Fairy Ring
Wes Evans visits his little brother in the hills to look for fairies and maybe escape an arranged marriage. He finds himself taken as the new king’s consort, which isn’t quite what he was going for— but it’s better.
read it on ao3
welcome to resbang 2017!! i’m excited and proud to be able to kick off the season with my favorite disaster couple :D
my artists this season fic have been @sahdah [x] and @fabulousanima [x]. thank you for spoiling me with your wonderful art! i am and will forever be honored to have been your writer ♥
eternal thanks go to the enchanting @l0chn3ss, my enabler and beta-reader from the very start. this fic would not exist without you u3u
you can find Fairy Ring here on ao3. if you’d rather test the waters, well— please enjoy ACT I: Wishes.
don’t ever walk into a fairy circle. for protection: iron, salt, rowan and vervain and hazel. never give out your true name.
“You know, salt is what keeps us away.”
Wes looks up from scattering oregano and sees, looming intimately close and yet too far away, a slender young man dressed all in black. “Oh,” he breathes. “You’re beautiful. Why would I want to keep you away?”
The man stares. Wes’s heart skips a golden beat.
Then, with a blink, he wakes.
His little brother is staring down at him. Wes thinks he catches an inhuman red in Soul’s eyes, a fragment of flash photography— and then the moment passes, and they are their usual brown.
“A b-beast is gonna get you one of these days,” Soul sighs.
“Love you, too,” Wes mumbles. He sits up and absently taps a few fingers to his chest. “Time is it?”
“Sundown. You shouldn’t s-still be out.”
Wes pushes himself to his feet and pats himself down. “It wouldn’t be a problem if you didn’t live in the hills,” he points out as he sheds stray grass blades. “You know what the locals call you?”
Soul smirks. “The Catholics call me a demon. The rest are too smart to call me anything.”
“No, they call you a witch.”
Soul waves a dismissive hand. “Same difference.” He scowls at Wes. “Are those mushrooms? What’re you doing with them?”
Wes returns the scowl with what he is sure is an impressively patronizing frown of his own. “I’m gonna cook ‘em. Duh.”
Soul picks up an offending fungus. “No, why were they… on the ground at all?”
“They grew there, of course.”
Soul sighs. The sound is tinged with exasperation, but only just. “These are shiitake mushrooms.”
“So?”
“So if you’re gonna lie, at least try and be plausible.”
Wes beams. “But if I did that, how would you ever know I was lying?”
“Wow, th-thanks, you braggart.” Soul’s voice is as flat as any of his expressions, but Wes is reasonably certain that he hears sincerity. “Here.”
Wes deposits his handfuls of fungi into the wicker basket before he takes it. “That’s the spirit. Why’d you come looking for me?”
Soul gestures mutely at the rapidly darkening sky.
“It’s not even twilight yet,” Wes says. “How’d you know where to find me?”
Soul’s scowl deepens ever-so-slightly. “I have my sources.”
“You and your little birds,” Wes grumbles. He tosses the last of the mushrooms into the basket and straightens, tugging his necklace from under his shirt to fiddle with the charm.
Soul sighs. “Put that down,” he warns, exasperated, as Wes lifts the loops of violin string to his eye. “Don’t know why you even bother,” he adds, crossing his arms, but he doesn’t move away.
“A harmless habit,” Wes says cheerfully, dropping the charm back down the front of his shirt.
“Yea, well, don’t do it ’round the— guest.”
Wes doesn’t miss Soul’s hesitation, but he also doesn’t pry. “We have a guest?” (Okay, he pries a little, but Soul has been fidgeting in that cagey way of his ever since Wes woke up, and he is burning with unanswered questions.)
“I have a guest. N-not family.” Soul hesitates again, just as briefly as before, but this time Wes recognizes caution. “He’ll be gone before dawn, but—”
“I have enough to make him dinner, too,” Wes offers, cheerfully brandishing his mushroom-laden wicker basket.
Soul sighs. “He’ll take it if he wants to, I suppose,” he says, turning and striding into the woods around them. Wes follows, waiting in placid silence for Soul to tell him more about the mysterious guest.
“… He’s my boss,” Soul admits, several minutes later. “You, ah… I cannot afford for you to make a poor impression on him, and he is… not likely to take kindly to your— harmless habit.”
Wes taps his chest with absent-minded fingers, tracing the circle of violin string hanging quietly under his shirt. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says softly.
Soul’s guest is familiar, in a dizzying, déjà vu kind of way, but Wes is certain that he’s never seen the man in his life, if only because he’d surely remember such precise elegance.
“I apologize for running off without letting you in, Ki-Kid,” Soul says as he unlocks his front door. “You understand my haste, I’m sure.”
Kid’s eyes flick to Wes. “Perfectly,” he agrees.
Wes feels oddly flattered, but isn’t sure why. “A pleasure to meet you,” he murmurs.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Kid replies, with breathtaking honesty that Wes could get lost in.
“This is my brother, Wes,” Soul tells Kid.
His name feels like a dash of cold water, shocking his system and washing it clear. Wes finds himself ushered into the house, and then the kitchen.
“Are you okay?” Soul whispers.
“Fine, I’m…” Wes loses track of the sentence and diverts to something more important. “That’s him? Your… boss?”
“Yes.”
“He’s beautiful.” Whoops.
Soul is grimacing. “He’s dangerous,” he says. “Stay away from him.”
“Can I cook him dinner?”
Soul sighs. “Yes, fine, but he might not take it.” He pauses. “He has my— my dietary restrictions.”
Wes salutes. “No salt, lots of milk and cream.”
Soul nods and glances at the kitchen door. “I should go… speak with him.”
“He’s a guest,” Wes agrees. “Go be a good host.”
Soul salutes back, smiling faintly. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Wes pauses at the closed door to Soul’s study, not quite eavesdropping— rather, he’s listening to tones and cadences more than to words. Soul’s voice he knows: emotionlessly even, with only the slightest of variations to indicate that he has feelings. Kid’s voice, though, is new and expressive and utterly intoxicating.
“Dinner’s ready,” Wes announces at last, knocking on wood.
The door clicks open smoothly, and Wes finds himself looking down at Kid. “Perfect,” the man beams. “Lead the way, dear.”
“Of course,” Wes says, and hopes that the grin spreading across his face looks less stupid than it feels.
Soul’s cottage doesn’t have a dining room, only a little round table beside the back door in the kitchen. Usually there’s only a single seat, but Soul has extra chairs in the pantry, and Wes had taken the liberty of setting the table for three before fetching them.
“What’s this?” Soul asks. “Cream of mushroom— Wes.”
Wes startles at his name— he hadn’t quite registered that his brother had followed him and Kid. “They’re mushrooms, they grow from dirt anyway,” he says, petulantly, one hand rising absently to hook itself around his necklace.
“You’re not wrong,” Soul sighs, and Wes lets go of the necklace. “Freely given,” he tells Kid, already seated. “Please stop flirting.”
“Why?” Wes asks, seating himself.
“Because you’re taken, Wes,” Soul says bluntly, and Wes rips his gaze from Kid to stare at his brother, betrayed, but Soul is watching Kid.
“Is that so?” Kid sounds calm, but the expressiveness of his voice has vanished, and Wes’s skin prickles with goosebumps at the sudden chill in the room.
“He’s betrothed,” Soul continues to Kid, with an ugly note of smugness, apparently unaware of—
Wes stands, feeling empty, empty, empty. “Excuse me,” he says.
Soul looks at him, finally, with abrupt guilt. “Wes—”
But Wes is out of the kitchen and halfway to his room and not about to stop.
He locks his door like a petulant child and crumples to the floor, a sob caught in his throat— but where he once would have let Soul hear him cry, he now chokes on rage and desperation and hurt. He’d come here, to the hills, to his brother, to get away from his impending marriage. It was supposed to be his personal, private bachelor’s party with the one other person on the planet who knows how intensely terrified Wes is of his familial duties.
The one other person who was supposed to know, at least. Wes scrubs at his eyes angrily and glares at the bed.
Someone knocks at the door. “Wes,” Soul says.
Wes doesn’t answer.
“I’m… sorry.”
Soul doesn’t lie. Wes doesn’t care. He scoots off his ass and crawls to the bed.
Soul sighs. “Wes, please,” he repeats, knocking again, and he sounds as heartless as Wes feels. (He’s not, Wes knows— but Wes isn’t listening for Soul’s subtle tells, not right now, and he doesn’t care. He pulls a knapsack out from under the bed and tries not to remember why it’s there.)
“Please let me… explain myself.”
Wes shoves himself to his feet and unlatches the window over the bed.
“Kid is… dangerous,” Soul is saying. “I wanted to ward him off, to protect you, but I should have remembered how you felt. Feel. About the whole affair. I apologize.”
“I don’t need protecting,” Wes hisses to the wooden shutters as he swings them outward.
“I know,” Soul sighs, as if he’d heard Wes. “I know you don’t… need me. But Wes, please, be careful. At least until Kid leaves.”
Wes slings his knapsack out the window and clambers after it.
“Master Evans,” a mild voice says.
Wes startles and tumbles to the cropped grass. His heart reappears in his chest, beating furiously as if to make up for its agonizing absence. “Kid,” he blurts, scrambling to his feet. “What are you—” He glances around, expecting at any moment to see Soul’s pale hair.
“I was just about to be on my way when I saw you leaving as well,” Kid says pleasantly. (Eagerly.) “I thought I would wait for you.”
Wes tugs at the chain of his necklace, abashed at having been caught but flattered at having the man’s attention. “You shouldn’t have,” he murmurs, but he’s grinning uncontrollably.
Kid grins back, fey and sharp. “If you need somewhere to go…”
Wes blinks. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. I can afford a night at the inn in town.”
Kid eyes Wes’s knapsack. “You have a bedroll with you.”
“I can afford a night at the inn,” Wes repeats.
Kid nods. “Let me accompany you, then,” he declares, and beckons for Wes to follow him down the little dirt path leading away from the house.
Be careful, Soul had said, and Kid is dangerous, but Wes chases the warnings from his thoughts. “I would be honored, sir.”
“As you should be.” Kid’s reply might be flippant if it didn’t sound so rote. “So, you are betrothed.”
Wes’s heart falls. “An arrangement of convenience,” he says bitterly, staring down the path. “My heart is my own.”
“I see.” Kid sounds pleased. (Wes’s heart trembles with irresistible hope.) “Do you… seek someone to give it to?”
You, Wes almost blurts, but holds his tongue out of lingering caution. “I seek an escape from false convenience,” he says instead, sneaking a glance at Kid in time to catch the corners of Kid’s lips quirk upward.
In a blink, the man is looming over him, close enough for Wes to feel cool breaths whispering over his face. (It smells woodsy, or perhaps like a muggy, blanketing fog.)
(They are surrounded by trees. The dirt path is nowhere in sight. When had they stopped walking? Had they ever started?)
“Why not let me provide, Wes Evans?” Kid asks, and Wes feels like he’s drowning in a golden, blissful sea. “Is it enough, Wes Evans, to confess that I want your heart?” Kid’s words sound more like promise than like confession. “Or should I admit that I want you in entirety? Or— perhaps I should steal you away. Let me grant your wishes, Wes Evans, and you will want for nothing.”
“I wish,” Wes whispers to gold, gold, gold.
Cold fingers slide into his hair. The shock jolts Wes from his stupor and weakens whatever influence Kid is exerting, just enough for Wes to tug instinctively at his necklace.
Violin string falls against his chest. Kid’s hand vanishes. Without the support, Wes’s knees give out, but he presses the silver loops to one eye—
“Don’t look at me, Wes Evans,” Kid commands, too late.
The charm drops from Wes’s fingers. He presses the heel of his hand to the weeping eye. “I wish to escape this world,” he gasps.
Kid’s face twists in— rage? Confusion? Greed?— some swirling, chaotic, alien mass of emotion. It’s the last thing Wes sees before his world turns to pitch, and woodsy fog whispers, “Wish granted, Wes Evans.”
leave a review on ao3 or continue to ACT II: Deals.