Chapter Text
She doesn’t speed because Zayne will kill her, but she sprints to her bike, and then sprints to Rafayel’s house once she parks.
She has to move. If she doesn’t do something with the energy she has right now, she’s afraid she’ll lose her mind.
The door is locked, and she’s about to break it off the hinges when Zayne opens it for her, a kitchen towel slung over his shoulder.
She kisses him squarely on the mouth and he hurriedly closes the door.
“I love you, thank you so much, I know you’re tired, also I’m sorry!” she says.
Zayne raises an eyebrow.
“You are absolutely covered in blood,” he says.
“Sorry, I came right from work,” she says.
She walks into Rafayel's familiar chaotic living space, which looks slightly less chaotic than normal. In the kitchen, dishes are drying on the rack and steam is rising from a pot on the stove. On the other side of the vast living space, Rafayel is on the couch, an oversized towel around his waist, lying on his side with his chin propped on his fist.
“Miss Bodyguard! You’ve decided to join us!”
He doesn’t look sick at all. He looks flushed and smirk-y as ever.
Zayne hands her a bowl of rice with soy sauce on it. “Hungry?”
“Uh…thanks.”
“It would’ve had an egg at least, but they were all bad. And he wouldn’t let me leave…or get anything delivered,” Zayne says in a low, slightly irritated tone.
“I don’t like strangers at my house, okay? We don’t need eggs. And soy sauce is basically a vegetable,” says Rafayel loudly.
“Soy sauce is in no way any kind of vegetable,” says Zayne.
“What is a soy bean, then?” asks Rafayel challengingly.
“A legume.”
“Legumes are vegetables! So it’s like…liquid vegetables. Like a smoothie,” Rafayel says.
“They can be considered vegetables, but the nutritional profile of soy sauce is not even comparable to--”
Rafayel grabs his phone from the floor. “We’ll see about that. If you’re wrong, I’m revoking your medical license.”
Zayne rolls his eyes and turns back to the dishes.
They weren't even alone that long…
“Wow, I said you could have sex, not get fucking married?!” she says.
She sees a smile pulling at the corner of Zayne’s mouth. “If you’re not eating, go shower,” he says.
“I can do both at once!” she says, and she’s off to the bathroom, bowl in hand, before Zayne can get his disapproval out of his mouth.
While she’s soaping her hair, Zayne walks in and leaves a towel, a folded shirt and pair of boxers. She rinses the soap away, dries off as fast as she can, and puts on the shirt and boxers. She swims in the shirt, and she has to roll the waist band of the boxers twice to keep them barely hanging on her hips. But they smell like Rafayel.
She gobbles up her bathroom rice, combs her hair, and returns to them.
Zayne is nearly done cleaning up, and he kisses her cheek when she walks into the room. “That’s better,” he says.
Rafayel calls, “I liked you covered in blood, you looked cool.”
She walks over to him. “How do I look now?” she says.
He stares for a moment, and she prepares herself for a witty jab. But his expression turns soft. “Silly,” he says. “And pretty.”
He opens his arms, and she sits next to him on the couch. He pulls her in and squeezes her tightly, kisses her wet hair.
“I’m sorry I worried you,” he says.
“It’s okay,” she says, squeezing back. “I’m glad you feel better.”
“…I’m also sorry I disappeared when you needed a friend—I know that’s…how it felt. I won’t do that again.”
Something is different. He is different.
“I want you to understand that I like you,” he says. “Really like you. I didn’t want to share you. I wanted to have you. So the three-way thing, while very hot, really threw me.”
“Well. I’m sorry too. I thought you were a fuck boy, and that I was delusional for feeling ways about you. We…put you in bad position.”
He squeezes her tighter. “You feel ways about me?”
She’d insulted him and apologized to him in one breath, but he hears neither of those things. The only thing he seems to care about is that she feels something for him.
She has a sudden, intense sense of déjà vu as she nuzzles her face into his shoulder.
“I feel a lot of ways about you, yes,” she says.
When she pulls back, he gazes into her face like he’s lost. He holds up his hand, and she threads her fingers through his.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks. “You haven’t shifted on this couch since I’ve been here.”
“Well. I’m tired. Also your boyfriend has me stuffed like a turkey.”
“He what?”
He loosens the towel and pulls her hand around behind him and down beneath the fluffy fabric. She touches the hard loop of the plug and the soft skin of his body.
“Oh…” she says quietly, and she can’t help but tease. “Does this mean you’re joining the superhero club today?”
“If I can handle the induction, I suppose I am,” he says.
Her hand is still on his backside, so he moves accommodatingly so she can touch him more easily. He’s being so vulnerable and calm, and she realizes that before now, Rafayel’s apparent vulnerability, all his I’m-down-on-my-knees talk has sounded like a trap.
But now…
She runs her hand over his backside and hip, lets her fingers glide along the line between his pelvis and thigh. And she sees the lust in his eyes, but also a kind of serenity.
What did Zayne do to him?
“I’m well on my way to ruining more underwear and this time they’re yours,” she says.
“Well. Take them off. Ruin me instead.”
She jumps a foot in the air when she feels Zayne’s hand on her head. He completely snuck up on her.
“You’re a fickle little cat,” he grumbles. “Jumping at me, purring at him.”
He’s been politely ignoring them for several minutes, but it seems he’s done being patient. She’s on her feet in a snap.
"Um, I think I've been pretty clear about the fact that I'd like to purr for both of you," she says.
"As much as I love couches and...kitchen tile, I do have a massive bed that I never sleep in. But only if you carry me again,” Rafayel says. “I can’t walk with this thing in.”
“You should learn,” says Zayne, leaning down so Rafayel can wrap his arms around his neck. "I won't be doing this again."
She runs up the stairs, taking two at a time, calling back, "He'll definitely do this at least twenty more times!"
From the top she watches Zayne scoop up Rafayel. He looks slightly grumpy, but Rafayel is glowing.
“Oh yeah, you get to keep your medical license. Soy sauce isn’t a vegetable.”
“Thank goodness. Nearly lost my livelihood in my hubris,” says Zayne.
Rafayel’s bedroom looks like a museum, like every element was carefully chosen, only for the space to be abandoned.
Zayne lowers Rafayel, who is limp and docile, onto the bed. She crawls in with him--that sweet, calm expression is irresistible and she has to kiss his softly parted lips right away. He shuts his eyes and accepts her gratefully. But almost immediately Zayne pulls her away, snatching her by her waist and planting her on her butt in front of him. “Listen, I know you’re excited. But I’m not going to be an afterthought,” he says. “Put your arms up.”
She does, and he slips the shirt off over her head.
He kisses her, palming her breast possessively. He tastes so good, so comforting, and she’s missed him so badly. When he pulls back he looks at her like he feels the same.
“Blurting out I-love-you and thank-you and sorry in one breath when you run in the door is not a very nice greeting for me, all things considered,” he scolds, but his voice is soft as rain. “Where is the sincerity in that?”
She smiles. “Always in trouble, aren’t I? Can I show you my sincerity now?”
He kisses her again, lightly. “All I want to know is that you missed me as much as I missed you. Or were you pleasantly distracted the whole time by him?”
He pulls her forward and turns her around so he’s cradling her with one arm. He rarely seeks affirmation from her, or anyone else, but now she sees in his furrowed brow that it is important to give it to him now.
“I missed you,” she says earnestly.
Rafayel doesn’t move, but he chimes in: “I can confirm…every thirty seconds, she was daydreaming. Getting pouty-faced looking at her phone. Very annoying,” he says.
Zayne tugs down her boxers. “Is that so?” he says playfully, but she can tell he is genuinely relieved to hear it. He eases her thighs apart and begins to stroke her softly. "Darling, you are already so wet. Do we make you so hot just existing?”
The ‘we’ is music to her ears. “Honestly, you do,” she says.
“I did hear a story about an aquarium…” he says.
She covers her face. Rafayel snorts.
“Naughty girl,” he says, and slides his fingers inside of her. “You’re lucky it was him with you and not me…I would’ve made you walk around wet.”
She moans. Rafayel is grasping at her fingers so she holds his hand.
“I’m sure…you would’ve,” she says. ”But you wouldn’t have kissed me in public like that…so I’m…safe.”
He laughs, that soft breathy, real-joy laugh “True. But if you’re at the point where just being in the room with us will make you fall apart like this…”
“Sorry, you’ll never be safe again,” says Rafayel, and some kind of spark passes from his fingers to hers, she would swear it.
Zayne kisses her forehead.
“I’m glad being in the same room is enough, because I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you to entertain yourself for a bit,” he says, and the glance he steals at Rafayel alone makes her toes curl. When he sits her up and retracts his fingers, she immediately replaces them with her own—it would be agony to be empty right now. She thinks of Rafayel, tied in the chair as he was at Zayne’s apartment, and understands how acutely he must’ve ached then.
"First, you demand my attention and then you tell me to wait," she sighs. "I see how it is."
"...that's exactly how it is. Are you complaining?"
"Nope!"
"Good."
Zayne turns to Rafayel, who is still lying on his back, patient as can be. He moves to the space between his legs, and opens the towel at his waist. He places his hands on either of Rafayel’s hips, and runs them down the length of his thighs to the space behind his knees, bending them up and open, tilting his pelvis up. Rafayel squeezes her fingers.
Her lover lowers himself over Rafayel, kisses his neck. She watches as Rafayel’s chest rises and falls with his quickening breath. He cranes his neck to receive these kisses, and she watches as she pushes her fingers deeper inside herself.
“Now, what is this about a superhero club?” Zayne whispers to him.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” he says.
“Oh? Am I allowed in the club?” he says.
Rafayel laughs, and the way Zayne looks pleased with himself for making him laugh causes her heart swell.
“You are the president, sir,” he says.
She joins Rafayel in his giggling.
“The president of a club I am not permitted to know the purpose of,” says Zayne. "Sounds about right, actually."
Zayne sits back up. “Be still just a moment,” he says. “I’m going to take it out now.”
Rafayel nods. The serene look returns to his face as Zayne reaches a hand between his legs. She can’t see exactly what he’s doing but she sees Rafayel’s back arch slightly, his lips part. Zayne pulls a tea towel from his pocket, wraps the plug in it and puts it on the floor beside the bed.
“Are you comfortable then?” says Zayne.
Rafayel sits up partially, letting go of her fingers, and grabs Zayne by his belt buckle.
“Please,” he says. “I’m very comfortable. I will be more comfortable when you’re inside me.”
Zayne shoves him gently back down to the mattress. He undoes his belt and pants and strips them off revealing his very-local legend of a cock. She and Rafayel sigh in tandem like lovelorn cartoon characters at his naked body, and he rolls his eyes. He reaches for the bottle of lube lying on the bed, but she snatches it before he can. She pops it open, hoping he'll see this as the service she intends, and not refusal to comply with his instruction that she 'entertain herself.' He doesn't seem annoyed, and, in fact, watches approvingly as she wets her hands. She wraps them around his cock, and he closes his eyes while she works it over him. When he’s slick enough to drip, she takes her hands away and Zayne gives Rafayel a similiar treatment, massaging his opening with wet fingers, dipping them inside. This time she moves so she can get a view of what he's doing, and watches shamelessly as her lover pushes his perfect fingers to the hilt into Rafayel, who is also perfect and pink, wet and shining.
Rafayel is blushing intensely. He doesn’t squirm, though he looks like he wants to.
Zayne lifts him by the hips, and begins to push his cock inside him. He moves slowly, carefully. She can see Rafayel’s abdomen muscles clench as he tries to rise up faster.
“Rafayel,” says Zayne, and his voice is soft but warning, “breathe, and relax, and just let me.”
Rafayel nods, and she can tell he’s eating it up--if there's one thing in the world that goes straight to Rafayel's heart, it's being fussed over, and boy, is he getting fussed over. It only took her two hours to get to them, and Zayne had him fucked and bathed and fed, and here he is getting fucked again, Zayne fretting over every motion.
Her lover drips more lube over the two of them, and pushes deeper, until he is nearly fully inside him. Rafayel’s got the back of his hand over his forehead like some maiden on the cover of a romance novel and she can’t help but smile. Zayne leans slightly forward.
“Still good?” Zayne asks.
Rafayel’s voice comes out small. “It’s good,” he says. “It’s really good.”
Rafayel peeks out from behind his hand. And Zayne begins to move, in and out. He lowers himself by degrees until his chest hovers over Rafayel’s, his soft, dark hair falling forward. And Zayne rocks, forward and back, holds him with one hand at the base of Rafayel's spine to keep him anchored.
Rafayel reaches up and puts his arms around Zayne’s torso, moving his hands over his back gently.
She is bewildered, and a little jealous to realize what is happening--Rafayel’s fingers trace her lover’s scars. And Zayne not only allows it, he looks at Rafayel with utter tenderness as he does it.
And Zayne looks at no one but her like that. He is kind to everyone, nice to a few, but this degree of trust and sweetness has been previously reserved only for her.
It hurts in a way she didn’t expect. She understands, with a little prickle of shame, why Zayne made the Only Kissing mandate in the first place.
But she also sees how this trust and sweetness washes over Rafayel, how it makes him so different.
Rafayel needs this. And she loves Rafayel, and wants him to have it.
She loves Rafayel.
And the way Zayne holds him, lowering his forehead to touch Rafayel’s own damp brow, she thinks Zayne could love him eventually too.
Rafayel grits his teeth as Zayne increases his pace.
“Still okay?” Zayne asks. “Don’t hold anything in, I need to know.”
He looks up at him, eyes wide.
“I won’t…just don’t stop,” he says.
And Zayne takes his words to heart. He rolls his hips rhythmically, makes love to him deep and slow, and Rafayel gasps a little every time he's filled. Zayne glances at her out of the corner of his eye and she hopes it's clear she's a happy in her voyeurism. Meanwhile Rafayel is sinking deeper and deeper into his ecstasy, and his fingers have ceased to be gentle--she sees them digging into Zayne's shoulders now, and his eyes are shut tight, his pretty long lashes flush against his cheek.
She reaches out and touches his hair.
Zayne sits up, holding Rafayel by his hips again to keep them tilted. Rafayel's cock is crowned with one opalescent drop of precum, and she sees the shine of it on Zayne's belly too.
“Rafayel,” Zayne says.
It takes a moment for him to respond.
“Yes…sir…”
“I like spoiling you but I don’t want to leave her out forever. Can you handle taking care of her a little?”
Rafayel manages to laugh in spite of the fact that he seems barely tethered to reality anymore. “You said yourself…that I would always have enough for her…”
“And was I right?”
“…you know you were,” he says.
He looks over at her, his eyes teary and blissful. “You heard your boyfriend. Find a use for me.”
And just like that her brain is flooded with the images he used to make come over the phone.
He is even lower than his knees now. He is about as helpless as he can be.
She crawls to him so that she is looking at his face upside down. She kisses his forehead, kisses his lips, then inches forward, positioning his head between her legs.
“Oh my God,” he breathes, as she lowers herself to his lips.
She feels the sharp tip of his tongue first, stretching eagerly to get a taste of her. She lowers herself slightly more and she feels his mouth open wide for her. He sucks, the lips of her vulva, her thick wetness, then licks her with firm, long strokes. He moves to touch her with his hands, but she pins them down at his sides. He groans with frustration, and she knows his misery and pleasure are compounding each other.
She looks up at Zayne, seeking his approval, and gets it in the form of an eager kiss. His brow is furrowed, almost as if he is in pain, and she feels a seriousness in the way he kisses her, the pulse of his tongue, the waves of intensity. The kiss is long, and she can feel the motion of the rest of his body, the rhythm of what he does to Rafayel, on her lips. And she can feel it through her pussy, too, Rafayel’s whole body, mouth included, shifting as Zayne fucks him.
Zayne’s tongue in her mouth. Rafayel’s tongue in her folds.
She could fucking die. They are a perfect triangle.
Rafayel moans into her cunt and the vibrations push her nearly to the edge. Her muscles go taut.
His moans turn into words, "Please," he says. "Harder."
And Zayne squeezes his eyes tight, makes a noise that she can only describe as a growl. And fucks him harder.
Rafayel sounds like he's about to weep every time Zayne thrusts into him. "Thank you...thank you, sir," he says, still licking her with an admirable degree of focus. She looks into Zayne's face, and he is completely undone. He looks at at the ceiling as if he's expecting to ascend into heaven, his body glistening with sweat.
When Rafayel begins to tremble, Zayne slows. She can see what Zayne sees--Rafayel will fight through the urge to come, maybe even fight through pain, and not say a word. Yes, that's a very Rafayel thing to do, never admit defeat. No wonder Zayne fusses, asks a million times if he's alright.
She begrudgingly moves from his mouth.
And Zayne withdraws from Rafayel, who looks devastated.
“Get up,” Zayne says. “And kneel. Facing her.”
He obeys, but moves clumsily, so she offers her hands to hold on to while he rights himself. For a moment they kneel in front of each other, both their hands holding. Zayne has gone from being so gentle to being curt and demanding—he's in his own kind of liminal space, and it makes him sharper, not softer. She squeezes Rafayel’s hands because she also knows the hard shift can sting a little if you’re not ready for it.
Zayne moves behind him, and puts a hand on his back. “Down,” he says. And she scooches back so Rafayel can fall on to all fours.
More lube, more fondling, and Zayne is inside him again. Rafayel squeezes his eyes tight, blushes crimson, and even though she knows his ache is a good one, she wants to keep comforting him.
Zayne raises one knee, so he looks like he’s about to propose. He pulls Rafayel back up to his knees until Rafayel is arched against him, his spine flush with his chest. Rafayel's eyes are closed, his mouth is gaping, and Zayne holds him by the waist, his brow furrowed, breathing hard. Rafayel bites his lip as Zayne pushes into him. He mewls quietly and continuously, his body stretched ermine in front of her lover.
Rafayel’s cock is as pink as his ears, and neither of them have given it the slightest attention. She wants to remedy this, but she’s been waiting for the right moment.
Maybe that moment is now?
But just as she is about to reach for his body, Zayne wraps an arm around Rafayel’s waist and forces him forward, first back to his hands and knees, then to the bed, so that they are both on their sides, curled around each other. Big spoon, little spoon.
Rafayel grasps for her, his eyes still shut. She sees the vision now. She loves that Zayne, who is so reserved and cerebral, is also such a diabolical sexual architect. She lies down, takes the position of littler-spoon to the little spoon and feels Rafayel’s shaft flush against the base of her back. She reaches around and takes him in her hand, spreads her thighs and guides him into her.
He lets out a cry that pierces the sound of breath in the room. Both their hands touch her, Zayne finding his way to her breast, and Rafayel’s fingers come to rest softly on her clit.
When Zayne pushes into Rafayel, Rafayel’s cock is pushed into her. They move to his rhythm like boats on swelling and breaking waves. Rafayel fucks her, and Zayne fucks them both through the conduit of Rafayel’s body.
It doesn’t take long for this sensation to make her come, and she’s so loud she scares the birds perched on the window sill. And she can hear a little laugh slide out of both men between their breaths, but no one even slows down. None of them want to, certainly not her. Rafayel is soaked with her orgasm. She feels her own wetness all over his pelvis and thighs as he is pushed into her.
Zayne takes her hand and squeezes it.
And Rafayel gasps into her hair, “Iloveyou,” like it’s all a single word, an idea that had to compress itself to escape his mouth.
Her whole body is tense and she's still so aroused, still peaking. She claws at the sheets, squeezes Zayne’s hand in return. “I love you,” she says. She says it to them both, but it feels brand new in either case. She didn’t realize she loved Rafayel before today. She’s always loved Zayne, but she's figuring out he's even better than she knew, that he's going to blow her mind in every way until their very last breaths.
Her insides feel swollen, her sex even more sensitive. Rafayel barely moves his fingers around her clit, and it's enough to make her instinctively arch back into him. She does it at just the right moment to counteract Zayne’s force.
It occurs to her that only Rafayel can’t control the movement, and so he is at both of their mercy.
She steels herself then and starts counteracting Zayne's force intentionally. The sound of Rafayel's whimpering as they crush him between them make her come again.
Maybe he was right on the phone that night. Maybe, after all, she is a little cruel. But he said he liked her just as she was. And as she comes for the second time, she’s even more aware of how good he feels inside her, how good it feels to clench around him.
They fit so well.
She hears Zayne whispering to him. “Look how well you’ve pleased her. You’ve been so good.”
“Thank you…sir…please…I want you to come too. Please. I wanna…feel you…”
It seems this is all the encouragement Zayne needs. She hears her lover's low moan and Rafayel is not far behind, filling her up, throbbing inside her. He clutches her close to him, his lips on her shoulder.
He takes a breath and sinks a little bite into her shoulder.
It’s only briefly painful, and she gets it—some emotions can only be expressed with one’s teeth.
“Yes,” she says, when she can catch her words. “I’m here. I’m here”
She and Rafayel both make for the shower together, but Zayne asks for a separate bathroom.
Rafayel hands him a towel, tells him he can have his pick of three, and points the way.
When he leaves, Rafayel asks if she thinks he’s upset, and she says, “Nah, he’s just Zayne.”
They bathe in a state of giddy giggly euphoria, hip checking each other at the mirror when they get out. Rafayel redresses her in his clothes. As he pulls the shirt over her head, though, he is suddenly sober.
“Hey…can you say what you said earlier again…just to me?”
“Uhhh…”
“I mean, you don’t have to…if you don’t mean it. If it just came out…if it was really for him…but if it was for me I—”
“Ohhhh. You mean ‘I love you’?” she says and stops short. It’s going to be a cataclysmic level of embarrassing if that’s not what he means.
But it is, because he looks suddenly terrified. “Yes. That.”
“I love you, Rafayel.”
He stares at her, his eyes wide and shimmering.
"Say it again. Please."
"Why do you look like you're upset? I said I love you."
He wraps her in a tight hug, his relief is palpable. “I love you, too,” he says.
“It feels too soon to say that,” she says.
“Who cares? I knew it right away.”
Eventually, after a solid minute of squeezing, he lets her go. He pulls on a pair of soft-looking pants, picks up his phone, and starts typing something into it.
“What does your boyfriend like to eat? He’s gotta be starving….I should’ve let him get take-out…I said I would return the hospitality, and here I am, being an ass.”
She pats her hair with the towel.
“Well, he can eat his weight in macarons,” she says.
“Hm. I can probably arrange that. How much you think he weighs?”
“You really like him don’t you?”
Rafayel laughs. "What a question to ask now. What am I gonna say, 'Yeah, I like him okay, sure, he's alright.'"
"Well! I don't want to jump to conclusions..."
He puts down his phone, and grabs her by the arms. He kisses her, holding her firmly, and it surprises her a little, the assertiveness with which he suddenly holds her. "I love you," he says. "And he is a part of you. I feel it. I know it. Please don't feel torn in two anymore. I laid out my whole hand for you both in there. Every card I have. You've seen it now."
They return to Rafayel’s bedroom and find Zayne wrapped in the bedspread.
He pulls it tighter around him when he sees them, but there’s a tell-tale layer of frost crawling up his neck.
Shit. Not this.
“Everything’s fine,” he says before she can even say anything.
Seized by anxiety, she gets into bed next to him. She tries not to overreact, because it always makes it worse for him, to be in pain, and also think she is upset. But it's hard to keep the worry from her face or stop herself from getting close. As if she had any way to shield him.
Rafayel frowns, and pulls a blanket from a bench at the end of his bed--he doesn't know the unspoken Don't Make a Big Deal About It rule.
“Use this one, it’s warmer and softer,” he says.
Before Zayne can protest, Rafayel pulls the bedspread away and replaces it with the other blanket, which does look cozy.
"When did it start?" she says.
"When I went to shower," says Zayne. He shudders, pulling the blanket closer. "It's almost over. It's not bad...nothing broke the skin."
Rafayel looks nothing short of angry for a moment, but then seems to gain his composure. “Can I see something?” he asks.
“No,” says Zayne.
“C’mon, just let me…”
He holds his fingers over the frost on Zayne’s neck, and a yellow flame appears. Zayne jerks away.
“It won’t burn, I swear,” he says.
"That's not what he's afraid of," she says.
"It could hurt you," says Zayne.
Rafayel rolls his eyes. "Listen, you might be able to shut her down with this martyr shit, but not me."
Zayne looks away from him, but lets Rafayel hold his flame to his skin.
The ice begins to recede slightly faster. Rafayel opens the blanket, and does the same with the rest of the frosty blight on his skin. It's no miracle cure--it doesn't stop the growth of the ice, only melts it. It wouldn't do much good if it were a more serious loss of control--but in this case, it does help.
“Thank you,” says Zayne. He looks embarrassed.
“No problem. It’s the least I can do after you fucked my third eye open. Plus…kinda interesting isn’t it? You may have found a nonsexual way to use me.”
“You have no obligation to make yourself of use to me,” says Zayne.
“For someone who gave me a lecture on how Lemurian emotions work earlier, you have overlooked some critical points,” Rafayel says. “Furthermore, it’s wise to keep the devil in your debt, right?”
Zayne locks eyes with him for an instant, then looks away again, his slight smile returning. Rafayel’s flames melt back into his hand.
Only she sees his clenching fist, the brief, subtle shiver of his body.
She weasels her way into Zayne’s lap, and he wraps the blanket around her. “Zayne…why don’t you try and get some sleep.”
“I'd like that, but sleeping has been a challenge…”
“How are your patients doing?” she asks.
“I checked just now. They are in fair condition.”
“Good! And we are both here. Doesn’t that help?”
“It might…”
“Then lie down,” says Rafayel, pushing them both until they do.
Zayne gently moves her hair out of the way and sighs into her neck. She holds his arms close to her chest—she cannot adequately thank him, not for what he did today, or his patience with her feelings for Rafayel. She cannot adequately thank him for being so kind and wise that not even Rafayel could resist him. But at least, maybe, she can help him sleep.
“I have to pick up several hundred macarons and some Thai food in a minute,” says Rafayel.
Zayne shifts at the mention of desserts, but doesn’t say anything.
“But if you think it would help, before I go…I could…sing to you…a little.”
“…really?” she says. She tries to tamp down her excitement—but she’s been wanting to hear him sing for so long.
“Just a little,” he says.
"Please, I'll take just a little!"
He clears his throat and stands up.
“…Be nice, I’m out of practice…” he says, stalling.
“I will pretend to like anything!” she says, and Zayne pinches her inner thigh. Lightly, but still.
“She will genuinely like anything. Rafayel, sing,” says Zayne.
Rafayel straightens. He takes a breath, and...
It’s a song that is obviously Lemurian, the words all foreign, the notes haunting. The very composition is different than anything she’s ever heard.
But it is beautiful, and somehow, familiar. His voice is also unlike anything she’s ever heard, a mellow tenor that wraps around her and squeezes her, takes her breath away. His high notes are as clear and unaffected as a child’s.
To her relief, she feels Zayne falling away, into sleep. She listens to Rafayel's voice, and finds herself following the path laid out by its notes to a field of white flowers.
And then Zayne is very much awake, and standing next to her, dressed as some kind of magistrate or...something. She holds his hand, staring out across green hills, Rafayel’s song all around them. Birds fly across her vision.
They have discussed these birds, she and Zayne. They’re very long-lived.
Zayne looks down at her, and he is not himself, but he loves her and his love feels just like Zayne’s. And the melody reaches its refrain. She knows after this…after this…
Zayne is gone then. And so is the flower field. And now she is staring at the night sky, sparkling with stars. She is being carried, and the footsteps of the man who carries her fall in time with the music that still surrounds her. She looks down to see the top of Xavier’s platinum head. She feels she’s looked at this part in his hair for hours upon hours. But when she leans to kiss it, he is gone, too.
And now she is standing in front of Rafayel, except he’s just a boy, maybe seventeen, decked out in beautiful clothes and princely jewelry, but shackled. He stares at her alternately with curiosity and contempt, singing his heart out.
She reaches for him. She has to help this one, she thinks. The others she couldn’t touch, they were snatched from her, but him, him…
She moves to set him free but instead her body jerks, and she is awake, in a room still full of Rafayel’s voice.
She can’t have been asleep long, and she knows the images she saw were just her subconscious, her synapses rapid-firing to the mood of the music. She feels such intense longing, though, such a deep grief.
She knows that Rafayel will be the death of her—before, she feared he might take the role of the angry god in her dreams.
But her desperation to unshackle this young version of himself lingers in her body, and she knows he’s not the one who takes Zayne from her, but the one she loses herself saving.
When his song ends, the silence in the room feels unnatural. It's a minute before she can hear the songs of the birds outside, the hum of the little fan on his dresser. She looks up at Rafayel, whose eyes are on Zayne.
“He asleep?” Rafayel whispers.
“Yes,” she says quietly. His body is limp, his breathing soft and steady.
“Good. Wait, why do you look sad? Did my song make you sad?” Rafayel asks, sitting down on the bed.
“No…”
“Yes it did. It’s weird, humans find Lemurian music sad-sounding. But the lyrics aren’t sad.”
“What are they about?”
“It’s about love. What else would I sing about right now?” he says. He brushes her bangs aside and strokes her cheek with his finger. “I really do have to pick up those pastries…”
“You’re not going to disappear like you did last time are you?”
“Well, I don’t have that option this time, since I live here?”
“I know what you’re about,” she says.
“I swear I will be back in thirty minutes.”
“…okay. And when you get back, will you tell me what the words to the song mean?”
He kisses her cheek, and looks tenderly at Zayne, who continues to slumber.
“That’s a harder task than you think. It’ll take time, and poetry isn’t the art I’m good at…”
“That’s okay. I’m not going anywhere,” she says.
“I mean it might take weeks…”
“Okay.”
“…months, even.”
“That’s fine.”
“It’s a very long song…getting it perfect might actually take years.”
“You’re just messing with me now,” she says.
“I’m not. I’m giving a realistic timeline. But I promise…if you and your boyfriend can stick with me…you’ll have your translation.”
His eyes are earnest. He has shown all his cards, and she believes him--if they stick around, they will have their translation.
They will write it together.