Chapter Text
“Soft goes the shepherd in another man’s field,” a voice murmurs from behind him, gentle as the whisper of the grass. It travels across the empty meadow like a shot arrow, burying in his ear. Jason spins to find a man leaning against a fence, wrists hooked over the eerie white paling.
Jason knows immediately that he isn’t human. There’s a fragility to him, a smeared glow at the edges of him, like Jason’s peering through a mirage. His hair parts down his crown, ink as pitch. It makes his overpale skin luminate in the broad light of the bare meadow. There’s something to his eyes too, speaking of youthful mischief and atavistic wisdom. His lips twist in a shrewd smile when Jason’s hands curl nervously at his sides.
Jason frowns, his voice tumbling from between stunned lips. “I’m not here to commit a sin on another’s wife.”
That smile widens, and while Jason can see that soft mouth is full of nothing but human teeth, the reminder does nothing to assuage his distrust. “Who says I have a wife?” he chirps with private amusement, and flicks a wrist to the ground beneath Jason’s boots.
He glances down, mouth thinning at the ring of mushrooms scattered around him, the grass flattened and smooth within its perimeter. A coil of panic weaves up Jason’s spine, coaxed by ancestral instinct, but he clamps down on his resolve and meets the fae’s gaze. “This is your field.”
“Still assure you’re not here for sinful purposes?” the fae chuckles, and Jason elects not to glorify that with an answer.
“I’m here for a covenant,” Jason admits, and the fae perks at that, eyes shining.
“What could a handsome, virile young shepherd possibly call upon my graces for?” the fae asks in a teasing purr, and even though Jason knows it’s steeped in masked derision, he blushes despite himself.
The figure knits itself behind his brow, tones of azure blue and charcoal painting in his mind’s eye. The curl of a bright smile. The twinkle of a generous eye. “A man,” Jason croaks, and clears his throat.
The fae’s head tilts ever-so-slightly, some of the hair falling to trace his cheekbone. His expression, while delicate and bare, is wholly unreadable. “What of a man?”
Jason swallows, and twists his cap in his grip, taking solstice in the tangibility of it. “There’s a Romany man in the village. He sings to the children, dances for them. I…” The words curl and shrivel in Jason’s throat, and he swallows and tries again, “I want him to fall in love with me.”
“Because you’ve fallen for him,” the fae discerns, the barest hint of jealousy painting his tone, and Jason stares, unable to bring himself to confirm the truth. The fae doesn’t seem to need the assurance, because he hums and laces his fingers together, dangling them in front of the fence. “And you want my covenant to ensure his fidelity?”
Jason nods, a rush of guilt lighting him up from crown to toe.
He wouldn’t wish a fae’s influence over anyone. The midnight meddlers are known for their love of irony, their trickery of the unwitting. And there’s a curse to be had in the bent of another’s will to the unyielding whim of the fae. Jason wouldn’t ever consider partaking in a covenant with one.
Or, so he’d thought. Jason had never considered the allure of the faefolk until the Romany had wandered into his little village with a mouthful of sunlit laughter and wrapped Jason’s heart in his, sparking an unceasing ache in his chest. Jason hadn’t felt anything akin to the rush of heat that swamps him even now; his soul is bound to the new visitor. It’s only fair he be bound similar.
The fae offers him a gleaming smile beneath the rosy silver of the moonlight, unfurling from his lean over the fence. He slides between the two beams with liquid grace, grass barely parting under his weight as he crosses the dew-soaked meadow.
There’s an ethereality to him that halts the breath in Jason’s throat. He’s nearly intangible in the dim light, suring as he crosses the ring of mushrooms into the circle Jason’s frozen within.
He stops within a yard of him, a head shorter and shimmering with beauty. Jason can’t tear his gaze away from that demure, wicked smile. His hands twist on his cap.
“Lay,” the fae instructs, and when Jason doesn’t move, he steps forward and hooks his arms around Jason’s shoulders. Jason stiffens beneath the contact, close enough now to see the humour glinting in those fog-blue eyes. They drink him in in the space between them, and Jason finds himself folding down to the grass below.
The dew is cold on his bare palms, and it seeps into his trousers with soft wet kisses as the fae slips into his lap, ankles loosely knotting in Jason’s lower back.
“I need three traits to bind the person of your affections,” the fae explains, and Jason can feel the heat of him through his thin shirt. It makes cold tingle up his spine, his gaze falling to the fae’s lips as they quirk in a smile, and Jason realises he’s looking for an answer.
His stomach is simmering with heat and wariness. He’s heard enough rumours of the faefolk to know their covenants rarely end amicably. But Jason knows he can’t hold a candle to the airy glow of his unrequited; he only wants to stoke the embers in the man’s soul, nothing more. All that comes from it will be natural, given gracefully and longingly received. Jason twists his fingers into the blades of grass and exhales as the fae’s hands shift to cup the back of his neck, nails tracking into his hairline.
“Is this lover a traveller?” the fae asks, and Jason nods after a hesitant moment. He looks amused, and continues, “Dark of hair?”
Jason frowns, but affirms again.
The fae sighs fondly, forehead dipping until it nearly brushes his. Nearly.
“Does he have unwitting charm?”
“Yes,” Jason murmurs, voice hoarse in the dark night. The fae’s lips curl in a broad grin at his vocalisation, and he leans forward to lick his way into Jason’s mouth, parting his lips with his insistent press. Jason lifts a hand to steady the slim creature, pliant beneath his touch as those fingers curl and pull at his hair.
Something heated in Jason’s stomach lurches and pulls up through the breadth of him.
The fae breaks off with a breathless sigh, eyes half-lidded as he surveys Jason. “Say for me,” he instructs, and waits until Jason has nodded to continue. Jason’s lungs bubble up into his throat, caught in the grip of some unseen force, but he opens his mouth and pledges,
“May my heart ne'er be torn asunder,
May my heels ne'er touch the ground,
Lips to taste of true love's skin,
And rings of gold be bound,
Let his bod fore'er yearn for me,
Let him wax and wane and ache,
For his soul to be affixed to mine,
This vow I steadfast take:”
Jason’s gaze flickers between the fae’s, transfixed. He can see into the very nebulae of his irises, deeper than the pools of the dusk-night sky. The words roll off his lips like a Sunday prayer, and Jason’s blood pulses thick, honeyed in his veins.
“I offer up myself for him,
My vessel true and devout,
And if 'nother love shall twixt mine,
Let me be fore'er without.”
The fae’s smile is sharp and wicked. Jason can feel it pressing at his throat when the creature leans down and mouths a line up his jaw. He shifts ever-so-slightly, pressing against the core of Jason, making his breath falter and the heat in him lurch. A soft tinkle of laughter slides into his ear, followed by the fae’s lips on the shell.
“And when you look in his eyes,” he instructs, and pulls back to bare that knowing grin, “stir your resolve and bind him with the words:
'Fore my eyes I see no other,
Than my fairest, faith'd and true,
Come take my arms and soft my heart,
Dear'st love I yearn for you.”
The last is whispered on the rise of Jason’s lower lip, the fae’s eyes melting into him, the heat spiralling up through Jason’s chest to meet it. It saturates him, searing up through his veins to set him alight. He feels too warm, his inhalations too short, and between one breath and the next, he swells upwards and seizes the fae’s lips.
He takes the creature down into the grass, hair splaying around his dark crown as his heels sure in the arch of Jason’s spine and Jason’s hands chase the heat up through his ribs to his throat and then his jaw. He’s so small, so fragile and compelling beneath Jason’s huge hands. So Jason wraps them around the sides of his neck and burrows them into his hair, pouring himself into the fae.
Jason jerks back when his head is starting to throb in beat with his pulse, sucking in a sharp lungful of chilled air. The fae slumps back into the grass, stunned and roused beneath Jason’s awe. There’s a want in that gaze, and Jason can’t help but rise to meet it, thumbs searing into the fae’s cheekbones as he cradles his face and whispers into the corner of his mouth.
“‘Fore my eyes,” Jason murmurs, vision filled with the widening of the fae’s blue irises, “I see no other than my fairest, faith’d-” He rolls his weight down onto the fae, pinning him to the grass and smothering the heat in his veins with the proximity of him. “-and true. Come take my arms-”
The fae whines, soft and pliant beneath the brush of Jason’s lips, and arches beneath his heat, body shivering in the grass as his mouth parts.
“-and soft my heart-”
Those hands jump to squeeze his wrists, the bones protesting as the fae stares up at him with an intensity that feels scalding. Jason can see a flicker of concern in those wide eyes, smothered by the roiling heat of his want, and he mouths the fae’s lips open with his own, whispering the words into the core of him.
“Dear’st love I yearn for you.”
When the heat has sated to a soothed simmer in Jason’s spine, and the chill of the wet grass has dried in the crooks of their elbows and the dips of their collarbones, Jason sprawls back and watches the stars. The ragged breaths of the fae beside him smooth to soft gasps, and then fade altogether while Jason swims in the low warmth of his veins.
The fae stirs before he does, bending at the waist to curl over his hitched knees. Jason tilts his head to trace his gaze up the unblemished arch of exposed spine, watching the gooseflesh speckle and ripple across his shoulders. The fae curls tighter around the bundle of his shirt in his lap, expression unreadable behind that sweep of dark, mussed hair.
Then he clears his throat so softly that Jason almost mistakes it for the creak of a nearby hawthorn. “I’ll honour your covenant,” he whispers, and Jason stills, blinking up at him.
He pivots, glancing down at Jason’s silence over a shoulder dipped in liquid moonlight. There’s a guilty sheen to his gaze, and he fixes it on Jason’s lips when he’s incapable of meeting his eyes.
“I shouldn’t- I did not intend to effect your pledge,” he admits softly, and turns away again. His words still filter down to Jason where he lays on the grass. There’s a quiet shame radiating from, but his shoulder hitch in a single laugh. “I was so certain I could bind you to me.”
Jason reaches out to trace the curve of the fae’s hipbone with his fingertips, and the man stiffens beneath the touch, but doesn’t turn around. “And didn’t you?”
“I did,” the fae murmurs, and Jason shifts to sit up, nuzzling into the crook of his neck.
He mouths along the fae’s rigid collarbone, feeling the sigh that swells to catch in his lungs. When Jason glances up through his lashes, the fae’s brow is knitted in hesitance and a blatant plea. The creature tips his head back, a groan trembling up his throat when Jason shifts to trace its ascent with his teeth.
The fae’s eyes roll open like the sun rolls over the horizon, languid and reluctant. “I won’t hold you to it,” he promises, and Jason can feel the heat seeping from his pores, cooling in the wake of the fae’s words. “I won’t bind you to me.”
Jason dips his fingers under the fae’s hand, tickling up his palm to circle the fae’s wrist. He doesn’t part from the man’s throat when he asks, “I don’t get a choice?”
“I deceived you,” the fae replies in a hollow tone, shuddering beneath his ministrations. He doesn’t shift to pry Jason away, and Jason kisses up the pane of his jaw. “Your influence was overborne by my own covenant; your affections weren’t true. I won’t bind you by a false covenant.”
“Do my affections seem false to you?” Jason asks, timbre rumbling in his throat, soft as the grass under them. The fae shudders, coils tighter and then slumps into the line of Jason’s side with a dejected laugh.
“You don’t even know my name,” the fae says, and Jason feels a prickle at the back of his neck. It sounds like the warning words of his grandmother in his ears, pressing tight and wary against his skull.
“Nor you mine,” Jason allows, and the fae doesn’t respond for a long minute.
“Timothy,” he offers, his breath fanning into Jason’s hairline. “I go by Timothy.”
Jason hums and layers his teeth against the side of the fae’s throat, hearing and feeling the pressed whine that vibrates up through it when he arches against Jason, brow knitting.
“Thank you,” Jason murmurs sincerely, pressing a kiss to the fae’s closed eyelid, then the other. “For dissolving your covenant over me. But I have no intention of revoking mine, Timothy.”
The fae’s eyes slide open, searching Jason’s expression as he hovers over him. Those blue eyes pinch and then flatten, heat pooling in their depths. He tilts back against Jason, fingers curling as he bows against his frame. Jason can feel the tug of the tendons beneath the grip on his wrist.
“Affixed,” the fae promises softly, baring his throat to Jason’s soft kiss. A laugh bubbles back against Jason’s lips. “Oh, how I yearn and ache,” he teases, but it’s resigned, haunted, and Jason pulls back to meet his gaze.
“And dear’st I yearn for you,” Jason reminds him, and gets to watch the stars blossom in his eyes, bright and hopeful.
