Chapter Text
The dappled rays of reaching light percolated through the dense leaves of towering Sitka spruces. Soft splotches touched down on the lush moss that swathed the forest floor, refracting through morning dew into a beautiful collage of varying greens. Creeping vines and other lianas wound themselves upwards from the dozens of trunks, their curling leaves proudly splayed out in bushels as tall as fifty metres.
Though beginning to stir at firstlight’s caress, the forest remained blanketed in a shroud of sinking haar. The embossment twisted through the trees- once a thick enclave, its form now faded to an opaque mist as the world began to rouse. The murky haze was beginning to disperse through the greenery, saturating the lichen and procumbent plants that covered the terra as the twisted brambles of the evergreens shuddered in the crisp air.
Now, the squirrels chittered to one another as they raced along the branches, and hares cautiously stretched their limbs in the canopy of tall grasses. The birds exchanged aubades as they poked their heads from their nests, some already beginning to take flight into the fresh morning.
The soft squish of compacted grassy knolls under Seán’s feet and the rustling of his heavy jacket were the only sounds he made in his morning trek. Soft tuffs of condensation trailed into the sky with each breath, the tips of his ears faintly dusted with red at their exposure to the cold. Taking great care to avoid crushing any of the sprouting Honeysuckle he knew liked to grow in the area, he basked in the atmosphere, following his own well-trodden path to the nearest bus stop. It was always peaceful in the early hours of the morning- arguably one of his favourite times. He loved watching the world start its routine- sitting back and just existing as part of the ebb and flow of the natural order was soothing and gave him time to think. Not the deep, unsettling thoughts of existence and questions of his own place into such a large and exuberant puzzle. Instead, dawn gave him time to think about nothing in particular and everything at once. He could use a sort of apathy that he often denied himself when turning over curious thoughts. The day time was where he could safely contemplate himself, the people around him, and where a moustache stopped and a beard began without the self doubt that he was prone to feel.
He supposed his diffidence came from the reminder that he wasn’t human. He masqueraded as man, going through his life smiling and lying avidly in order to assimilate. Most of his adult life had been spent in a limbo, trying to tear himself between two worlds with the knowledge that he needed ignorance. Night often brought these fears. The whispers and calls of a world he did not wish to intimately understand beckoned him endlessly and Seán often found himself in turmoil when he laid down to rest.
The call of Tír na nÓg beckoned eternally, but for most of the year, it was a faint whisper even if you were fully fae. While the ability to see had little to do with heritance and could even be gifted, those that were raised under fae rules were prone to the knowledge of how to resist the temptations, and, the closer in fair folk’s origin one could claim, the more acclimated they were to the Otherworld’s enticement.
Those with mixed blood tended to have the hardest times during the Solstices and Harvests. The once silent lull became a cacophony of sounds all at once and those caught unprepared or without a decent anchor to their world were swept away in the swirl of harrowing euphoria. The echoes of the past melded with the present in an indistinguishable woven dance as its sweet tunes smothered the senses. Unfortunately, it wasn’t uncommon for someone that saw to be swallowed in the ecstasy, and, once they entered the garden of the fae, it was nearly impossible to escape. Those that did miraculously make it back had no guarantee how far they were displaced in both space and time. It could be five minutes in the next street over or five centuries on a new continent- earth’s laws held no power in the fae’s realm.
Seán could solely ever hear or see outside of his transformation- he never had proof but he was sure that it had something to do with how far removed he was from his Celtic heritage. His roots to the Otherworld primarily came from his lycanthropy- its origins often quoted somewhere in South-Eastern Europe- and, while he was more than half Irish, it seemed to come from the human inhabitants rather than the fair folk.
Last night had left Seán particularly haggard. The féth fíada had crept onto the isle after sundown as the fair folk crossed over from the Otherworld. Undetected by the human eye, the Sídhe had thrown a grandiose celebration during the night. Its murky, livid depths had sung sonorously and promised sweet effervescence to those unfortunately caught under its call. Seán was unsure what the Seelie had been in revel over, but the fair folk needed little excuses to party, often engorging themselves on nothing and everything during their respective times of thriving. Though Midsummer had already passed and Lughnasa was still more than a month away, the pull had been particularly unbearable to those that heard and saw. The calls that had been but faint whispers and tunes, beat like a drum between his ears. Seán had spent most of the night trying to ground himself, tossing fitfully in his sleep even with his wreaths of St. John’s Wort.
If not for the knowledge that he was set to open the café the next morning at six, he would have given into his urges and shifted to satisfy the nagging itch. Instead, he clenched his jaw and threw the blankets over his head in hopes to shut the world out- an unsuccessful endeavour that he submitted himself to.
When the alarm on the brunet’s phone went off that morning, he felt like he hadn’t slept at all. Bleary, crusted eyes felt like lead and it took forever to be convinced to drag himself from his splayed sheets. Again, it was his sense of responsibility that forced him out the door of the rickety cabin- that, and the promise of at least two espresso shots when he set everything up properly.
As the foliage began to thin, a familiar asphalt road that hadn’t been tended to in ages peeked through the trunks. Rich mulch sloped upwards slightly- dead leaves, moss, and the occasional broken car part gathering in a trough at the bottom. Seán shuffled through the damp leaf litter, slipping slightly as he clambered up the brush. He reached the crest and broke through the thicket a second too late as he heard a deft screech and the slam of a door, watching as his scheduled bus sputtered down the road without him.
Seán groaned and let his head fall into his hands before dragging them down his face. He would have made it in time if it weren’t for the damn féth fíada. Stupid fae and their stupid call. He had work dammit. Adulting was extremely difficult in itself but trying to pretend to be human while adulting? And in the morning? Now he was gonna be late and wouldn’t have time to properly wake up before the morning rush started.
He let out a louder groan as he threw his head back in frustration, trying to peacefully resign himself to the thirty minutes he’d have to wait in the bitter cold before the next bus arrived.
Seán adored humans- he truly did- but this particular morning they were testing his patience.
Boarding the next available commute, he sat several rows in front of a mother and her swaddled infant. Whether the mother had slighted the prowling fae of last night or her child was just an unfortunate new object of interest, Seán wasn’t sure, but the absolutely haggarded lines on the poor woman’s face were well-earned as her child continuously wailed. The pale yellow blanket wrapping the child rustled and shifted violently as it attempted to wriggle away, fat tears rolling down an incredibly scrunched, red face. Even without his keen hearing, Seán was sure that its cries were unbearable as it attempted to break the sound barrier- seemingly without a breath between.
The hairs on the back of his neck were raised the entire time, his molars tingling sorely as the charm that had been woven to one of them hung in the air. The brunet couldn’t tell who or what had created the charm, nor what they were particularly attempting to create, as he had never had the knack for magick- it wasn’t in his blood- but his ability to sense the touch of an Otherworldly being had been a skill he had chosen to hone during his life. It was incredibly versatile and had saved his hide more times than he could count, but, in certain moments, he found himself almost cursing his decision.
He suffered through the ride and practically flew out the door the second the bus had reached his stop. His nose still twinged with the unrelenting pressure of a torturously unfulfilled sneeze as he tried to hurry past commuters with his keys in hand.
He was already late by nearly fifty minutes when the familiar shop front had come into view. His slight panic had trickled into dread when he had rounded the corner, spotting an unmistakingly impatient man dressed in a professional suit loitering outside the window.
Seán had tried to pass him a sheepish smile as he fumbled with his keys but he hadn’t been able to get a single word in his defense before the man had demanded to know why the store was opening so late today and didn’t the brunet know that he had important places to be?
The menial joke about traffic died on his lips and, for a moment, he almost lost his grip on the keys as a white, hot anger ran rampant through him. How dare this human. How dare it think itself so important. The blatant disrespect and impudence. Would it still be so high and mighty when its tongue was temporarily swollen and it couldn’t speak coherently? Or should Seán charm his skin to secrete the mucus of its horribly ill personality? The probability of mis-rendering his intentions when attempting a spell was astronomically high and the ways that it could mutate were innumerous- each creation more horrifying than the last. The mortality of the man would be realised too late as his skin boiled and slopped off his bones- or perhaps the spell would flay his tongue like a tassel and he would choke on the raw pieces. If it killed the man- whether instantly or torturously slow- would be tame compared to what other fae would have done for more humble transgressions.
The snarl that tugged at his lips was only quelled by the werewolf’s sudden horror at his own thoughts. This was an actual life he was thinking about. An entire person with thoughts and desires of its- his own. He couldn’t just ruin that with his own selfish desires- no matter how much he was perceivably slighted in the eyes of his fae blood. He didn’t have the right to give or take things where he pleased- he was supposed to be playing human. Just a regular human-person-man with regular habits that did not involve malicious slights.
Instead, Seán gave a subdued apology, mentally berating himself for the slip in morals.
Though he had to remind himself to separate his fae upbringing and from his human role, he wondered when enough was enough and he could reasonably snap. The suited man seemed to be doing his best to make himself as unattractive as possible as he practically breathed down Seán’s neck. When the werewolf had finally gotten the forsaken door open, the man had almost pushed him out of the way to get inside and had the gall to complain that it was too dark to see properly.
The brunet swallowed the quip that threatened to come up, running his tongue over his teeth as he tried to calm himself. Perhaps just a little magick. Not anything complicated but maybe just a tag of bad luck to relieve the itch to strangle him. Just a stain on his expensive-looking suit- or perhaps a botched business deal to satisfy the anger that burned under Seán’s skin.
He absently wondered what a normal person would have done. Would they be able to take the frankly heinous manners of the man in stride or would it be an all out bloodbath just as it would be in the gardens of the fair folk? Would they be able to wholeheartedly apologise for their unperceived slights? If it were another, more human colleague and not him, would they have to swallow the same smarting fire or would they have the patience to endure? Logically, he knew that no one could reasonably undergo an interaction so demeaning. But the part of him that strove to be so different from what he had been raised as couldn’t seem to comprehend it. What did it mean to be human? In what ways did he have to rip and tear his hermeneutics in order to shape himself into the ideal he strove to be?
Seán started by not charming the man’s coffee- a knee-jerk reaction that was proving to be more difficult to ignore than he originally thought. The man wasn’t helping his barista’s moral quest as he found the most insignificant things to complain about. He found himself dealing with the second wailing infant of the day and had to faze out to protect his sanity. It was almost a reward in itself when the man left, huffing about a choice set of words he would have with Seán’s higher ups.
He had managed to buy himself time to rein in his budding foul mood by throwing himself into the preparatory work. The front counter needed an easily restockable amount of sugars and the little vanilla creamers but he set about refilling every possible container before moving on to the napkin boxes. By the time he had finally set about taking down the chairs for the internal seating area, he had already checked the storeroom and made a note of what they were running low on in pastries and coffee beans- an endeavor that was wholly out of his job description but he chose to indulge the tugging need to count.
He was lucky that he had smoothed his ruffled feathers when a trio of kids poked their heads through the door curiously. Idly sipping his well-deserved doppio, he watched as they shuffled through the small entrance with hesitant but bright smiles and took a short while browsing the list. They were kind- fully human if his nose had been correct- and settled into one of the circles of papasan chairs with low chatter.
The morning rush began steadily. He let himself be lulled into the groove and left his anger behind- even weaving a charm of chance encounters into a coffee when one of the kids came up for another cup. It was, otherwise, a pleasant shift, and he was able to smile easily by the time one of his coworkers rushed through the door.
“I’m so sorry!” Mary wheezed out, her normally neatly primed A-line cut rustled by her obvious sprint. “I completely lost track of time this morning and then my mum needed help in with the dogs and I-”
Seán glanced at the clock and let his shoulders drop dramatically as he threw his head back with a theatrical groan. “You should be sorry. I had to serve the entire city and at least seven bears in the past twenty minutes alone.”
The petite girl shrugged her heavy jacket off her shoulders with an eye roll, hanging it on the coat rack as she straightened out her black button-up. “Wow, a whole thirteen people in one morning, Jack? How’d you survive?” She clocked in, just barely managing to catch the taupe apron he had tossed with a playful scowl.
The name tag pinned to his chest shifted heavily at the use of his pseudonym. It had been a necessity, he reasoned with himself. Everything in his up-bringing had warned him of the powers a name could hold. A name was a person- for lack of a better term. It encompassed their entire being and, to put that in the hands of another with a simple glance, seemed ludicrous to him. Even if a name tag only showed the wearer’s presumed first name, his paranoid nature hadn’t wanted anything to tie him to this persona- so much so that he sometimes even went to the next town over for produce when someone recognised him.
His skin suddenly felt too tight for his body and he tried to subtly shift his collar- his throat suddenly swollen shut. The cold panic washed over his limbs and he was all too conscious of himself at the moment- how his clothes covered his skin; the uneven distribution of weight he placed on his right foot as his instincts readied to bolt; the thrumming of his heart between his ears.
His eyes focused back on the slight worry in his coworker’s face. Her head minutely tilted to the left and, for a moment, he feared that he would have to fumble with a completely unbelievable excuse in order to keep himself safe.
A soft ring of the front door’s bell- brass, thank Danu- snapped both their attention away from the conversation. Mary slipped by him, greeting the customer with a plastered smile after tossing him one last reproachful glance and Seán hoped that he could use the borrowed time to think of a decent excuse.