Chapter Text
The ring is just too fucking heavy to carry this far.
He had thought it might be, honestly, when he saw the flier for the auction, but it was so pretty. And it had enough space for so much power, what with the huge blue stone in the middle that felt like cool water under his probing and the tiny diamonds settled around its edges in the perfect arrangement to amplify. With this, he could do all sorts of cool shit, if he had the motivation.
(It’s not as if Ed needs more power, though, honestly: the huge pile of treasure they’ve got stored away will last them hundreds of years, let them go fucking wild with magic. But that’s not the point of it all. There’s the reputation to consider. After this haul—after they finish stripping this auction of all the things that they can use—then, maybe, he can take a break. He’s tired of this shit. He’s tired of it always being the same.)
Iz is always prodding at him to go back to attacking humans, fighting back against what he calls the invasion, certain they’re the reason for all their troubles, but honestly, the humans don’t bother him all that much? They’ve been there all his life, and most of them seem like just boring regular people. They’re at least something different from the same old shit on the other side: they’re always bustling around, always changing things, always doing new stuff. Besides, they make cool shit like rings, and lamps that don’t stink of burning honey, and they give the bees fancy little houses in exchange for a little bit of honey once in a while. All the wild bees Ed knows are jealous of the ones who’ve moved into the big square hives, and honestly, Ed gets it. Something really nice about being taken care of without being caged.
He’s sagging a little bit, and that’s no good: the dawn’s just over the horizon, Ed can feel it. It’ll be breaking soon, and with it, the tide of his magic. He’s got to get somewhere safe.
He could drop the ring: could say he didn’t like it, or decided not to grab it, but then it’d be a whole thing with Izzy, and he’s fucking tired, so.
So a place to ride out the dawn’s what he needs. He fucking hates getting caught, hasn’t had that happen in ages, but he still remembers the way it makes him feel: like he’s stripped of everything that makes him safe, makes him dangerous, makes him Ed.
He’s in the part of the city that’s just north of the river, where the humans have built huge edifices of beige stone with fancy little curls of iron that make Ed’s teeth vibrate as they repel him. That’s the one thing that does piss him off about the humans: the iron.
He sags again, feels the ring catch on a branch of one of the skinny little trees the humans have stuck in the fake rock of the road, and shakes himself. He’s gotta plan, because the sun is hovering just below the lip of the earth, and while the buildings will give him a bit of cover from the dawn—he won’t be smacked flat with it, wings disintegrating in the blast of fresh light—he’ll fall to the pavement and probably get eaten by a cat.
Not fucking optimal.
He scans the buildings for any niche, any cleanish looking drainpipe, anything—
And then he sees it.
There’s a window, cracked on the top floor across the street, and there’s no iron bars, no screen, nothing to keep a determined fairy out except for the cross-currents and thermals up that high (and, the Fang inside his head reminds him, owls). But the light’s on inside, so there’s probably a human and that’s fine; Ed can curse that bridge when he gets to it. For now, he digs deep, tightens his grip on the gold in his hands, and flaps his wings harder.
#
Stede’s finally given up on sleep, the air hanging heavy and so, so hot around him.
Old Mme Baudet next door has complained to the guardienne already about his music, but it’s hot in the deuxieme arrondissement in July, so he cracks the window, just a few centimeters, and sets a record on the turntable.
He sets the speed to just a little slower than he should, hears the way the notes stretch languid through the air, and settles back on the couch to try and rest, at least, if not sleep. He unbuttons the top two buttons of his linen pajamas: they’re nearly light as gauze, and they keep his sweaty skin from sticking to itself, but still, he considers losing them entirely. It’s so hot.
Stede has a fan, of course, standing by the window, but it seems to just be moving hot, sticky air from one place to another, not cooling anything down.
He’s just managed to fall back into a fitful doze when something tinks against his window.
It can’t be rain: he’s high enough up that he can smell the shift when it starts, can smell it coming, even. It could be a bird, although it’s not even dawn, and he rarely hears birdsong in this dense part of the city.
Something flutters in the air, and he reconsiders the bird theory.
He cracks one eye open, just a bit, because if there is a bird in his apartment, it’s probably frightened, and don’t frightened birds try to nest in your hair? Or something?
Anyway. He doesn’t want to spook it further, so he just peels one eye open. Just a bit. And—
Stede freezes, doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe.
There’s a tiny man on his coffee table.
He’s sitting beside Stede’s abandoned teacup, and he’s fussing with something in his hands—oh! It’s a ring, big enough that he could wear it as a belt! He’s struggling with it a bit, dragging it across the table, and he drops it with a clatter just as he passes the corner of the still-quietly-playing turntable.
“Fuck,” he murmurs in a shockingly human-sounding—if quiet—voice, and then his head whips around and he’s looking at Stede.
Stede forces himself to close his eye slowly, naturally, and keeps his breathing long and slow.
There’s a beat of silence, nothing and no one moving, and then the shuffle of tiny footsteps resumes. Stede can’t resist it: he cracks his eye back open again, watches the tiny man reach the end of the table and set the ring down carefully before laying flat and reaching down to yank at the handle of the drawer that’s tucked into the side of the table.
It doesn’t budge.
The little man swears under his breath, shoving the other arm down, and yanks harder. Still nothing.
A faint shaft of light is creeping over the table, the dawn finally breaking, and when the tiny man—fairy? is he a fairy?—glances back, he seems to see it and jolt into action, leaping from the edge of the table and away from the light, catching himself in midair with the wings that somehow Stede hadn’t noticed before. There’s a hiss of something like steam when the tiniest bit of light hits the tip of one wing, and the fairy lets out the slightest hint of a gasp and ducks down further. The drawer finally slides open a few inches and the little fairy leaps inside, ducking down. There’s a moment of stillness, then he pops back up, drags the ring in with him, and disappears again just as the dawn light reaches the edge of the table.
What the fuck?
#
Ed’s stuck in a fucking piece of furniture, with a full-size human right outside, with no sight lines and no defenses.
Fuck.
The human had been… kind of cute, though, in a massive, pink-and-gold kind of way. Stretched out and sleeping in pretty matching clothes, bare feet sticking out and a sliver of belly that looks softer and warm and pillowy.
And now he’s stuck in the drawer until the dawn passes, and... honestly probably for a while longer, since he can’t fucking see what’s going on outside of the drawer he’s shoved himself into and doesn’t have any way to know if it’s safe to sneak back out?
Well. That sucks.
At least he’s on the side of the table away from the window, so while a faint, diffuse light sneaks in, it’s been bounced around enough that it doesn’t burn, just sort of tingles when it hits his skin. Kind of nice, actually. Refreshing. It’ll add a little extra sparkle to his wings for a few weeks, which looks fucking fantastic even if it’s not, strictly speaking, great for him.
It’s summer, too, a few weeks after the solstice, so it’s gonna be a long wait.
It’s not that he can’t go out in the sunlight—obviously he can, when the weird energy of the dawn fades—but more that. Well. Humans.
Ed’s lived his entire adult life around humans, ever since getting to Paris when he was still basically wet behind the wings, and they’re fucking fascinating as a whole, what with all the shit they make and how fast that shit changes—and the things that don’t change, like the big-ass clock he saw against the wall when he flitted in that’s definitely older than him by at least a hundred years.
He can’t close the drawer from the inside, so he hopes the human doesn’t peek in or shut it, because it’ll be a big problem if he gets stuck in there. Inside a building this size, with this much iron lacing its bones, there’s no chance of teleporting, either, not even if he completely vaporizes this ring. He’s more likely to end up in fucking Nantes again, or worse, half of him home and half here, if he tries. So. He’s stuck, apparently.
Ed sets the ring down carefully in the sunlight, lets it catch a bit of it to store, because if he does get trapped, he’ll need every last reserve to get back out. The human will definitely notice if he has to blast his way out, but he’d rather that than be trapped in a table forever.
The drawer is tall enough that he can sit without feeling like he has to bend—even the tips of his wings fit, which is nice, and it’s at least three body-lengths long. Maybe he’ll nap the day away? He never feels quite rested these days, and hey, if he’s trapped anyway...
Ed shifts to sit more comfortably, and a sparkle catches his eye. He pauses, turns, and actually looks at the contents of the drawer.
Okay. Maybe he won’t be so bored in here after all.
#
Stede must have fallen asleep eventually, because when he wakes up, it’s with a gasp and a flail that nearly sends him tumbling off the couch.
He’s not sure why he’s on the couch at first: he never falls asleep there, not when he has a very comfortable bed just a dozen steps away. He must have been sleepier than he thought, or the chamomile must have worked for once, because he’s actually feeling relatively rested.
The morning light is cutting through the window, pale and lovely, and with it, a cool breeze. It’s still humid, and the air smells a bit like rain.
That’s something Stede loves about Paris: back home, the storms were intense and majestic, filled with hail and huge, towering clouds. Even in the city, the sky was huge and the weather changed on a dime.
In Paris, it’s milder. It rarely gets cold, almost never snows in the winter, and the summer heat always breaks right when it’s about to get unbearable. And the storms are different.
He can feel them coming, for one, can smell them on the air. They ramp up slowly, not sudden bursts of hail and lightning from a clear sky, but a steady buildup of gray in the sky and anticipation in the air. He can feel it today: the heat’s going to break, the streets washed clean in a summer deluge.
He loves the rain in Paris, loves the way it makes the gray stone of the city gleam. There’s something inside of him that craves it, that makes him want to go out into the deluge and turn his face to the sky and soak in the thunder of it, to give himself up to the lightning, to stand naked in the street and scream into the power of the sky.
He doesn’t, though. He just thinks about it.
Stede takes a deep breath of petrichor, faint and lovely, and smiles. Lucius and John will be thrilled.
He swings his legs down from the couch, stretches, glances down at the coffee table, and—
The coffee table.
Had he dreamt it? He must have. He must have imagined a tiny man flew into his open window and hid himself in the drawer of his coffee table, right? That couldn’t have actually happened. There’s no way.
Slowly, he leans forward and peers around the table.
The drawer is open, just a bit. He never leaves the drawers open, because he bangs his shins on the damned things if he does. He knows he closed it yesterday after dropping a button he’d found under the couch inside. He knows he did.
But the drawer is open.
#
Ed’s having a fucking fantastic time. Look at all this stuff!
He’s tucked his ring in the back, safe from prying eyes, and honestly, he’s considering abandoning it altogether in favor of the string of pearls he found tangled in a corner. They’re real; he can feel it, can sense the layers of power running through each pearl the size of his fist. They’re catching the light that trickles into the drawer, almost glowing with it, gorgeous and pale silver-gray. Ed can’t help reaching out to touch them, draping the string around his neck, and then underneath them he finds a golden button that glitters with butter-yellow light. He’s just finished polishing it to a mirror shine when he spots a green flower the size of his entire torso tucked in the back, and shuffles over to it, still wearing the pearls.
The petals are soft, and made of some sort of fabric—he thinks it might be silk—and perfectly ruffled, brilliantly green.
Something crinkles underfoot, and he realizes he’s stepped onto a small pile of papers, so he kneels to take a peek.
It’s a letter, the envelope slit open neatly. The stamp is—eugh, it’s a human child, staring back at him. No thank you. He pulls the folded paper out and lays it over the creepy eyes, flipping it open.
(Yeah, Ed can read seven human languages as well as the various languages of the fae. Whatever, it’s not like it’s hard.)
He thinks that maybe he should feel bad about reading this guy’s mail, but he doesn’t, so he stands back and starts reading.
Stede—
The kids were asking about you today. I didn’t know what to tell them. Dad’s off finding himself on the other side of the world doesn’t exactly answer any questions.
We appreciated the call last week, even if it was short; the kids were thrilled to hear from you, and I was glad to hear you weren’t dead. Thank you for the address, too. Alma wrote you a letter, and Louis decorated the back. You’ll see he’s still in his bug phase, so don’t leave that page out where you’ll see it out of the corner of your eye, because he’s getting weirdly good at them? Not sure if I should be proud of the artistic eye he got from me, or freaked out by the bug thing he got from you.
I hope you find what you’re looking for, Stede. The divorce is final, and the paperwork is attached.
Doug says hi.
Mary.
There’s a picture paperclipped to the letter, and Ed recognizes the man on the couch, between two children that Ed assumes must be his. They both have a bit of him in their faces.
Mary must be his former wife, then, but...
“Who’s this Doug, then?” Ed murmurs, and flips the page. The letter from Alma is shorter, just a few lines about school and asking questions, and on the back—
“Fuck!” he leaps back from the page, catching himself on a pile of coins. That Mary hadn’t been kidding: the wasp on the paper is exquisitely detailed, horrifying in the low light of the drawer. He sets the page of adult handwriting back down on top of it and tries his best to forget it’s there.
There’s so much stuff in here: a key the size of Ed’s body! A little leather packet with threads and needles! A box of what Ed thinks must be candies, small white circles that smell of peppermint and sugar, and when Ed opens the tin to pull one out he actually shivers with how powerful the mint smell is (he pulls one of these out and holds it in one hand, taking considered licks that make his tongue go cold and tingly as he keeps exploring).
Underneath all that he finds a magazine, and when he wiggles his way between the pages and pops a faint glow into the air, he laughs. He doesn’t know all that much about humans, but he knows they don’t usually hide pictures of half-dressed people in their drawers.
Stede. His name is Stede. Stede Bonnet, apparently, according to the address on the outside of the letter.
Ed stills at a noise from the room outside the drawer: footsteps, heavy and human, barefoot, so it must be Stede. He slides out of the magazine, extinguishes the light, and slides to the front of the drawer. He peeks up, peering over the edge, holding his wings down and close around his back so they don’t give him away with the glitter.
Stede’s up! He’s moving! He’s facing away from Ed and he’s disappearing into the bathroom, and now is Ed’s chance.
As soon as the door slides shut, Ed’s moving, fluttering out of the drawer onto the table, and—
He sees the green ring out of the corner of his eye, and pauses.
#
Stede emerges from the bathroom just in time to see something tiny flit out of the window it had come in through, and he scrambles over to it, staring. It had been real. And the fairy—it had been there the whole time! In his drawer! And... had it been carrying his pearls?
He pulls the drawer in the coffee table open and yes, everything’s askew, his letter from Mary and the kids out of the envelope, his breath mint tin open, and in the place of the string of pearls he’d found at a lovely little jeweler on the left bank, there’s a ring.
He picks it up, turns it over in his hands. It seems to glitter more than it should, seems to radiate light, and the color is gorgeous, a deep turquoise that he wants to swim in.
Stede slides the ring onto his index finger and curls his other palm around it, pulling it to his chest, as he stares at the place in the sky where the fairy had disappeared.
#
Ed’s always been a little bit creeped out by the entrance to the cavern. Sure, it’s a rift in the human world—has to be, if they want to create a fae pocket, obviously—but did they have to find one that was so... covered in human bodies? Yeah, the energy of it keeps it more stable—usually—but still. Fucking yuck.
He ducks through the eye socket of the third skull from the door and two down, then closes his eyes and flutters his wings just so. It works this time, thank the veil: he feels the cool rush of the barrier, the pearls sliding over his body as he makes the transition. They seem to have held the heat of the sun, a little bit, protecting him from the chill of the magic, and when he pops out the other side into their space, he’s smiling.
He just barely has time to flit into his own room and slither the pearls off his body to tuck into the hidden space behind his chameleon stamp before he hears voices approaching.
“The fuck have you been?” Izzy asks immediately when he makes it around the corner into Ed’s, buzzing up to him and fluttering around his face. His silver-veined black wings make a slight hum in the air that puts Ed’s teeth on edge. “And where’s the ring?”
Ed’s looking up at his wall, at the fucking awesome decorations he’s put there, very casual. “Got stuck at dawn,” Ed says. “Couldn’t bring it back.”
“So, what, you just spent the day prancing around the city?”
“Pretty much.” Ed kicks off his boots and sets them next to his door. “We don’t need it, Iz. Chill.”
“We might,” Izzy grumbles.
“Boss! You’re back!” Fang appears in the doorway, and Ed waves him in. Might as well make it a party.
Ivan’s with him, his shadow as always, and their bond flickers in his second sight, the power sliding between them effortlessly. He nods at Ed, not a fairy of many words, and Ed nods back.
“Gonna do some research tomorrow,” Ed says. “Talk to Archie, see what she’s heard. I bet there’s something else good we can grab.”
“The fucking Lou Carcolh?” asks Izzy. “The fuck’s that big shell-snake gonna know?”
“Hey, Archie’s a good one,” Ed says. “A little... enthusiastic, maybe, but a good dude.” And Archie, at least, always has something new to tell him, always wants to hear about the weird shit he’s thinking, rather than giving him a stink-eye and asking what use that’ll be.
“Fine,” says Izzy. “I’m going to keep gathering grave goods, like I always do, and if you want to go for the flashy pieces, be my guest.”
He flaps his wings and ducks through the doorway, disappearing, and Ed exchanges a glance with Fang. “Has he gotten more high strung lately?” he asks, and Fang shrugs.
“Don’t ask me to explain Izzy, bro,” Fang says, and Ivan snorts his agreement.
Ed sighs and ushers them out before curling up in his nest and falling into a restless, dream-filled sleep for the rest of the morning.
#
Stede’s phone rings just as he’s about to step into the shower, and he sighs, wrapping the towel around his waist. It might be Mary, might be an emergency, and he’s promised her he’ll make himself more available, so. He picks up the red handset. “Bonnet residence, Stede speaking,” he says.
“Stede, I know who you are,” says Lucius’s voice, tinny though the phone line. “You can just say hello like a normal person.”
“That’s rude,” Stede says. “Is there something you need, Lucius?”
“Wow.” There’s a rustle across the line. “You’re in a mood.”
Stede rubs a hand over his face. “I’m about to step into the shower,” he says. “What is it?”
He likes Lucius—he really does—and he’s grateful to him for introducing him to the rest of the crew, to the gay scene here in Paris, but. Sometimes the boy can be incredibly irritating.
“Oooh, so... you’re answering the phone naked? Mm, that’s—”
“Lucius! Get to the point.”
“All right, all right.” He can hear the laugh in Lucius’s voice. “A bunch of us are going to the park later, and Frenchie wants to visit the Louvre, if you want to come along?”
Stede glances at the table, at the open drawer. If anyone will know more about fairies, it’ll be Frenchie. Half of what he says will be nonsense, obviously, but the rest? The rest might have some gems.
He looks down at the table and picks up the green ring, turning it over in his hands. “All right,” he says. “That sounds... nice.”
“Groovy,” says Lucius. “See you at noon at the Tuileries? At the pond? We’ll do lunch and drinks before the museum.”
Stede agrees, hangs up, and pointedly does not think about the tiny man in the shower.
#
Ed takes that trip to see Archie, who’s currently living under le treizième to slurp up the leftover noodles at night, and gets a list of jewels likely to be moving through the city soon. He tucks the list away, gives her a fully-charged ruby in exchange, and finds himself flying north rather than west to the catacombs.
Stede might have more jewelry, he thinks, quite reasonably, actually. He probably does. Pretty necklaces and rings and shit, probably all big stones and shiny metal, and no iron anywhere.
It had smelled nice in there, too.
And Stede’s golden hair had glittered almost as brightly as a gem.
Yeah. He’s going back. He accepts it as truth pretty much as he’s sliding into Stede’s still-open window as twilight falls. He flits through an arched doorway into a darker room, slipping along the shadows to duck behind the books stacked on the bookshelf to get his bearings.
He’s lucky he made it in when he did, because just as he alights on the slightly dusty shelf—fucking ew—Stede’s bathroom door swings open and the man himself emerges in all his enormous pink glory and a cloud of sweet-scented steam.
And the pink is—all over, actually.
Stede is naked, Ed realizes. He’s naked, and he’s—oh.
Is that what humans have under their clothes?
Stede has some sort of protuberance, a long floppy bit that hangs down with a loose, soft-looking pillow of skin behind it. It’s all set in a thatch of hair, and when he moves, it all swings slightly, pendulous. Ed can’t look away.
He’s fresh from washing, Ed thinks, because his hair is wet, the golden-yellow of it wetted to a sleek bronze, and he’s rubbing his towel over his chest, over his arms. As Ed watches, Stede lifts one leg up onto a chair and drags the towel down his calf and over the top of his foot.
Ed wants to fly closer, wants to look. He wants to see what Stede smells like, all clean like this, wants to touch his skin, see if it’s as soft as it looks.
He bets it is.
Stede sits down on the bed, pauses for a moment, then smiles a bit. Ed wants to ask what he’s thinking, wants to know, wants to understand. He doesn’t know why he’s so taken with this human, can’t understand it, but there’s something about him: something about the stuff he collects, the way he treasures it. Something about the light in his eyes when he looks around, about the way his voice softens when he waters his plants—Ed’s fucking fascinated.
He tucks himself further behind the stack of books as Stede settles back against the pillows, still completely bare, and stretches his legs out, flexing his feet and rolling his neck on his shoulders. He’s spread the towel underneath himself from lower back to knees, and when he relaxes, he drops one knee to the side and strokes his hands down his thighs.
Ed wonders what it would feel like, a hand that big stroking against him. Stede could cover his whole body, his palm the size of Ed’s torso. Ed could be be pressed flat like that, rubbed down, petted gently or roughly, and—
Ed’s body gives a little shiver, and he realizes... he’s kind of into this. He’s kind of into Stede.
Fascinating.
Stede’s got his eyes closed, and he’s leaned his head back against the headboard, so Ed risks a flutter closer, alighting behind a curtain this time on the sill of the closed window. The light’s about the same outside and in, right now, so he’s pretty sure that even if Stede opens his eyes and looks Ed’s way, he won’t spot him, and Ed’s got a perfect view through the gap in the curtains. He settles back against the glass, the coolness of it grounding against his spread wings, and watches.
Stede’s running a hand down his chest, stroking over his belly, and the hair there is finer than the rest of his body, thin and soft-looking over skin that Ed wants to curl up on, because the flesh there looks softer than any mattress he’s ever slept on.
The flesh under it, though—that’s not looking as soft anymore. The dangly bit is bigger, thicker, more solid, and it’s rising from its nest of hair to wave like a tree in the wind above the fleshy sac. Ed feels a stirring in his own center in response, because he suddenly knows exactly what Stede’s doing, and when Stede’s hand dips lower, scratches through the hair there, he feels Stede’s little groan rumble through his bones.
He shivers with the realization, has to drop a hand to press against his own groin, because fuck, he’s swelling, isn’t he? He’s swelling already, just from watching Stede touch his own body, and he’s not going to light his own bulbs here, watching Stede, because that’s a whole weird thing to do without the guy knowing, but.
But he’s gonna go.
He’s gonna go. Yep. He’s gonna—he’s gonna sneak back out, he’s gonna go back to his cavern, he’s gonna spark one out in the privacy of his own room, and he’s absolutely going to be thinking about this when he does.
Shit.
#
Stede’s thinking about the little fairy.
At the museum, there had been this little statue of a man. David of Goliath fame, terra cotta, fifteenth century. Less than a foot high, long hair, bare chest.
It had caught his eye, had captivated him for long enough that Lucius made a joke about his libido and his lack of partners, which had been enough to jolt him from his reverie. He’d laughed it off, and they’d moved on, but he kept seeing more things that made him think of him.
Frenchie had listened to his questions—all incredibly hypothetical!—and given him a list of books to request from the library as well as a promise to bring him some from his own collection the next day. So until then, Stede’s not sure what else to do. So he showers off the dust of the summer heat and the general yuck of an afternoon in a hot, crowded museum, and makes himself comfortable.
And by makes himself comfortable, he means relaxes in the best way he can.
It’s a weird thing to think about as he touches himself, certainly, and he knows that, but.
But when he left his family and moved across the world, he made a promise to himself: he would let himself do whatever he had to do to be happy.
And yes. He had been thinking more along the lines of “dating men” or “wearing what he wants” or “having marmalade on toast at midnight” rather than “pleasuring himself to the thoughts of a tiny human-shaped creature with wings who had hidden in his junk drawer and possibly robbed him” but.
Needs must.
And the thing is—
It’s good. He’s always been a bit of a hedonist, yes, always enjoyed making a bit of a production of self-pleasure, but something about the way the fairy had brazenly flown off wrapped in a string of Stede’s finest pearls? Something about the flex of his minute biceps, perfectly formed on arms four centimeters long? Maybe it was the glint of his eyes, the way he cursed in that perfectly human-sounding voice, or the way Stede had found the ring he’d left behind propped up to catch the sunlight and glitter beautifully. Stede’s not sure! But god. It gets him going like nothing else, lights a fire in his cock that stokes easily, the ring glittering just as much on his finger as it had in the drawer, and shit, that’s not hurting his arousal, either.
He’s spread his softest towel under him, and he wiggles his hips happily against the luscious terrycloth. His heels slip in his satin sheets, and he drops both knees wide, letting his hands wander.
What would it feel like to have that tiny mouth press against his skin, those wings flutter against his cheek? What would—
There’s a scuffling noise, just to his left, and Stede freezes with his fingertips resting on the base of his cock.
Mice? It must be mice. The guardienne is always telling the residents to stop leaving crumbs out, and Stede’s upped his cleaning service to twice a week to compensate, so if they still have mice...
There’s a slight thump, and one of the books on the shelf just to the right of the door into the bedroom shifts.
Big... mouse?
It could be a big mouse. A bat? Are there bats in France?
Because there’s no way the fairy is back. There’s no way. Not right now, not when Stede’s got his dripping erection in his hand, thinking about what fairies might have inside their tiny, tiny pants, wondering if the beautiful lines on his bare chest continued under his—kilt? skirt? shorts? Damn. Stede can’t remember, can’t quite picture the garment.
He tries, though, and his hand moves of its own volition, it seems, because he grips himself, squeezes the base, brushes his fingers over the sensitive skin of his balls and lets the other hand wander his chest.
Maybe the tiny man is over there.
Maybe he’s watching Stede.
Maybe he’s—
There’s a crash, and Stede’s hands automatically scrabble for the sheets, yanking them up over himself as he looks around wildly. The stack of books that had moved earlier are on the floor: a set of the three Dune books are splayed out, pages bent, but he can’t even be fucked to look at them because something is glowing in the recesses of the shelf.
Something small. Something human-shaped. Something with elegant, glittering wings in a silver-black-purple iridescent shine that looks almost like fish scales is watching him.
#
Fuck!
Ed freezes as the books hit the floor. He’d leaned a little to hard on them, fucking knocked the whole stack to the ground, and now Stede’s covered himself up and is staring in his direction with those giant, sparkling eyes, and Ed pushes himself back against the shelf to slink into the shadows, only—
Fuck.
Ed’s glowing right thought his fucking wrap.
Ed’s a fully grown fairy, with nearly fifty human years—and a shit ton more that don’t really count on the other side of the veil—under his belt, and yet here he is, fucking glowing through his wrap like a teenager.
And yeah. Stede absolutely sees him.
“Hello?” he says, tentative, and Ed realizes with a start that he hasn’t heard Stede’s voice before. It’s nice: a light, friendly voice, a curl of accent that doesn’t quite fit in Paris but that scratches something deep in his soul. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” Ed says automatically, but he doesn’t move.
Stede starts to move, then glances down and grimaces. He stands, shuffling so he’s wrapped in the sheet, then fiddles around underneath it for a moment before setting it on the bed and emerging with the towel around his waist. “Erm,” he says, and, fascinatingly, there’s a pink blush spreading over the bridge of his nose, his cheeks, and down his chest. It’s nearly the color of his nipples. Ed wonders if his skin is warmer, where it’s all rosy. His skin is glistening with moisture, too, and he wonders what it smells like—what it tastes like.
Okay. He’s always been into weird shit, but this might be pushing it, even for him. The guy’s like a hundred times his size. He eyes Stede—yeah. More than a hundred.
Fuuuuuuck.
There’s a droplet of water rolling down his collarbone, over his pectoral, down through the bronze hair across his chest, and Ed wants.
“That’s good,” Stede says, and Ed has to rewind the conversation a bit to remember what the fuck they were talking about. Right. Whether Ed was scared. And no, he isn’t. Because even though this guy’s maybe three hundred times his weight and at least fifty times his height, Ed’s a fairy. Ed’s got powers the humans can’t even imagine. Ed could rip through to the other side right now, could blow a hole in the fabric of the veil that would suck Stede to pieces, and—
Stede licks his lower lip, just a flash of huge, pink tongue, and what was that Ed was thinking about sucking and blowing?
Anyway.
“I’m Stede,” Stede says, and holds out a hand.
His palm is the size of Ed’s torso. Each finger is the length of one of Ed’s legs, but even thicker.
Ed reaches out his own hand, presses it to the center of Stede’s palm, and watches those enormous digits close around his entire forearm and shake his hand, very gently.
“Ed,” he says. “Hi.”
#