CALL OFF THE SEARCH FOR YOUR SOUL

“I really doubt Benji is capable of that.” Tyler said with a slight laugh, although it wasn’t far from true. Even without his actual literal life on the line, he knew that taking his friend’s books would never actually end well. Not only that, but it sure as hell wouldn’t end in fun for anyone involved, even at it’s best. “Although, sadly, I agree, that it might not be the best option.” He shrugged. “Supposed to be, but either they’ve bailed, or they’re really, really lost.”

“Yeah? That was a very nervous laugh,” Nickel observed, dryly. He briefly raised both eyebrows together, and then let the topic drop fully. “Some people have a hard time finding the door. You told ‘em it was a speakeasy, right?” 

He ran few fingers from his temple into his hair, thinking. At some point, he’d have trim the excess--actually shave, too, for the black tie thing. He could put that off a little while longer. “If they did bail, maybe you need to find some more adventuresome friends.” He left a pause, just here. “Want me to introduce you?”

Raven’s smile widened the more Nickle spoke. By the time he was done, the shadow was actually grinning – this was definitely right up his alley. He headed toward Nickel and the bathroom. “You are bullshit,” he teased, “We’ll get you a less candy-ass tattoo when you’re older. You don’t have to play senator’s son forever.” 

Passing the changeling on the stairs, Nickel headed for the bathroom, wiping all traces of amusement from his expression. He shoved the door open with far more force than was necessary and scowled into the room. “What the fuck is going on in here?”

“Oh boy, can’t wait to fake my own death,” Nickel said, tailing Raven. It was a matter of pure curiosity. “Take off for a couple decades to the old country, wait for my face to fall off the internet.”

In the bathroom, there were all the signs of an incredible, adult-sized tantrum. Nickel thought a lot about why people did the stupid shit that they did, but actual empathy was not the point of the exercise. He hung back, jumping a little when the door cracked loudly against the wall. 

Propped up beside the sink was the kind of burly guy who didn’t move for nobody and did things like wear leather vests unironically. He’d fought Nickel at every turn, though Nick had managed to turn off the faucets and keep them off. Some Player was gonna have to go at this place with a mop in the near future. 

“You owe me,” he said, startling, awkwardly to his feet. He had accurately sensed that someone more intimidating than himself had entered the arena, but he was slower in owning to that fact. “You all owe me!”

Nickel whistled, in awe of how very much the wrong thing to say that was.

For all the oddities that life had served to Nickel on a silver platter, he did his job well. The Unseelie Court may not have been  the place that made up his childhood memories, but he’d settled into it all the same. Nick’s appearance and attitude  were both something Lacha believed he should be proud of - he represented the Court well, regardless of the fact that he grew up somewhat of an outsider.

There wasn’t a complaint to be made about him as far as she was concerned - not yet, anyway. Anyone was capable of disappointing her, it was true, but so far he had stayed true to his word, to his duty. She respected that.

For that reason, his presence was greeted with something just short of a smile. Lacha leaned forward, fingers that were so recently tapping away at a text message now entwined in front of her on her desk. Eyeing the USB, she nodded, not grabbing it just yet - the information was more than important to her, but she didn’t want to appear desperate. The calm demeanour she’d worked so hard to build could crack in a day, in a minute, in a second.

Instead, Lacha listened to what he had to say, hands slowly unravelling from one another as he brought up a point she’d already thought over a dozen times. “You can sit,” she began, gesturing to the seat opposite her with the same hand that reached to finally take the USB. She twisted it around her fingers once or twice before sitting it safely by her computer, focus returning to Nickel within an instant.

“I’ll secure some ninety-nine for you to use when the time comes, you don’t need to worry about that.” Her tone was steadfast and sure - even though it wasn’t exactly a secret that the supply of #99 was dwindling (with no help from Adare), there was no reason to worry anyone more than she was already worrying herself. “And thank you, Nickel. Your work on this isn’t going by unnoticed or unappreciated.” The words felt strange rolling from her tongue, but she knew they were necessary if she was going to have people warm up to her. “I also had some questions for you. About Benjamin.”

She did the thing where she persuaded you into thinking she smiled. Her face made all the right motions but didn’t quite get there. It was a trick that belonged to people in positions of real power, and he’d seen it done on only a couple of faces. Nickel tugged back a chair and perched on the edge, his hands resting on his knees. He drummed the beat from the song outside with his thumbs. 

“Sure,” Nickel said. Notice and appreciation were not his favorite things in the world to hear. He considered that in light of a brewing rebellion and an unknown murderer of fey running wild, basic competence probably looked like a gift from God. Danu. A gift from Danu. Anyway, it was a like being told, congratulations, I have a standard for you now. 

Fuck. Outwardly, he cracked a brief, pleased little smile. He imagined making a difficult shot that he’d only been pretty sure on. He’d feel an absurd pride over what was essentially a little accomplishment--and it would vanish almost immediately, as he remembered to whom, exactly, he was speaking.

He’d never used #99 before, either. There had been no point. Was it exactly like regular glamour?Would he ever have regular glamour again?

With the exception of full-on fantasy novels, which could come unselfconsciously, unwittingly, and unironically very close to the real truth, any book called The Changeling tended to have at least a thread of unease running through its construction, if not outright horror. The human protagonist was almost always family, often a parent, particularly a mother, but sometimes sibling. On his way in the building, he spotted a classic picture book display, with Outside Over There placed prominently beside its two companion books. 

The changeling in question could be a genuine replacement, or merely a convenient and artistic metaphor. Often the suspense was never relieved; the suspicions of characters were never resolved. In children’s stories, the message was: look out for your little child, for your baby brother, because goblins literally always want to possess him. In adults’: you don’t know this person, even if you thought you did. You never did. You never will. 

Mom had sent him a long list of possible gifts, most of them books. Nick had texted back, whens he gonna have the time to read these? and Mom had said, It’s giving the gift of opportunity :) 

Nick breezed past literature/fiction, and into thrillers. He picked out the first title on Mom’s list and tucked it under his arm, and then took his time on the way to the register. He fixed momentarily on another display--the store, gearing up for Halloween, had a table for books that will give you the creeps, laid out inside a paper ghost laid flat like a tablecloth. Nickel reached for it in the same moment as someone else, slightly ahead of them; he still had his hand on the spine when he glanced at that person.

“Oh, yes. I’ll have to tell you about the really weird stuff later,” Jasmine replied dryly. The interview bit was familiar to him, she reflected. Senator Dalton’s face was a constant on the local TV stations and in the papers. Jasmine’s image of a politician’s family was a cluster of tight-lipped people with perfect hair, being herded into long black cars while the press yelled questions. Nickel would be used to being in the spotlight, or at least spotlight-adjacent.

They made it to the front of the line, Jasmine’s feet moving automatically as she listened to Nickel spin out the broad strokes of his life. If he frequented the art scene, he might know Quinn, or at least their work. She stopped short of asking him; better not to give the Unseelie any information about the Players, no matter how innocuous. 

“Sounds exciting.” But who calls themself Rag? “I love to go to the theatre too, when I can.” As for the raves, there was little Jasmine could say that wouldn’t make their age difference readily apparent. She remembered when the DJs at the wildest all-night parties were spinning Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor. It was almost sordid to think about.

“Most of my dance experience is with ballet, but–sorry!” The seat they’d been led into was too small for comfort, and Jasmine’s elbow had jabbed into Nickel’s ribs. She tried to make more space for him, but their shoulders were still wedged together when the car started to clatter forwards. 

In retrospect, he probably ought to have seen a space issue coming. It was easy for everyone to forget, or at least set aside, the fact that Nickel was a bigger guy. He carried himself that way. He found a place and fit himself neatly into it, so that when the photograph was taken he looked more or less on the level with everyone else. Nick was in that not-absurd-but-still-above-six-foot range where people still thought they could prove something and take him. It was annoying for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that they were right. It was like being a lightning rod for assholes. 

Or, he thought, wincing, a magnet for elbows. His other long-time nemesis, the low-hanging tree branch, had yet to put in an appearance. 

It wasn’t really possible to shrug, or even laugh too hard, so he tried not to do either. “Happened before,” Nickel assured her, trying to keep from instinctively touching the sore spot . It would happen again, undoubtedly, a couple times more in the next few minutes.

The Cyclone began its first serious ascent. There was delighted chatter all around them. In front of them was a teenage boy and a younger kid, and the kid was practicing throwing his arms up, over and over, prepping for a drop that was taking its time. Seconds clicked by.

Nickel was, in Sean’s eyes, an outsider. It was something he found inherently hilarious considering the fact that it was Sean who was the real outsider. He was a human living among the fey; he’d never be equal to them and he’d never been treated as an equal. But Nickel hadn’t grown up with them. He’d grown up with humans with no idea of the truth until he’d become a teenager until, eventually, he’d shown up at the Rookery. The rest was a history he gave no fucks about.

But Sean had yet to decide if he actually liked him.

That might have had something to do with how he opted to toss Nickel the lighter he was almost certain had run out of juice lighting Sean’s own cigarette. “Knock yourself out.” He flicked ash into the slush nearby before pushing his sleeves up. The weather was somewhere in the high 40s or low 50s right now, but Sean had grown up in far colder temperatures. This weather felt fucking good       felt more like that of the Unseelie Court, of what had been his home for over twenty years. Now that he’d moved into the city, he never planned on moving back. “What brand?” he asked before inhaling on his own cigarette.

The lighter felt light. He shook it. When Nick tried striking it, there were sparks at first and then just a dry, scratching noise. Sean was kind of an asshole. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Nick said, giving up. He couldn’t remember what he’d swiped from Raoul, and he didn’t feel like getting it out if there was no point. He tossed the empty lighter over into a dumpster, and tipped his head back against the brick, bundling his hands back into his hoodie. He didn’t actually feel the tug of addiction. Certain things took their time with him, or didn’t work at all, and it was only by consulting other fey that he found out why that was. 

They called him Nickel more often here. It was supposedly his real name, Nickel Fairburn, but only really old fey tended to use the whole thing, the fey surname included. There was not so much emphasis on family as identity here. There were any number of Fairburns; the court was what mattered. He still introduced himself as Nick. He was working on it, but he still thought of himself as Nick. 

“How long you been here?” he asked. 

“Great,” she said, and it was entirely earnest. With one quick exhale, her shoulders sloped down for a moment, Ivy letting go of the nagging worry she’d felt burrowing into the back of her brain. She hated inconveniences that kept her from doing her job right. In that respect– she’d had a lot in common with Dalton Sr. Nickel didn’t quite strike her as the type, though she admittedly didn’t know him all that well. Was it nature or nurture, then, that had made him who he was?

The question formed in her mind, and before she could so much as sigh, it had planted itself right on her tongue, expectant and waiting. It had been on her mind, lately, more than it usually was – the nature of their existence; the culture of it. She found new angles to it, now, looking at it all with Nickel in mind. Had he always known there was something intrinsically different about him? Or did it awaken, somehow, when the Unseelie sent for him that first time?

“Nickel– did you always.. know what you were? Fey, I mean?”

He’d settled on a low stack of pallets, glancing once more at his phone before realizing again that it was dead. Instinct. He put it away before he could play himself again like that. Nickel had anticipated some kind of conversation, something to while the time that it would take for Beryl to put on real clothes and trek out the door. Maybe not that. 

To him, Ivy was another constant, another fey. Nickel understood that the overseers were halflings, and halflings had been human--but it was one thing to know that, to see Forest or something, watch him win and change, and then to match that up to Ivy, who must have been the same once. Born human. 

“Not really,” he said. He shrugged, his shoulders coming up high once briefly and then dropping. This was all commonplace among changelings, speculation that they had all shared in the late nights around a bonfire, but other fey either paid little attention or did not really want to know. “It’s not really a secret you wanna trust a little kid with--especially a little kid who can’t actually lie, y’know? There’s like a summer school thing where they spring it on you when you’re like ten years old or something.” 

“Just in time, huh,” Ivy sighed in response, briefly pressing her right-hand knuckles against her forehead– and then making peace with the situation. They’d get out eventually, no matter what happened; someone would need the wine out front, sooner or later. 

“– I’ll take this,” she said, stepping forward and taking the box from his hands, “- and hopefully someone will pick up the phone. Try Beryl, if you have her number.”

In a certain slant of light.. it wasn’t an uncanny resemblance, but she could see it. Why they’d swapped him for Sean. Turning the thought over in her mind felt bittersweet, considering she wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with the latter. She’d need to fix that. Soon.

With bated breath, she waited for someone to answer Nickel’s call, gaze hopeful. Was there even a decent signal in here?

Nickel passed off the box and focused on his phone. The plan had been to charge it while wiping down tables, so he’d let it go. He cast a critical eye first on the sliver of battery left in the icon--and then at Ivy. Nickel raised an eyebrow in her direction, the beginnings of a grin playing on his face. Have you met me?

“I’ve got Beryl’s number,” he confirmed, glancing back down at his contacts. The phone rang out the first time, so he hit her up again. The second time she picked up. “Hey, what’s up?”

She’d been sleeping. “Yeah, I figured. Sorry ‘bout that.” What was going on? There was a slight note worry in her voice, and Nick realized that a call in the early morning hours boded ill, especially with the Unseelie still reeling from a murder over two months ago. It felt like everyone was waiting on bad news. “Oh, everything’s okay in the sense that we, me and Ivy, we have our health. We just have it, you know, in the storeroom behind a door with a new lock that we did not get warned about. Yeah! Finally, right?” She was beginning to sound more awake. “Ivy’s here with me, we’re the only ones.” He rattled the door to illustrate. “Yep. Stuck. Yeah, I know it sucks, but I’d appreciate it. Thanks.” She yawned on the other end of the line. See you soon. 

“Oh, wait, one sec,” Nickel tacked on, as if he’d forgotten. “You remember that thing you were talking about? Yeah, yeah, I think I found one. It’s in Brooklyn.” She made a wry comment about being as good as the original. “Hey, you can tell them that. We’ll go. Cool. See you in a minute.”

He hung up. The phone stayed on for another five seconds and then a battery icon took over the screen. It faded to black, protesting with the icon whenever Nick hit the buttons on the side. He nodded. “Help is on the way,” he said, shrugging. 

When: September 2018

Where: The Rookery, Lacha’s office  

Treason hardly bothered Nickel now. It was merely the shape his life took. They all played their roles, here in the precise machine of the Unseelie Court.

He executed certain steps to keep off suspicion, watching with detached interest as headlines hit Congress and the nation became aware that it was being watched by outside parties. The security and precautions taken around Dad’s information got tighter and tighter, but no one could keep out the fey. No one could match them for closeness, for invisibility. 

Nickel thought about that every time he checked in. He wondered what James Dalton thought about his son going in to work for the woman he knew as an otherworldly queen. If he thought Nick had been hooked by her, too--that would be like Nick, wouldn’t it, selfish and lazy Nicky, looking for an easy way to irritate his father and stay comfortably flush with cash at the same time--and was waiting for the other shoe, for his son to come home, distraught and finally chastened, saying I don’t know what to do, I’m a Player in their game now ...

He slid a USB over to Lacha across her desk. Nick had wandered in, ostensibly on a break. He looked like what he was: a barback, not particularly important, his black t-shirt and black jeans marking him as the part of the staff you ignored. 

“Huh.” Nickel rattled the door a little harder. “For real?” 

There was no one out there. The fact that he was here--running on a combination of black coffee and elixir #32--spoke to the fact that no one else was available to come help haul a couple cases of red wine, among other things, from the storeroom to the bar. He balanced the box against his hip, trying to fish out his phone from wherever the hell he’d put it.

“Good news is that someone finally installed a lock on this thing,” Nickel observed, glancing back at Ivy behind him. 

He couldn’t explain it, but Nick’s hand in his mother’s spread something warm and soothing through Benji’s veins. It was… different than his experience watching Nick and their father interact. Much. 

Oddly, though Benji had always been closest with Mother, Nick’s relationship with her never bothered him or made him uncomfortable the way his relationship with their father did. Or perhaps that part wasn’t the odd bit. Perhaps the odd bit was how Benji often felt about Nick and James Dalton. 

Yes, half the time they were fighting or narrowly avoiding fighting—but growing up, Nick had always been the pride and joy of their father’s most grandiose wishes. And even when Nick had long since dropped the ball (and begun chucking it around like a football, careless and apathetic about their family’s reputation and expectations) Benji had been unable to be visible to his father the way he’d hoped to be. The burden of holding up the family name had fallen to his shoulders, and he’d done well and continues to do well. And his father had supported him financially, and with the occasional, somewhat empty words of encouragement. 

But Benji knew that there was a part of his father who would always be holding out hope that Nick would return to become the man James had always hoped him to be. That one day, Benji wouldn’t have to be his only hope, because Nick would come to his senses and everything would go back to the way it should be. 

Benji loved his father. And respected him. And their relationship was more or less decent. Neither outstandingly good, nor particularly bad. But he would never feel with him what Nick had, at one time, and vice versa. 

So yes, seeing Nick’s touch go almost gentle, sentimental with their mother—perhaps it reminded Benji that Nick was more in tune with his integrity than he sometimes cared to admit. Reminded him that Nicholas Dalton was still a good man, for he loved his mother and would always be true to her. 

It was one of the many, many reasons Benji liked these brunches. 

Benji was pulled from his thoughts not so much when Nick redirected his attention to his brother, but when he said the words ‘she’s a singer’ to their mother. Mother sounded intrigued in a sort of sweet and superficial way, but Benji would have suddenly stilled, were it possible for him to be even more still than he had been a moment ago, sitting there deep in thought. 

As it stood, his muscles almost tightened, on the verge of springing to attention, and though he barely moved an inch, his chin lifted and his eyes cut up to Nick. Carved around the side of an immaculately cut jaw, peppered with shadow and a bare bit of scruff, until Nick had turned his gaze back to Benji, expectantly. 

But perhaps not expecting Benji’s reaction, specifically. “A singer?” His heart felt like butterflies under his ribcage. Something completely unknown was waving a tiny, nondescript red flag, and somewhere, something else totally indiscernible was falling into place. 

Benji knew the name Lorde, of course. He wasn’t particularly up with celebrity status, but neither did he live under a rock. Well—maybe a small one. But… a singer at the Rookery. Lorde. Larkspur. Had she—could she… ?

He felt fogged, confused, as the series of his instances of following a voice into the Rookery, and meeting Lark, rattled through his head like a freight train. “Lorde? Does she—does she frequent there or something?”

It occurred to him that it might look to Nick like Benji was uncharacteristically interested in meeting some celebrity, which he may either pick up on as an amusing guilty pleasure on Benji’s behalf, or otherwise a cover for something less simple, but no more sophisticated. Or perhaps he wouldn’t think twice on it at all. Either way, Benji was already preparing himself for the questions that might be coming back his way in a few minutes. Figuring out which truths to tell, which lies might make things simplest. 

But did he have to lie? What was even giving him the compulsion to do so? It was nothing, in any case. Nothing had happened, whatsoever. So why did he feel oddly secretive about the whole thing? Like he’d been committing some kind of… taboo, unnatural thing, listening to this voice, letting it influence him, invade his thoughts. Move his feet in directions he hadn’t intended on going, as if touched by dark magic, or something maybe less sinister—but either way, not something Benji had ever believed in. 

They weren’t a family that got caught off guard. There was always some sort of scrutinizing lens trained on their family--Nickel felt it with particular keenness--and so they tended to have a reaction held in reserve. Even Mom--especially Mom, actually, since people liked blindsiding her. So Benji’s deer in headlights look was new. 

Nickel raised an eyebrow. “She performs there, Benj. It’s one of the Rookery’s big draws.”

The Unseelie Lure, of course, would have the power to make his brother walk into a bar. Nickel liked Lark, but in that moment something unpleasant twisted inside him. If she knew, would it matter to her? He seldom talked about his human family with those friends that he had a more nebulous, good times only relationship with. What could he offer, he wondered, to persuade her to let him handle Benji? 

There would be too many steps to take Benji aside and explain it all at once. Nickel had a pretty good idea of what his baby brother’s initial reaction would be to hey I’m not actually human, and it would require irrefutable evidence and probably a lot of effort to make the gravity of the situation apparent. He’d have to talk about Dad. Now ... now wasn’t the time. 

Benji was probably expecting him to latch onto this Lorde thing. Nickel knew what his own natural reaction would be: a mildly cruel glee, a grin, a few suggestive comments, ooh, I didn’t know you were a fan. A little light name dropping. He might suggest that Lark was fun to party with; he might say now do you wanna go someplace with us?

“Why d’you ask?” Nick rather deliberately flicked his eyes at the server, who was walking at a brisk clip in their direction. “Does anyone actually know what they want to eat?” Nickel looked down, as if realizing there was a menu there. He pushed one in Mom’s direction.

He’d figure something out. He liked hanging out with Lark, a lot, but he’d have to talk to her, feel her out, either figure out her intentions--she was the Lure, her intentions were pretty fucking obvious--or make some kind of deal. Because Benji was his brother. 

when: january 2 2011 where: the rookery who: @nickclas

Sean always kept his smoke breaks brief, knowing that the longer he was outside the more likely Ivy would be to come looking for him. She’d have something to say about his newly adopted habit       something he didn’t particularly care to listen to, but would feign interest in it so that she didn’t feel it was necessary to put him through more training over some fucking nicotine. His habits weren’t anywhere near as bad as some of the ones he’d seen in players over the years. Plus, he was twenty-three. He could smoke a cigarette or two if he wanted.

That still hadn’t kept him from positioning himself in the alley behind the Rookery where he wouldn’t be immediately spotted if Ivy did stick her head out the door looking for him. But it was why Sean didn’t jump when the door pushed open. Instead, he merely cut his eyes that way to see who it was before taking a quick drag on the cigarette. Nicholas. Nickel. The not-’son’ of a senator who’d started working at the Rookery a handful of weeks ago. “Need a light?” Sean asked after blowing smoke skywards while the other patted at his pockets. 

This won’t stick. I guarantee it. 

Nick was bad at habits. Smoking was the kind of thing that made for good conversation starters, but his ability to remember all the necessary components was somehow nonexistent. He could remember all kinds of other shit, he could reel off whole swathes of memorized dialogue, but a lighter? No, not happening. 

It’s been nearly a month! I think you should bring up education again. He listens to you.

He doesn’t listen to anyone. 

“Sure,” Nick said. He was getting used to randomly coming across real Nicky in the wild. It hadn’t been a factor in why he’d held off signing on as Rookery staff like essentially every other Unseelie, but it was something he’d thought about when he broke the news to people. He hadn’t given anything away the first time he and Sean exchanged one or two word sentences and he didn’t give anything now. It wasn’t at all like looking into a mirror, a fact for which he was actually grateful. “If you’ve got one you’ll let me use.”

Where: Central Park 

When: Noon

Who: @nickclas

Onyx shifted positions, his butt sore from sitting so long on the stone fountain. Throwing his jacket hood over his head he felt the lines in his face harden.‘What a way to spend your day off’ he thought tapping his foot. There was no doubt about it, he was bored. Boredom always seemed to lead him down what some would call a questionable train of thought. But he couldn’t help it! It was just in his nature. Onyx scanned the park and all it’s occupants, only stopping when he spotted a tall man passing by. He bit his lip, there was no harm in a little fun. 

He slid on a pair of sunglasses, his face now barely visible under his hood. Quickly he started tailing the man, and when he was hot on his heels he started muttering something, just loud enough for him to hear. “Suspect is on foot,” “Yes,” “That’s right he’s in a grey sweater,” The man whirred around to face him. “We’ve been compromised,” “I repeat we’ve been compromised, take the shot,”  

Onyx watched as the stranger’s expression went from annoyed to alarmed when he saw the tiny red dot dead center on his chest.

“... the fuck?” Nick, who only rarely pulled the do you know who I am? card, felt like making up for the lack of it in that moment. He didn’t truly feel threatened--not yet. He was in broad daylight, in the middle of Central Park. This wasn’t even the first time he’d been followed by a mumbling rando.

The dot ... he tried to follow the line with his eyes on instinct and then realized that it was plainly stupid to do so. No, this was, like, patently fucking ridiculous, this was theatrics, this was a game of some kind. An improv group thing? Somebody who was bored? Should he be looking for cameras?

He threw his hands up. “Whoa, whoa,” Nickel said, gambling a little. “You take that shot, you’ll never know my secrets, man. I’ll take ‘em to the grave.” 

“Just as I call you Nick in the city. It would be a bit odd to call you Nickel, no matter how much that is your given name.” She scrunched up her nose. “Camellia is fine in any and all cases. It is well-established that I am the princess, most all are aware of that, it feels a bit redundant to say it always.” After a small pause, Camellia added, “Besides, if those of our Court wish to not respect me, forcing them to call me Princess will not win over that respect.”

She looked up at him. She was still unsure if she could call him a friend (though more than part of her wished to), but she appreciated his perspective, appreciated his understanding. “That’s true.” She said, finally. Readjusted her clothing, took another glance out at Tara to see if anyone was especially keen on watching what the two of them were up to.

“Of course. Of course I would look out, there is no need to thank me.” It is my job in many ways, is it not? To look out for my Court’s well-being, though I would do it regardless. “Do you have any other fun plans for the evening? Here or back in the human world?”

No one had really given him the name Nickel. Nicholas had had his name before Nickel did, and when Nickel came around, he had taken it. You didn’t have a fey changeling child with a perfectly compatible name to the human baby he was swapping with because of random chance. 

“Nah, they really wouldn’t, would they,” Nickel said. He tugged his phone out from his pocket. The calendar, away from wifi, populated with painful slowness. Was it even possible to get a signal here? He’d never thought about satellites or cell towers in Tara. Was it another planet or another dimension or what? 

He hadn’t thought that far ahead. There were a couple lowkey things he’d flagged as interesting, but if he wanted lowkey, he could just go to Benji’s and watch a Star War or something. He hadn’t been to Benji’s in a while--since ... May? No, he didn’t ever leave it that long. Nickel scratched the bottom of his brain, looking for any memory of going to Benji and Tyler’s shared apartment after June first. Really? Nothing?

“Perhaps it is not the time yet?” Camellia asked, offering another shy but slightly coy smile. She gave a tug at her clothing, but did nothing more. She was not about to force anybody into the water, although her previous reluctance to get in was growing smaller. She just wouldn’t change into a mermaid in the middle of a party, because that would be a bit much. None of these humans deserved to see her in her mermaid form, anyhow.

She kept watching Gwen, trying to make her out, fingers anxiously aching to touch her arm, brush against her and find out just exactly it was that she was thinking - but that would have to happen in some other time. Because Gwen already seemed to be eyeing the two of them, trying to somehow pick apart whatever it was that was happening between the two of them. Her eyes said that she was curious, but Camellia was more than content to leave it at curiosity for now. No more poking and prodding than was necessary.

She flashed Nickel a covert smile as he looked over to check in on her. Oh, playing this small game with these humans was delightful. A part of her wondered if she was taking too much delight in it, but that was quickly pushed from her mind. These were only humans, after all. She let his elbow brush against her, let her fingers briefly cross against his back - things that said they cared. That perhaps there was something (despite there not being anything) there, something secret that they held away from the world.

Which was true, but now in the way that these three would likely assume, no matter how aware of elixirs they were.

“Then we had best make sure I do not drown.” Her laugh escaped her lips, then. A light, aired giggle that would have told anyone who didn’t know her that she was a bit fancy-free, amused far too easily and that perhaps her mother and Nickel’s had gone back years. That they were the sort to talk on the phone, to check up on what their children were up to with one another. Of course, Lacha would do more than phone up Nickel’s mother if Camellia came home with any sort of even minor injury, but for now, the comments were made in jest.

“I think I am thirsty. Do they serve lemonades here?” Because she wasn’t supposed to be able to drink. “I am happy to continue our conversations, though.” She grinned over at the three humans, watching as they tried to take her in, unable to quite place where she fell, which, in many ways, was just the way she liked it.

There was a specific look people got when they were trying to get your number and they couldn’t quite do it. That midway point between frustration and fascination. Nickel knew that look. People looked like that at him all the time. 

If he was on the outside, he’d think Camellia had a kind of girlish little crush on him, which happened. He humored that girl so she’d have a fun evening out and didn’t let her feel too much like an idiot when he let her down. She’d feel disappointed, but not angry, and when she thought of him again later, it would be fondly. If it was real, he’d be trying to get Camellia to think fondly of him, like that--presumably so that if her mother, his boss, got angry, she’d speak in his defense. The fantasy version of Nick that people clung to often did more work than the real one. 

He added it up in his head. Camellia did have a certain soft-focus, old-soul, flowery, poetical vibe. He didn’t think that was necessarily faked--but there was an intriguing quickness to how easily and fully she leaned into their little game. There was nothing at stake for her, which was of note. Nickel would be the one to answer these people’s questions, if he chose to, they were fixtures in his life and not hers. If they came to the Rookery, which sometimes they did, they’d see her, but they’d never see through her. Nickel admitted to himself in this moment that it was likely that he couldn’t, either. The only reason he could pick this out was because he was lucky enough to know the truth to start with. 

The Princess is better at this than she lets on. Cool to know. 

She was also about a thousand times more approachable than her mother. If this was a facade, it was the kind of facade that had to be sustained. This was basically the circular trap that Dad got into re: constituents. He was voted in for his appearance as an upstanding family man, honest and forthright. He had to maintain that appearance from every angle. If Camellia flipped that script, she’d shed the followers she had who’d picked her for that reason, and there’d be no guarantee of picking up the people who had shunned her for the same, since they’d know now she couldn’t be trusted.