sunset glow and shadow | lydia & felix
Setting: Current. Summary: After weeks of silence, Felix and Lydia talk. Warnings: Brief mentions of fae eating habits With: @inspirationdivine
The conversation, if it could have been called that, with Lydia hadn’t sat well with Felix. Days, weeks ticked by, and still it stirred his guts and soured his tongue in a way that cigars or sweet wine couldn’t cover. He had been angry with her. He had been angry a great deal with people lately but one of them was dead. Long dead. His human skin felt tired and worn around him. The effort put into keeping it caused sweat to form at his temples. Murder and crime was a tiring business. That anger was a feeling he was familiar with enough to know it by name but that hadn’t stopped him from making his way over to her home when the nighttime hours fell over White Crest. After everything, he could stand to see a friend. She was his friend, Lydia, and he had been happy to call her one but the way she spoke of Bea…
He shook his head and rapped lightly against her door.
“Hey Lydia? It’s me. Your pal, Felix.”
Lydia hated the night. She couldn’t shake the feeling that, no matter how tall her new fences were or how rigorous her security, just on the other side of the dark were those soft red eyes and that horrifyingly calm smile. Even though it was late, she was perched in the living room chair, reading a book and in sharp denial as to how little she was actually reading, her eyes reading the same sentences over and over. Concentration slipped through her fingers faster than ever. When someone knocked, she jumped, looking back up at O with her eyes side. They began walking down the hall. Outside, the lights turned on so that Lydia could see her visitor on her camera. It was just Felix. Shivering, Lydia unfolded her legs from underneath her, stepping into blue slippers as she began towards the hall herself. “It’s alright, O!” She told the zombie security guard, and O opened the door. A little afraid to get close to the threshold, Lydia smiled from a distance. It was a weary, exhausted smile that didn’t reach her eyes, full of trepidation. God, she didn’t know that she could stand to lose another friend tonight. “Felix. It’s good to see you!”
The lampade’s head felt uneven as Felix tipped it to the side with a smile. A crooked one for a crooked fae. The thought burned black in him, made his expression that much tighter as he looked at Lydia. She seemed tired too and his smile wavered. “Back at ya,” he said with a soft sigh as he glanced at the other body. “O, huh? How’d you do?” He grinned again with a nod, the way he might have before. It was gone just as quickly and his attention went back to Lydia, his brows slightly drawn and lifted above his glasses. “Is it…” He trailed. Pulled it back in. Everything felt discombobulated, upside down. He shifted on his feet. “Uh, is it alright if I come in?”
“You know you don’t have to ask that,” Lydia replied with a nervous smile, eyes skating past him into the dark. “You’ll have to forgive the stiffness, since my recent unwelcome visitor I’m careful of what I say when it comes to the thresholds of my home.” She left it at that, and, trusting that Felix would follow her cues, walked over to the living room. The glow of her skin was barely bright enough to reflect off the marble surfaces of her counters as she plucked two glasses from her cupboard, and reached into her wine cooler for a rich Merlot. “Any reason for the pleasure of your company, or is it just a friendly visit?” They had spoken perhaps once since their last argument, and only barely then. It hung thick in the air, alongside all of Lydia’s other recent arguments about humans. How could something so insignificant cause her so much strife.
“Sure, sure.” Felix said with a faint wave of his hand. Uncertainty rode sidecar to him as he stepped through. Lydia seemed happy enough to see him as far as he could tell. She could be hard to read sometimes or maybe it was because the last time they spoke, he didn’t like what she had said. What she had implied. But friends were few and far between, some more capable of being there one day and then gone the next. It was one conversation. Enough to put some cracks in him, sure, but they could have another. They needed one, he thought. Friendly visit. “Something like that, yeah,” he said, words a bit shorter than he usually wove together. As filling as Roy’s magic had been, it wavered as the days went. He slipped off his glasses and slipped them into his suit pocket. As he sat down, he loosely intertwined his fingers and looked at Lydia. Shadows lingered on the edges of his fingertips. Slowly, they took over the rest of him. “I just...it’s been a cool minute, y’know?” He smiled at her some. As much as he wanted to bring it up, address it, it felt...nice to just not. For a moment. “I saw a nice puddle and thought of you, truth be told! And I just, uh, figured we oughta talk. Catch up. How you been?”
Busying herself with wine glasses and bottles meant she didn’t have to face him as he sat down. Lydia wondered if he was as curious as her about which way this might go. If he was flipping a coin in his head. They couldn’t not talk about it. They could talk around it until their tongues fell off, and let time atrophy either the hurt or the friendship, without them choosing which. Or they could pull the wound out into the open, and Lydia would have to risk losing him or risk lying. She breathed shakily, before finally committing to turning back to him. “It has indeed. It has been a busy fall.” She smiled, not quite meeting his eyes, as he told her about the puddle. “Rather terrible, if I’m honest, but I do not know if I wish to discuss them right-” Lydia looked back at him, sliding the wine glass along the table before freezing stiff. “Felix,” she murmured, looking up at the gaping hole in the side of his head. “What-- When- What happened?”
“Been one heck of a busy year,” Felix said as he tried to relax back in the chair but he couldn’t. Piano wire was what came to mind as he tapped his fingers against his legs. They hadn’t stayed tangled long, quick to go apart. “Don’t think I’ve felt so tired and yet not so tired in one year, you know what I mean?” He sounded out of tune even to his own ears. He could only imagine how it sounded to Lydia and the way she sounded to him, was almost just as much. Or maybe it was just him. “You too, huh?” His brows creased with worry as he tried to search her face. “This town sure is something else, ain’t it? And I thought New York was all rough and tumble.” He took the offered wine glass and when she looked up, looked at the broken bits of him, a thin smile cut through his features. It was different from just simply being seen. It was being seen as fractured and he worried--a fact that nearly made him laugh--worried how she might see him then. It was different. Humans prided on broken bones, something about how they grew back stronger. He had to think it was inherently different for fae, as most things were. Maybe it was a foolish thing to worry over. Lydia would understand, wouldn’t she? They had seen one another, hadn’t they? He gestured vaguely at where his antler had been. “Oh this old thing?” He tried to make it sound like a joke but it strangled itself halfway through. “Made friends with a lamia while doing some business,” he said. “They’re dead now. Their boss too.”
“I do.” Lydia agreed. She was bone tired. Her eyesockets ached from all her crying, her glamour and glowing skin no longer properly hid the shadows beneath her eyelids, and everything ached from regrowing a brand new limb. Exhaustion was a way to put it. “New York doesn’t even come close. At least not the parts where I lived,” Lydia said softly, smiling ever so slightly, if only because he was and she didn’t want to shut that down. It was an alarming sight, like someone had tried to take hims crown. Lydia did not know much about Lampade antlers, certainly not as much as she ought to. She knew that his had grown over the summer, but she did not know if they would grow back. Her wing had, but that was not the same. His voice was as thin as hers, but he tried to joke, so she did not push the matter. “Good,” Lydia breathed, her voice soft in case she might break the fragile peace between them as she took his hand, dark beside light. “I hope they both suffered for the injustice.”
“New York’s got some rules to it but this place? Not a one in sight.” The lampade huffed a laugh. The thought made Felix’s lip curl ever so slightly. After what had been said, the ire drawn like a tight piano wire over a few words, there was some solace to be found in exhaustion. He nodded slowly at the word injustice. “They did. They sure as heck did. And we’re better off for it.” Even after what had been said, he was still there. A distant cousin to happiness sat in his chest. Maybe more kin to melancholy. His eyes drifted from her hand in his to her face. He had been so angry, a roaring fire that burned so hot that no bone could be found after. But there in front of her, looking at her for the first time in...heck, a few weeks, he wasn’t as angry as he had been. He was tired. Tired of being angry. But that didn’t stop the thought from bubbling or his brow from creasing slightly. His thumb drifted across a knuckle of hers. “Lydia…” He started, voice a quiet calm. A bit lost until it finally found where he wanted to go. That bared and broken place. “Still think I’m disgusting?”
“Good,” Lydia breathed, growing even quieter as she grappled with the slowly suffocating silence between them. Tension that she had made and he would resolve, one way or another. Lydia inhaled shakily as he asked his question. The question. “No. Never.” Lydia said, with all the weight that came from being fae. She could not lie, and she wasn’t. “I… I haven’t really known what to say. I owe you an apology. I should have waited until I was calmer to talk to you. I cannot even begin to express how sorry I am for speaking to you the way I did, and for saying what I did the way I said it. I don’t think you are disgusting, and I’m horrified that I put our friendship in jeopardy like that. But-” Lydia looked only at his hand then, her brow furrowed she tried to find the right words. She hadn’t last time, though. “I’ve been afraid, too. Not all truths are kind. A human is one thing, and I thought you were a different kind of fae, but.. Necromancy? I’m Catholic, I- I was taught, and still do believe… I don’t think that’s something anyone should be able to do. I should never have spoken to you like that… but I also can’t easily change what I believe.”
His breath shook. Maybe it was the jagged edge of what had once been there or the tremor of blood from near-death. Whatever it was, it was hard for Felix to stay still. But he tried. “Well, that helps the ol’ ego,” he said dryly. Quietly. “Real worried about that for a second.” His smile was small, tension-riddled. He sat up some, the words you owe her one too in his mouth, but he swallowed them back. As entangled with humans as he had been throughout the course of almost two centuries, he wasn’t much in the business of dealing them out apologies. Not when he could deal to them other things. And to tell another fae to do just that? “You’re right. Not all truths are kind but people can be. Not all but a few. She is, y’know. You are,” he said as he looked at her. A truth could sever as quickly, as efficiently, as any human lie could. Better, even. His hand slackened some in hers. “A different kind of fae?” The back of his neck went cold. “How’d you mean?”
“I think you know precisely how I mean, Felix,” Lydia replied shortly. She breathed, squeezing his hand even as he threatened to let go. A fae like me. “I eat humans. I flirt with them until they trust me, I poison them with my saliva, and then I drain their life right out of them, piece by piece. The thought of falling in love with one is entirely alien to me. I thought you were the same, considering your own diet, but clearly I was wrong. I mean nothing more than that. Truly, I do.” She forced herself to look back at him, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. His eyes were like the moon, the stars, the sun on a winter day. She did not want to be the pain in them anymore. “Does she make you happy?”
Felix supposed he did know but still he asked the question. And Lydia certainly wasn’t wrong. He had eaten his fair share too. Pulled the magic from humans that tried to lay claim to it until they no longer could. Forced them to look into an empty well and didn’t think twice about it, nor should he have. As he looked at Lydia, at the dark under her eyes and the lack of glow to her skin, his gaze softened. His fingers curled slightly. It wasn’t a way for them to be. Not when they had walked through an upside down place and felt at home. “It is a funny thing,” he admitted. “I was in love once before. With a fae. It, uh, didn’t take. I guess the differences got to ‘em.” He shrugged with a hollow laugh. It didn’t sting as much as it once had. Not the way her words had when she had leveled him with them and left him doubting. He didn’t doubt her then. Certain as the moon looked down on them. “She does,” he said simply, his mouth curved into a smile around the words. He looked at her in earnest. “You do too, Lydia.”
“That is the most important thing,” Lydia said. “My ideologies shouldn’t affect that.” As she’d said to Deirdre, no human was worth ending their friendship over. Back then, the human in question had been Morgan. Lydia swallowed as Morgan’s words echoed in her head. And I would have loved you, if you’d ever let me. Lydia had loved her. After she’d been a zombie, a doom she’d been fated to, but she had loved Morgan all the same, completely radically. Morgan hadn’t thought a difference in ideologies was something she could set aside. That stung, like salt on a wound that had forgotten how to heal. “You make me happy too. I just… I am sorry.” She could swallow the rancid bile that thinking about Bea’s throat brought up, she could halt the thoughts about the maggots that must have wriggled inside that corpse before she’d been back alive to be loved once more. “I am so sorry, Felix. You shouldn’t have had to come to me.”
Felix searched her face and nodded slowly. Slowly, gently, his fingers curled with hers. It hurt and if he thought on it, the wound opened but... They had all the time in the world and one day, they might look back on this with a laugh. With a wing beat, a whisper of shadow. The way olden things did. They had all the time and yet not enough to stay tiptoeing around one another. Not when they had danced before. Not when they were so tired. The moons of his eyes glimmered and he gently squeezed her hands. Met her eyes with the smile of his own. “It’s behind us,” he said softly. “And we got a whole heck of a lot in front of us. Is tu caraid mo ghràidh.” You are my dear friend. “I would’ve come to you anyway, you know. One way or another, one day or another. I got a feeling that now was the right time.”
“It should still have been me. This month has been so terrible, I didn’t dare invite more heartbreak into my home.” Lydia barely knew she was moving before she had, pulling on his hand and stepping closer to him until she could wrap her arms around his middle, squeezing him tight, her forehead pressed into his shoulder. This wasn’t forgiveness for a transgression, she knew this, but he wasn’t walking out the door. She knew she’d been afraid of it, but until he’d held her hand again she hadn’t realised quite how heavy the burden was. She couldn’t keep doing this. Deirdre, sobbing on the floor of a hotel, unwilling to tell Lydia that her lover had died because of her fear of Lydia’s reaction. Her and Felix, not speaking for weeks because of her opinions on necromancy. If Lydia couldn’t be the hearth for her friends to warm their hands by, what kind of friend was she? “I am so, so happy that you have someone there in that way for you.” It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t the right someone, but that mattered less. Felix had centuries. He deserved good friends every step of the way, not just when it was to her liking. “God, I’ve missed you. I will make this up to you, I promise.”
“No heartbreak here, doll. I assure ya.” A shuddered breath rolled through him. Felix wasn’t a stranger to loss. Certainly not recently. As angry as he had been with Lydia, as much as he retraced every step and conversation to understand how they had gotten to where they did, he feared. He feared not having her as a friend. He feared them not being able to unfurl their masks and simply be. The way that fae could be. The way they had been before, in a time he looked back on with sepia lenses. He smiled into her hair as his arms came around her loosely. “I’m lucky to have her. She’s my favorite star,” he said with a smile. And he meant it. Beatrice was the hop to his step, the twinkle in his eye. Her and all her dead, he couldn’t be bothered. Not when she made him feel so alive. “It gets lonely here sometimes. Even with friends.” He glanced down at her, the shine of his eyes a trembling lake. “I’ve...I’ve really missed you too, Lydia. We can start now, y’know, on this whole making up thing.” His smile was teasing, his tone just as much. “I think a vase of wine or two might be a good start. What do you say, for old time’s sake?”
His arms, finally settling around her back just above her wings was just what Lydia needed to lift that final weight. “That’s what matters most.” Did it sting, just a little, that a human could offer him something Lydia couldn’t? He wasn’t wrong. “You can always come find me too, you know, if you’re looking for some time with friends. I’m sorry I made that harder, but I really mean it.” Lydia stepped back slightly as she heard a small spark in his voice, the first hint of a real smile she’d had to offer him all night. Her eyebrows raised, even as his soft tone was enough to make tears threaten her eyes. “A whole vase? Each? You’re just trying to kill me. I see how it is,” Lydia winked up at him. She ought to move, pull them into the kitchen and find her best bottle of red for them. Instead she held him close, watching the flickering tendrils of his shadows dance alongside her sunset glow for just a little longer.
