Midnight had come and gone by the time they stood outside of the Muck Moth Tavern, but Jacim City didn't seem to know that.

The streets were narrow, and subtlety was key, so they had left the coach a ways back. And had proceeded to walk past the tavern a grand four times before they realized it was right in front of them.

The sparse streetlights did little to fight the dark, but Jacim was busy as high noon. It looked like a night market installed in a maze; insistent peddlers blocked every corner, and a disorienting mix of food smell and rot hung in the air. So they couldn't be blamed for missing one squat standalone building with the same lopsided roof and weary wood planks as all the rest.

"Hey. Before we go in," said Nicholas. Rayan continued squinting distrustfully at the mostly illegible words carved above the door - it was possible that they were walking into the Meat Mill, or the Milk Motel, or the Mage Mafia. "Promise me you won't take names or faces in there."

"And with what authority do you make that order?"

"This isn't a witch hunt! You can't arrest these people."

"Is that so?" Rayan mused, with all the smugness of a man who could do anything he wanted.

"Please don't arrest these people," Nicholas corrected.

He couldn't see much of Rayan's face. Rayan had tied a headscarf over the bottom half, and let his hair loose to shield the rest. He seemed to be trying at discretion - his coat and vest had no patterned embroidery patterns or engraved buttons, even the scarf was plain. But there was no disguising the fine material of his clothes, and all-black wasn't what Nicholas would call inconspicuous.

Rayan didn't make any promises, but as he started for the door, he said, "We have a job to do. I do not plan to stay any longer than necessary."

Chiming bells announced their arrival. Not from the door itself, but from one of two identical windchimes hanging over the closest end of the bar. The barkeep continued rattling the chimes as she greeted them with black-rimmed teeth. Smile or sneer was anyone's guess.

The noise inside hit like a blast of hot air, alongside an actual blast of hot air. The tavern was a heat trap. Nicholas took one step in and turned back around, shrugging off the long coat he had been given to wear over his linens. He stalled for time hanging it on the rack, until the uneasy feeling of shifting energy wasn't so strong.

It wasn't like every patron had stared at the sound of the bells. But there had been subtle side-eyes from the tables, and shoulders hiking up around the bar, and a dampening of the boisterous conversation in the back corner.

Rayan pressed forth with his shoulders hunched. Nicholas would guess he was putting on a NOT-THE-KING act, if not for the agitated flit of his eyes around the small, crowded space. He startled imperceptibly when the woman behind the bar hollered, "Drinks?"

"No, thank you."

"Actually, I'll have something strong. Your strongest, priciest drink. On his tab," said Nicholas. Rayan glowered as Nicholas accepted a tumbler of - he took a sniff and regretted it - brandy. He'd never been a fan.

"Name," droned the barkeep. "For the tab."

Rayan mumbled, "Omar." Nicholas took a sip, smiling over the rim.

None of the long tables crossing the room matched. Or the stools, or the rugs, or the lamps. Nicholas aimed for an empty end. Somewhere behind them, glasses slammed. The tavern had no music, but that didn't stop a sloppy few from dancing.

Where Nicholas and Rayan settled, the conversation dimmed. Within a minute or two, the women around them had slipped away to a different table.

The entry bells chimed again. Nicholas watched the barkeep greet the threadbare woman at the doors like an old friend. He noticed that she had pulled the other windchimes, and that the sound was different. The slightest bit lower. A signal.

The Muck Moth Tavern felt like a living, breathing animal. The woman was welcomed into its mass as easily as a new cell. Nicholas was a foreign substance, one wrong move from being booted by its immune system.

He tried to play it cool as he sidled up to the nearest group. "Your hair." He used his most trusted approach: skip the formalities. Catch their interest before they can brush him off. "I've never seen anything like it. How'd you get it like that?"

It was black, but when the light hit it right it glimmered purple. The girl had shied away at first, but now she brought a flattered hand to her cheek. "Oh! You're the first to notice. It's a special stain, made it myself. Simple, but the flora doesn't grow around these parts-"

"Safa," called an older woman. "More ale?"

She whisked the girl away, and the rest of the group edged purposefully down the table.

"Valiant attempt," Rayan said over his shoulder. Quieter, he added, "We aren't going to get anywhere if we can't speak to anyone."

"Working on it," Nicholas grumbled. "Got any bright ideas?"

"I...do, actually."

"Care to share, or?"

"May I touch you?"

Nicholas choked on his brandy. Through the burning in his throat, he managed, "Whuh?"

"For the job."

"The job."

"Yes or no, Nico."

"Um. Yes."

"I do mean, really touch you."

Nicholas had no idea what that entailed, so it was honestly concerning that he still landed on, "Yes."

He followed Rayan's gaze to a rocking chair in one corner, where the only other two men in the building had squeezed onto the seat together. Atop one another, even. That was all the heads up he got before an arm tucked around his middle.

Nicholas had spent the entire coach ride pressed close to the door, trying to ignore this. The warmth. That got a lot harder when his back hit Rayan's chest.

"Try again," Rayan said right at his ear, and it started to simmer.

His plan worked. When Nicholas scooted down the table again, the knee-jerk wariness on the women's faces only lasted as long as it took them to appraise him. He leaned into Rayan for good measure and saw their hackles lower. Not quite trust, but the understanding that they were understood. Nicholas knew that comfort, of realizing that someone else knew how it felt to be other. Solidarity.

Or maybe girls just liked gay men in all centuries, in all worlds. Nicholas laughed under his breath. Forcing down the feeling in his gut, he gave his most nonthreatening smile and admitted he didn't know the city very well.

His gaze snagged on something shiny. As the woman closest to him waxed poetic about Jacim's (deeply) hidden charms, leaning drunkenly onto another and waving her hands, Nicholas looked at the bracelet beneath her sleeve. It was inlaid with three different stones.

"That's beautiful," he said. He pointed at the stone in the middle. "What's this, citrine?"

The woman cackled. Her friend peered over her shoulder and said, "You oughta get that replaced, love." She dug a long chain from the bust of her dress and showed Nicholas. The biggest stone charm was a clearer yellow, and didn't appear cracked from the inside like her friend's. "This's how it should look."

He bided his time, made small talk. Rayan was no help, surveying the room while Nicholas did all of the work. Really, he made matters worse; Nicholas stumbled over his words every time the hand on his stomach drew up and down, annoyingly absentminded.

"This isn't the sorta city people come to visit, you know."

"The stench lure you in?"

Their laughter shook the table. Nicholas took the plunge.

"Actually. If I'm honest, I was in jail not so long ago. Do you know an Angesie? Angesie Bazar?"

The women exchanged a glance.

"Haven't seen her around in some time."

Nicholas lied through his teeth, "We were friends. We got each other. She told me I should look here for the help I need."

The closest woman sighed. She pointed, rather brazenly, toward an aging lady in a shadowy nook. The lady took no notice. Curled up in an armchair with a pint of ale cuddled to her chest, she stared into space.

"She's been like that since Angesie got arrested. Comes in every night but won't say a word."

"Were they...in love?"

Nicholas cringed. He felt Rayan snicker behind him.

The closer woman snorted. "Nothing like that. Just bonded, is all." She said it the way people talked about cats in shelters: must be adopted together.

"Angesie said we could help you, eh?"

Nicholas started from the beginning, though he left out a few details. Most of them, actually. No mention of kings or stories; just a boy who somehow got thrown from one world to another. While the woman with the bracelet thought it over, her friend cracked a suggestive grin.

"Someone got distracted on his quest home."

The tips of his ears grew hot.

Rayan made his first contribution to the conversation, "I'm simply here to help."

"So you just...appeared here? I've never heard of anything like that," the bracelet lady spoke up, pointing a wobbly finger between Nicholas' eyes. She looked dizzy after thinking so hard. "We only know what we're told, and-"

"We're only told what we need to know," the pair recited together.

"But I could ask R-"

Her friend shushed her.

"So uptight! Who else stands a chance of knowing?"

"That isn't our problem."

"Look at his sweet face! He's Angesie's friend."

"And see where she ended up?"

"I have to visit-" she theatrically shielded her mouth and whispered to her friend. Rayan, with his higher vantage point, read her lips and whispered, "'Red.'"

"-anyway, remember?" She rattled her bracelet, showing off the stone that needed replacement. "There's no harm in asking. Oh, you'll come with me, won't you?" She draped herself over her friend and wailed, "It's such a journey! I won't make it without you."

Her friend laughed, dragged her into a headlock, pressed a loud kiss to her hair. Nicholas was forgotten.

Now that he and Rayan had been judged not a threat, ladies flocked to the new blood. Eavesdroppers bombarded Nicholas with questions about his old world, hardly discouraged by his boring answers. The crowd grew tighter, and so did Rayan's arm around his waist. Hyper aware as he was of every twitch of Rayan's body, Nicholas could feel the tension creeping in.

"What'll become of your romance when you find your way?" a stranger pried, feigning a pout with eyes full of cheer. "Or, don't tell me- do you have a lover waiting for you back home?"

The ladies shrieked. Apparently gossip was universal, too.

Nicholas sputtered, "No, um. There was no one."

"You poor things!" She reached over the table to ruffle his hair. Then she aimed her hand at Rayan.

Nicholas snatched it out of the air. "Oh, woah!" he said, pushing back her sleeve to look at the arm band above her elbow. That same yellow stone was at its center, surrounded by two smaller gems he hadn't seen yet. "Where did these come from?"

"Do you want another drink?" murmured Rayan. He had gone stiff as a log. Nicholas shook his head, already a little fuzzy from the brandy. Rayan let go of him anyway. Nicholas watched him leave.

"Don't know." She was shrugging when he remembered to look at her. "And you'd better quit asking."

Nicholas shrank back. Heeded her warning and switched to observing. Stick to your strengths, and all that. He smiled and made nice while his eyes roamed the tavern, noting everything he could. He caught glimpses, sometimes, of shiny earrings and brooches, lockets bumped open and loose bangles that glimmered only on their inner face.

Several minutes passed. Nicholas excused himself. "I'm going to go look for my, um. Yes."

He made a lap around the tavern, and another, squeezing past pairs of women in various states of intoxication - and various states of decency. He made a mental note, witches are kind of exhibitionists, before immediately scratching it out. That wouldn't help him. He hoped.

After seeing more of the female anatomy than he ever made a point to, Nicholas sat heavily on a lopsided barstool and accepted that he had been ditched in the semi-sapphic witch bar.

His new angle revealed a door he hadn't seen, on the other side of the counter right behind the bar's swinging gate. It didn't say Employees Only, but it definitely gave off that vibe. Entitled bastard.

Nicholas waited for the barkeep to take an order, then snuck in.

It was more closet than room, windowless and only big enough to accommodate standing and sitting. Maybe a three-sixty spin, if you kept your arms tucked. A sofa had been squeezed in, probably so the poor owner could nap off harrowing customer interactions. If she came in now, she would find a broody mage burning her candle, sitting in her spot.

Well, almost.

"Do you get a kick out of making people scurry around after you like...dogs." Nicholas started off strong, chastising, but he lost his train of thought. Rayan was extra-heather gray. The vest was unbuttoned, the coat and scarf were on the floor, and he had tied his hair messily off his neck. He was sitting on the floor against the sofa instead of on the sofa. And there was a near-empty glass of brandy by his hip. "Um. Hi."

"I'm coming back," said Rayan, reaching for his coat. "I just...it was hot out there."

"It's alright. I don't think we're going to get much more out of them, anyway."

"You've figured something out." He dropped the coat with obvious relief. "What is it?"

"I don't know." Nicholas winced at how that sounded. "I have a few ideas, nothing- concrete. A couple days of research, and I think I can get us somewhere. There's just. A lot to sort through. Up here." He gestured around his head, then felt stupid and dropped his hands. "More importantly, what is His Royal Hiney doing on the floor?"

Rayan either didn't mind the crude joke or didn't understand it. Nicholas expected his deflection to be scolded, or go ignored. He waited for the accusation of wasting time, the question of where exactly somewhere was.

"There was a spider on the sofa."

"...Like, a big one?"

Rayan made a circle with his thumb and pointer finger. It was an inarguably small circle. He watched Nicholas bite down laughter and let the clock on the side table tick.

"You were good out there," he said.

"Oh. Yeah." Nicholas swiped a hand over his mouth, feeling bashful, what the hell. "I don't know what came over me."

"You always do that," said Rayan. "This isn't me or I'm not myself or something came over me. But it felt easy, didn't it? Must be exhausting, pretending without rest to be someone you are not."

There were plenty of smart things Nicholas could have said here. You would know, and all of its variations. His mind was elsewhere. Mainly, on the drastic shadow the candlelight cast beneath Rayan's jaw, and the tacky heat of a small room in summer.

"Why did you come here?" asked Rayan.

"You're the one who pulled a vanishing act."

"You could have left." He had the nerve to sound frustrated, like Nicholas was supposed to have left. "Really, this time."

There were no guards here, no locked doors.

Nicholas pulled the bolt latch behind him and didn't dwell. One locked door, now. When he turned back around, Rayan looked distraught. His eyes followed as Nicholas crossed to his other side and sat with his back to the sofa, as close as he dared.

"It slipped my mind," he admitted.

"You're too smart for that."

"Not tonight, I'm not."

Rayan rested his head back against the seat and said to the ceiling, "What are you doing?"

Nicholas got distracted by the curve of his Adam's apple. The top few buttons of his shirt were open, and Nicholas was unsteady. It was his own damn fault for drawing Rayan like this.

Except he'd never drawn him this way, not even close. He didn't think it was possible. This wasn't the sort of sight that could be captured in two dimensions, in black and white, on 8 x 5.5.

"Your Majesty."

He had a moment to second-guess himself before Rayan turned onto one ear to look at him, and Nicholas saw his face and was sure all over again.

"Don't," Rayan said sharply.

So Nicholas called him, "Rayan," quiet to respect the liminal space between them. "Tell me. Tell me if I'm-"

"Come on, Nico."

It wasn't an order, but Nicholas wouldn't have minded much if it was (there was something to be said about Stockholm Syndrome, there). He went in one jerk, like a string attached between their chests had been pulled taut. Their shoulders made contact before anything else. Just a brush, but it killed his momentum. He remembered, with a hair's breadth to spare between them, that Rayan was not someone who wanted to be touched.

Rayan grabbed Nicholas by the jaw and hauled him across that leftover space.

His lips were warm. Everything was warm. It was August heat and blushing skin and vigalis pulsing through Rayan's veins, and it was such a relief that Nicholas gasped with it. And then it was deep, and then it was gone.

"Your hands," Rayan said like it hurt him. "I need you to..."

Nicholas saved him the trouble, clasping his hands behind his back without question. Then he kissed Rayan again, and Rayan groaned at the contact, and Nicholas had to shove his hands under his own ass because clasping them would not have been enough. All of a sudden, he could get behind the taste of brandy.

For all his elusiveness, Rayan kissed like he had nothing to hide. Loose with his lips, honest with his tongue, curious with his hands, as if he'd been waiting for the chance to break open. Nicholas wanted to do the same, come undone, unravel like a flower in bloom.

Rayan seemed more than willing to take him apart.

He kissed Nicholas back into the sofa and dropped one hand to his thigh, digging in with all five fingers, forcing it aside to clear a space for himself between Nicholas' legs. He knocked the glass over as he crawled into place. Nicholas missed his mouth already, the heat of it, but his hands were trapped and his voice had fucked off back to Earth, so the best he could do was tilt his head up, part his lips, and hope Rayan got the message.

Rayan had read him before with far less. "Impatient," he muttered, but kissed like he was greedy for it. "Shit, Nico, you..."

Flyaway hairs fell over his eyes. "There is a...thrumming, inside of me, always." He bunched up Nicholas' shirt with his right hand and splayed his left over the burn scars underneath, scowling down at his rings.

"It isn't bad, just- ceaseless. Even when I take off the rings, it only quiets. It never stops."

He met Nicholas' gaze. Nicholas nodded, freeing his hands just long enough to let Rayan get the shirt off.

"But when I touch you," Rayan murmured, leaning down to close his lips over the curve of Nicholas' neck. His next breath came out shaky. He seemed to forget the rest of his sentence, too busy striking out a path up Nicholas' throat, along his jaw, back down to his chest. They learned together that there was a spot right beneath his ear that made it hard to keep his tongue in his mouth. Rayan abused this knowledge. Nicholas allowed it. Encouraged it, if all that noise was really coming from him.

He wondered how it must feel, for all of the power coursing through Rayan's body to stop dead. He preened at the thought that he was the only person who could give him that respite.

He was breathing heavy when Rayan eased up, and Rayan was just...staring. At the shining column of his neck, the rise and fall of his chest. He skimmed his fingertips over Nicholas' abdomen and watched the muscle clench away from his touch. Nicholas squirmed, antsy under the attention. But for all of the discomfort, he didn't want it to stop. He wanted to remember how it felt to be looked at this way, like he was something unbelievable. Gone was that put-on impassiveness; Rayan wanted him openly.

"I wish..." Rayan frowned down at his hands, black silk against brown skin. "I wish it weren't like this."

"I don't mind." Nicholas closed the distance, took Rayan's lip between his own, skimmed it with his tongue and his teeth, and felt the king shudder.

"Well, I do." Why was he still talking? "Look at you."

Nicholas forgave him, pleased.

"I'd prefer if you kissed me," he said, though it was a tough call when Rayan looked at him like that.

He made a humiliating sound, somewhere between a yelp and a moan, when he was lifted by the waist and planted on the sofa. It was overwhelming, how Rayan surged up on his knees to crush their mouths together.

Closer. Nicholas curled his fingers into the seat. He crossed his ankles behind Rayan's back and it wasn't enough.

"Are you sure you should be kneeling," he asked, adding, "Your Majesty?" just to push.

"Don't," Rayan said again. He tried for a glare. The sex eyes kind of ruined it. Or Nicholas was the ruined one for finding it hot. "I don't want to be that right now."

"Who, then?" said Nicholas.

"Whoever you can make me. Somebody rare."

Nicholas lay back, stretched out on the sofa. He reached behind his head to hold the armrest tight. Now it was Rayan who moved as if reeled by a string, climbing up and slotting between Nicholas' legs. And Nicholas liked this position a lot, because this time when he wrapped his legs around Rayan's waist, their bodies came together just right.

Rayan held himself up on one forearm. His other hand worked its way quickly down the buttons of his shirt. The second it was open, he bore his whole weight down on Nicholas, with a broken little noise when they were skin-to-skin.

For a prisoner pinned beneath a king, without even the use of his hands, Nicholas was feeling awfully powerful again.

"Whose couch even is this?" It came to mind suddenly, and with a breathless laugh where there should have been remorse.

"Mine," said Rayan. "All of it, everything, mine. Or have you forgotten?"

Nicholas started to argue like he had last time, "Not everything," but Rayan found that spot on his neck and went at it with those teeth. Nicholas choked on his words. He felt Rayan grin against his jaw and retaliated by tightening his legs, forcing their hips together again. He expected a clean win, but when Rayan grunted, it was right by his ear, and Nicholas shivered everywhere.

Nicholas made a discovery. The kind that could bring about world peace, probably: this was what it meant to even the playing field. Not fighting for the upper hand, but mutually accepting that they were at each other's mercy.

Then Rayan started moving like he was fucking, and any chance of world peace, here or on Earth, went up in flames. Nicholas' mind was wiped clean.

He might just go up in flames, too. Maybe this was what Dalisay had meant, when she said he would burn with every step. August heat, blushing skin, vigalis- it all came to a boil deep in his gut, deep beneath Rayan's feverish skin. Nicholas had always imagined the king would be cold to the touch. He'd been wrong about so many things.

"Nico-"

"Yes," said Nicholas. "Yeah, yes."

Rayan yanked at Nicholas' pants, then his own. Then he spit into his fucking glove.

"Christ."

"You keep saying that! Who-"

"Shut up. Kiss me."

Rayan obeyed. He put his goddamn piano hands to good use and stifled the whine that came, unbidden, from Nicholas' throat. He didn't stop there, moving on to kiss Nicholas' collar, his chest, his bicep. Nicholas couldn't help the arch of his back off the sofa, the messy roll of his hips, or the way, with his mouth free, he began to talk. Useless, babbling nonsense. So good, so pretty, and more-faster-perfect- and something, at some point, that sounded mortifyingly like fucking bite me, vampire.

Silk gloves made for a surprisingly smooth glide, and Nicholas was out of control. He felt inspired. He felt like an artist. He felt like this was going to be over way too soon.

At least Rayan was right there with him, panting against his (very bitten) neck, racing head-first over the mouth of a volcano. He only lifted his head to watch Nicholas crumble, and to kiss his slack mouth through it. But when he followed moments later, he selfishly buried face against Nicholas' chest, and Nicholas could only guess how he looked by the flutter of lashes and lips against his sternum. So, fuck the crown, or something.

Nicholas didn't voice that. He was past the point of self-preservation - had overshot that line by a country mile - but he would like to preserve this. His skin was tacky, the pool cooling between their stomachs was truly foul, and Rayan's heaviness was starting to constrict his breathing. But that was fine, that was okay; the moment might sprout a crack if he breathed too hard, anyway. Nicholas wanted to keep on like this a while longer before it splintered. Before he was forced to pick up the mess and try to piece it back together, and face the fact that the fragments would never fit the same again. And probably cut his finger trying.

The desire was so strong that he nearly kept his mouth shut when he saw it. But that would be cruel.

"Rayan?"

"Mm."

"On your shoulder."

Rayan lifted just his head. His pointy chin dug into the dip of Nicholas' collar. "What's on my shoulder."

Nicholas made a very very small circle with his thumb and pointer finger. Rayan looked horrified.

"Are you joking?"

"Why would I-"

Rayan jolted upright. "Saints, I can feel it, remove it."

"I'm sorry? With what, my mouth?" Nicholas tried and failed to hide that he was laughing.

"Nicholas!"

Nicholas reached over the sofa for his shirt and flicked it like a duster over Rayan's shoulder. The tiny spider went flying. Rayan craned his neck trying to peer down his back. Nicholas threw his forearm over his mouth to muffle all his giggling. Rayan gave him a dirty look, but it was quickly replaced by surprise, and then a look like he'd opened Pandora's box.

The moment shattered.

Rayan stood and made quick work of righting himself. "We've long overstayed our welcome," he said with his back to Nicholas.