Chapter Text
See, it’s like this: they never go out on a Friday night intending to get in trouble, you know? It always happens this way, without fail: first, Calum asks why they aren’t doing anything other than lounging around on the shitty old couch in their living room, considering it’s Friday night and they’re all young, relatively speaking. Then, when no one responds to him asking that, he makes his eyes all big and wide at Luke until the vampire can’t ignore them any longer and gives in. And then it’s all over, because Ashton will go wherever Luke and Calum are going, under the pretense of making sure they don’t start a war or something. And Mikey will, of course, be dragged into this as the three of them then start making puppy eyes at her. (She’s been banned from calling them that, though, because Ashton got offended by the insinuation that he’s anything like a puppy. Which, whatever, Ashton. You turn into a fucking wolf all the damn time, you’re at least tangentially related.)
So it’s Friday night, and of course they’re in a huge giant heap of trouble.
Mikey should know better, by now, than to let her three idiotic best friends talk her into bringing them to The Underground, but she’s got problems like poor impulse control and a bad sense of timing and the fact that she never thinks these things through. The Underground is a really sketchy pub, even by witch standards, which are historically very low when it comes to places to drink and do inadvisable magic. There are always a few dingy witches-for-hire that want to rub their creepy fingers on your sleeve edges and ask you if you want your palm read, and there are always dangerous drunken fauns drooling in the alleyway out back. And, of course, there are way too many intoxicated witches with a cruel sense of humor who like to fuck with younglings like her.
The Underground is on The Other Side, which is pretty hard to get to if you’re not a birthright witch like Mikey, so she’s always the designated driver- designated magic user, really. Which means she’s far too sober when midnight rolls around and the deafening music is overtaken by even louder chimes from the cursed grandfather clock behind the bar. She’d been watching Calum and Luke and Ashton make fools of themselves on the dance floor, one or two of them occasionally drifting back to her to beg her to come join them, and sipping some sort of nasty herbal sparkler that’s doing less for her than the grimy fauns leering from the corner. She’s not paying very much attention to her surroundings, too busy keeping track of her boys out on the floor, so it’s a little bit of a startle when a toweringly tall woman sits down at the stool next to her and rests her hand on Mikey’s shoulder. Mikey flinches- she can’t help it, caught off guard, and the woman laughs. She laughs like dried up leaves scuttering across pavement in the darkest days of autumn, sending shivers up Mikey’s spine all the way to her lavender hair.
“Little witchling,” the woman says, leaning closer, and Mikey can’t stop her nervous swallow. “You’ve got a pretty band of bodyguards.”
“Just my friends,” Mikey laughs nervously, shifting on her stool as though that might make the woman’s hand disengage from her shoulder. She looks back at the boys, fervently hoping they’re having some sort of emergency, but they seem to be giggling far to close to one another’s ears in a sweaty huddle on the dance floor. Fuckers.
“So they’re not your summer guard?” the woman asks, her voice getting deeper with amusement. “You look at them like they’re your spellmates, witchling.” Mikey scowls, struggling not to just brush the woman off (a move that’s inadvisable even with witches you know well.)
“I don’t have spellmates, nor a summer guard,” she says steadily, glancing at the woman and then looking away. (Don’t look in a witch’s eyes if you don’t know them, don’t look in a witch’s eyes at all.) It’s kind of funny that the witch is assuming the boys are Mikey’s spellmates, except it’s not really funny at all because ever since the day Mikey found out about spellmates she’s wanted the boys to be hers. Spellmates are unique to birthright witches, one or more magical beings whose innate magic is drawn to the magic of the witch, and whose magic can be bound so tightly to the witch that the witch can actually draw from it. The old legends say that each birthright witch has one spellmate, and each learned witch has one familiar. But it’s not unheard of to have more than one, though it’s pretty much solely for the most powerful witches. Ones who haven’t aged in centuries, who remember the old times.. Mikey’s pretty damn powerful, but she’s not very old, and she’s certainly not the type of ancient powerful that comes with multiple spellmates.
“I think you’re blind to what’s right in front of you,” the woman rasps in her ear, her fingernails briefly pricking Mikey’s shoulder as she grasps her even tighter. “You’re powerful, little witchling, I could taste your magic from across the bar. Don’t be so stubborn about accepting what the Goddess gave you, or you’ll find out what happens to those who spurn her Gifts.”
There’s a bitter taste like copper and coal in Mikey’s mouth as the woman leans back again, and for a moment she can’t breathe. It’s too hot in The Underground all of a sudden, because Mikey’s suddenly deadly seriously sure that the woman next to her is no woman at all. Her pulse is racing, and she’s kind of regretting both the herbal sparkler and the shitload of pizza she ate earlier. She knows she’s not supposed to, but she turns towards the not-woman anyway, and when she meets her gaze Mikey can feel the room slowing, feel the frost squeezing her veins as the not-woman slowly smirks at her.
“I just want my daughters to be happy,” The Goddess says, her teeth sharp like broken glass in her black mouth. “There are great strings for you in the cavern of the Fates,” she tells Mikey, and Mikey can’t even gasp for breath. “And I am an impatient mother, growing restless watching you dance around your summer guard.” Her fingertips trail up the side of Mikey’s neck, fingernails scratching lightly along the tip of her earlobe. “So I’m going to give you a little- push.”
Not for the first time, Mikey wishes she had the wherewithal to refuse her friends when they want to come out- they could be playing video games and eating doritos and she could be somewhere far away from here, where the Goddess wouldn’t be playing matchmaker with her, squeezing the air out of her lungs and probably giving her nightmares for the rest of her unnatural life.
“Until you bind them to your blood,” the Goddess murmurs, leaning in close enough that Mikey goes a little crosseyed trying to focus on her cold, stone eyes, “your blood will not obey, little bird. I’ve put the spark in you, witchling, and it will grow and grow until it consumes you unless you share it with them.” She leans back, finally, and Mikey can draw a breath again. The music filters back in slowly, until the not-woman is no longer pulling the veil around Mikey. She smiles at her, jarringly benevolent and soft seeming in the shadows between the strobe lights from the dance floor. “I’ll be watching, witchling,” she mouths, too quiet for Mikey to rightly hear, but the words are branding on her ears regardless. And then, in the space between one blink and the next, she’s gone.
Mikey stares for a minute, trying to resettle herself, but it doesn’t work- of course it doesn’t work, she’s just been visited by the Goddess and given a fucking ultimatum about binding her three best friends to her soul for eternity. Her herbal sparkler has gone flat in the glass, so she shoves it aside a little too hard, barely catching it before it goes off the bar, and flags down the bartender.
She is way too goddamn sober for this.
--
It’s near last call when Calum finally slinks his way over to where she’s steadily getting drunker off absinthe and random shots sent to her by the shifty, lumbering wood troll across the bar. He’s reached the final stage of intoxication he always gets into before he actually just leans up against someone and falls asleep on them, and he’s irrepressibly cuddly. Calum slings his warm, tattooed arms over her shoulders, and presses his smooth cheek to her ear, his nose inexplicably cold when it brushes over her cheekbone.
“You should come on the floor with us, Mikey,” he drawls, his breath fluttering her lilac hair and dragging a shiver down her spine. “It’s so lonely without you.” She can hear the pout in his voice, and she’s kind of glad she can’t see it as well or she’d be lost to it. Calum is always so convincing when he’s drunk.
“You’ve got Luke and Ash,” she says, nudging him with her elbow in an attempt to disengage him. He’s latched on thoroughly though, because he doesn’t seem to be letting go even as her elbow grows sharper in his side. “You don’t need me.”
“We always need you,” she thinks she hears Calum say, before a curly head is resting on her shoulder, and cold fingers are poking her in the neck, and the other two boys are right there, all of them up in her space at once. Which she’s less opposed to than normal, really, because of all the absinthe that’s not in her cup anymore.
“We should go home,” Ashton says far too loudly in her ear, his breath sour with alcohol. “And we should play some video games, and maybe eat some popcorn.”
“Popcorn,” Luke murmurs dreamily into the crook of Calum’s neck, which- when did they get that close? She’s probably drunker than she thought if she didn’t notice it happening. She heaves a sigh, fumbling for her wallet and slapping a wad of cash down on the bar, mumbling her old charm for proper change towards it so she doesn’t leave more than she needs to. It’s a lot of work to disassemble the pile of boy that’s been constructed around her, particularly since she’s feeling a little effervescent and a lot overheated, but eventually they’re all more or less standing, and Ashton is more or less leading them in a straight line towards the exit (the one that’s usually surrounded by less weird drunk goblins and bean sidhe.)
Somehow, even though the boys seem hell bent on distracting her, she manages to manhandle them all into the circle of hand holding she needs in order to get them all back to their living room, where Calum and Luke promptly collapse onto the couch in a heap of limbs and black skinny jeans. Ashton wanders towards the kitchen, muttering something about popcorn, and Mikey just kind of stares at them all for a moment, before collapsing into her own seat on the tattered beanbag by the tv set.
They’re strangely endearing when they’re drunk, always have been. Luke’s a rather quiet drunk up until the sixth drink, usually trying to tuck his broad frame up against someone to steal their heat. After the sixth drink, he becomes unusually and a little alarmingly flirty. Calum is a cuddly, loud drunk, using his big eyes and pout to charm his way up against anyone he’s taken a fancy to. He can’t control his volume or keep secrets, and he’s always hell bent on everyone having a good time- Mikey’s been on the receiving end of a cheer up cuddle at a party more than once. Ashton’s a giggling mess when he’s drunk, lighting things on fire for the hell of it and laughing more than strictly necessary at everything everyone says. And he’s always hungry, which means Mikey’s gotten very good at hiding her favorite cereals from him on the weekend.
Mikey is, unfortunately, more often than not, either a nostalgic or maudlin drunk. She rarely ever actually ventures out with the intent to get drunk, considering that one downturned quirk to her lips and Calum will attach himself to her like a limpet- and also considering that for young witches, magic is always particularly unruly when intoxicated. Tonight, she’s finding herself maudlin, which is unfortunate, given the weight of the trouble they’ve found themselves in this Friday night.
“Well, lads,” Ashton says from the doorway, holding a bowl of popcorn and somehow having lost his shirt. “I’d say this was a successful Friday. We’ve not been arrested, we’re not bleeding. No trouble, eh?” Calum and Luke cheer from their tangle on the couch, and Mikey feels her heart skip a few important beats.
“Hoo-ray,” she says weakly. Fuck. Fucking hell.
--
When she wakes, sprawled out on the living room floor with Luke’s head on her stomach and Calum and Ashton spooned up next to her, her head aches like a bitch and her heart seems to sink down to the vicinity of her feet as the memories of last night come rushing back. Her hair is an absolute mess, lilac obscuring half her field of vision, so she carefully extracts a hand from underneath Luke’s massive shoulder to rake it back until she can see the blue of their living room ceiling. She kind of wants to push Luke’s irritatingly perfect looking sleeping face off her stomach, because his stupid jawline is digging into her hipbone even through the extra softness of her tummy, but then he sighs in his sleep and smacks his lips slightly, and she just kind of melts back into the carpet. Calum and Ashton are ridiculously peaceful next to her too, their hands intertwined, dark-pale-dark up against her shoulder. So it’s just her for some fifteen minutes, stewing in her own panic and feeling fretful while they slumber on without a care in the world around her.
Ashton is the first to wake up, his eyes blinking slowly and sleepily at her from over the curve of Calum’s shoulder, his mouth opening wide on a yawn that has his teeth looking extra predatory when they gleam in the diffuse sunlight peeking through their blinds. He presses his nose to Calum’s skin and breathes deeply before smiling at her, that dazzlingly bright smile that literally no one else she knows can pull off so soon after waking.
“Good morning, muffin mouse,” he rasps at her quietly, his hand flexing in Calum’s. She smiles helplessly at him, feeling the warm press of his skin when he nudges his hand closer to her shoulder. “Been awake long?”
“Just woken up,” Mikey lies, leaning back again to look towards the ceiling as their other two housemates begin to stir. Calum’s awful to wake up, groaning into the ratty carpet and kicking slightly, but Luke is even worse because he always looks so pitifully sleep ragged, blurred around the edges and mussed and blinking his eyes so pathetically and bemusedly at them. “Hello there, Lukey,” she can’t help murmuring at him, dragging her fingers softly through his knotted haystack of blond hair and watching his eyelashes flutter at her grumpily.
“Fuck off,” he mumbles, immediately turning his face into her stomach and mumbling, “Sorry, Mikey,” afterwards. Ashton laughs at him, so cranky yet always so incapable of following through. His cold mouth presses against the small strip of skin that’s been exposed during the night, the space between her plaid shirt and her skinny jeans, and he exhales unnecessarily hard, sending little lightning bolts through her nerve endings. She swallows heavily, her hand going still in Luke’s hair as he rubs his mouth against her skin, nuzzling his face into her soft stomach. She can feel red beginning in her round cheeks, and she has the sudden urge to just shove Luke off, watch him hit his stupid face on the carpet in the space where her stomach used to be.
“You gonna bite her or something?” Calum says grumpily from her other side, and Luke stills, jerking backwards and pushing himself up on his hands, a little paler than normal.
“I-” he stutters, mouth falling open and- “I’m sorry, I should have fed before we went out last night-” and he’s flustered, clearly embarrassed, because he didn’t mean to do that at all- instinct, rather than desire. Which Mikey should know very well, considering witch blood is like catnip for vampires. But it still sends a stab of disappointment through her, just like every time Luke accidentally gets a little too fangy with her and then immediately pulls away, apologies spilling from his unfairly red lips. It makes her angry, it makes her frustrated, it makes her-
The lightbulb in the lamp in the corner suddenly ignites, glowing a vicious red for a brief second before it shatters all over the carpet. And- fuck.
“Mikey?” Ashton says after a moment, unsure and a little wavery.
“Fuck,” she repeats, this time aloud, before pushing herself up, out of the tangle of them. They’re all staring at her, wide eyed, because the last time she lost control of her magic was when they were in high school and a bully trapped Luke in the school bathrooms during class and left him there. “Fuck,” she says again, a third time for good measure, and then she’s waving her hand towards the glass and repairing it without a second thought and practically running the hell out of there, up the stairs to her room.
Fuck.
--
Everything on her desk is levitating and she’s got her speakers up full blast, blaring Jesus of Suburbia on repeat straight at her face, when there’s a timid knock on her door. Timid knocks are relatively rare in their house, given the length of time they’ve known each other- given how long they’ve lived together. She flicks her eyes towards the speaker, cutting off the music mid-yell, and whoever is on the other side of the door takes it for the cue it is. It creaks open slowly enough that she’s a little annoyed by the hesitance, before Calum’s head pops into view and he smiles warily at her.
“Can I come in?” he asks, voice low and amiable. It should piss her off, how obviously he’s broadcasting his absurd levels of magical Charm at her, but they’re working too effectively for her to get very angry so she just waves him in. He shuts the door behind him, stepping around the levitating pencil holder and the binder full of orders for their little magic shop they run out of a storefront downtown. Calum sprawls himself lengthwise next to her, nudging up close even though she’s got a California King bed (enchanted to fit in her room, of course) and there’s no need for them to be within three feet of each other. His fingers trail down her trembly arm until he can twine them around her wrist, and he slings his ankle over hers, just like they used to lay together on the field after his football practices in high school, watching the clouds above.
They lay like that for a while, just breathing in each other’s company, and the full, sleepy weight of Calum’s Charm eventually wears down the storm building around Mikey, until the levitating objects in the room settle gently back in their place and everything is quiet once more. Calum shifts next to her, rolling a little closer, and presses his lips to her shoulder once, twice, three times.
“You’d tell us if something was wrong, right Mikey?” he says softly, his thumb rubbing over her pulse point. And how unfair of them, really. Fucking cutthroat of them, to send Calum to do their dirty work. They all know that Calum’s known Mikey the longest, that Calum’s Charm is the hardest to resist (by its very nature as the Charm of a gancanagh), that Mikey will always cave to Calum’s coaxing. She sighs heavy and long, closing her eyes, squeezing them so tightly that colors burst behind her eyelids, before she opens them again and lolls her head to the side, meeting his earnest gaze.
“I fucked up,” she says, her voice gravelly with frustration. And she loves Calum so, so much in that moment because all he does is rub his thumb over her pulse again and kiss her shoulder one more time, and murmur-
“We can fix it.”
“I don’t think we can,” Mikey mumbles, closing her eyes again. “It’s not something you can really fix, Cal.”
“Is it a boy problem? A girl problem? Did you get someone pregnant? You owe someone money?” he asks, shaking her ankle with his, the force of his silly smile obvious in his voice.
“It’s a Goddess problem,” she says after a minute, taking a shuddery breath. Calum breathes out as she breathes in, and she can feel the tension even with her eyes closed.
“What sort of Goddess problem?” Calum asks her carefully, his fingers going a little tighter around her wrist.
“The sort of problem where, like-” she opens her eyes, the weight of his gaze overwhelming her, “where, like, she came to me last night at the bar and put the spark in me.” Calum’s jaw drops a little, his eyes narrowing at her. “And she told me who my spellmates are, and if I don’t do what she wants, I’m going to literally lose my goddamn mind.”
It feels like such sweet relief to have it off her chest, even if Calum is staring at her dumbfounded, even if saying it out loud makes it frighteningly real, and they just stare at each other for a long, long moment, before Calum sits up and opens his mouth and yells as loud as he can-
“Ashton! Luke! House meeting, now!”
--
“So, the Goddess-” Luke starts, his brow furrowed-
“As in, The Goddess-” Ashton interrupts. “The Goddess. The One. The Witchmother. The source of all birthrights.”
“Yes,” Luke says exasperatedly. “The Goddess, yes, that one- that’s the one who came to you last night? And told you, what- that you have to shack up with your spellmate, or you’re doomed?”
Mikey nodded miserably, her head in her hands, staring down at the scarred up wood of their kitchen table, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes. Calum’s hand was on her knee, a thumb stroking over her kneecap, clearing trying to Charm her still, but it didn’t seem to be working. She was shaking out of her skin, the black of the tattoos on her pale arm writhing a little under her unease.
“That’s fucked,” Ashton says, frankly, sitting back in his chair. “That’s well fucked, Mikey.”
“Do you know who they are?” Luke asks, his voice a little wavery, and shit, fuck, well-
“Yeah,” Mikey says, nearly inaudibly, raising her eyes a little to look at the three of them.
“We’ve got to go get them, obviously,” Ashton says, glancing at Luke and Calum. He’s got that confident caretaker tone on, the kind he gets when he feels he needs to take care of his little pack, and she really really doesn’t want to tell them the truth, but they’ll know if she’s lying, and the Goddess will know that she’s lied to them, and there’s no doubt in her mind that won’t go well. “Where are they?”
Here goes nothing, she thinks despairingly.
“Right here,” Mikey coughs, rubbing an awkward hand over the back of her neck, sitting up in her chair so she can avoid meeting any of their eyes.
“I’m sorry?” Luke says slowly. “Did you- what?”
“Right here,” she repeats. “In this house. Right here.”
“So it’s one of us,” Ashton says, his eyes wide and his brain clearly struggling to catch up. Which, Mikey doesn’t blame him. This has got to be kind of fucked for them, considering that if she wasn’t well in love with all three of them it would be fucked for her too. It still is fucked for her, because these are her best friends and they don’t want her like that and she’s fucking doomed to an eternity with them because forces beyond her control shacked them up like little pawns on a matchmaking chessboard.
“It’s, uh-” she coughs again, clearing her throat and trying not to fidget right out of her earthly body. “It’s actually, um, all of you?”
“All-” Luke chokes a little. “All of us?”
“Surprise?” Mikey says, doing half-hearted little jazz hands at them. They look real fucking surprised, for sure, and not at her lack of jazz hand ability.
“I thought there was only one spellmate for every birthright?” Calum asks, his voice a little weak.
“Funny thing, um. No? Not if you, like, have a lot of magic. Which I guess I must? Because. Um. You guys?” Mikey stumbles over her words, watching their faces as they struggle through what must be the shock of a damn lifetime. And not a good one, if the way Ashton’s face is contorting is any indication. She feels sick to her stomach, the salt and pepper shakers on the table rattling as she loses a little control, and Calum immediately slaps his hand back on her thigh to try and Charm her down off her ledge. It works, of course, because she’s weak and she’s fucking- she’s so damn easy for them, all three of them.
“I don’t know if we have a bed big enough,” is the next thing Luke says, and it breaks the tension enough that she can stand up without holding on to Calum’s shoulder for control.
“We don’t- um. We don’t need a bed,” she says, the words fumbling out of her mouth like water from a broken dam. “We don’t have to be, like, involved. It’s just a ceremony, just a power binding, and then. Everything can go back to normal.”
“But your spellmate is supposed to be your life partner,” Luke says, audibly upset, probably distressed at the thought that Mikey’s going to have to live her life as some weird celibate monk in the bro-hood of their house, doomed to an existence where platonic cuddles and fist bumps are the substitutes for candlelit dinners and a dozen red roses every month.
“Everything can go back to normal,” Mikey repeats, and then she turns away from them, because it’s getting kind of hard to look at their dumbfounded faces. “I can get the things for the binding by tomorrow night and we can just do it then, and get this over with.”
They don’t say anything as she leaves the room, but she can hear their frantic whispering behind her by the time she reaches the staircase, and it makes her heart feel like it’s flopping like a dying fish in her throat.
Everything can go back to normal, she tells herself one more time, like the third time’s the charm in making her believe it. Because normal is what I want.
She doesn’t bother analyzing how bitter it tastes to lie that blatantly to herself.