We met at the disco

[Niall Gallagher]

Aw, what a cute kid. His eyes were welling up for him? Little old him? Well... Niall did have a nasty life up until now but it could have been worse probably. Still, what a sensitive kid. Niall smiled at him.

"Oh yes. Yes, I feel that with Ken. All the time. Even when he's frustrating and a complete stiff. And not in the good way... But yes. He makes being here worth everything."

Now, Niall wasn't strong enough emotionally--he was still kind of brittle--to say that he would do it all over again for Ken. He would hope he would... but honestly, he was given to his vices. He was an addict and he needed things. He needed them like a habit, he needed them to comfort him, whether it was a cigarette or it was clinging onto Ken like a koala. Some things were healthier than others. But he was a needy person and also a very vocal and grabby person. No way was anybody going to be loved by Niall the way he loved Ken and not know it.

Niall leaned in as Raphael placed his hands on his knee. And he raised a brow. They kissed and they almost did stuff? Niall stared at that innocent--so, so, so innocent--kid's face and he wanted so bad to laugh but not at him. Just the... cuteness of his naivety.

"Oh, honey..." He patted Raphael's hands. "You already have the okay? Then what are you doing here? And yes, do push him down and tell him everything. Make sure he hears it, too. Don't let him pretend he didn't hear you. Look him right in the eyes. That part's important."

He glanced over at Marge.

"You sound like you have a different idea... What do you got?"

[Raphael Malai]

"Relationship goals," Raphael whispered in rapt adoration, recalling the way Ken looked at Niall and kissed him before he left. To be loved like that... It must have felt so wonderful and so fulfilling. And Niall loved him back just as passionately, that was easy to see. When he spoke about Ken, his eyes got a little sparkly... They were so cute together!

Well, Niall wasn't going to be turned, Raphael could see that easily. The love he had for Ken and the love Ken felt for him, it was stronger than any corruption that the King might try to force upon them. That was something of a comfort, actually; Raphael wanted so badly to believe in the idea of true and lasting love. He was naive, young and just experiencing deeper emotions so maybe he was idealizing the concept of love, but... it sure was hard to be dissuaded when he was faced with Niall and Ken and Professor Jack and Brayden!

"I'll look him right in the eyes and tell him what's what!" Raphael nodded, full of conviction.

Behind him, Marge laughed. "Oh, don't you worry about me. But I think you should go over and pay your older brother a visit. I'll let Ken know which unit to find you in. And maybe I'll take a walk down to the—to work. To see how they're doing over there." She slid off the couch and headed for the bedroom where the naked fixer Charles slept. There was something kind of funny about her, though. Raphael blinked. He swore he saw a little glimmer coming from Marge, the sort of thing that happened when someone used magic.

Hmm... Or was it a trick of the light? Raphael turned back to Niall. "What if he still says no Niall? What if he decides he doesn't want to feel anything and pushes me away again?"

[Niall Gallagher]

What? Did he just whisper relationship goals at him? Niall blinked. Well, why not? He smirked as crossed his legs and leaned forward to take another sip of his tea. By now it was growing cool. He should have toughed it out when it was still hot. Cold tea... was gross.

"All right," Niall said setting the tea back down and slapping his free knee. "Then get your arse in there and tell him! You tell him everything, boyo!"

And he better! Because Niall didn't usually dispense of advice because people didn't usually ask him for it. But it was nice, kinda. Being an older brother again. He imagined Lorcan coming to him for this kind of thing... And he would tell him the same things. He smiled as he lowered his gaze.

Then over at Marge, who had the suggestion to go visit the other brother. Niall popped off the chair and righted himself. Hopefully he wouldn't want advice, too. Niall wasn't sure how much he had to dispense. Just this once, he actually knew what he was talking about and had the advice to dispense. Looking Raphael over, he noticed his conviction seemed to have flagged.

"He won't," Niall said, taking his chin like a mother hen and giving it an affectionate squeeze. "He won't be able to resist this face."

He patted Raphael on the head. "Good luck." He gave him two thumbs up. "I'm rooting for ya, kid!" Then he headed for the door, looked at it suspiciously and tried it. It opened without giving him any trouble. Whew. He turned back to Raphael and smiled and gave him another thumbs up before leaving to find this other brother across the courtyard.

[Raphael Malai]

"Okay baby, it's all up to you now." Marge was leaving too, shrugging on a jacket while groggy Charles yawned and ruffled a hand through his blond hair. She gave him a one-armed hug and a pat on the butt. "Don't fuck it up, okay? We need that emo little boy in there to grow wings fast. Condoms in the bedside drawer, and lube. Bye~"

No... pressure... or anything.

Raphael watched her leaving with a kind of surging panic that made him want to run out and latch on to her hand and pull her back. Suddenly he wasn't sure about anything. And yet, something inside was propelling him forward. He felt the weirdest urge to go find Rhys. Even while internally freaking out, Raphael was moving back into the apartment, towards the tiny room that Rhys had holed up in.

Tap tap tap!

"Rhys?" Raphael swallowed. The feeling inside was growing stronger: resolve. He knocked again, less hesitantly this time. "Rhys, everybody's gone. Do you want to come out now?"

[Rhys McCabe]

Rhys was spending
a lot of time in bathrooms lately.

And he didn't like it, particularly. Bathrooms here were purely functional. Back home, Rhys could spend upwards of three hours soaking in his tub but it was in the middle of an enormous chamber, filled with servants and consorts waiting on him, hand and foot. If he so chose, he could spend an entire day inside that tub. But it got boring after a while, just like everything else in his life.

Now it wasn't boring being holed up in a bathroom. It was insulting and humiliating, that he should be forced to spend his time in this trap of a room, curled up inside the empty tub without even the comfort of that old blanket to keep him warm. It was kind of cold in the bathroom. Not much warmer in the tub, either. Actually, he'd hissed with pain and cold when his back touched it, bare as it was. Which was how he ended up in this... awkward, half curled position so that his back no longer touched anything and he just... felt pathetic.

But he was also stubborn and he wasn't going back out there to be lectured by a brother who didn't know him, by some supposedly well-meaning witch with an evil stare, and most of all, Raphael.

Now, he'd tell Raphael to fuck off but if he found a way into the bathroom and found him like this... he would just rather not go through that. Sighing, he forced himself to climb out of the tub and unlock the door. Slowly, he opened it and peered out.

"...where did they go?"

[Raphael Malai]

Oh! He came out! Raphael must have looked surprised when the door opened, because he expected Rhys to tell him to go away. Blinking, he stared at Rhys for a moment. "They—Marge went out with the fixer and Ken went back home to get something and Niall's visiting Professor Jack and Brayden, so..."

It was just them now, all alone. All alone inside of Brayden's apartment, left to their own devices. No more safety nets, though. No one to give him good advice, no one to interrupt them or to help take away the awkward silence that fell after his explanation. Raphael stepped back a pace. "Do you want to rest? In the bed?" He didn't think Rhys would appreciate being told to get in bed so that Raphael could do what Niall told him to—straddle him and grab his face and tell him all the things that had been bottled up inside for... forever.

"I made tea, if you want some. Are you still feeling bad? Does it still hurt?" Rhys looked so tired still, so pale and haggard. Maybe this could wait... Raphael didn't want to upset him and he thought doing what Niall said would surely upset him! It sounded like the exact type of thing Rhys would hate! All emotional and full of sincere feelings and... and so un-Fallen!

[Rhys McCabe]

There was a definite awkward silence after Raphael explained where everybody had gone. Rhys had asked, but he didn't know what he meant to do with the information. He just asked because Raphael said they left. Great. They were gone. So they stood there. Awkwardly. Because Rhys wanted to leave the bathroom but Raphael was still in the doorway. But oh, there. He stepped back.

Rhys opened the door. He'd discarded the ugly brown sweater he'd stolen and left it in the hamper, like an idiot. Another reason not to be found looking pathetic in the bathtub. He was even too good for somebody else's sweater. (He wasn't, he just hurt too much to put it back on after he took it off and got in the tub.) Now he pulled it back out of the hamper to put it on again, over goose pimpled skin.

"No. They had sex on it," he said, somehow annoyed by that. Even he couldn't explain why everything annoyed him. It was just having the feeling of anything--that was what was annoying. Still, he moved past Raphael, given the space to, and definitely passed the bedroom.

Actually, a bed sounded like heaven. But he wanted his own bed. Some part of him was homesick for his old chambers, the ones back home, not the apartment hovel they called home here. But even that bed would have been an improvement over the couch here, which had somehow become his... bed.

"I'm fine."

The living room was indeed empty but there were still books scattered all over the floor. Rhys remembered the things Niall said to him and felt annoyed again. There was truth to what he said, which only made it worse, especially coming from somebody like him. He looked like the sun could shine out of his ass and he was talking to Rhys about love and dying and acting like Rhys needed to just buck up. He sighed.

Where did he even go from here? The apartment was a luxury apartment and yet it felt too small and cramped, even when it was just the two of them, because he knew he couldn't leave and he was stuck here. The pooka in him couldn't stand it. He took the sweater back off. Every time anything touched his back, it felt awful. He hung it on the back of a chair and took his place back on the couch, only because it was comfortable and the only part of this place that felt like he was even really allowed to be.

"I'll take the tea."

[Raphael Malai]

"Ah—yes..." Marge and Charles did do things on top of the bed... Raphael felt as though he ought to have anticipated that and known, somehow, that it would displease Rhys. But by that reasoning he ought to have been able to read minds and anticipate Rhys' every need, which in fairness all good servants should be able to do. Except he wasn't a servant any longer. But he was still in that mindset and acting like it, because that was all he had known for the better part of a decade.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, subdued, trailing after Rhys as he made his way back to the couch. Raphael felt something odd inside his chest. Not an ache—that was normal now, whenever he and Rhys interacted. It was just a little niggling sensation, like somebody was urging him to do something he didn't want to do. A compulsion maybe. A quiet but insistent suggestion.

Raphael ignored it to the best of his ability. "Coming right up!" Tea he could still do, especially with the kettle still hot off the stove. Scurrying into the kitchen, he pulled the least chipped mug he could find from Brayden's cupboards and slid another tea bag into it, then poured hot water into the cup. Raphael waited in silence for it to steep, steadfastly avoiding looking at Rhys. The things that Niall said to him rang around and around in his head. Things for him to do, things he needed to take into consideration. Things about love and pain and not wasting the time he was given, and making good on this opportunity to let his feelings be known. The niggling feeling persisted and grew a little stronger.

He returned with the tea. "Careful, it's hot." A stupid, unnecessary thing to say as the mug was steaming furiously. Raphael handed it over and then absently set about picking up the books that had scattered off the coffee table, replacing them into a neat stack—just to have something to do. He didn't feel like he ought to sit there like a lump, silently struggling to be... stubborn and irresistible.

[Rhys McCabe]

Things between them were strained. Anybody would be able to tell in a second. Even Niall knew and he met them for all of ten minutes. (Longer but who was counting?) Why did they all have to leave? All it took was one other person and they wouldn't be so... awkwardly sitting here like this. Or rather, Rhys wouldn't be sitting there awkwardly with a hot cup of tea while Raphael annoyingly flittered around like an animated house rat doing chores.

For a few minutes, Rhys just... let him but then it started to really grate on his nerves for whatever reason. Maybe because it was too quiet. (Never a problem for him before.) Or maybe because he could see him out of his peripheral vision even when he wasn't watching him and it was annoying. (Distracting.)

"Stop," he said in irritation. "This isn't even your house. You don't have to clean up after that pig."

That pig not being the owner of the apartment but rather that idiot brother of his, who seemed to have no regard whatsoever for anybody else or their space or their things or their thoughts!

[Raphael Malai]

"P-pig?!" Raphael stopped cleaning up and straightened, shocked and indignant. Brayden was not a pig! "You've never even met Bee!" He gasped, shocked that Rhys would go there and insult a person he'd never met—just because someone else knocked a few books off the table! Ooh, that crossed a line! Brayden had been the nicest one out of all of them! And he was a true fae prince, which somehow made it worse because he was everything Raphael would have liked to be. A real fae, a real prince, and a person who was liked by all.

Sighing, he stooped to pick up the last book and set it down onto the top of the table. Another thing he did that annoyed Rhys. What else was new? Nothing he did or said seemed to be okay. Every emotion he elicited was a shade of annoyance or irritation, and while Raphael was glad that Rhys felt these things—felt anything—he was personally affronted that... that he couldn't draw out any positive emotions.

Well all right then, he'd stop. Raphael sat down on the couch, exactly half a cushion away, with his hands sandwiched between his legs like a bad pupil waiting to be admonished by the head master. He kept his eyes on the edge of the coffee table, staring straight ahead. Not talking. He wanted to—there was a lot he needed to say—but he just didn't know where to start!

After a moment, he shifted a bit closer. Maybe an inch or two closer. His head didn't move but his eyes did, swerving over to catch the corner of Rhys' knee out of their periphery. Then he slid closer again, lessening the gap by a further inch or two. This repeated twice more—as if Rhys couldn't hear or see him quite literally inching closer. Raphael opened his mouth—he didn't know which of the questions crowding his mind would come out.

"Do you love me?"

Well. That one apparently.

[Rhys McCabe]

"I wasn't talking about him. I was talking about my... brother."

The word came out as if it tasted unpleasant, although he wasn't actually certain how he felt about his brother. It was kind of nice to say, actually. Brother. He had a sibling. He had more than one. But he'd known that for a while. He had a brother to be annoyed with. Kind of strange. Most of the time, he wasn't very annoyed with Satine but she was there back before his emotions were all kinds of messed up. And then when they were messed up... well, she was just as messed up.

Warily, he looked over at Raphael. Not when he first sat down but when he first edged toward him. And then kept edging toward him. His wariness grew with each succession of scooting. What was Raphael doing, exactly? Earlier, Rhys only let him get close because he'd been too weak to do much else. Now, he was still weak but he was sitting up. He could at least shove him if he tried to do anything weird. Like kiss him again.

He fought the urge to move away because that was stupid and he'd only end up trapping himself against the other end of the couch. And then Raphael had to ask his question and Rhys sort of let his tea flip end over end, splashing hot fucking tea all over his own lap and his legs.

"Fuck!" He stood up immediately, as one does when hot liquid spills so close to sensitive body parts.

[Raphael Malai]

Niall was no pig either! He was a very wise and handsome and distinguished prince, full of good advice and kind words and he was a colorful, interesting individual. He must have led quite a life, too, judging by the look in his eyes. They were the eyes of a man who had seen the world at its best and at its worst, and had come out of it alive to tell the tale—if only anyone would listen to him instead of brushing him off.

No one was a pig here. Except maybe Keith, but he didn't factor into the current conversation. Raphael was waiting, not breathing. His lungs burned and his eyes hurt as he stared without blinking at the coffee table, which was when Rhys spilled hot tea all down his legs. On purpose?! To create a diversion so he wouldn't have to answer the question?!

"Rhys!" Raphael cried out in shock, seeing the damp patch seeping and pooling as Rhys leapt up, scalded. "Are you okay?!" He asked, concerned, and then—somewhat foolishly and indignantly, "Why did you do that?!" Because why did Rhys have to go and spill the tea into his own lap just to avoid answering the question? That was uncalled for!

But even as he was angrily accusing Rhys of evading his question, he was leaping up too and trying to remove Rhys' trousers, to avoid the tea spreading up into his crotch and burning him there too. Although he would deserve it!

[Rhys McCabe]

"Why did you ask that stupid question?!" he said right back. Like he enjoyed having hot liquid all over him! He was already freaking shirtless! And then Raphael was coming at his pants with his hands and Rhys was pushing his hands away and swatting at him.

"What are you doing?!"

Did he want to strip him down right then and there?! But it wasn't like it was a move on him. Even if the question was a highly suggestive one (suggestive, not sexual), it didn't mean that Raphael was intending for him to throw tea into his lap so he could pull his pants off. Rhys knew that... logically.

"I can take off my own damn clothes."

Which was true but usually not a thing he had to say. Back at the castle, he had servants to do even that. Raphael was not one of them. He was the go-fer servant. Not the clothing servant. Not the bathing servant. Not a consort. So why him. Why. He turned away from Raphael and with irritation now aimed more at himself for being stupid enough to put himself into an awkward position, he tugged the pants off. And by the time they were off, he was tired and flung them across the room.

"And now I'm a pig too," he said angrily. "Don't you dare pick them up."

[Raphael Malai]

"It'll spread!" Raphael pointed to the rapidly advancing damp patch at the front of Rhys' pants, angrily. It was an angry point. The nerve of Rhys to insinuate that he was trying to do something untoward! When he only wanted to help! If Rhys wanted to sit in hot wet tea-stained pants, Raphael didn't know about it! He couldn't read minds!

And now Bee's couch was soaked too! ARGH! Raphael was indeed going for a towel from the kitchen to blot the tea out of the cushions, since Rhys had the pants situation on lockdown. Hmph! He came back and pressed the towel to the large wet patch on the couch, trying his best not to watch Rhys wiggling out of his trousers. Because yes, Rhys was shirtless due to the large corruption at his back, and now he had gone and scalded his legs. The skin there looked rather red and irritated—just like Rhys himself.

Raphael straightened when pants flew across the room. The—the nerve of Rhys to tell him not to pick them up! Raphael stood there, arms akimbo, feeling something snap inside. That feeling inside intensified to an unbearable level and he just... lost it. "Stop telling me what to do!" He snapped. "I'll pick up all the pants I want, when I want!"

He strode over purposely, glaring at Rhys the entire way, bent and grabbed the pants. And held them. And glared.

[Rhys McCabe]

Clothes were going to be his enemy for a while. He was going to end up having to wear some kind of toga so his burnt legs would be free of chafing and his back open to air instead of also more chafing.

But Raphael was also making himself an enemy. More of an enemy than clothes. Rhys said not to dare pick up those pants and of course the first damn thing he did was stride over and pick up the pants. Rhys stared at him, glared back, too, jaw set hard. What the hell was his problem, anyway? Everything Rhys said, he did the goddamned opposite. Maybe he should tell him not to go play in traffic next!

"Put. Them. Down."