Ivory and Horn (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ivoryandhorn) wrote in ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} no_true_pair,@ 2008-07-05 10:13:00 |
 |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Entry tags: | ! june 2008, author: ivoryandhorn, fandom: original[the city adel] |
Original -- The City Adel; "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" 2/2
Title: Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo 2/2
Author/Artist: ivoryandhorn
Fandom: original -- the City Adel
Pairing/Characters: Barakiel, Pevi/Ivahn
Rating: worksafe
Warnings: light m/m, glossed f/f, swearing
Prompt Answered: Week 4 -- Barakiel and Ivahn as the main characters of a fairy tale.
Length: 7100/15600
Summary: In which a fairy must pull off a Happily Ever After, and does so. With style.
Notes: This thing ballooned on me, it really did. But I had a blast writing it anyway.
The kitchens turned out to really be a series of kitchens, the largest of which had walls lined with strange metal implements that might have been quite at home in a torture chamber. The room was frantic as a bee hive, with servants running in and out with trays of food and drink while cooks flailed at their posts, creating masterpiece after masterpiece to fill the bellies of hungry guests. The ovens that lined the far wall blazed as they baked pastries, roasted meats, heated soups.
“Maybe we shouldn’t bother them—“ Ivahn tried to say, but Pevi just pushed his way into and through the bustle. And Ivahn, his hand still caught in Pevi’s, was powerless to resist the pull. The prince finally stopped at a relatively quiet corner (meaning Ivahn could finally hear himself think, and what he was thinking was, Why is it so loud in here?) where two formidable women stood roaring orders at passers-by.
“Hey, Ma’am Rawnel, Ma’am Ming,” Pevi said breathlessly. “I don’t suppose you could spare us a basket?”
“A basket of what?” The first woman, with graying dreadlocks and copper skin, turned her gimlet eye on the prince and Ivahn resisted the urge to cower when she turned it on him. “And for what?”
“Food! For exploring the palace!” Pevi explained in excitement. “I mean, this guy, he’s never been here before, so I figured I’d, you know, show him around.”
“Bet there’s a few things you’d like to show him, eh, Your Highness?” the other woman grinned. Her grey-speckled black hair was cropped short, almost as short as a man’s.
Hadn’t Pevi just said he wanted to show him around the palace? What was she talking abo—oh. Oh.
“No no, not on a first date,” Pevi said airily, and Ivahn blushed even harder, even as he laughed along. He was surprised—he couldn’t remember ever having this much fun, even if they weren’t actually embarking on an illicit hallway tryst.
“Here you go then, Your Highness.” Rawnel brandished a small basket with a stiff arching handle. “Please try not to get caught again. Remember all the fuss with the Vizier’s son last year?”
“I regret nothing!” Pevi cried, hefting the basket in his hands, but his ears, Ivahn noticed, were bright red.
“That’s not what he said,” Rawnel replied with a grin. “Have fun, Your Highness, mysterious masked person.”
“Thank you for giv—“ Ivahn began, but Pevi seized his hand again.
“Come on!” Pevi dragged him back out into the hallways, a different one from the one they’d entered by. After the bright bustling kitchen, the marble pathway seemed cavernously empty and eerily silent, lit only by lamps that lit up as they approached and died as they passed.
Ivahn glanced longingly at the basket, and was relieved when Pevi stopped at a pair of ornate double doors. “Here’s the portrait gallery,” he explained. “My entire family for like a million generations has portraits in here, it’s pretty cool. But first—help yourself.“
The prince pulled back the basket’s cover and inside, Ivahn saw a fresh-baked loaf, a chunk of hard cheese, some cold sausage peeking out of their cloth wrapping, rich red apples and flagons of drink. He eagerly tore into the bread and pinched off a bit of cheese. Maybe not exactly the haute cuisine out in the ballroom, but—the bread was still warm and soft inside its chewy crust, and the cheese was tangy and smooth under his teeth.
“Thanks,” Ivahn said shyly, as Pevi pushed their way in.
The prince smiled and took an enormous bite out of his apple. “No problem.”
The portrait gallery turned out to be one long hallway, lined with enormous portraits of various royal personages—it was like taking a walk down history, Ivahn thought, fascinated by the way the fashions and backgrounds slowly changed as the generations passed. Pevi led him down the soft blue carpet, explaining the occasional particularly interesting ancestor. And this main hall wasn’t even the whole of it; Ivahn could see various smaller halls branching off the main one.
Ivahn leaned over to examine a quirky portrait of a sleeping old man with half-moon spectacles and a truly impressive white beard, when the man’s eyes suddenly popped open and his veiny hand waved in greeting.
“Whoa!” Ivahn stumbled backwards in surprise, but Pevi caught his arm before he could embarrass himself by tripping over his own feet. “The painting, it—it moved!”
“Yeah, they do that,” the prince said sheepishly. “I probably should’ve warned you, huh?”
“Wow.” He leaned back in, and the old man, perhaps sensing his wonder, winked at him with a twinkling blue eye. “That’s amazing! How do they do that?”
“Not a clue.” Ivahn felt Pevi lean over beside him, their shoulders bumping. “This is my great-great-great-great-great-great-grea
“Is it still alive?” Ivahn asked hopefully.
“Yeah, it lives in the menagerie except for when it doesn’t want to,” was Pevi’s reply. “But that’s kind of out of our way, though.”
“Oh.”
“Maybe next time, if you can visit again?” Pevi asked hopefully. “I’ll show you the rest of the place, all around the outside of the palace. The gardens have some pretty amazing stuff.”
“That’d be nice,” Ivahn said, knowing full well he’d never get an opportunity to come back ever again. “I hope I can come back again some time, too.”
“Anyway…oh look, Rawnel packed poison apples!”
“…poison apples?”
“Oh, don’t be scared,” Pevi assured him, rummaging in the basket’s depths. “One of my great-great-great-great-great…great-grea
He pulled out two apples that were exactly half red and half white, and handed Ivahn one before eagerly biting into his.
Ivahn watched Pevi licking juice off his bare hand with long languid swipes of his tongue, and the moment he realized what he was doing he looked down at his hands, hoping Pevi would think his blush was leftover from the kitchens, or something other than from staring at him, and started fumbling with his gloves. He didn’t want to get them dirty or anything, enchanted or not.
“What are you doing!?” Barakiel hissed, popping onto Ivahn’s shoulder. “Stop, stop! Do not touch the gloves! Keep the gloves on!”
“But—“
“Do not. Touch the gloves. For any reason. Whatsoever. Leave taking care of them to me. Or I will fry your ass to kingdom come and back! Before personally snapping your wand in two!” And with that, he disappeared.
“What did you say?” Pevi blinked, looking up.
“I said ‘But wicked witches are wicked. And stuff,” Ivahn fibbed. “You’re not wicked. Are you?”
“Yeah, well,” Pevi shrugged. “Every family’s got a few bad apples, eh?”
Ivahn groaned. “And you must be yours, am I right?”
The prince smirked at him. “Won’t know ‘til you take a bite, will you?”
He immediately turned bright red.
Pevi laughed. “Joking, joking. Come down this way, there’s one of my favorites…”
At the very end of the hallway hung a portrait even larger than the ones around—as soon as he got a good look, Ivahn realized that it had to be a portrait of the current royal family, though it had to be out of date because in it, Pevi couldn’t have been more than five or six. He was sitting there in his little boy shorts next to his sister, who had been stuffed into a dress bearing more ruffles than seemed strictly necessary for a child that small. The portrait-Pevi was squirming around restlessly on his mother’s lap and looking around, obviously bored with all this sitting still nonsense.
“Who’s that?” Ivahn asked, pointing at the boy beaming at them from behind the queen’s chair. He looked to be maybe ten or, or maybe slightly older.
“My brother.”
“But…isn’t that Prince Rexin?” Ivahn asked, pointing at the white-haired teenager who solemnly gazed at them from behind the king.
“It is. That’s my other brother.”
“You never mentioned having two brothers.”
“He…lives in the south castle.” Pevi’s voice dropped. “Asleep.”
“…oh.”
“Well, you know how these things work.” The prince shrugged. “He’ll wake up. Eventually.”
Without really thinking about what he was doing, Ivahn took hold of Pevi’s free hand in his and just held it.
The prince down his arm and back up Ivahn’s and into his mask. “It’s okay, it’s been seven years.”
“Still,” Ivahn said, feeling just a little stupid. Frankly, he couldn’t imagine loving any of his siblings or indeed, any of his family as much as Pevi obviously cared for his (…well, except for Prince Rexin). But he imagined it couldn’t be a good feeling, to see someone you cared about trapped, still alive but dead to the world—and not be able to do a single thing. “I mean, I’m…not exactly close to my brothers, but…”
Up above, keeping an invisible eye on them, Barakiel felt something that totally wasn’t guilt at all squirm inside. But it’d been a Sleeping Beauty or setting up an octogenarian with a teenager and that just didn’t bear thinking about.
“Anyway!” The Prince brightened up and headed for the doors. “Let’s keep going, shall we?”
But he didn’t let go of Ivahn’s hand.
“Psst, kid,” Barakiel hissed in his ear. “Share a little back, huh? It doesn’t all have to be lies.”
“So you mentioned having brothers?” Pevi was asking.
“Um, yeah, two,” Ivahn said uncertainly. Just go with it, right? “But, like I said, we’re…not really close. We don’t have a whole lot in common. I like books. They don’t.”
“That’s too bad,” Pevi said. “I mean, I can’t imagine not getting along with someone who lives in the same damn house as me and seeing them every day. Well, there’s Rexin, but Rexin doesn’t count; I don’t have to look at his ugly mug all that much, thank his hermity ways.”
“Yeah, it…really sucks,” Ivahn said sincerely. “Sometimes I…I wish I could just…run away and leave them all behind. Never look back. You know?”
“So why don’t you?”
Because I don’t have anywhere to go, he thought, and something wrenched inside, because that was truer than anything else he’d fed Pevi all night. “Well…even if we don’t get along…blood is thicker, and…all that.”
Pevi nodded, and Ivahn had a feeling he did know, which made him feel bad, because he’d just spouted total bull and that…wasn’t what he wanted to be telling Pevi.
The prince walked down the hallway, stopping abruptly at was apparently a very elaborate, very beautiful, and very dead end.
“Pevi?” Ivahn asked uncertainly.
“Shhh, watch.” He gave Ivahn a little conspiratorial grin and dropped the now-empty basket before doing something that looked highly inappropriate to a little statue standing in a niche, and a small side door that had previously been a bit of elaborately wallpapered wood popped open.
“Guests first,” he bowed, and Ivahn stepped into the passage first.
“Not a lot of space, so we have to go single file,” Pevi said again from behind him, just as he heard the door click shut.
“Living paintings, secret passageways, menageries…is there anything your palace doesn’t have?” Ivahn asked, mostly to distract himself from how he could feel Pevi’s breath blowing on the back of his neck, which shouldn’t even be physically possible considering how much taller he and his suddenly too hot collar was, but he could anyway, and it was making his stomach flutter in new and—just maybe—not entirely unpleasant ways.
“Frogs,” Pevi replied, deadly serious. “Not since the Golden Ball Incident, what with the elopement. Steps up ahead, careful.”
His voice sounded like it was right in Ivahn’s ear, a seductively low murmur, which was just silly, because of course the crown prince of the kingdom wouldn’t be trying to seduce a nobody newcomer he’d happened to take a temporary shine to.
“Twenty of them, straight up,” the prince added. “They’re kinda steep, be careful.”
“Okay,” he whispered back. But when they’d just about reached the top, he caught the next step with the toe of his boot and tripped; there would have been a tragically embarrassing faceplant and possibly broken noses and other appendages, had Pevi not saved him via the arm around his waist that had yanked him backwards just in time.
They froze like that, both of them breathing too loudly. Ivahn was very aware of Pevi’s body pressed all along his back in a way he hadn’t been aware of out in the ballroom, having then had panic and embarrassment to occupy his mind. Now, he only had the dark—and Pevi. Suddenly his clothes felt too thick and warm, which was ridiculous because they hadn’t been five minutes ago.
“You okay?” Pevi muttered hoarsely, head bowed against the back of Ivahn’s neck.
Ivahn swallowed nervously. “Yes.”
“Alright. Let me go in front now.”
There was an awkward moment were they both stood backs against the wall and Pevi wriggled past him, but their coat buttons got tangled about halfway through and they were trapped like that for long moments, pressed chest to chest, hips to hips, legs tangled, warm breath puffing into each other’s faces.
“Um,” Ivahn said feebly.
“Hold on,” Pevi whispered. His did some fiddling between them, knuckles pressing into Ivahn’s body as his fingers worked, and then he was suddenly free, gliding past while Ivahn tried to pull himself together. This wasn’t really happening, except for the part where it really was, and he absolutely could not believe that this was what the fairy had planned for him. There was just. No way.
(Two teenage boys, trapped in a dark confined space with no supervision whatsoever, Barakiel thought in despair, and there hasn’t even been any inadvertent groping yet! Where did I go wrong?)
The last few steps were awkwardly loud, their boots resounding against the wooden boards. Then Pevi stopped, fiddled with a switch high in a corner, and a section of wall popped open with a rush of cooler air, reveling a section of room lit by moonlight streaming in through huge windows.
“Ta-daaaa!” Pevi cried, as Ivahn clambered out of the stuffy passage. “The royal library!”
It was everything he had ever dreamed of.
“Do you know what just happened? Do you know what just happened? My princess just rejected my greatest hope for her prince! He’s tall, dark, handsome—and rich! Very rich! He can even hold a reasonably intelligent conversation that doesn’t involve dragons, slaying of! I just don’t understand! What’s wrong with him?”
“Is this the prince that told her that fencing and riding were unladylike? And that women were too weak to do either properly? And then presumed to tell her her proper place in society was to be his wife?”
“Well—yes—“
“…and you really don’t see the problem with him?”
“He was probably just—dazzled by the magnificence of her beauty! He wasn’t in his right mind! She didn’t have to challenge him to a duel over some—ill-advised remarks!”
“You’re just pissed because your terrible taste in men is showing.”
Pevi watched Ivahn wandering the library in rapt fascination, reading off titles and authors like a kid in a candy store read off all the sweets just begging to be gobbled up. The lamps obligingly lit themselves up as they passed, and now that he was up close and not doing the tour guide thing he could see that the glinting on Ivahn’s shoulders and arms and back was the result of beads—loops and whorls of beads, twined in intricate patterns that were like nothing he’d ever seen before.
“Nice gloves,” he said aloud, because he didn’t have anything else to say (it was a library. It had books. That was about all he knew about the place.) and also because it was true—he’d been dying for a close look every since he’d first felt the cloth beneath his palms.
“What?” Ivahn looked back up at him, startled, and for some reason that made Pevi smile. He was so into the books, it was really…unexpectedly kind of cute.
“Your gloves,” he repeated. “Can I see?”
After a moment, Ivahn hesitantly held out a hand and Pevi pulled it closer to him using both hands.
“Silk,” he said. “Wow.”
“They were a gift.” Ivahn sounded a little embarrassed; Pevi couldn’t think why. He looked gorgeous in them.
Pevi ran his hand over Ivahn’s, fingers long and elegant under his palm. He wondered how that might feel without the glove between their skin and a moment later, he wondered when he could loosen his shirt collar without looking rude or horny. “Who from?”
“Uh, my godfather,” Ivahn said. “He’s an eccentric. Not all there, you know. Up here.” Pevi nodded absently in agreement.
(Up above, Barakiel gave a huff of indignation and immediately popped back to the ballroom in order to balm his whimpering ego.)
“Could I, um, have my hand back now?”
Pevi looked up into that black feathered mask and made up his mind all at once. Fates, he’d already told Ivahn about Lorin’s enchantment, hadn’t he? Compared to that, this was almost public knowledge. Well, technically it was. But still. “Want to see my favorite part of the castle?”
As loathe as he was to leave the library—there were whole floors, whole wings he hadn’t yet had a chance to see!—Ivahn still couldn’t help himself. He was curious to see what room in this palace of wonders could capture a prince’s attention so. Pevi led him down the cavernous hallways and into a single spacious room with a high ceiling arching over them.
“A music room?” he asked incredulously. He’d been expecting…maybe a weapons display room, or maybe…the stables, or something. Not a music room.
Pevi nodded and tugged him towards the center of the room. “My parents made us take lessons.”
“So what did you learn?” Ivahn asked, trying to keep jealousy and longing out of his voice. He’d always wanted to learn how to play an instrument, maybe the violin, but no one spent that kind of coin on the red-headed stepchild. Or black-haired, as the case may be.
The prince leaned over a sleek black grand piano and plinked out a little ditty. “This. Among other things, but that’s all just dabbling. Piano’s always been my favorite.”
Ivahn blinked in surprise. “Really?”
Pevi looked up at him, amused. “What were you expecting?”
“Um…not this?”
“What, you think I just say I can play to attract pretty girls?” Pevi laughed. The prince sat down with a little flip of his coat tails, and his hands raced over a cascade of notes that ended with a dramatic chord that faded gently away beneath his words. “Try me. Ask me to play you something. Anything.”
“Um,” Ivahn said. He tried to remember the last song he’d heard, but he was becoming increasingly preoccupied by the memory of Pevi’s fingers, lean and strong, and the way they had moved seamlessly over the piano’s keys, agile, graceful. “You pick.”
“If that’s what you want,” the prince shrugged, and started on some song Ivahn had never heard before. It was fast but not frantic, raced up and down in pitch and volume, the melody flowing unbroken, without pause. It reminded Ivahn of what it must be like to fly, of soaring over clouds without a care. It was like listening to unbridled joy made sound, drifting all around and through him, lifting him up just by being there.
It ached, thinking about where he was going to be this time tomorrow. Not listening to a prince playing the piano just for him after a night of showing him around this castle and all of its treasures. He’d be back in the storeroom, squinting at trashy romance novels by the light of a candle’s dying gasp and wishing he was here instead, aching all over from whatever chores he’d had to do that day.
The last notes died away, lingering in the cool air. Pevi smiled up at him, and if Ivahn hadn’t already had a night full of (mostly) cheerful, confident Pevi, he’d have almost said the prince looked… almost nervous. Which couldn’t possibly be. “So? What’d you think?”
“That was…it was amazing, just. Amazing. I’ve never…” Ivahn swallowed, trying to find words that didn’t want to come just yet. “I’ve never heard anything like that before in my life.”
“Good, because I just made it up.”
Ivahn looked up sharply. “What? Really?”
Pevi shrugged one shoulder like he didn’t want it to be a big deal or anything. “I do that sometimes. Improvise. For fun. I think that was one of my best, though.”
“But…how can you do something like that?”
“I just pick something to play about, and just…play.” Pevi looked down at his hands, still resting on the keys. “I don’t know. I just…feel it. Sounds pretty stupid when I say it out loud, doesn’t it?”
“No, not…not really.” Suddenly Ivahn’s mouth felt very dry. “So…what were you, um, thinking about?”
Pevi got off the piano bench and came up to him, standing very close. He brought up his hands and placed them on Ivahn’s face, fingers lined up from earlobe to jaw, thumbs just brushing the underside of the mask.
“Well, you know,” the prince said softly. He began pushing the mask off, slow and careful—Giving me time to bolt, Ivahn thought dizzily, but he stayed right where he was, he didn’t—he didn’t want to leave, never wanted to leave, never wanted to go back to that life with the little storeroom and patched clothes and endless, hopeless work. “I was just thinking about…how I’d like to dance with you when there aren’t about three hundred people and my parents watching.”
“R…Really?” Some serious pounding was going on in Ivahn’s chest and he was almost afraid that Pevi had to be feeling it, he was standing so close. He tried to look elsewhere, but his eyes were locked with Pevi’s, the blue-green color looking even more gem-like in the low lighting of the lamps. “That’s, um, that’s very—“
“Yeah,” Pevi whispered. “Really.” He tilted Ivahn’s face down and the mask was slipping over his eyes now so all he could do was feel the press of Pevi’s palms and fingers against his face and smell his apple-scented breath and oh, Fates, this was really, really going to happen to him—
BONNNNnnnng…
Ivahn froze. “What time is it?”
“Does it matter?“
BONNNNnnnng…
“What time is it?” he asked again, panic rising in his breast.
“Probably midni—“
BONNNNnnnng…
“I have to go!” Ivahn burst out, and it felt like something inside him was breaking, when he tore himself out of Pevi’s hands, ran past the prince and out the door, clutching his face with one hand to keep the mask on so he wouldn’t have to look at Pevi’s face. He frantically retraced the hallways—through the library passageway, back through the portrait gallery, elbowed his way to the other side of the kitchens.
But while Ivahn had longer legs and adrenaline to fuel his legs, but Pevi wasn’t all that much shorter, knew the palace better than his own face, and actually got regular exercise. So by the time Ivahn had pushed his way through the ballroom’s surprised guests and down the sprawling palace steps, Pevi had just about caught up with him.
“Wait!” he shouted. “I don’t even know your name!”
“I’m sorry!” Ivahn cried, just as Barakiel brought the carriage around with a professional story-maker’s sense of timing.
Just before he managed to climb in, though—Pevi managed grab hold of his hand. Barakiel cracked the whip and Ivahn gave his arm one last wrench, before tumbling backwards into the carriage as the door slammed shut. Leaving his prince standing on the palace steps, one sheer silk glove clutched in his hand.
“I cannot believe she is actually going through with the duel! She’ll die! What should I do? If she dies I’ll have failed, but if she wins I’ll never find her a prince! Barakiel! I can’t believe I’m asking this but—what would you do?”
“Anaphiel?”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
After the guests had been ushered home in various states of drunkenness or discreetly directed to the guest rooms in various states of debauchery, Barakiel popped into Pevi’s bedroom to find the kid sitting on his bed, holding the glove in his hands.
“So that’s how it went down,” he mused, after Pevi spilled the whole story to him. Secretly, he was feeling a little smug—the kid was smitten, no doubt about it. Score one for Team Fairy.
“He was really different, you know?” Pevi said wistfully. He ran his fingers over the delicate fabric. “Not like anyone else I’ve ever met.”
“That so?” Barakiel asked innocently.
“It was a really good song, too,” he added. “The one I played when I thinking about him. …I wish I could remember all the notes, now.”
Barakiel perched on Pevi’s knee. “So now what’re you going to do?”
“Try and recreate it from memory, I guess,” Pevi muttered. “Right after my parents rip me a new one tomorrow.”
“No, kid, not the song, the guy,” Barakiel said impatiently. “The one that got away?”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I can find him again. I don’t even know his name or family, or even what his face looks like. Not even the color of his eyes!” Pevi looked down at his hands. “All I have is…this glove.”
“Yeah?” Barakiel leaned over and pretended to have never seen the beadwork in his life. “Nice craftsmanship. Quality stuff.”
“He said it was gift from his godfather,” Pevi told him. He pulled it on, careful, but it took quite a bit of straining and tugging before he could get (most of) his fingers in, and even then there was still quite a bit of fabric dangling off at the tips.
Barakiel watched him pull the glove off, gingerly tugging it off bit by bit until it slipped off nice and easy.
“Must’ve been tailored to fit only him or something.”
And then he watched Pevi carefully fold it up and wrap the glove in a couple handkerchiefs.
“Since it can’t fit your hand, probably wouldn’t fit my hand even if I were the right size—“
And then he watched as Pevi tucked the whole bundle into his bedside drawer.
“And didn’t you say it was magic, because it didn’t get dirty when he was eating that apple? That kind of stuff, that’s unique. One of a kind. Wouldn’t you say?”
And then he watched as Pevi started to pull off his birthday suit for bed.
Clearly, some serious intervention was required if the kid was going to get the hint sometime this century.
“Kid,” he began, “don’t tell me you’re giving up just like that?”
“Even if I narrowed my search to all the merchant families that visited, that’s still a hell of a lot of houses, and that’s assuming he was telling the truth about not being royalty or peasants in disguise,” Pevi said, flopping onto his pillows. “And even if he was, he might be from kingdoms away. I wouldn’t know where to start. Or how to pick out the right person.”
Oy vey.
“The glove, kid,” Barakiel said impatiently, because he’d spent eighteen freaking years on this couple, no way was he letting it go because one half of it was getting depressed and pathetic loser all over himself. “It must’ve been tailored, right? So it’s gotta fit only his hand, right?”
“Yeah…yeah!” Pevi brightened and rolled over. “Wait. How do you know its custom tailored?”
“How many people do you know of who can do beadwork like that? And magic the cloth to boot.”
“True, true…but why not just visit all the tailors who can and get their, you know, client lists or something? There can’t be many people who can afford that kind of service, right?”
Barakiel gave suppressed a sigh and resettled himself on Pevi’s chest. “Take the number of merchants you need to visit and multiply that by a thousand. That’s how many tailors you’d need to visit to find the ones who could do this shit. We’re not even factoring in the fact that it might’ve been made by several separate people. And we’re assuming whoever it is is even in this kingdom.”
“…maybe visiting houses is a better idea after all.”
Barakiel gave him an encouraging nod. “Why wait? Might as well get started ASAP, right? Didn’t you say he looked foreign or something? He might be moving on after this, you never know.”
“You’re right!” Pevi peered up at him. “You know, you seem awful gung-ho about ruining my chances of producing an heir.”
“Like I said, kid,” Barakiel replied, picking loose feathers out of his wings. “I’m your fairy. Your happiness is what keeps me in robes and sparkles.”
The next day, Barakiel popped back into Ivahn’s little room and listened to him spill the beans about the night, nodding along and pretending to have not heard it all the night before. Yep, the kid was smitten too.
Team Fairy—2, World—0, he thought to himself as Ivahn wound down his narrative with an account of barely beating dawn home, on account of his carriage turning back into a bush halfway home and having to walk the rest of the way.
“Sounds like you had a good night,” he said. “But kid: I’m not done with you yet.”
“You aren’t?”
“You’re still stuck in this pathetic little hellhole, aren’t you? Just hold tight and wait. Things’ll get better. I promise.”
“Alright,” Ivahn said softly, second glove held tight in his left hand.
“The prince figured out the Cinderella without a glass slipper? What? How? When did this happen?”
“My ways are mysterious and not for the plebian masses, aka you, to know.”
“You zapped him into it, didn’t you?”
“Did not.”
“Did too!”
“Did not!”
“Did too!”
ATTENTION, GOOD CITIZENS OF THE KINGDOM OF CIT Y ADEL:
THE CROWN PRINCE, PEVI THE CHARMING VIII, REQUESTS THAT ALL HOUSEHOLDS LISTED HEREAFTER SHALL READY ALL THEIR SONS BETWEEN THE AGES OF SIXTEEN AND TWENTY-FIVE ON THE DAYS THAT SHALL HEREAFTER BE LISTED, FOR HE INTENDS TO RETURN A STRANGER’S GLOVE LOST AT THE BALL HELD THIS EVENING PAST IN CELEBRATION OF HIS ASCENSION TO MANHOOD.
THE CROWN PRINCE APOLOGIZES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE, AND THANKS YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.
HAVE A PLEASANT DAY.
More or less one week later after the decree was sent out to every merchant house relevant, Ivahn sat in his storeroom bedroom, even though it wasn’t quite midday and potatoes needed peeling and well water needed fetching and the dogs needed washing, because the prince was on his way and in the absence of his mother his stepfather had decided that what was really needed to impress visiting royalty was to lock the youngest kid up and throw away the key.
“At least he’s hot,” he heard Jarod’s muffled voice say.
“If you’re into that kind of thing,” Sebastchen replied, sounding bored.
“For half a kingdom? Hell yes I am.”
“Shut up both of you and look gay,” his stepfather snapped. “The prince is here.”
Ivahn pressed his ear against the wall, listening for every sound, straining to hear Pevi’s voice—it was too much to hope that he remembered much about what Ivahn looked like, but…maybe he’d remembered enough at least to know it hadn’t been either of the boneheads outside that night.
“You’d better keep your word,” he whispered to his fairy, in case he was listening.
Please.
“…maybe you can pull this off after all. Not that you should, because it is Deviant and Wrong. But maybe you can.”
“You sound way too surprised, considering who it is you’re talking to.”
Pevi watched the two sons try the glove on in the interest of fair play—even though he dismissed them out of hand. The first was tall enough but too broad across the shoulders and probably too old to boot. The second was too short and too pale, even if probably closer in age. Still, he’d promised himself that every son eligible would get a chance and he stood by his word, but just as he’d suspected—just as he’d known in his heart from the moment he saw the pair—Jarod’s fingers barely made it to the first knuckle, and Sebastchen’s fingers were too short.
“Oh, well,” Pevi said, hiding his disappointment. He was two families away from being done with the merchant families based in his kingdom, which meant he was almost a third of the way through all possible houses. “Are there any more sons in the house?”
“Oh no,” the father simpered. “None at all. Just these two little darlings.”
“Ah,” Pevi said, resisting the urge to edge away as fast as possible, because the father was starting to seriously creep him out. “I see. Well. I shall be moving on then, thank you for being so obliging—”
Barakiel popped into place by Pevi’s ear. “He’s lying, there’s another son,” he shouted. “No, don’t talk, you’ll just look crazy. Ask the servant girl! Use these!” He conjured a small sack of mint sweets into Pevi’s coat pocket.
For a moment he was afraid that Pevi was going to pick now, of all times, to ignore what Barakiel was saying, but right before he exited the sitting room, he stopped by the girl, who couldn’t have been any older than ten.
“Hello there,” he said with a friendly smile, dropping to one knee. She blushed and curtsied unsteadily; Pevi reached into his pocket and pulled out the little sack, solemnly offering her one of the candies. “My name’s Pevi. What’s yours?”
“Annetta,” she said shyly, taking one of the sweets and popping it in her mouth.
“Ah, a pretty name for a pretty girl,” Pevi smiled a little wider, a little more conspiratorial. “It must be hard, having three masters in the house. Aren’t boys so messy? My sister’s always telling me to clean up after myself. All day long, nag nag nag, that’s all she does.”
The girl giggled at Pevi’s face, though Barakiel highly doubted Yelina would have, and said, “There en’t three masters.”
“No?” Pevi mimed surprise. “But they’re all here, aren’t they? One, two, three.” He pointed at each of the men in the room in turn; Barakiel subtly dissuaded them from going over and making the girl shut up, on account of how manhandling royalty was really not a good way to better your standing in society. Then again, neither was lying to royalty, or exposing your inability to treat human beings decently to royalty, but they’d find that out soon enough.
“There’s another one. But th’ other masters dun like ‘im,” the girl explained, whispering into Pevi’s offered ear, and he let her take another two sweets. “But we do.”
“I see, I see.” You might have thought this was the most fascinating thing in the world, from the way he listened to her words so intently, head slightly cocked like a curious bird. “And where’s the fourth master right now?”
“I en’t seen ‘im all day. But I ‘eard Cookie say ‘e’s in th’ storeroom now.”
“Is that so?” Pevi stood and bowed to her solemnly, at which she giggled and curtsied back. He dropped the whole bag of sweets into her hands. “Thank you, Annetta.”
He faced the stepfather and the asshole sons and for that one moment, he really looked like the prince he’d been born and for that one moment, everyone in the room (sans Annetta and Barakiel) looked really, really nervous, perhaps imagining guillotines and racks lying ahead in exchange for lying to their future ruler.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t think of deliberately prevaricating to your own crown prince,” Pevi said, arch and cold. “So I’m sure you wouldn’t mind showing me what’s in your storeroom. Hmm?”
Barakiel dashed to the storeroom ahead of them.
“Yo, kid, wake up!” he shouted. Ivahn’s head snapped up from where it was resting on his knees.
“Huh?”
“Grab the other glove and get ready,” he ordered.
“What are you talki—“
And then the door opened.
He could see his stepfather and brothers arrayed along the wall, but what caught his eye was Pevi—dressed not quite as fancy as he had been that night at the ball, but it had to be him, could be no other man standing there, watching him intently, eyes raking him over. Ivahn slid out of his room uncertainly, standing in the sunlight that was flooding the kitchen. He held the other glove behind him, trying not to mangle the fabric in his nervousness.
“As you know, I’m, uh, attempting to return this glove I found,” Pevi said. He seemed about to say something more, but stopped himself and simply held out a hand, with the glove resting in it.
After a moment, Ivahn haltingly held out his own, the matching glove crushed in the center of his palm.
“If you’d just be so kind as to, to try them on—” Pevi stumbled over his words.
Ivahn silently pulled on one, then the other. Scarcely had he pulled the second glove down tight when Barakiel gave him a discreet zap, transforming his tatty hand-me-downs back into the striking beaded creation of the night before.
“Um,” Ivahn said shyly. “Hi.”
“Hey,” Pevi said. “I, uh. I still don’t know your name.”
“It’s…it’s Ivahn.”
“Ivahn.” Pevi seemed to rolling the name around on his tongue, savoring it. Then he grinned.
DINNnnnnnng…
“What time is it?”
“What?” Ivahn looked confused.
DINNnnnnnng…
“What time is it?”
“Probably…just about noon…”
DINNnnnnnng…
Pevi looked back down the hallway at the cuckoo clock and back at Ivahn again. “You going to run out on me this time?”
“No,” Ivahn said breathlessly. “Never again.”
Then Pevi he raised his hands, just as he had in the music room, holding Ivahn’s face between his palms. But this time, when Pevi’s thumbs began pushing the mask off, Ivahn’s gloved hand came up to tug it off the rest of the way.
“You know,” his prince said, “you never did get your kiss.”
“I doubt they’ll last even three months this time.”
“Well, since you’ll be the one stuck watching over them…”
“What?”
“Since you still haven’t managed anything for your princess yet, and I highly doubt my prince’ll leave his True Love to languish here for any longer…”
“What!?”
“I expect you take very good care of my handiwork, Anaphiel. I’m putting them in your hands. And if you fuck up—wait, you already know what’ll happen if you fuck up. How’s the wand doing, by the way? And the other one?”
“…I don’t believe this!”
“See you ‘round, Ana-boy.”
Three months later, Barakiel checked in on what was possibly one of his favorite Happily Ever Afters yet, if only for the damage pulling it off had done to his boss’ ulcer. Ah, good times, good times.
Pevi had offered Ivahn anything he wanted in the world, anything at all, and fortunately Ivahn had asked for the possible as opposed to golden fleeces or fallen stars. And so Pevi had gotten him a job at the palace library as assistant librarian and also paid for violin lessons and a nice place for him to stay nearby the palace, because he that kind of besotted sap. He was also, Barakiel was pleased to see, actually making an effort to seriously woo his True Love without abusing his Prince Charming smile, something Barakiel fully approved of.
Ivahn was incredibly happy with his new job and violin lessons and being asked out to walks and shows and outings with his True Love, even if it sometimes got to be a bit much for someone who until recently had had zero social life to speak of. He was even learning how to smile like it wasn’t physically painful to do so. As far as Barakiel could tell from trailing him around the palace, he was pretty happy. Especially since his mother had come to her senses and kicked the sultry stepfather and asshole sons out without a single red cent in favor of an absentminded scholar with a heart of, if not gold, at least very high quality silver (or perhaps it was platinum.).
Still, Barakiel still had one last promise to keep.
He watched as Ivahn climbed up one of those ladders on wheels to put books away and watched as Pevi not-so-subtly eyed his ass. He watched as Ivahn climbed back down and called Pevi on it and Pevi leered at him before asking him out to tea. He watched as Ivahn ducked his head and accepted with a blush and a laugh, and he watched as Pevi leaned his head against the books, a smile on his lips and love in his eyes.
He appeared right behind his former prince’s head, brandishing his zapping finger and cocking an eyebrow.
Ivahn simply gave his head a tiny shake, and turned back to the kiss Pevi was pulling him into.
…and that, as they say, is
THE END.
*
Barakiel was allowing himself a congratulatory cigarette for a tough job well done and pretending not to be watching his former charges make out in the library aisle, when he felt his fairy-sense tingling.
He immediately popped to the nearest window and blew on the glass, polishing it with one white sleeve. “Yeah? Who is it?”
A face wavered into view on the makeshift mirror. “Barakiel?”
“Fates, what happened to you?”
“A knight,” the face sighed.
“Figures,” Barakiel nodded in sympathy. “You gonna be okay? Anything I can do to help? Fry him in his tin can, maybe?”
“No, no, I already did…but there’s something else I need…”
Five minutes later Barakiel suppressed a groan and cursed being born with a (mostly) functioning moral compass. “Fine, I’ll do it. I’ll do it! But only ‘cause it’s you and you look like shit.”
Ten more minutes, and he was seriously considering surgery to have that damned compass removed so he could zap its ass to kingdom come and back, before personally snapping its wand in two.
Or is it?