who would prepare for peace take up the sword

The bonfire's been burning since sundown and Phantom still hasn't figured out where to stand.

That's the thing nobody warns you about, coming up. You spend your whole becoming learning how to be — how to move, how to speak, how to want things in a shape someone else can recognize — and then you get dropped into a field full of ghouls who've had decades to learn the same lesson twice over, and you realize standing is its own skill. Where your hands go. Whether you're allowed to look people in the eye or whether that's a thing you earn.

Phantom has been holding a cup of something spiced and too-sweet for too long without drinking much of it, mostly so their hands have a job.

The Abbey grounds are lit up gold and orange, firelight catching on antlers and horns and the general unbothered glimmer of ghouls who've done this a hundred times. Someone's playing something low and stringed near the trees. A knot of older ghouls near the mead barrel laughs at something Phantom didn't hear the start of, and for one hot, stupid second Phantom is sure, sure, it was about them.

It wasn't. Probably. But new is new, and new means every laugh is a held breath until proven otherwise.

"You're doing the thing," says a voice, low and amused, close enough that Phantom feels it more than hears it over the fire's crackle.

Phantom turns and it's Aether. Big, easy, gold-lit, the kind of presence that doesn't so much enter a space as absorb it. He's got a drink in each hand and an expression like he's already decided something about this conversation and is just waiting for Phantom to catch up.

"What thing?" Phantom says, and hates how careful it comes out.

"Counting exits." Aether tips his head toward the crowd. "Doing math on who's watching. You've had that cup for half an hour and you've drunk maybe two sips."

The heat that crawls up the back of Phantom's neck has nothing to do with the fire. "Is it that obvious?"

"Only to somebody who used to do it too." Aether holds out one of his drinks, something darker and unlabeled. "First solstice topside. You're allowed to actually enjoy it, you know. Nobody's grading you."

Somebody's always grading you. Phantom doesn't say that part. Just takes the drink, because refusing would be its own kind of scene.

"There you go," Aether says, warm and encouraging. "See. Not so hard."

The second drink goes down easier than the first. That's the trick of it, Phantom will think later — not that the second one is stronger, just that after that one you stop counting.

Aether doesn't hover, exactly. He's too smart for that, too smooth. He drifts off to greet someone by the fire, laughs at something with his whole chest.

Phantom thinks okay, that's over then, and feels the disappointment land somewhere it has no business landing. But he comes back. Every time, he comes back, drink refreshed, attention refastened like Phantom's the only unfinished conversation at the whole party.

"You're flushed," Aether says, third time he circles back, thumb almost brushing Phantom's cheekbone before he seems to think better of it. "Good color on you."

"That's just the fire."

"Sure it is." He's grinning like he knows better. He probably does.

By the time the crowd around the bonfire starts to thin toward the later-hour stragglers, the ones who'll be here till the coals die, the ones with nothing to prove, Aether's steered them both to a fallen log at the treeline, close enough to the fire to catch the warmth, far enough to be its own little pocket of dark. Phantom didn't even notice the steering happening. That's the part that'll bother them later, lying awake. How easy it was.

Aether pulls a joint from somewhere — inside pocket, sleight of hand, ghoul magic, who knows — and lights it unhurried, cupping the flame like it's precious. Takes a slow pull. Holds it. Looks at Phantom sideways through the smoke with an expression that isn't quite a question.

"You ever done this?"

"The weed, or the—" Phantom gestures vaguely at the whole situation. The fire, the log, the way Aether's knee is angled toward theirs.

"Either." Aether's still holding the smoke, patient, unbothered by his own lungs. "All of it."

"No," Phantom admits, and it costs something to say it plain instead of performing around it.

Something shifts in Aether's face. Pleased, low-banked, the look of someone handed a gift they weren't going to ask for but won't turn down either.

"Come here, then."

Phantom's whole body understands the instruction before their brain finishes translating it. Leans in without deciding to.

Aether's hand comes up, resting warm and huge against the side of Phantom's jaw, tilting them the last few inches into range — and then his mouth is close, so close. He exhales slow and Phantom breathes it in like they've been told to, like there was ever a version of this where they said no.

The smoke hits different straight from someone else's lungs. Warmer. Closer. Aether's mouth is almost touching theirs the whole time, so near that Phantom can't tell anymore if the heat crawling up their spine is the weed or just him.

"There," Aether murmurs, low, right against Phantom's mouth, not quite pulling back. "Good?"

Phantom can't remember how to make words work. Just nods and feels dizzy and isn't quite sure anymore if it's the smoke or the proximity or the fact that Aether hasn't moved his hand off their jaw.

Aether pulls back, just enough that the air between them turns cold where his breath had been. Phantom makes a sound at the loss of it.

"Easy." Aether's voice has gone rougher, pleased with itself. He turns the joint between his fingers, offers it out. "Your turn. You're holding your breath already, aren't you? Whole body's tense."

"I don't—" Phantom's hand is already reaching. "I don't really know how."

"I know."

Aether doesn't hand it over. Instead he brings it to Phantom's lips himself, fingers hovering close, guiding without quite touching.

"That's alright. Let me."

He holds it there, patient, and Phantom parts their lips and pulls. Aether watches the whole time like he's cataloguing it. The way Phantom's throat works around the smoke, the little furrow of concentration between their brows.

"Good boy," He huffs, something like a laugh. "Hold it a second. Don't rush it out."

Phantom holds it, eyes watering slightly, chest tight, and Aether's free hand comes up to rest light against their sternum, like he's steadying them, like he's feeling the breath contained there.

"Now." His thumb presses, just slightly. "Let go."

Phantom exhales, shaky, smoke curling up between them, and Aether's expression does something soft and hungry at once.

"Good," he says, quiet. "That's good, yeah? You're a natural."

The praise lands somewhere low and molten in Phantom's stomach, more intoxicating than anything they've actually consumed tonight. They want to hear it again already. Would probably do something stupid to hear it again.

"Can I—" Phantom stops, embarrassed at how badly they want to ask.

"Can you what?" Aether's not making it easy. He's grinning now, knows exactly what he's doing. "Say it."

"Show me again. Please?"

"Mhm." Aether brings it back to their lips, closer this time, his fingers actually brushing Phantom's now, deliberate. "Since you asked so nice."

He doesn't pull away after this pull. Stays close, enough that when Phantom goes to exhale there's nowhere for the smoke to go but into the small space between their mouths, and Aether just breathes it in like he's got all night, like Phantom's the only thing worth paying attention to.

"You want to kiss me," he says, low and almost fond, breathing out into the warm space between them. "Go on, then. I'm not gonna do it for you."

Phantom closes the distance.

It's clumsy, a little too fast, the desperate lean of someone who's been told to want something and has finally been given permission to take it.

Aether catches it easy, catches them, one hand sliding back into their hair as his mouth opens against theirs like he's been waiting all night and just needed Phantom to get there first.

He kisses like he does everything else — unhurried, certain, like there's no version of tonight where this doesn't happen. Phantom makes a small, helpless sound against his mouth and Aether swallows it down, hums low with something that might be satisfaction, might be hunger, and pulls them half into his lap without seeming to try.

It's good. It's so good Phantom's brain goes soft and staticky at the edges, smoke and alcohol and Aether's hand fisted loose in their hair, and for one perfect stretch of time there's nothing else at the whole festival worth existing for.

"Aether." Swiss's voice, cutting in from somewhere near the fire, easy and unbothered like he's interrupting nothing at all. "You seen the mixer? Sunny's asking."

Aether breaks the kiss in a slow, unhurried type of way, like he gets to control the pace of this, too. Presses one more kiss to the corner of Phantom's mouth before he draws back.

"Duty calls," he murmurs, and there's real amusement in it, like he finds the whole situation — Phantom's face, Phantom's ruined composure, Phantom's hands still fisted in his shirt — thoroughly delightful.

"No — don't —" It comes out before Phantom can stop it. Small. Humiliatingly small.

Aether's smile goes softer at that, almost gentle, which is somehow worse. He brushes a thumb along Phantom's jaw, the same spot as before. "I'll be back. Finish your drink." A glance toward the log, the cup gone lukewarm and forgotten. "Have another if you want. Loosen up a little, yeah? It's a party. Enjoy it."

"Aether—"

"You're doing so well." Said like a reward, like a leash. He's already standing, already half-turned toward Swiss and the fire and the rest of the night that doesn't involve Phantom. "I'll find you."

And then he's gone, swallowed into firelight and noise, and Phantom sits there on the log with a lukewarm drink and a mouth that still tastes like smoke and ozone, feeling the absence like a held breath with nowhere to go.

The next drink gets finished faster than the one before it.

Phantom gets up because sitting still has started to feel unbearable, cup dangling from two fingers, aiming vaguely for the drinks table and the promise of something to do with their hands again.

They don't make it that far before they have to stop.

Rain's got Dew backed against a tree a little ways off the path, unhurried about it in a way that makes it worse to watch. No urgency, no performance, just Dew's hand fisted loose in Rain's shirt and Rain's mouth on his neck like he's got nowhere else in the world to be. Dew laughs at something, low and easy, and Rain says something back too quiet to catch, and Dew laughs again, softer, and kisses him like it's the easiest thing he's done all day.

Nobody's watching them. That's the part that lands hardest. They're not performing for an audience, not doing anything to be seen. They're just together, unbothered, the way people are when there's no question of whether they're allowed to want each other.

Phantom's throat goes tight and stupid.

It's not that they want Rain, or Dew, or any specific shape of what's happening against that tree. It's the ease of it. The certainty. Whatever Aether's giving them tonight — the drinks, the smoke, the hand in their hair, good, you're doing so well — none of it comes with that. It comes with waiting. With being told to loosen up and enjoy the party while he goes to find Swiss instead.

They make it to the drinks table on legs that don't feel entirely their own, pour something dark into their cup with a hand that isn't as steady as they'd like, and drink it too fast, like it might fill the hole shaped like Aether's attention if they just get enough of it in fast enough.

It doesn't. Obviously it doesn't. But the world goes a little softer at the edges for it, a little more forgiving, and that's something.

"Rough night?"

Phantom turns too fast, nearly sloshes the drink down their front. It's not Aether. It's — someone, one of Terzo's ghouls they haven't been introduced to yet, watching with mild curiosity from a few feet off, and the disappointment hits so hard and so fast that Phantom has to look away to keep their face from doing something humiliating.

"Fine," Phantom says, too quick. "I'm fine."

They're not sure that's true. They're not sure it matters. Across the fire, they catch a flash of Aether laughing at something Swiss said, entirely unhurried, exactly as unbothered by Phantom's absence as Rain is oblivious to anyone watching him kiss his own ghoul like the world isn't on fire around them.

Phantom pours another drink.

By the time Aether finds them again, the fire's burned down to something lower and redder, and the crowd's thinned further to the ones with nowhere better to be.

Phantom's back on the log, another drink gone, world tilted and pleasantly soft at the edges. The performance of being okay gone a little slack. They see him before he reaches them. Feel it, actually, some old animal part of them noticing his approach before their eyes catch up, and the relief that floods through them is embarrassing in its size.

"There you are." Aether drops onto the log close, closer than before, thigh pressed warm against theirs. "Missed me?"

"No," Phantom says, and it comes out so transparently false that Aether laughs, real and deep in his chest.

"Liar." His hand finds their knee like it belongs there. "You drank all that on your own?"

"You said to."

"I did." Something pleased moves through his voice, low and warm. "Good. You're all soft now, look at you." His thumb drags along the inside of their knee, idle, like he's not doing anything at all. "C'mere."

Phantom doesn't need telling twice. Doesn't really need telling at all — they're already moving, and Aether guides the rest of it with an easy pull at their hip, settling Phantom into his lap like it's the most natural transition in the world, straddling his thighs with the fire throwing gold and shadow across both of them.

"Better," Aether murmurs, hands settling at Phantom's waist, thumbs pressing in slow circles through the fabric. "You looked so pathetic sitting over here by yourself."

"You left."

"I came back." Said like that settles it. His hands slide lower, cup at the curve of Phantom's ass, and he tugs, just slightly, just enough to close the last inch of distance, grinding Phantom's hips down against him in one slow, deliberate drag. "There. Isn't that better than sulking?"

Phantom's breath catches. The sound that comes out isn't anything they'd choose to make on purpose. Aether's grip guides the next movement too, rolling Phantom's hips against him again, slower this time, and Phantom can feel him — can feel exactly how unbothered and exactly how interested he is at once, the maddening combination of it.

"That's it." Aether's voice has dropped, gone rough at the edges, watching Phantom's face like it's the best thing he's ever seen. "Just like that. You're doing so well."

The praise hits the same place it did with the joint — lower now, hotter, molten and immediate. Phantom grinds down again without being told to this time, chasing the friction, chasing the sound Aether makes low in his throat when they do.

"Look at you." Aether sounds almost reverent, almost smug, the two indistinguishable in his mouth. One hand slides up their spine, fists loose in their hair, tips their head back just enough to expose the line of their throat to the firelight. "Needy little thing. Nobody would guess, seeing you across the fire all quiet."

"Aether—"

"I know." His mouth finds their throat, open and hot, and Phantom's hips stutter against him, graceless now, all the careful poise of earlier in the night burned clean away. "I know, baby. I've got you."

Aether pulls back just enough to look at them, really look, the way he's been doing all night but heavier now. Hungrier. Phantom feels it like a hand on their skin, feels the want to be worth looking at rise up hot and immediate.

"You like this," Aether says. Not a question. His hips roll up slow, and his eyes don't leave Phantom's face, cataloguing every flicker of it. "Being watched. Look at you, you're not even hiding it."

"I'm not—" Phantom's voice comes out wrecked, betrays them completely.

"You are." Aether sounds delighted, low and rough. His hand slides up under the hem of Phantom's shirt, splayed warm against their ribs, and he doesn't stop watching their face even as his fingers trace a deliberate map upward. "Every time I look at you, you go softer. Feel that?" A slow roll of his hips again, and Phantom keens, actually keens, mortified and past caring. "That's not the drink doing that."

"Please—"

"Please what?" He's grinning against their jaw now, teeth grazing skin. "Use your words. I want to hear you ask for it."

"Touch me." It comes out in a rush, stripped of any pretense Phantom might've held onto an hour ago. "Please, I want — I want you to look at me, I want—"

"I know." Something in Aether's voice goes deep and pleased, like he's just confirmed a theory. His hand finds the clasp of Phantom's shirt, works it open unhurried while his mouth stays at their throat, sucking a mark into skin like he's got all the time in the world and means to use every second of it. "You just wanted somebody to see you. That's all this was ever going to take."

He gets Phantom's shirt open, palms sliding over newly bared skin, and pulls back to look at them again, appreciative in a way that makes Phantom's whole body flush with it, want climbing sharp and immediate under the weight of his attention.

"Beautiful," Aether says, simple and certain, like it's just a fact he's reporting. "You gonna let me have you properly? Right here, or—" his hand drifts back down, palming over the front of Phantom's pants, pressure deliberate, "—want me to take you somewhere quieter first?"

Phantom's hips jerk into his hand before they can stop it, and the answer comes out entirely undone. "Don't care. Don't care, just — don't stop looking at me."

Aether laughs warm against their throat, hand working slow and sure. "Wasn't planning to."

There's a version of Phantom, the one from before tonight, before the drinks and the smoke and Aether's hands, that would be mortified by this. Would be scrambling for the dark, for cover, for anywhere the eyes of a dozen ghouls couldn't reach.

That Phantom feels very far away right now.

What's left instead is this: the fire hot against one side of their face, Aether's hand working slow and certain between their thighs, and the unmistakable, electric knowledge that they are being watched. That somewhere past the haze, Swiss is grinning into his cup. That someone murmured something appreciative a minute ago and Phantom's whole body had answered it before their brain caught up — hips rolling harder, back arching into the firelight like it was an invitation instead of an accident.

They've spent their whole short existence trying to figure out how to take up space without apologizing for it. Trying to learn the shape of allowed. And here, now, falling apart in Aether's lap in front of the only family they've got, getting louder instead of quieter every time they remember someone's looking — here, they understand something with total, drunk clarity: this is what they wanted. Not just Aether. Not just the drink or the smoke or the hand in their hair.

This.

Being seen and not punished for it. Being watched and finding out it doesn't feel like exposure — it feels like being witnessed. Like proof they exist here, that they take up room, that somebody thought they were worth the whole grove's attention.

"Good," Aether murmurs. Not to Phantom, exactly, more like an announcement, pitched just loud enough to carry. "Look how good they take this."

Heat rushes up Phantom's spine at being talked about, at being made into something worth narrating. They realize, distantly, that they're grinning, giddy and wrecked and shameless, chasing every roll of Aether's fingers like they've finally found the thing their whole body's been starving for since they arrived topside with no name and no place and no idea how to be looked at without flinching.

I could get addicted to this, Phantom thinks, clear as anything through the fog, right before every thought dissolves into sensation entirely. I already am.

Aether goes still for half a second, just a half, but Phantom feels it, feels the shift in him like a change in air pressure.

"Oh." Aether's voice drops lower, rougher, something almost startled threaded through the satisfaction. "There it is."

"What—" Phantom's brain is too fogged to catch up, too busy drowning in his hands, his mouth, the fire.

"I felt that." Aether's fingers still for a moment, just pressure, just presence, and Phantom whines at the loss of movement before understanding dawns, slow and mortifying and thrilling all at once.

He felt it.

Quint recognizes quint — of course it does, of course Aether's been sitting right there in the current of them all night, and now that current's gone electric and unmistakable, broadcasting exactly how gone Phantom is.

"You're already addicted. To this. To me."

"I didn't—" Phantom's face floods hot, caught in a way that's worse than being watched by the whole grove combined. "I wasn't going to say—"

"Didn't have to." Aether sounds thoroughly pleased now. His hand starts moving again, faster, like the confirmation's only made him hungrier for the rest. "Felt it right through you. That's — fuck, that's better than hearing it."

"Aether—"

"I know exactly what you want now." His mouth finds their ear, voice gone dark and low, pitched just for them even with the fire crackling and the grove murmuring around them. "Every single thing running through that pretty little head. You want them watching. You want me watching. You want to be so good you can't remember how to be anything else."

A slow, devastating drag of his fingers that has Phantom keening, hips bucking helpless into his hand.

"And now I get to feel you get there. Every step of it."

There's nowhere left to hide the want, none at all. No performance, no careful arrangement of a face into something composed. Just the two of them tangled together in shared current, Phantom's whole spiraling, giddy realization laid bare and answered back, amplified, given somewhere to land.

"Good," Aether breathes, watching Phantom come apart from the inside and the outside both. "You're being so good. Let me feel the rest of it."

Aether doesn't slow down after that. If anything he speeds up, driven by the current running open and unguarded between them, every helpless spike of want in Phantom answered instantly, ruthlessly, like he's decided the only thing worth doing now is chasing every single thing he can feel Phantom craving.

"Tell me," he growls against their throat, fingers working relentless now, sure of exactly where and how. "Out loud. Want to hear you say it, not just feel it."

"I'm close—" Phantom's voice breaks apart entirely, hips grinding down shameless into his hand, every scrap of composure burned away hours ago. "Aether, I'm so close, please—"

"Yeah?" Something fierce and pleased cuts through his voice. "Let them hear you, then. Let everyone know exactly who's got you like this."

Phantom does. Can't do anything else, can't hold back a single sound with the current wide open and Aether's hand merciless and precise, the fire hot on their skin and a dozen ghouls' attention a living thing pressing in from every side. The sound that tears loose from them isn't quiet. Isn't careful. It's everything they've been holding back all night, all their short existence, finally let loose without apology.

"There." Aether's voice, thick with his own want now, watching them shatter with something like awe under all that satisfaction. "There you go. Perfect. So perfect."

Phantom comes apart in his lap, in the firelight, in front of a pack they didn't have this morning and belong to completely now. Shaking, sobbing something wordless into Aether's shoulder, current still open and broadcasting every last aftershock straight into him.

Aether holds them through it, hand gentling but not stopping, drawing it out long and slow until Phantom's boneless and trembling against his chest. He murmurs something low against their hair, pleased and possessive and unbearably fond that Phantom's too wrecked to fully catch.

Somewhere near the fire, Swiss laughs, warm and unsurprised, and someone else says something that gets a ripple of low, approving sound moving through the grove.

Phantom doesn't lift their head to see who. Doesn't need to. For the first time since they came topside, that doesn't feel like something to hide from.

The fire's burned down to embers by the time Phantom remembers how to be a body again.

They're still tucked against Aether's chest, shirt hanging open, hair a wreck. He hasn't let go of them yet, one hand tracing idle, absent patterns along their spine, like he's not in any hurry to stop touching them now that he's started. The current between them has settled into something softer, quieter, more like warmth than static.

"You back with me?" Aether murmurs into their hair, and there's an edge of real gentleness under the smugness now.

"Mhm." It's the most articulate Phantom can manage.

Dew drops onto the log a few feet away. Hair mussed, mouth swollen, looking about as put-together as Phantom feels, with Rain trailing behind him wearing the unbothered smirk of someone who has zero shame left to lose.

"Well," Dew says, delighted, dropping his temple onto Rain's shoulder as Rain settles next to him. "Somebody had a good solstice."

Phantom makes a small, dying sound into Aether's chest.

"Don't tease them," Rain says, entirely unconvincing, already grinning.

"I'm not teasing, I'm complimenting." Dew props his chin on his hand, looking far too pleased with himself. "That was very impressive, actually. New record, maybe. Swiss owes somebody money."

"There was a bet?" Phantom's head comes up, mortified.

"There's always a bet," Aether says, entirely unbothered, arm tightening around them like he's proud of the fact. "Welcome to the pack."

Phantom groans and hides their face back against his chest. Aether just laughs, low and warm, pressing a kiss into their hair like the whole thing is the best entertainment he's had in months.

· · · — ⸸ · ⛧ · ⸸ — · · ·

Phantom wakes up in Aether's room to sunlight, a pounding skull, and the horrifying, total-recall clarity of every single thing that happened the night before.

They lie very still for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, running an inventory: mouth dry, whole body sore in a way that has nothing to do with the hangover, and a memory reel that includes, in no particular order, fire, everyone watching, Swiss's whistle, saying please more times than any self-respecting ghoul should admit to.

"You're doing the thing again," Aether says, without opening his eyes, voice rough with sleep and entirely too pleased with itself.

"What thing."

"Panicking quietly instead of just talking to me." He cracks one eye open, looks entirely too smug for someone who was passed out three seconds ago. "Morning, by the way."

"Everyone saw," Phantom says, and it comes out strangled.

"Everyone saw you have the best night of your topside existence, yeah." Aether stretches, unbothered, pulls them back down against his chest like the conversation's already settled. "Swiss made forty bucks off you. You should be flattered."

"That is not—" Phantom stops. Starts again. "You could've warned me there was a bet."

"Would you have done anything differently?"

Phantom opens their mouth to argue, and nothing comes out, because the honest answer is no. Not one single part of it, not the drinks or the smoke or the way the whole grove had felt like witnesses instead of an audience to escape.

"That's what I thought." Aether sounds unbearably pleased with himself, presses a kiss to the top of their head like he's won something. "You're stuck with us now, you know. Officially part of the pack."

Phantom groans into his chest, mortified and glowing at once, and doesn't try very hard to argue with that either.

"Speaking of," Aether says, entirely too casual, rolling over so he's braced above them, weight settling in slow and deliberate, "I was thinking breakfast."

"Mm. Food sounds—" Phantom's train of thought derails as his hips press down, unmistakable, grinning down at them like this was always the plan. "That is not breakfast."

"It's a breakfast." He noses along their jaw, entirely shameless. "Very traditional. Very nutritious."

"Aether."

"What? You said you wanted to enjoy the party." His mouth finds their throat, and Phantom feels their protest dissolve embarrassingly fast. "Solstice isn't technically over till noon."

"That is not how solstice works."

"Pack rules," he says against their skin, already grinning wider at whatever he can feel humming back at him through the current. "I don't make them. I just enjoy them."