Chapter Text
The night air on the outskirts of their town was oppressively hot. Even driving down the ruggedly paved road at enough of a speed to get a breeze, Josiah Hollis could feel the sweat starting to pool down his back. He shifted in the driver’s seat, grateful especially in summer moments like these that he no longer needed to wear a binder or layers to hide his chest. Sure, he still wasn’t comfortable in this kind of weather, but it made a world of difference. It made him equal to the rest of the people in their town, all sleeping with their windows open and their fans on. Apparently when all the apartments and houses there were built, none of the architects had thought to include air conditioning. They had bet on the neutrality of West Coast weather, and quickly found that the valley had a mind of its own.
Josie was heading home from a night with a new friend of his. Well, play partner really, but he had never been able to engage in any sort of kink activity without first establishing a baseline of friendship and familiarity. He had taken this new friend out to coffee multiple times, eventually to chat about preferences and boundaries, but at first they had only covered the topics of hobbies and jobs and books they liked to read. Josie liked historical fiction, but this new friend was a fan of fantasy and science fiction. He had never understood the appeal of that sort of escapism, but he let them tell him about their favorite books anyway. He thought it was cute to hear them talk about it with such flushed excitement. Josie himself flushed to think about some of the things they had done that night. He was a dom through and through but even he needed the aftercare that cuddling and watching TV provided, and the quiet drive home with the windows down to re-regulate himself again.
The moment that he pulled into the parking lot, Josie knew that something was wrong. The apartment building, on one of the busier streets in town and usually buzzing with activity, was eerily quiet. The rocking chair on the porch that his cousin, Karina, usually occupied on summer nights was empty and through the window he could see that the apartment was brightly lit from the overhead light, which they almost never turned on. The uneasy feeling in his stomach grew as he saw multiple shadows moving behind the curtain of the apartment window.
Leaving his bag in the chair, Josie rushed up the stairs, taking the steps two or three at a time. Could it be his siblings coming to visit? That would be inconvenient but ultimately fine. He just hoped it wasn’t Karina’s mom, his dad’s sister. Then they might actually have a problem.
The moment that he put his key into the door, Josie heard a soft thud from inside the apartment. He swung open the door, but looking around the small living room, populated with thrift store art and local concert posters, he only saw Karina, sitting alone on the couch with her head in her hands. The big light blared painfully from the ceiling, so Josie went to turn it off.
“No, don’t,” his cousin said quickly from her spot on the couch. “Don’t do that, I don’t want it dark in here.”
“Dude?” Josie asked, locking the door behind him. “You good?”
“Sit down, Josiah,” she said. Being so close in age and raised together, they almost always acted like twins, but there were rare moments when Karina’s seniority took over, and Josie was forced to be reminded of the years before he came along, when Karina was still living with her mom. Those years had aged her in a way that he had yet to catch up to.
And so Josie sat down and listened. He listened to his older cousin as she told him all about the deal she had made with some handsome, otherworldly guy at the bar four years ago – healing for the joint problem in her hands in exchange for some favor, to be collected at a later date. And as it so happened, this was that later date.
“Two years of service,” Karina murmured, rubbing her temples as if to clear her mind and turn their new reality back into a fantastical dream. “Two years in this court he comes from, and God knows if I’ll live long enough to be returned here at the end of the two years. It can’t be safe for a human there if we’ve never heard about anyone else being returned.”
Josie didn’t want to believe her. He was usually a very rational person – always measuring the cost versus the benefit and living his life a step removed from any emotion. So much so that it was a problem. But when it came to his cousin, his rational brain abdicated itself. He believed every word she said, and the same fear in her eyes began to creep into his chest.
“There must be some other bargain he’s willing to make,” he said after a long moment of silence. “Some other favor. I love you, Kari, but you’re not a tradesperson or a musician or a fighter. What usefulness could you possibly have for him?”
Karina shook her head.
“There’s stories,” she said. “Of human servants in the estates of faeries, cooking and cleaning and doing manual labor. I think usually they do something to their minds, enchant them or something so that they don’t know where they are. But in my case, I’m just cashing in a favor. I would have to be awake the whole time.”
“Josie, all of the financial information is in the folder under my bed,” she continued without pause. “You know most of it already, but I won’t have time to change the insurance to be under your name before I leave and…”
“You’re not leaving,” Josie interrupted her.
“I’ve thought it through, you know I have. We don’t know the depth of what we’re dealing with. We can’t outsmart our way out of this.”
Josie sat down next to her on the couch and grabbed her hand in his.
“You’re not leaving,” he repeated. “Because I’m taking your place.”
Karina blanched.
“I can’t let you do that.”
“Kari,” Josie said. “You basically raised me for the last half of my life. I’m alive and sane thanks to you. Please, let me do this for you.”
Karina smiled sadly, squeezing his hand in hers. She had never cried in front of him, and she wouldn’t now, but he could see the hint of tears in her eyes. She sniffled and tucked a strand of her hair back behind her ear.
“You’re right, I raised you,” she whispered. “And I won’t throw away that responsibility now.”
They talked about it long into the night, but Karina wouldn’t budge. Eventually, after talking through every angle, exploring every possibility, the two of them began to nod off on the couch. Sometime in the very early morning, Josie came to and saw his cousin there, still asleep.
The sun had barely started creeping through the curtains, illuminating the small living room where the two cousins had spent so many years together. In this light, it didn’t look lived in at all. All of their posters and art seemed tacked on and sparse. There was something transient about it, like a college dorm – a place people were meant to pass through, but never really live. He felt nostalgic then for the homes of their parents and grandparents, the houses that had been populated lovingly by the personality of generation after generation. The houses that they would probably never enter again, all because Josie had grown from a girl into a man and Karina had dared to bring another woman home from college. He wanted so badly to be the kind of man that would fit into his grandparents’ world, but he never would be.
Karina was the gentlest, kindest person he knew. She would make a great mother one day, and she and the woman of her dreams would raise their child to know that theirs would be a home to them forever, no matter what. She would be a great grandmother, a matriarch.
Josie didn’t know what he was, but he wasn’t that. And he couldn’t let his cousin throw away all of that just because of some stupid bargain.
And so, in the early hours of the morning, Josiah Hollis walked away from the little apartment on E Street, off to the outskirts of the city where the faerie would come to collect.