
"It's Brendon's - my roommate's," Spencer clarifies. "He's the guy I was filling in for tonight. I don't know how often you come there. He's the human kid with a pageboy haircut? Wears a lot of unicorn shirts, only gets really surly when the religious revival people come through handing out pamphlets couple times a year?"
"Oh. Oh, okay, yeah. Seems nice."
"It's his trick. He pre-treats the paper, because he has some kind of weird thing about matches and lighters suck this part of the world. Worlds." He shrugs at the word choice. "He's been pestering his elf ex-boyfriend to teach him magic. This is the only thing that's stuck."
"Does it actually consume anything? The paper looks kind of burned, but it's like it's stopped at that moment. Does he know if it's a time spell, or a matter spell, or-"
A delicate throat clears at their table's edge. The boy in the white shirt, an impossibly slender elf with a cap of white curls and ears that Mike, in his less charitable moments, might have called 'ass-like', stands with regal bearing and an order tablet.
"You order," Mike says. "Only thing I ever had was the chili, and it was pretty good. Comes with herb bread." He smiles at Spencer.
"I'm okay," Spencer says quickly. He doesn't want to cost Mike any more than he already has, and his own cash flow is weak 'til payday, which isn't for two days yet. "You go ahead."
"Two chilis and a large order of the bread with melted cheese. Keep the change." He drops one of the buttons into the elf-boy's hand. He sniffs, turns it over and tugs at a red silk thread woven about its loop, bites it, and then disappears it in his long white hand. Mike finds himself blinking at the afterimage of his bright smile as he whirls away, cutting toward the kitchen through the crowd; no elf got *that* kind of skill in legerdemain using legitimate spellwork. He checks his pocket, relieved to discover that the staff is either too well-off or too lazy to victimize the customers.
Spencer glares at him. "Mike-"
"What? I'm lucky, really. He's a dip."
"No, that's - that's not the *point*."
"The point is, we're on a date and someone has to pay. I'm taller. Nyah."
Spencer thinks honestly about keeping up the glare for a while longer, then stops. He could be pissy with Mike for, really, no good reason; *or*, he could not be pissy with him, have dinner, and maybe have a good night. Maybe even kiss him. "Fine," he says. "'m sorry I was being an ass."
After a moment's bemusement at hearing someone who looks almost like an elf saying the word, he grins. "You can pay next time, believe me."
"I did pay next time. Or the time before this." Spencer shakes his head. "Whatever, I bought you a drink named after an insect."
"And you can pay again next time." He reaches out with his pinky and brushes it along the side of Spencer's hand.
"That - thank you, fine." Spencer hesitates, then hooks pinkies with Mike. "So you're from out there," he murmurs, looking at Mike's hand. It's strong without being veiny or too muscular, he thinks. A good hand. Hands like that-
"It was a damn good insect." Mike nods at the stage. "They're coming up now."
Spencer stops himself and blushes hard, looking up at the stage. "Who is?"
"The night's entertainment." The curtain is starting to ripple, a fog effect gliding from beneath it. "I'm from the world, yeah. About as different from most places here as you can get."
He opens his mouth to say something else, but everyone's shifting to look at the stage. And if there's one thing Bordertown-born-and-bred means, it's respecting the performers. Spencer stifles it and looks forward, fingers still linked.
The mist rises just high enough by the time the curtain parts that the woman seems to appear from it. Nothing, then a figure in black, then a figure of brilliant white as she peels back a black fur cloak. Her first note is more cry than song. As it goes on, high and wandering yet connected like a slick set of stairs, they feel a weird unease lifting the hair on their forearms. There's no other voice, not even an instrument, yet somehow the ghosts of her other notes linger at their tables like candle flame guttering in wax.
After a second, Mike's face clears, and he rests his ear against his emptied glass. It rings in sympathy. He whispers to Spencer, "Hell of a voice."
Spencer leans forward, mouth parted, just listening.
They're half expecting it, expecting some shock to terminate the climb, but when the rest of the band throws off fur cloaks and adds a chorus of bass and baritone and alto, it's like falling on a wall of stakes in the dark.
Mike feels assaulted, leveled by voices that demand too much from him and know it. He still doesn't know the language, though it breathes of cold to him, of northern reaches, of towns no more than a beard of campfire.
Some of the singers are men, some women, wildly varied in height and hair, all clad in leather and beaten metal. Milk-pale elves with muscle like braided rope and hair down to their thighs. Stocky women with cinnamon curls. A skeletal halfie with black hair in locks and one ear bobbed. A man of three hundred fifty pounds with bones in his beard. He's never heard such unison in music except in religious recordings. It's more like they're notes than they are beings. Powerful, consuming notes, notes that rattle in his throat and change his heartbeat, notes that drive all rhythm from his fingertips and feet. He's still as he seldom is, pinned to a chair he's forgotten was there by the prow of a ship of sound.
Spencer sits perfectly still, barely breathing. He's used to rock music you can dance to, or attempt to dance to; weird elf stuff people play on keytars and too heavy on bass. This is nothing like that. This is like getting your ass kicked after running a marathon and mainlining a year's worth of Norse mythology, or maybe GWAR. While doing acid. Mostly, it's like going to church. You sit very still, and you feel it.
The song ends. There can be no doubt. It's like having a spear as big as your wrist pulled from your side.
The woman steps forward. She's built like a fertility icon, broad hips and huge bronze breasts and hair both pale and brown. She has a necklace of ice on her bare skin, and it's steaming, soaking the front of her vest. "We are Dagaz."
The voices around her begin again, without warning, just the bass at first and then, shockingly, three silent sopranos six octaves past. It's like the crossing of silver swords with bronze.
Spencer sits forward in his seat. He has the urge to go up front and prostrate himself, but that might be weird.
"Do you-" he starts to murmur, and stops. Up on stage, crouched at one corner, is a red-gold fox, perched there like a piece of statuary. It's odd, he's never connected foxes with Norse lore before, but there are plenty of things he doesn't know. That's why he's in college.
"There's a-" he starts, and stops when the fox moves, bolting off the stage and making its way through the crowd.
Spencer watches it pad silently (not that it couldn't make a fucking racket, he thinks, with the sound the band's putting out) through, weaving around and over people's feet, before stopping in front of him. He wonders, dimly, if there was something extra in the coffee.
He really starts to wonder a second later when a pretty silver-blonde girl - who is not there, he tells himself, with only a smidge of hysteria behind it - crouches down to scritch behind the fox's ears.
"Hmm?" Mike doesn't turn his head. He has a weird feeling he *can't*, like he's in a centrifuge. Unaware of gravity, but subject to it all the same.
"Hey," he hears himself say weakly. There's *just* enough sense in him to know he's not really speaking aloud, but in his head. Where Maja and the fox are, probably. Probably.
She doesn't answer, just leans down to whisper something in the fox's ear.
"Mike," he says, voice barely a squeak. "Mike. Mike please tell me you see them."
"See what?" Mike turns his head, the competing shove of bass and baritone clashing against his breastbone like they're trying to call him to life.
"See *th*-" Spencer starts, turning his head, breaking his attention.
-so of course, that's when the fox leaps forward, darting into his chest and sending him sprawling against the hard bar floor with a muted thunk.
Mike lunges for him, the spell of Dagaz pressing down like a shipwreck. He falls to his knees and curses at their impact on the floor, his hands spreading out to catch at Spencer's clothes. "Are you okay? Look at me! Spencer!"
Spencer stares up at the ceiling, all non-reflecting blackness and the depths of the moon, and tries to remember to breathe. "Yeah," he starts, coughing. "Yeah, 'm okay."
He's really not sure if he is. But he didn't lose consciousness, and he's got a fairly hard head. He should be okay. If the room would just stop spinning…
"Are you bleeding? Keep still until I can move you and check. Do you feel dizzy? How many fingers?" Mike holds up three.
"Three." Spencer coughs again. "I'm--I don't think I'm bleeding, no." He starts to sit up.
The singing goes on. It's everywhere, the ring of a perfectly cast bell. It's re-ordering his organs, calling his mind to arms. The sun rises on an army and they've come to liberate him, if he turns and lets the knowledge in--
Mike jerks his head, shaking it hard enough that a cramp appears behind his left ear, and turns Spencer's head with his hands. No blood, just a slight knot under his hair. "You get your breath knocked out?"
"Kind. Kind of, yeah." Another, smaller coughing fit. Spencer starts and pats at his chest, trying to see if there's any difference. He should be, there's a goddamn spirit animal in him-
"What happened? What did you see? Do you have chest pains?" Mike asks with sharper alarm.
"I don't." Spencer swallows hard, still touching his chest. "I. Nothing. No." He shakes his head. "No, 'm okay.”
"Did you faint?"
"Didn't lose consciousness." Spencer shakes his head again. "No, let's - let me just get back in my seat, it's okay." He puts his hand underneath him to get his weight, taking a breath.
"Do you want to stay? It's kind of overwhelming. I had no idea it'd be like this." Mike takes Spencer's arm in his grip, helping him stand.
"I'm okay." Spencer takes a breath. "I'm okay to stay if you are. We ordered and paid and everything." He flails a little, getting his feet. He's not sure, but he's pretty sure leaving a show because you hallucinated your ex-girlfriend sending a ghost fox into your chest is somewhere in the top five Ways You Are a Pussy.
"Spencer-"
“Seriously.”
Mike meets his eyes. "You promise me you'll tell me if you're-if that's going to happen again. And we'll go, food or not."
Spencer waves him off and starts to get back into his seat.
"Promise," Mike says, and it cuts across the music enough that the nearest tables feel the dissonance. A couple people turn to look, but not many.
The force of Mike's glare is making his head throb. "I promise," Spencer says, climbing back into his chair. Mike settles in beside him. The song ends as abruptly as it began, and he shudders.
He gingerly touches the back of his head, testing for wounds and finding none. "They're really kind of. Powerful," he murmurs.
"Knock you on your ass."
"Literally, in my case." Spencer takes a long swallow of rapidly cooling coffee.
Mike startles when a wooden tray full of soup bowls and bread slides in front of them. This time it's delivered by a short, round, cheerful-faced human in the same glowing uniform. "Dig in. Maybe keep body and soul together."
Mike smiles sideways at Spencer, pushing the bread bowl toward him.
"I'm kind of scared to," he admits. "I don't want to freak out again and wind up with chili all over myself. This is a really nice shirt." He eats a spoonful anyway, making a surprised noise. "It's good." Hot without being too spicy, flavorful, good ratio of meat to beans.
"I told you it was. What freaked you out, anyway? You asked if I saw them."
Spencer eats another spoonful, tearing off a bit of bread. "It's nothing," he shrugs. "Probably just the hunger talking." It's easier, he finds, to tone down the power of the music when he's being distracted by something like food.
"We are Jera," speaks a man, skin so dark he looks cut out from his white-lined cloak. His voice rattles Mike's glass. The woman in the center begins to sing again, flanked only by women, their voices as gentle and patient as water opening rock. Mike feels the pressure stolen from his chest, replaced by a freedom as pure as a skin of glass.
Suddenly he's ravenous, the fear in his mind a shallow fence. He picks up a chunk of bread and delves it into his chili. He thinks it's the best thing he's ever eaten.
"'s good," Spencer says again.
"I have to look up rune meanings when I get out of here. It's amazing how they all make you feel different," he says after a moment, during which the music rolls through him like a cold spring, hollowing him out.
"Kind of disturbing," Spencer says, absently touching his chest.
"What's this one make you feel?"
"I don't-" He blinks. Just for a second, his hand isn't a hand-
-and then it's a hand, all right, and it's like he's speaking through a fog. "I don't know," he says, taking a deep breath. "It's kind. Kind of a lot. Of atmosphere." He feels woozy.
"Are you okay?" Mike turns, sliding on the lacquered wood, and studies him full in the face. "Look at me for a sec."
"I'm fine," Spencer says again, and goes to shake it off. His vision wavering lets him know that's not the best idea.
"Let's go." Mike stands, strangely free to do it, turning like wind is lifting him. He puts out a hand for Spencer. "Go for a little walk, clear your head."
"No, seriously," Spencer says, trying to push his hand away. He's not going to pussy out and mess this up, he's not. "I'm. It's fine. Honestly."
"Just around the block." Mike leans in, meeting his eyes. The music wells around them like the heads of snowdrops. "If you feel fine after, we'll come back."
"Are they even gonna let us back in?" he says, slowly getting to his feet. The world's still wavery. "Fuck, Mike, I'm sorry, it's my f-"
Mike wraps his arms around Spencer, startled by a faint musk to his scent. Strokes his smooth hair until he touches the tip of one ear. "We can get back in. We'll just get stamped on the way out. Fairy dust to show we were here."
Spencer will be mad at himself later for leaning on anyone. Right now he just needs air. Air would be better than anything right now, even peca and a good night's sleep. “’kay.”
Mike slides his arm around Spencer's waist, delicately tapered, and hates himself for noticing. He holds his hand out at the door and gets a stamp; Spencer does the same. His stamp glitters a little more, though that could just be a trick of the lighting.
*
Part Two
Featuring Spencer Smith as a halfie, Mike Pedicone as that guy most of you who’ve never heard of, and a whole new world to play in WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Men and Foxes: A Bordertown Tale
By stonedtodeath and iphignia939
SUMMARY: How Spencer Smith found true love and lost his fur. A Bordertown AU. [Spencer Smith/Mike Pedicone (The Bled); 21,141 words. Worksafe.]
AUTHOR’S NOTES: This is Mike Pedicone, drummer for The Bled. The Bled has, much like Mindless Self-Indulgence, toured with My Chemical Romance in the past and played Warped for the last several years. (See? We are *not* completely crazy. Nyah.)
This is Mike playing drums. This is Mike half-naked outside, being hot like burning, and this is a screencap of Mike taken from Google Images. Don’t ask me where, just look. NGGGGGH.
This is Spencer Smith. If you don't know who he is, this is possibly not the story you should be reading. (For the record, this is Spencer as a halfie. Kind of. Thematically. In that I'm not using my nonexistent Photoshop skills to give him pointed ears.)
Disclaimer 1: The Bordertown world was created by, and is copyrighted by, Terri Windling. The world, its landmarks and characters are used with her permission only. All rights to Borderland material are reserved by Ms. Windling and the authors of the Borderland books: Borderland, Bordertown, Life on the Border, Elsewhere, Nevernever, and Finder. (As this is a shared universe, all characters and situations in the Bordertown universe are subject to the whims and caprice of Ms. Windling, who seems uniformly awesome about the whole thing. A much longer and more detailed disclaimer can be found here.)
Disclaimer 2: Don't google yourself.
There was reality and there was reality; and some things were more real than others. - Neil Gaiman, “Anansi Boys”
Part 1: Spencer
Somehow, Spencer isn't at all surprised to find that there's a guy at one of the back booths, nursing his cup of coffee and fucking up his entire goddamn night.
He turns to look at Gabe. "You're sure I can't-"
"No," Gabe says, already shrugging into his hoodie. It's emblazoned with a giant gold lame cobra, which does not surprise Spencer even a little. If humans could have magical powers - outside of Ms. Wu and a few specific others, that is - he would say that Gabe's was to find any and all cobra-related pieces of clothing in the city limits, like some kind of tacky homing beacon. But Gabe has as much magic in him as Spencer has talent at spot-welding, so that's sort of doubtful. "Not my rules, man. We're closed to new customers, but you've gotta stay 'til he's ready to go."
Spencer pinches the bridge of his nose. "Please?" He's not begging, but it's close.
Gabe grins. "You're cute when you're desperate." He zips the hoodie up to his chin. "Sadly, I still have to say no. Word gets around we gave someone the bum's rush, we're both in for a world of shit."
"Gabe-"
"It's a cup of coffee. How long can he nurse a cup of coffee?"
"He's been here about two hours," Spencer says flatly. "So far."
"...oh." Gabe tries to look embarrassed. Tries to. "Um. Maybe someone will make an impression ball of the show?"
Spencer just shoots him a look. "What Soho kids go traipsing around with a fucking impression ball? And don't say Wentz," he warns, "because I love Pete, but sometimes he has more money than sense."
"Sorry," Gabe says, jamming his hat onto his head. "This is why I don't agree to do my friends favors." He leans over and kisses Spencer's cheek, too fast for Spencer to protest, and ducks out the front door.
Spencer sighs and wipes down the counter for what feels like the hundredth time. He doesn't even work at the Hard Luck, but Brendon's got a nasty case of the flu, and they can use the money. (Or, not money. The trading goods. Whatever, they can use it, they're down to canned beans and water. Canned beans and water. Honey, no.)
He washes the dishes Gabe left behind, and makes sure everything's set up for the morning crew. He checks the bathrooms for stragglers and general cleanliness - so far, so good - and neatens up the remaining booths. He reads ten pages of the Thomas Hardy he's studying for his Victorian lit class at the University Without Floors, and twenty pages of the shitty Laurell K. Hamilton novel he's reading for himself.
After all that, he steels himself to go over to the booth and ask, "Sir? Do you need anything?"
"Nah," the guy says, without looking up at him. He's engrossed in whatever he's reading, which is a good sign. In a person, anyway; in a customer, on a night when Spencer is working at job that isn't even his and is already running late for things he had planned, it kind of sucks. "I'm good."
Spencer, to his credit, does not immediately reach out and strangle him to death with Brendon's puppies-in-a-field-wearing-newsboy-caps apron. But it is close.
After a few more moments in which the only sound is the rustle of page on page, the guy seems to feel the weight of Spencer's shadow. He lifts heavy, straight lashes, and dark eyes look from beneath them. Unlike most of Bordertown's denizens, his scruff is neither two hopeful hairs or a skillful application of makeup. He curls up the cover of the book, showing a surprisingly sharp-edged illustration of a mouse with a nail in its heart. "It's an allegory."
Spencer blinks at him. He opens his mouth to ask, polite as he can, when he plans on leaving, but what comes out is, "An allegory for what?"
"What happens to you when you're just along for the ride." He smiles, his teeth bright and even. "Stay small, hide all the time, die anyway."
More blinking. "But if you're gonna die anyway," Spencer hears himself ask, "what's the point in needlessly getting hurt?"
"That's the nail." Strong fingers, stained with the blur of ink they've never quite figured out how to set properly despite much hair pulling and buckets of spelldust, open the pages. Panels of images, fine and clear as woodcuts and colored with far less skill, show the nail in a dozen places-hanging pictures, littering the floor, sitting unused in a toolbox, stinging a bare foot.
"Everyone's got one," he adds. "Sometimes it's useful, sometimes you don't even see it, sometimes it's a small pain. But if you're a mouse, it can kill you."
"Well, yeah, if it's to scale. The mouse is maybe three of those nails laid end to end." Spencer shakes his head. "...and I'm getting off-track. Do you want a refill?"
The guy grins again, sitting back. The overhead light gleams through short dark hair. He seems slightly self-conscious over the stool's squonk. "Okay...okay. If you'll-" quick breath "-have one with me." The way his eyes move is nervous, though it doesn't show, dark against dark.
"Fine," Spencer says, sighing a little. "Let me just-"
It takes a second for what the guy's said to hit his ears. When it does, Spencer stops and looks at him. His mouth falls open a tiny bit. "W-what?"
The guy straightens, scuffed boots hooking behind the ash column supporting the stool. Squonk. He rakes a hand over the top of his head, hiding his "Shit," behind it. "Forget it. I waited too long, right?"
"I didn't know you were waiting," Spencer says seriously. "You mean, like - like now?" He glances down at himself, in a ratty pair of jeans and a Cats Laughing shirt, and - oh my God - Brendon's puppies-and-newsboy-caps apron. God hates him.
"I spent fifteen minutes going, Is it still asshole to ask a waiter out? Did they edit that out of the Borderlands ed of Emily Post?" he blurts. "If you don't want to stick around work any longer than you have to, I-I heard there was a band at Danceland-"
"I'm not a waiter," Spencer says hurriedly. His face feels bright red, which stands out even more on him. Stupid halfie coloring. "I mean, I'm a waiter right now, because my roommate has the flu and I'm covering his shift. But I'm sort of...a student, I guess? In that this city doesn't really have a formalized, accredited college university, so it's mostly me learning whatever looks interesting at the University Without Floors and working as a clerk days, and oh my God I’m still talking."
The guy is still looking at him, but his entire face has undertaken a vital shift, like a haze filter on one of those movies they play on Good Tech Days at the Roxy. His eyes look wider, a space between his lips. "I'm Mike Pedicone."
"Spencer Smith." He wipes his hand on Brendon's apron and offers it. "And that's my real name. I have - not ID, I was born here. But you can ask people who know me. That's actually my name."
"I'm going to try not to tell you my name means anything cool," Mike says, wrapping fingers through Spencer's still warm from the side of his mug. He tips his head, studying Spencer's face. After a moment, he rolls his eyes slightly and makes the goal obvious--the elvish ear-check that's the savior (or doom) of B-town etiquette.
Spencer sighs and pushes his hair away from his ears. "Yes," he says patiently, "they're pointed. The fingers didn't give it away?" He lifts one hand and waggles them. They're not too thin or too pale, but they're just long enough that it looks strange on someone his height. Some of the kids he knew growing up were one way or the other - too human (blunt features and normal limbs but with an elvish cast to the eyes and ears) or too elf (long fingers, pale skin, pointed ears). He's not one way or the other. It's easier not to attract attention from any of the gangs if they can't tell what you are, is all. Not that it would matter; he's a halfie, he's bound to get shit from pretty much everyone, at one time or another.
"I'm sorry," Mike says at once, and he does sound it. "I should've just asked. Let me make it up to you?"
"It's okay," Spencer says. "It's classier than 'casually' asking where I'm from."
"I swear it was nothing more malicious than curiosity, but I still suck. Come on, come with me. The Mavens at Danceland. They're supposed to rip." He folds his hands over one another, as prim as a Catholic schoolboy, and blinks. "Please, sir. Please."
"I was supposed to see my friend's band," Spencer starts, the apology already forming in his voice. "They're-" He stops, thinks about it.
He really shouldn't. He's already missed half of Ryan's show; if he books it right now, borrows someone's bike on the way and rides hell-bent for leather the whole way, he'll...still come in at the end of the encore, when everyone's already started filing out. Crap.
Spencer bites his lip. "-they're probably already finished," he says, smiling at Mike. "Um. Let me finish up around here?"
"Shit," Mike says again, wiping his inky hands across his eyes. "No, you know what? I waited tables for years in Tucson. I can close up and you can go see his band. It's my fault you're late, right? Tell him you had a bad customer."
"I would've been late anyway." Not entirely a lie. If someone else had come in and stayed past closing, he would have been just as late. But it's a Friday night, so it's sort of doubtful; everyone has plans on Friday. Except him. "And it's my responsibility. I can't just let you close."
"Will he be worried if you don't show? I have a Warlock," he adds. "I could buzz out there and leave word. Where's he playing?"
"The Voivode Room, down on Chrystoble," Spencer says. "It's fine. He's there with his girlfriend. If I tell him it was a great show tomorrow, he'll say thanks." Ryan has eyes for no one but Keltie when she's in the room. It's really kind of sweet, especially after the slew of winners he tends to attract, but Spencer's not entirely convinced Ryan doesn't have her skin in a bag somewhere so she can't leave him. Seriously. Keltie. Way too close to “selkie” to be a coincidence.
Mike chuckles. "Young love. So do you need any help? Chairs turned up? Dishes washed? Sweeping up?"
Behind him, past the patchwork glass, a contingent of spellbikes floats, headed uptown. Their silence is as eerie as marshlights.
Spencer watches them go, then glances at the table. "Um. It's really just - I have to rinse out the coffee pot and put in a clean filter for the morning crew. Maybe two minutes, if you have to piss or something?"
"I may just have had enough coffee. You're not easy to ask out, you know."
Spencer looks at Mike, still blushing, and smiles a little. "If it was easy, there'd be no challenge." He moves too fast and brushes his lips across Mike's cheek, impulsively, then darts back out of reach. "Two minutes? You don't have to pee. You can wait for me at the door like a gentleman. Or something."
"I'll wait until the leaves all come down and cover me up," Mike says, and there's a certain fugitive softness in his eyes that saps the words of irony.
Spencer ducks into the kitchen, still smiling.
*
Halfway through the walk, Spencer realizes he can't shut up.
It's weird. It's weird in general, but it's really weird in this case, because Spencer, as a rule, is not chatty; and when he does talk, it's certainly not to total strangers, even if said total strangers sat in a booth for a couple hours nursing a cup of coffee and working up the nerve to ask him on a date. Not since-well. Not for a while now.
But here he is, yammering on about Bordertown.
"-of kids haven't grown up here. More and more, I think, since the city hasn't vanished and gone back to the World, but it's still not stable, you know, even with the Gate and the trains and stuff. Which is weird, because if we're stable enough to have currency, we should at least have more than a single generation of kids growing up here. Not that I'm a kid, Jesus, I'm 18, so-"
Oh my God, SERIOUSLY.
Spencer hauls himself in with an effort and feels himself flush. "And I'm talking like my string's been pulled! Um. Sorry."
"I like listening to you talk," Mike says, the constant smile that hovers in his eyes spilling over to his mouth. "I kind of wondered when I was watching you. You looked like you wouldn't talk to me. I'm basking."
"Wh-" Spencer blinks at him, frowning a little. "What do you mean, I looked like I wouldn't talk to you?"
"You have this closed way," Mike says consideringly, slowing to take in Spencer's face: his cool blue eyes, the way his lips press proudly. "I don't know. I'm not an elf, I'm not a halfie. I'm nothing special. You grow up here thinking that your human genome won't buy you shit."
“Not really.” Spencer wrinkles his nose. “It’s not - it wasn’t just humans. You ever see an elf light into a halfie kid sometime? It’s almost sad. They honestly feel bad for us, because we're not good enough. Like, racially. Humans, sure, some of them hate us, but with elves it's worse. They pity us." He tightens his hand in Mike’s, reflexively, then loosens it.
”Um,” he says again, flushing darker red. “Sorry.”
"Really?" Mike slows beneath the witchlight of one of the spell beacons they use to power streetlamps. It flickers the shapes of leaves on his face. "No-I don't know anything about being a halfie here. I guess we always think of it as-perfect, you know? Best of both worlds. Something special inside you, immortal blood. Like one of those adventure books."
"Not really immortal." Spencer wrinkles his nose. "I mean, I get hurt like anyone else. It's kind of - both? It's harder for me to get sick, but when I do, I'm out for weeks. I get injured. I get hungover when I drink too much, and I'm sort of allergic to cigarette smoke, and I can't fly." His sigh is wistful. "My little sister can. Lucky brat."
"Your little sister can-" Mike’s face shifts to tentative credulity. "No way."
"Barely." Spencer holds his fingers an inch apart. "She has to hit a magic updraft, and my dad's constantly freaking out that she’s gonna crack her head on the ceiling, but yeah."
"How does that work? With...do your parents..." Mike hesitates, his footsteps scraping to life on the wrinkled sidewalk again. Gravel grits under his sneakers. "Live together?"
"Uh, I hope so." Spencer raises an eyebrow at him (normal, boring, human eyebrows, thank you). "They're married, so."
"Hey, I don't know, okay? Most Bordertown kids don't exactly come from nuclear families."
"I don't expect you to." Spencer raises the other eyebrow, sounding amused. "We met, like, twenty minutes ago. You don't see me asking you questions about your family, do you? No. Because that requires appetizers. Appetizers at least."
Mike's arms fall, his eyes black pockets in the shadow of the tree. "Am I screwing this up already? Be straight."
Spencer stops and looks at him, startled. "I don't think so," he says honestly. "I don't know. It's been twenty minutes, like I said, and we've walked about three blocks." He shrugs. "But you have nice eyes, and your eyes go crinkly when you smile, so I'm cautiously optimistic." He tries to smile. "Plus, it's been a while since I flirted, so some of that's probably on me."
Mike touches his cheeks, testing the warmth in them. "Okay, good. Nothing unbearable yet. I can work with this." He flashes a smile. Spencer notices, distantly, that it makes his eyes crinkle, and tries not to start giggling. He is - no, dammit, *no*, he is *not* a seven-year-old girl with a unicorn Trapper Keeper. He is *not*.
Mike's laugh bubbles up in his throat, emitting as a squeak. Spencer stares at him, charmed. "Did you just *squeak*?"
"I wouldn't *squeak*," Mike says, eyes sparkling above the offended bar of his hand.
"You did! Just now!" He gives a little bounce. "You squeeeeaked."
“You lie! You lie! And they say faeries can't lie!"
"But I'm only haaaaaalf," Spencer sing-songs, grinning. His face might hurt tomorrow, but it's worth it for right now. "And neither half if lying, because the pretty man just squeeeaked-"
"Fine," Mike says, and gathers him in. The moon sets in Spencer's bright, pale eyes. "I squeaked. What do you win? Or do I win, for acquiescing?"
Spencer freezes for a second. It's been months since someone did anything more than playfully shove his shoulder; the motion is unfamiliar enough that it makes him stop. Then he looks at Mike - dark eyes, amazing smile, reads for *fun* - and makes himself relax. "You win," he says, smiling. "Within reason, anyway."
Mike's fingers loosen on his biceps. He can feel the shape of them as the blood flows in. "I'm sorry," Mike offers, reading the stillness in Spencer's face.
"Don't be." Spencer blinks at him. "I'm...I haven't dated anyone in a while, and I'm not particularly touch-y with my friends." He looks at Mike, hopeful. "That doesn't...that's not a no," he says gently. "Depends on what we're talking about."
"If we're dating, my touching you is okay, and if I'm your friend, it's not?" Mike holds it out like a hypothesis worth considering.
"Well." Spencer's quiet for a minute, considering.
"Clearly we're friendly," he finally says, "since we're walking down the street together on a Friday and neither of us is yelling at the other. But we're not *too* friendly because we just met. And we're not dating, because again, just met, but you *did* offer to buy me coffee, which is something people do on a date." He pretends to think about it, then takes Mike's hand in his own.
"This is good, I think," he says cheerfully. "For right now, anyway. We both reserve the right to renegotiate at any point."
"You're so logical, you could be my father. Without the creepy incestuous part," Mike adds with a hasty side glance. "Even though he wasn't a bad looking guy."
Spencer shrugs. "I don't see any reason to be all 'woooo, you're cute, let's be stupid.' Not just with you," he adds. "With anyone."
"Really?" He starts to walk again. It's so quiet in the street that he can hear the hiss of denim on denim. "I like that part sometimes."
"I have a bad association with it." Spencer fiddles with the strap of his watch. "I was like that with my ex. It...didn't end great."
"Fistfight in the wedding cake?" He looks at Spencer again, his eyes starring. "Out you with a skywriter? Sent your mom a scurrilous email describing your fetish for putting roach clips on your nipples and jerking off with a silk scarf while watching reruns of Knight Rider in your dorm room?" He catches Spencer's look. "It's hypothetical."
Spencer's laugh is quiet. "Not really. She was...you know, very nice girl. Ran away from the True Lands to rebel against her parents, the whole elf story in ninety seconds." He walks on the cracks in the sidewalk, less to hurt his mom's back and more to practice imaginary tightrope walking. "I got kind of pissed when she said she had to go home and marry this guy her parents had picked out for her, but that I shouldn't worry because she just needed to have kids with him for the inheritance. Wouldn’t change a thing with us.”
Mike slows to stare at him, starting to reach for the crossing shoulder and then letting his arm fall to his side again. He rubs the tips of his fingers across the pocket of his jeans instead of touching Spencer, rough where he'd stitched it. He'd bought the yarn and an upholstery needle with a jar of unbent staples, then sewn a row of glossy red Xs like barbed wire. "Guess there're some things the same everywhere."
Spencer stretches his arms out to keep his balance. He stumbles for a moment and yelps, catching hold of Mike's arm. "Sorry," he says, laughing a little. "What do you mean?" He turns to look at Mike fully and stops, blinking, eyes widening.
"Had the same thing with a guy."
It's not - it's easy to discount things, under weird sodium lighting or whatever the Hard Luck has. Past ten-thirty at night, *everyone* looks good, or at least interesting enough to walk down a street with. This is different. Mike looks like thoughts he's had half-awake, just coming out of a dream and rubbing sleep out of his-
"Really?" Spencer blinks again.
Mike strokes his palm across his head, stroking the shorn velvet like he would a short-haired cat. "Knew him growing up. Smart, hot, sweet. His parents wanted him to get married, and there was this girl..." He blinks hard, driving back the remembered pain with a force that feels unfair after all this time. "He invited me to the wedding. I came here instead."
Spencer stops balancing and looks at Mike for a long time. "People are stupid," he says flatly. "But I still got that beat."
"Yeah?" Mike moves on, so they're not standing beneath the saturated sweetness of a blossom-heavy orange; Spencer follows.
"I do," he says solemnly. "On her way out of town, we had this enormous fight. Seriously, it was about six hours. And just as I was telling her to let the Elfhaeme Gate hit her in her ass on her way out of town, she kind of..."
He winces. This part always sounds stupid. "Cursed me."
Mike’s hand spasms on Spencer. Fae curses, some of the most creative and impervious known, burning through every surface of reality like light through a filmstrip. "With what?"
"I think she cursed me. See, she did it in Elvish.” Spencer makes himself laugh. “My Elvish is about as good as my Japanese, which…I mean, except for saying ‘hi’ and a couple social niceties, I can’t speak it at all. But it’s - I haven't exactly dated since then. It just seemed...not a great idea." For no reason he could ever explain, whenever Brendon (or anyone else) asked him. His parents chalked it up to his seventh sense and agreed that it was probably a good idea to abstain for the moment.
"Do you know it was a curse? Have you been to Mrs. Wu or Milo or anybody?"
"It sounded curse-y. My grandma was pretty free with them, the one time I met her." He shrugs. "I went to Ms. Wu. She said whatever it was, it wasn't immediate, but I should keep an eye out for anything unusual. And so far, there hasn't been anything."
"’Keep an eye out for anything unusual’." Mike snorts. "Did she also tell you to stay in bed when there was a blue sky?"
"Anything unusual with me." Grinning, Spencer pokes Mike with his Converse.
They slow as they approach the White Cliffs of Dover, a block of office buildings co-op'd by a group of industrious humans, halfies, and elves and painted a uniform shade of ivory, so thick it might be chalk. A clinic, a bank, a restaurant, a greenhouse made of a gutted Airstream trailer that looks welded in among the stucco. The windows are covered by an exotic array of found metal-hubcaps, sewer grates, manholes on fist-sized spring hinges, portholes carted from God knows where.
The coffee shop is an igloo shape. He has no idea where or how it was made-from the top of a silo in an unimaginably distant corn-covered state? Part of a load lost as it headed to one of the poles with material for a research station? It, too, is ivory, painted with petals of color from the spell-lights housed on the eaves. "Like Tijuana on Mars," Mike says absently.
"I'll take you word for it. I've never been to either." Spencer glances at him. "What are we doing here?"
"Coffee." Three kids, two skinny elves taller than he is and a human so small and hairy he looks like a dog beside them, don't bother to get out of the way of Mike's reaching arm, but nor do they stop him from jerking the heavily whitewashed door out of its frame. It yelps, cracking free, and the row of Morris bells left by a Dancer on the top chink.
Spencer blinks, catching the door. "This is not coffee," he says slowly. "This is...I don't know. Kind of a health film. From Iceland." He thinks it's the igloo. Either that, or Taco Hell has something sort of ice-themed cousin. When Hell Freezes Over, or something a little bit twee.
"But the coffee is fucking great," he says, deadpan. "Fish flavor."
Spencer blows him a raspberry.
*
It's a dim and strangely luminous space inside, the ceiling disappearing past balls of feylight and the rustle of University students beneath it like pigeons on the steps of a cathedral. The stage is clear, draped in something black and glimmering, and past it a backdrop shivers green, flame, green. Mike can't tell, and never could, whether it's fabric or illusion.
Spencer stops and looks at him. "This isn't coffee," he accuses. "This is a club. You're aiming for a two-fer."
"There might be a show, or just poetry." Mike dusts his shirt anxiously. It's always a tense moment, when your choice of entertainment proves out or tanks like a dodo flight. "There's coffee! Look, coffee."
A nearby student, less out of sympathy than some Marxist gesture, thrusts a plain white china cup in the air. Viscous liquid sways for its rim, then recedes.
"I'm kidding," Spencer says, grinning, and leans in to kiss Mike's cheek again. He freezes when his lips touch skin, but doesn't pull back.
"There's no back room. I promise. Or if there is, they don't tell occasional patrons." He leans in and takes a quiet smile of Spencer as he withdraws, like a wind-caught rose.
"That's no fun." Spencer pouts a little. His cheeks, he thinks, are a little pink -- *kissing*! -- but it's not like you can tell. Dim mood lighting for the win, show and place.
"I promise to grope you under the table if we can snag one with a cloth."
"Maybe," Spencer says shyly, smiling at him. This time it’s his ears that go pink.
"If you want." Mike bends Spencer's head down with a touch of his hand and kisses hair so smooth, it's like a blade of ice. Melting too swiftly to feel it.
Spencer squeezes his hand, still smiling. "Um. Do you want a booth, or a table?"
"I want what's open," Mike says, laughing, and points to a table carved entirely out of what appears to be an enormous tree stump. It has a polished center as big as an evergreen stump. "I don't know if that's a tree or just looks like it, but what the hell. At least it's not cold."
Like most things in B-town, the tables are an eclectic set-some cast iron and some rickety wood, some wicker and some solid slabs of pine that look fresh-cut from a West-coast diner.
"It's not actually cold in here." Spencer pulls out Mike's chair for him. "I'm telling you, the igloo shape's gonna throw people." If anything, it's temperate bordering on warm. He unzips his hoodie.
Mike's eyes dart to Spencer. If one of his friends were here, they'd be laughing by now, knowing what he saw-the creamy blur of skin, the way the lights cobweb on his fragile cap of hair, his colorless eyes and full mouth and narrow white wrists thrusting from the sleeves of his sweatshirt. Enough an elf to have that skin, that strange quality of growing light, like he's a candle someone lit; enough human that Mike isn't awkward reaching for him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Leading him through the crowd, mostly seated and mostly sober at this hour but buzzing. Holding out an arm like he carved the table himself.
Pleased, Spencer steps closer. "Thank you," he says. "Oh! What do you want to drink?"
"Does anyone actually get coffee when they're saying they're getting coffee? I'll take a grasshopper."
Spencer looks over himself for trading stock, coming up with a Cats Laughing pin and a slap bracelet. The pin, he thinks, should be good for two cups of coffee, maybe-
"I have no idea what that is," he admits, undoing the pin. He takes off the bracelet too, just for good measure. "You want to stay and keep the table warm?"
"It's crème de menthe and ice cream. Oh-I asked you, Spencer, no." Mike pops off a button, reading Re-Elect Kennedy, from his shirt. Hunts through his breast pocket after a minute and follows up with a wrinkled wax-paper packet, pressing a four-leafed clover.
"Oh my God," Spencer says, exasperated, "here, just--take the slap bracelet, okay? You're not wasting a clover on me, are you high?"
"In case you need a tip."
"Clovers are not tips!" He's Bordertown born and bred, so World money is as confusing as Elf scrip to him, but he's pretty sure that's an excellent tip. Like, food for a week good.
"You're an idiot," Mike says, but he's smiling like there's money in it. "I'm not taking your bracelet. What kind of assholes did you date? Pay with the clover then, and tip with the button. Just shoo."
"You are a jackass," Spencer says, sticking out his tongue, and pockets both. He'll slip Mike both buttons later, since he insists on being a spendthrift, and use the bracelet as a tip.
He makes his way to the bar and gives the order - Mike's grasshopper, a coffee for himself - to a human bartender, who doesn't seem at all surprised to put liquor in ice cream. He waits for the drinks and looks across at Mike, sitting at the tree stump. Mike smiles, a white flash even at that red-weighted distance.
Mike couldn't be more different from Maja if he tried. For starters, he's a guy, not to mention human, but it's not just that. With that hair and the tattoos, he could be a member of one of the gangs; hell, he might have been, once upon a time. It's not like it's exactly polite to ask. Not before drinks, anyway. But he's calm, and nice, and he smells like fancy herb-scented soap and his eyes gleam. He's real, solid in a way Spencer's not used to, like he's the only thing in the room in focus.
Spencer likes focusing on him. He likes focusing on him a lot.
"Hey. Pretty boy with the ears." The bartender reaches out to tug the strings on Spencer’s hoodie, earning a start. “Drinks are ready.”
"Sorry," Spencer mutters, pinking again. He starts fumbling for his trade goods.
"'s no problem." The guy stares at Mike, eyebrow raising. "I don't blame you. Guy like that, I'd be distracted too."
Spencer grins and gives him the clover and the bracelet.
The other eyebrow goes up. "You're kidding me, right? That's - no, take the bracelet back."
"Can't," Spencer says, shaking his head.
"Then-here." The guy reaches up and takes off one of the charms on his bracelet, a small silver fox. "Take your change."
"Oh, no, I couldn't-"
"Look, we can either stand here insisting at each other all night, or you can get over there and give the extremely hot man his drink." The bartender smiles. "And if, by some wild chance, you happen to think it's not gonna work out, steer him over here and tell him to ask for Ross.”
Spencer smiles and carries the drinks back to the table. "Your grasshopper, sir," he says, putting it down with his best waiter's flourish.
"First sip," Mike says, and holds it up to Spencer, a frothy pale-green confection in a broad-mouthed glass. He points the candy-striped straw in his direction, wondering if it was diverted from some McDonald's outlet in Minnesota.
"Yeeeees?" Spencer blinks at him, setting his coffee down.
"Taste it."
"…Taste your alcohol and ice cream."
"It's goo-od." Mike’s expression couldn’t be more puppy-dog if he tried.
Spencer sighs, humoring him, and leans in, wrapping his mouth around the end of the straw. He closes his eyes, tasting it. Mike watches intently, a smile flitting beyond his remote face.
"Ith not bad," Spencer says after a moment, pulling back, licking the inside of his mouth. "Kind of. Wow. Kind of a kick."
"I hope you like mint," Mike says lamely a moment later. "It's-it's really minty."
"I meant the alcohol." Spencer blinks. "Wow. That's-two of those, I'm carrying you home." He starts to sit, then pats his pocket and remembers. "Oh! That's right." He holds the buttons in his hand and steps closer, sliding them into Mike's pocket under the table.
"Change?" Mike asks doubtfully.
Spencer smiles. "Maybe." He pats Mike's thigh once, enough to be friendly but not to be creepy, and slides his hand out.
"That's too much change," Mike says, but he cups his hand over the fabric anyway. He darts in before he can think better of it and kisses Spencer, going for the brass ring of his lips and happy with his cheek.
Spencer freezes for a second. It's not that he's startled, though he is, but for a second- He blinks and sits back, managing a smile.
Mike draws back like a cat that's stepped in water, the gleam of the overheads prickling his dark eyes. "Too soon? It was too soon, right. I'd say I'd sit on my hands, but you can't sit on your lips. Maybe a solemn promise. I could make it in the elf tongue, if you pronounced it like I had brain damage."
"No!" Spencer blurts out, too loudly. A couple of halfie kids at the next table peer over at them.
"No," he says again, this time in an indoor voice. "It was. It was nice. I wasn't expecting it, is all." He lets out a breath. "Or maybe I'm just starving. I haven't eaten since this morning." He sips at his coffee.
~Think of something, idiot,~ he curses. ~Something to talk about, you're *dying* out there.~
"There should be someone-" Mike lifts up in his chair, sees one of the waiters, distinguished by his glowing white t-shirt where he walks beneath the spell-powered blacklight bulb suspended in the room. He makes the 'next' sign. "Here, take a look at the menu. All the tables have them lacquered on." In unfortunate silver script, but there.
Spencer cranes his neck to read it, then gives up and scoots closer to Mike. "Stupid lighting," he mutters faintly, squinting.
"There's supposed to be a spell that activates the fuckers," Mike mutters, "but the guy who did the scripting got deported to the Fair Lands and nobody remembers it. Here." He reaches into his pocket and strikes a match, safer than lighters in this part of the world. He lets his shoulder touch Spencer's, feeling his own daring in the pit of his stomach.
"Um, that's not gonna-" Spencer reaches out and cups his hand around the match, feeling around in his pocket. He usually keeps a couple around in case of emergen-bingo!
He takes out a thick twist of paper, the length of his wrist to the tip of his index finger, pre-treated with spell ingredients. Touches it to the flame, relaxing when it catches and holds halfway down. The fire doesn't advance on the paper, just holds in place like there's some kind of unseen barrier. As far as Spencer knows, there might be. He eases it closer to the table so he and Mike can see.
Mike hasn't been here forever, but he's lived long enough to recognize the signs of magic. "Neat trick."
"It's Brendon's - my roommate's," Spencer clarifies. "He's the guy I was filling in for tonight. I don't know how often you come there. He's the human kid with a pageboy haircut? Wears a lot of unicorn shirts, only gets really surly when the religious revival people come through handing out pamphlets couple times a year?"
"Oh. Oh, okay, yeah. Seems nice."
"It's his trick. He pre-treats the paper, because he has some kind of weird thing about matches and lighters suck this part of the world. Worlds." He shrugs at the word choice. "He's been pestering his elf ex-boyfriend to teach him magic. This is the only thing that's stuck."
"Does it actually consume anything? The paper looks kind of burned, but it's like it's stopped at that moment. Does he know if it's a time spell, or a matter spell, or-"
A delicate throat clears at their table's edge. The boy in the white shirt, an impossibly slender elf with a cap of white curls and ears that Mike, in his less charitable moments, might have called 'ass-like', stands with regal bearing and an order tablet.
"You order," Mike says. "Only thing I ever had was the chili, and it was pretty good. Comes with herb bread." He smiles at Spencer.
"I'm okay," Spencer says quickly. He doesn't want to cost Mike any more than he already has, and his own cash flow is weak 'til payday, which isn't for two days yet. "You go ahead."
"Two chilis and a large order of the bread with melted cheese. Keep the change." He drops one of the buttons into the elf-boy's hand. He sniffs, turns it over and tugs at a red silk thread woven about its loop, bites it, and then disappears it in his long white hand. Mike finds himself blinking at the afterimage of his bright smile as he whirls away, cutting toward the kitchen through the crowd; no elf got *that* kind of skill in legerdemain using legitimate spellwork. He checks his pocket, relieved to discover that the staff is either too well-off or too lazy to victimize the customers.
Spencer glares at him. "Mike-"
"What? I'm lucky, really. He's a dip."
"No, that's - that's not the *point*."
"The point is, we're on a date and someone has to pay. I'm taller. Nyah."
Spencer thinks honestly about keeping up the glare for a while longer, then stops. He could be pissy with Mike for, really, no good reason; *or*, he could not be pissy with him, have dinner, and maybe have a good night. Maybe even kiss him. "Fine," he says. "'m sorry I was being an ass."
After a moment's bemusement at hearing someone who looks almost like an elf saying the word, he grins. "You can pay next time, believe me."
"I did pay next time. Or the time before this." Spencer shakes his head. "Whatever, I bought you a drink named after an insect."
"And you can pay again next time." He reaches out with his pinky and brushes it along the side of Spencer's hand.
"That - thank you, fine." Spencer hesitates, then hooks pinkies with Mike. "So you're from out there," he murmurs, looking at Mike's hand. It's strong without being veiny or too muscular, he thinks. A good hand. Hands like that-
"It was a damn good insect." Mike nods at the stage. "They're coming up now."
Spencer stops himself and blushes hard, looking up at the stage. "Who is?"
"The night's entertainment." The curtain is starting to ripple, a fog effect gliding from beneath it. "I'm from the world, yeah. About as different from most places here as you can get."
He opens his mouth to say something else, but everyone's shifting to look at the stage. And if there's one thing Bordertown-born-and-bred means, it's respecting the performers. Spencer stifles it and looks forward, fingers still linked.
The mist rises just high enough by the time the curtain parts that the woman seems to appear from it. Nothing, then a figure in black, then a figure of brilliant white as she peels back a black fur cloak. Her first note is more cry than song. As it goes on, high and wandering yet connected like a slick set of stairs, they feel a weird unease lifting the hair on their forearms. There's no other voice, not even an instrument, yet somehow the ghosts of her other notes linger at their tables like candle flame guttering in wax.
After a second, Mike's face clears, and he rests his ear against his emptied glass. It rings in sympathy. He whispers to Spencer, "Hell of a voice."
Spencer leans forward, mouth parted, just listening.
They're half expecting it, expecting some shock to terminate the climb, but when the rest of the band throws off fur cloaks and adds a chorus of bass and baritone and alto, it's like falling on a wall of stakes in the dark.
Mike feels assaulted, leveled by voices that demand too much from him and know it. He still doesn't know the language, though it breathes of cold to him, of northern reaches, of towns no more than a beard of campfire.
Some of the singers are men, some women, wildly varied in height and hair, all clad in leather and beaten metal. Milk-pale elves with muscle like braided rope and hair down to their thighs. Stocky women with cinnamon curls. A skeletal halfie with black hair in locks and one ear bobbed. A man of three hundred fifty pounds with bones in his beard. He's never heard such unison in music except in religious recordings. It's more like they're notes than they are beings. Powerful, consuming notes, notes that rattle in his throat and change his heartbeat, notes that drive all rhythm from his fingertips and feet. He's still as he seldom is, pinned to a chair he's forgotten was there by the prow of a ship of sound.
Spencer sits perfectly still, barely breathing. He's used to rock music you can dance to, or attempt to dance to; weird elf stuff people play on keytars and too heavy on bass. This is nothing like that. This is like getting your ass kicked after running a marathon and mainlining a year's worth of Norse mythology, or maybe GWAR. While doing acid. Mostly, it's like going to church. You sit very still, and you feel it.
The song ends. There can be no doubt. It's like having a spear as big as your wrist pulled from your side.
The woman steps forward. She's built like a fertility icon, broad hips and huge bronze breasts and hair both pale and brown. She has a necklace of ice on her bare skin, and it's steaming, soaking the front of her vest. "We are Dagaz."
The voices around her begin again, without warning, just the bass at first and then, shockingly, three silent sopranos six octaves past. It's like the crossing of silver swords with bronze.
Spencer sits forward in his seat. He has the urge to go up front and prostrate himself, but that might be weird.
"Do you-" he starts to murmur, and stops. Up on stage, crouched at one corner, is a red-gold fox, perched there like a piece of statuary. It's odd, he's never connected foxes with Norse lore before, but there are plenty of things he doesn't know. That's why he's in college.
"There's a-" he starts, and stops when the fox moves, bolting off the stage and making its way through the crowd.
Spencer watches it pad silently (not that it couldn't make a fucking racket, he thinks, with the sound the band's putting out) through, weaving around and over people's feet, before stopping in front of him. He wonders, dimly, if there was something extra in the coffee.
He really starts to wonder a second later when a pretty silver-blonde girl - who is not there, he tells himself, with only a smidge of hysteria behind it - crouches down to scritch behind the fox's ears.
"Hmm?" Mike doesn't turn his head. He has a weird feeling he *can't*, like he's in a centrifuge. Unaware of gravity, but subject to it all the same.
"Hey," he hears himself say weakly. There's *just* enough sense in him to know he's not really speaking aloud, but in his head. Where Maja and the fox are, probably. Probably.
She doesn't answer, just leans down to whisper something in the fox's ear.
"Mike," he says, voice barely a squeak. "Mike. Mike please tell me you see them."
"See what?" Mike turns his head, the competing shove of bass and baritone clashing against his breastbone like they're trying to call him to life.
"See *th*-" Spencer starts, turning his head, breaking his attention.
-so of course, that's when the fox leaps forward, darting into his chest and sending him sprawling against the hard bar floor with a muted thunk.
Mike lunges for him, the spell of Dagaz pressing down like a shipwreck. He falls to his knees and curses at their impact on the floor, his hands spreading out to catch at Spencer's clothes. "Are you okay? Look at me! Spencer!"
Spencer stares up at the ceiling, all non-reflecting blackness and the depths of the moon, and tries to remember to breathe. "Yeah," he starts, coughing. "Yeah, 'm okay."
He's really not sure if he is. But he didn't lose consciousness, and he's got a fairly hard head. He should be okay. If the room would just stop spinning…
"Are you bleeding? Keep still until I can move you and check. Do you feel dizzy? How many fingers?" Mike holds up three.
"Three." Spencer coughs again. "I'm--I don't think I'm bleeding, no." He starts to sit up.
The singing goes on. It's everywhere, the ring of a perfectly cast bell. It's re-ordering his organs, calling his mind to arms. The sun rises on an army and they've come to liberate him, if he turns and lets the knowledge in--
Mike jerks his head, shaking it hard enough that a cramp appears behind his left ear, and turns Spencer's head with his hands. No blood, just a slight knot under his hair. "You get your breath knocked out?"
"Kind. Kind of, yeah." Another, smaller coughing fit. Spencer starts and pats at his chest, trying to see if there's any difference. He should be, there's a goddamn spirit animal in him-
"What happened? What did you see? Do you have chest pains?" Mike asks with sharper alarm.
"I don't." Spencer swallows hard, still touching his chest. "I. Nothing. No." He shakes his head. "No, 'm okay.”
"Did you faint?"
"Didn't lose consciousness." Spencer shakes his head again. "No, let's - let me just get back in my seat, it's okay." He puts his hand underneath him to get his weight, taking a breath.
"Do you want to stay? It's kind of overwhelming. I had no idea it'd be like this." Mike takes Spencer's arm in his grip, helping him stand.
"I'm okay." Spencer takes a breath. "I'm okay to stay if you are. We ordered and paid and everything." He flails a little, getting his feet. He's not sure, but he's pretty sure leaving a show because you hallucinated your ex-girlfriend sending a ghost fox into your chest is somewhere in the top five Ways You Are a Pussy.
"Spencer-"
“Seriously.”
Mike meets his eyes. "You promise me you'll tell me if you're-if that's going to happen again. And we'll go, food or not."
Spencer waves him off and starts to get back into his seat.
"Promise," Mike says, and it cuts across the music enough that the nearest tables feel the dissonance. A couple people turn to look, but not many.
The force of Mike's glare is making his head throb. "I promise," Spencer says, climbing back into his chair. Mike settles in beside him. The song ends as abruptly as it began, and he shudders.
He gingerly touches the back of his head, testing for wounds and finding none. "They're really kind of. Powerful," he murmurs.
"Knock you on your ass."
"Literally, in my case." Spencer takes a long swallow of rapidly cooling coffee.
Mike startles when a wooden tray full of soup bowls and bread slides in front of them. This time it's delivered by a short, round, cheerful-faced human in the same glowing uniform. "Dig in. Maybe keep body and soul together."
Mike smiles sideways at Spencer, pushing the bread bowl toward him.
"I'm kind of scared to," he admits. "I don't want to freak out again and wind up with chili all over myself. This is a really nice shirt." He eats a spoonful anyway, making a surprised noise. "It's good." Hot without being too spicy, flavorful, good ratio of meat to beans.
"I told you it was. What freaked you out, anyway? You asked if I saw them."
Spencer eats another spoonful, tearing off a bit of bread. "It's nothing," he shrugs. "Probably just the hunger talking." It's easier, he finds, to tone down the power of the music when he's being distracted by something like food.
"We are Jera," speaks a man, skin so dark he looks cut out from his white-lined cloak. His voice rattles Mike's glass. The woman in the center begins to sing again, flanked only by women, their voices as gentle and patient as water opening rock. Mike feels the pressure stolen from his chest, replaced by a freedom as pure as a skin of glass.
Suddenly he's ravenous, the fear in his mind a shallow fence. He picks up a chunk of bread and delves it into his chili. He thinks it's the best thing he's ever eaten.
"'s good," Spencer says again.
"I have to look up rune meanings when I get out of here. It's amazing how they all make you feel different," he says after a moment, during which the music rolls through him like a cold spring, hollowing him out.
"Kind of disturbing," Spencer says, absently touching his chest.
"What's this one make you feel?"
"I don't-" He blinks. Just for a second, his hand isn't a hand-
-and then it's a hand, all right, and it's like he's speaking through a fog. "I don't know," he says, taking a deep breath. "It's kind. Kind of a lot. Of atmosphere." He feels woozy.
"Are you okay?" Mike turns, sliding on the lacquered wood, and studies him full in the face. "Look at me for a sec."
"I'm fine," Spencer says again, and goes to shake it off. His vision wavering lets him know that's not the best idea.
"Let's go." Mike stands, strangely free to do it, turning like wind is lifting him. He puts out a hand for Spencer. "Go for a little walk, clear your head."
"No, seriously," Spencer says, trying to push his hand away. He's not going to pussy out and mess this up, he's not. "I'm. It's fine. Honestly."
"Just around the block." Mike leans in, meeting his eyes. The music wells around them like the heads of snowdrops. "If you feel fine after, we'll come back."
"Are they even gonna let us back in?" he says, slowly getting to his feet. The world's still wavery. "Fuck, Mike, I'm sorry, it's my f-"
Mike wraps his arms around Spencer, startled by a faint musk to his scent. Strokes his smooth hair until he touches the tip of one ear. "We can get back in. We'll just get stamped on the way out. Fairy dust to show we were here."
Spencer will be mad at himself later for leaning on anyone. Right now he just needs air. Air would be better than anything right now, even peca and a good night's sleep. “’kay.”
Mike slides his arm around Spencer's waist, delicately tapered, and hates himself for noticing. He holds his hand out at the door and gets a stamp; Spencer does the same. His stamp glitters a little more, though that could just be a trick of the lighting.
*
Part Two