The Likely Lads

Milliano was smiling, even as the cream-colored item hit him in the face, the little hand-stitched bananas and tiny brown simians cutesy and quickly discarded to the floor. Beck, standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by a sea of clothing, huffed faintly and folded his arms. His freckly face looked so young, then, that Milliano had to remind himself that, at the end of the day, Beck was barely a quarter of the age he was.

A terrifying concept, really, considering how well the rogue was getting to know him.

“You have seriously weird taste in clothing, man,” Beck commented. Milliano chuckled, rubbing his mouth.

“Well, in any case, I think you have enough. Twelve pairs of jeans that probably need to be hemmed--”

“Only because you’re built like a goddamn wall-spider--”

“Five shirts, two jackets, and I’m pretty sure that’s my favorite driving scarf tucked into the back of your pants like a tail--”

“No one uses driving scarves anymore,” Beck pointed out. “It isn’t 1916 anymore. In case you have trouble looking in the rear view mirror.”

“Ha, ha, because I’m a vampire?” Beck lifted a brow.

“Because you can’t see beyond your own swollen head. Or whatever dumb sunglasses you chose to wear that day.” Milliano smirked, hiding it under a bejeweled hand.

“See you tomorrow at 7:00?” he asked. “I’ll send Apex to pick you up.” Beck lifted his chin, in that moment looking a bit prouder and more haughty than before.

Then he opened his mouth.

“I have no faith in the likes of you.” Milliano’s smile slipped away, even as Beck began to pick up his chosen goods and pack them into a little brown suitcase.

He knew Beck hadn’t meant it--but the words did sting.

Cavan cocked a brow at Adelphie. The witch rolled her eyes, folded her arms, and, in one quick stomping gesture, made her point very clear.

“Out, on the table, off your person, and in my sight.”

“You know,” said Scout blandly, beginning to produce a small arsenal at a surprising rate, from lamb-cleavers to skinning knives to fish-gutters to small toothpicks that hardly passed for stiletto blades, “you really ought to word yourself more carefully.” Catching Adelphie’s stare, the Huntsman-who-wasn’t swallowed faintly and laid another knife on the table--a switchblade. “I’m just saying. When dealing with us folk--”

“I can, as you know, handle myself,” Adelphie retorted, her brown eyes flaring. Cavan said, wisely, absolutely nothing. He instead found a tiny morningstar he presumed gone. His brief moment of delight was shattered when he saw her motion for him to put it with the others. Reluctant but obliging, the phouka did so without grudge.

“Anything else?” Cavan shook his head. “I can find out for myself.” The negative gesture stopped mid-shake and he sighed, shoulders drooping. Adelphie held out her hand, flicking her fingers in a come-hither (but deadlier) way. 

With a grudge this time, Cavan stooped to draw a long, nasty-looking sickle out of his boot--somehow. Adelphie watched, brows raised, as the wickedly-curved crescent deposited itself on the hoard of glittering items with a clinking crash, a few smaller knuckle-knives skittering over her counter and onto the floor. 

Gradually, her brown eyes closed, and Cavan nonchalantly watched the heave of her shoulders (and below) as she placed a hand to her forehead like a long-suffering hostess after a long night’s restaurant managing.

“And why,” said Adelphie, “in the name of Diana, do you have that?” Kohl-lined eyes widened innocently, and Cavan spread his hands as Adelphie finally looked at him again.

“I’m saving that for a moment of danger,” said Cavan.

The couple in front of him is weathered; Estonian, or Eastern European at any rate, and exhausted. The smoke curls around the room like a comfortable, intangible serpent, coiling its children-smog into tendrils to fill the corners with nests of vipers-made-vapors. They’ve been traveling for six days and seven nights to meet with him.  Fernando worries his cigarillo between his index and pointer-fingers, chewing on his inner cheek. The blonde woman is quietly frantic under her shawl, her fingers clutching at a barren belly. The man beside her is sickly, with sunken eyes and a drooping mustache.

New York has been unkind to them.

“Please,” begs the man, his brown eyes lost to bushy brows and worry lines ill-fitting for a man of barely-thirty. “Please. We just need a child. One child. To make things right.”

“They will let us stay,” says the woman, “if we have a child here.”

“An American child,” the man agrees. Fernando shuts his eyes briefly. The burn of sweet-hot smoke in the back of his mouth turns sulfuric. He has half a mind to dismiss them outright, no explanation given. He could handle greed, he could water the weeds of gluttony, and he could trim the hedges of pride, but this…

Demons didn’t play god.

All they did was file papers for the man below; God’s opposite.

And at the end of the day, he only pushed paper and pens. His deals were in blood, but it was bad blood. There was no bad blood here. They didn’t fit the bill; and they wouldn’t fill his quota.

“I’m sorry,” he says at last, gaze reopening to the furthest corner of the room, the snakes of smog squiggling away through the cracks in the building windows. 

Remus sighed heavily as Dusek planed his feet and all but grappled with one of the pier’s poles, bright blue eyes petrified. The thin sudicky looked out of place in his fine dark suit and open-throated purple shirt. Remus, in his khaki shorts and v-neck, feet toughened by many days roaming Normandy’s warm white sands, seemed more at home--if somewhat exasperated--than his brother.

“I like my routine,” Dusek blurted, before Remus could even open his mouth.  “It--has a--a structure. A purpose. It--it--”

“Is boring,” Remus agreed, plucking a cotton candy from the nearest vendor with a pleasant smile. Dusek, detaching an arm from the pier long enough to pay the man, frowned stormily. 

“Not the words I would’ve used, ‘brother mine’,” said the fate-child irritably. “Structure is necessary. It...soothes, organizes the mind.” Remus was pulling faces as he stuffed his cheeks with cotton candy. His nose was staining blue and pink by it, and his greenish eyes were bright.

“You worry too much,” decided the more draconic of the two, his face serene. Dusek’s scowl intensified; lightning-like crags of displeasure twisting his face like a rubbery mask. “Come,” Remus reached for Dusek and the sudicky took an instinctive step backwards. “Let’s just--” And another, though this time, he’d run out of boardwalk to step on, and Remus flinched as the ocean opened up with a splash, Dusek’s yelp immediately swallowed by the brine.

Peering over the top of royal purple tulle in endless yards, Edan flashed the confident young lady a curious smile. Beaming back at him with rosy-cheeked enthusiasm, Mabel granted Edan two thumbs up and hopped a little in place. Her constant companion; Waddles, Edan believed his name was, had taken up temporary residence under the cashier counter and was snoring up a storm by Moineau’s adjacent feet.

“What’s that, now, dear?”

“Something I heard once,” said Mabel brightly, passing a yard of tulle in Suvi’s direction, the swan-maiden hiding a smile by ducking over her work. “I mean, you can do anything you set your mind to. I believe that,” Mabel went on, still beaming.  “I always have. Probably always will.”

“Great,” Edan said teasingly, moving his heap of fabrics over to Mabel with a rustle and tumble of different colors and textures. The girl’s face lit up still further; somehow, with glee. “You can feel free to finish all my orders as well, then. Since you can do anything you set your mind to.”

Parting the sea of colors with both hands, Mabel grinned toothily at Edan, eyebrows raised.

“Challenge accepted, sir.”

Sprawling languidly against the counter, Cian shrugged a nonchalant shrug and picked invisible lint off his sleeve. Angus had abandoned all hope and crawled into a booze cupboard hours ago. He was probably already marinating in half a gallon’s worth of wine and collecting cobwebs. The bar was otherwise deserted. Outside, something caught fire, hissed, and exploded, spraying the stowaways in the bar with brief flares of light and shadow.

“I’m saving t’at,” said the cat, “fer a moment of danger.” 

Pips’s unamused look was buffered only by the roar of another something catching fire, followed by riotous Gaelic yelling, whooping, and hollering. Flicking one brow towards Heaven, Cian lifted his hands and jerked his vest into place, rising to his feet.

“Alright. Alright. Understood.”

“Then be quick,” Pips said tersely. “It’s happy hour in ten minutes.”

Nan tightened his jaw. His hands were shaking. The room revolved in a carousel of dystopian colors; the camouflage patterns of war criminals and bloodshed. Nectar veered in and out of a semi-conscious hallucination of hues, bobbing up and down on a sea of suspended alcohol and imbalanced brain chemicals. The bar-back had to lay his hands on the counter to keep from toppling over with the rest of the sloshing imagery, his head pounding a fit to burst and the demon in his chest laughing softly.

“Lies are best left to those who can manage to manifest them. You could no sooner be dishonest with your friends than you could kill any of them.” Nan ran his hands through his dark hair–but suddenly it was neither his hair nor his hands. Once more, his body belonged to someone else entirely. Someone who watched the world through distorted black eyes; eyes like oil welling up beneath limpid pools of stars. The wealth, the richness of Hell, glimmered in those opulent, obsidian eyes.

“Don’t lie, not even to yourself, shh,” soothed Eligos, pressing a finger to his lips and smiling down at his borrowed reflection in the bar’s polished surface. His latest host was–well. Cute. Hospitable. Downright cuddly. “Leave it all to me, Daniel.”

From Nan:

To Angel:

 It’ll become whatever weapon she needs at that particular moment in time when unsheathed, so to speak. 8)

To Archie:

A few collectors’ items. The Eligos half of him probs said there was a Luna lookalike somewhere on the Isle, too, if Archie REALLY wanted a collectible to beat all collectibles...

From Brooklyn:

To Angel:

 The softest knitwear. Says he made it from like. Swan down or something.

To Archie:

From Izzy:

To Angel:

 Something he purchased from Haldor’s shop. Allegedly a magic mirror that makes you feel better when you’re in need of a pick-me-up. 

From Edan:

To Angel:

To Archie:

From Schmen:

To Angel: