Team, 65

Everyone Has Something They Want, Whether They’re Willing to Say it or Not

Ao3 Link

—

“I swear to me, the world had better not fucking end because of this meeting.”

“I’m pretty sure the world’s supposed to end because of a battle or something,” Mick said as he took his seat. “Not a meeting.”

“A meeting is just another kind of battle,” Cal disagreed. “And besides, I think I’d know a thing or two about the world’s going to end, so if I say it’s going to end because of a meeting…”

“You literally don’t know fuck-all about how the world’s going to end,” Beatrice interrupted. “Stop acting like you know stuff just because you created the universe and everything in it.”

“Not you.” Cal pointed at her. “Definitely didn’t create you, at least not on purpose.”

“When, exactly, will these two be having sex?” Mathilda asked Lillian.

“Ew,” said Cal and Beatrice.

“Soon, I hope,” Arky said. “It’d be fun to watch you try and touch a girl.”

Cal had, in fact, had sex with women before. But he ignored Arky as usual.

“They’re still pretending they don’t want to,” Lillian explained.

“That is foolish. They clearly do.”

“You’re wrong and crazy,” Cal told her, giving both Mathilda and Lillian the eye. And here he’d thought Lillian was useful. “Anyway, there’s a good chance some crazy asshole from the dawn of time is going to walk into the room with Theodore and then declare me to be the font of all problems in the world, which to be fair, I am, but if that happens we can’t overreact, okay?”

“Says the guy on the team most likely to overreact,” Wes pointed out.

“I am not.” That was just blatantly untrue and no matter how many knowing looks they gave to each other, that wasn’t going to change.

“I mean, you did make me put pants on just because someone looked at my dick,” Joey pointed out.

“That’s really not helping make the point,” Travis said.

“Huge overreaction,” Arky agreed.

Cal looked up as he said it, to Owen, who’d come around the table to see them. “Hey, Sully and Bartholomew not coming?”

Wouldn’t Cal like to know. “They’re in another meeting. I told them this was happening. Hopefully they make it.” Their synod was supposed to be over, but apparently it wasn’t for some reason that had to do with immortals being dramatic, according to Sully. He was going to tell Cal about it when he got back properly. He was also going to try and come to this meeting, but there was no sign of him.

“Okay.” Owen didn’t sound worried and only sound vaguely interested, which was why Cal hadn’t bothered explaining all that to him. “How’d you trick him into wearing pants?” he asked, nodding at Joey.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Joey sounded like something horrible had been done to him. To be fair, he’d somehow ended up dressed in a young child’s clothes, which was definitely Wes’s fault.

Owen smiled. “Do you want to talk about taking them off sometime?”

“As soon as possible.”

Whatever game Owen was playing, Cal didn’t have time for it. “Please don’t encourage him. It took us long enough to dress him.”

“He’s like Darby,” Owen said, smiling. “What I mean is that me and Gavin are thinking of having a party soon. You guys could come if you want.”

This hardly seemed like the time for invitations. “A party? What kind of party?” A party where Joey would take off his clothes, Cal figured. Which was probably any kind of party.

“The kind where everyone gets naked and has sex.”

Cal frowned. “Where I’m from we just call that an orgy.”

“Whatever, I was trying to be classy,” Owen said with a barely concealed laugh. “You want to come? No pressure if you don’t.”

“So much pressure if you don’t,” Arky disagreed. “You have to go. Please? Please?”

Cal almost said no, but looked at Mick, then Wes. Mick gave an imperceptible shrug, and Wes just smiled a little “We’ll think about it and get back you,” Cal said. It seemed like they were both down for it. Travis looked interested. He didn’t even need to ask Joey. And Sully wasn’t fucking here to ask.

Owen nodded as he stood again. “Works for me.”

“I want to go to an orgy! Can I go even if you guys don’t?” Joey was practically bouncing in his seat.

Predictable. “We’ll talk about it after we have this whole giant important meeting to stop the world from ending.”

“You’re so boring,” Joey complained.

“You’d better go,” Arky threatened. “Or I’ll step on your dick in your sleep.”

“I’ve got to go back to Gavin.” He looked over, where someone Cal didn’t know was talking to the prince. “See you.” And he headed back over there, leaving them alone.

“I notice,” said Beatrice, “that I wasn’t invited to the orgy.”

“What can I say? It’s clearly a boys-only orgy and also nobody likes you.”

Beatrice gave him the finger, but leaned into listen to Lillian whisper something. “So, we going to go?” Wes asked.

Cal shrugged. “If you guys want to, we can talk about it. I’m down, but there is the whole thing about the world possibly literally ending right here in this room in half an hour that I think is also important?”

“I don’t know,” said Travis, holding Joey’s hand under the table. “I think they’re probably equally important. Plus like, couldn’t we just invite all the people who want to end the world to the orgy, and then they won’t want to kill us anymore because we’ll all be too busy having sex?”

Cal blinked at him. “You think we can achieve world peace through an orgy? You know, it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Maybe we should propose it.”

“Do it.” The demon on his shoulder was supposed to be evil, not horny, Cal thought.

“I leave you people alone for a few days and suddenly we’re letting Cal have ideas?”

Cal turned around, saw Sully standing there, leaning against the back of his chair. He hadn’t felt him come in. Which Cal realized was a good sign, since sensing magic wasn’t something he was normally supposed to be able to do. “Hey. You came.” Bartholomew was with him.

Sully shrugged, poking Cal’s head. “I guess I did. Didn’t bother coming on time because I figured you’d be late in starting anyway.”

“How is the meeting going?”

“They’ll probably all be dead by the time Bartholomew and I get back,” Sully said, glancing over his shoulder with a strange expression on his face. “I’ll give you the details once they exist but basically right now we’re working on a plan to kill the old gods and give their powers to the human race.”

Well…that seemed intense. Cal turned fully in his chair. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, but I doubt it’ll actually happen. Klaus showed up and we ended up agreeing to this elaborate plan to make him go away. We’re going to play along for now but nobody really trusts that he wants what he says he wants,” Sully explained.

“So…your whole synod was what, a waste of time?” Cal asked. At least Sully was vindicated in his belief at Klaus being alive.

“No, it worked out like we wanted it to. Everyone agreed to stop trying to kill you for a while,” Bartholomew said, smiling as if to reassure Cal. “And we’re all kind of working together now to focus on the real problem, which is…”

This time Cal did feel the magic, and from their expressions he did it at the same time as Sully and Bartholomew. All three of them turned to face the door, which got everyone else to do that too. Theodore had just come in. “Oh, fuck,” Arky whispered.

Theodore came into the room. Hiding behind him was Rawen. He hadn’t even bothered to disguise himself, and he looked at Cal apologetically. “Your Highness,” Theodore said imperiously. He was looking at the guy Gavin had been talking to earlier. “I see you’ve found my thief.”

“Hey, Theo, how’s it going?” asked the thief.

“Cal,” Mick muttered.

“I know,” Cal answered.

“Is this your Adam behind you?” Gavin asked Theodore, interrupting whatever he’d been about to say to his thief.

“Yes,” Theodore said, trying to recover. “May I introduce…”

“Rawen Janaj He’Matke,” His full name came to Cal suddenly so he said it, not realizing that he’d stood. He didn’t care that all of the attention in the room split to him. “Hello.”

Suddenly Rawen wasn’t looking at anyone. “Hi. I told him this was a bad idea. If I’d known you were going to be here I’d have stayed away.”

“You know this person?” Gavin’s voice was the snap of a whip.

Cal nodded slowly. Nothing for it. “Remember how I told you I was God?” he asked, not taking his eyes off Rawen, who’d closed his. “He’s the other guy.” Sully and Bartholomew moved away from Cal as he spoke, moving to encircle Rawen.

Rawen sighed. “You know, I wish you wouldn’t go around telling people that,” he said, as if Cal had just revealed to everyone that he’d stolen the last piece of cake. “It gives them the wrong idea about me.”

Pax was practically wiggling in his seat, making Cal remember an exuberant naked hug and wonder if he was about to ask about birds. “You’re the devil? I have many, many questions for you, but I will say that your presence here really throws a lot of this enterprise into question.”

Well, that was at least a sensible point.

“Indeed.” Gavin was looking at Theodore. Owen looked like he might try to hit Rawen. Cal wondered how that would go. “What interest does the devil have in what Theodore does?”

Rawen smiled at Gavin around Owen. “He and I have the same interest, actually. I want to keep powerful magical things out of the hands of people who can use them to cause harm. Most of them are holdovers from a day when the world was trying to destroy itself and I don’t think we ought to return to that.” That was not, Cal thought, quite the same thing as what Theodore had said.

Given his unimpressed reaction, Gavin had noticed that too. “So I’m to believe that the devil opposes the Sorcerer King? After everything I’ve heard, I’d have assumed you were on his side.”

With just the shallowest shake of his head, Rawen said, “I don’t care about the Sorcerer King. I care about the powers behind him. If you look closely enough, you’ll start to see that most conflicts in your world are just proxy wars being fought between powers too big for you to understand.”

Oh, that wasn’t going to go over well with someone like Gavin. Cal started to say something, but fortunately Sully spoke up. “Not for much fucking longer.” The two of them had sort of pinned Rawen now, each at one end of the room.

“Guys, I’m not here to fight.” Rawen was suddenly standing by himself, the circle around him widening.

“Sure he’s not,” Wes muttered quietly.

“We’ll believe that when we see it.” Bartholomew didn’t normally sound so commanding, Cal thought. “Our people are already working on a way to get rid of the remainders of your kind and stop them from interfering in human lives. We don’t need your help.”

“You’ve come to an accord? That’s good. Was it Klaus’s idea?” Cal may not have known Bartholomew that well, but he did know Sully well enough to recognize the sour expression on his face. “Listen. I’m here because Theodore asked me to come. I thought it would be a good opportunity to come out of the shadows for once and just help properly.”

“Last time you did that,” said Sharon, who Cal had almost forgotten was there. Rawen’s mother. “Three million people died.”

That visibly upset Rawen, and Cal could imagine why. He’d conveniently never mentioned anything about that when trying to convince Cal he was maligned and innocent. “Yes, mother, I remember that. And you know full well that wasn’t my fault. Derel and Keden lied to me.”

“Three million people?” Owen asked. He sounded worried.

“Sounds about right,” Arky said quietly.

“Do you know what he’s talking about?” Mick asked Cal, who shook his head. His head was full of screams, but he didn’t know why.

“Indeed,” Gavin agreed, looking not at Rawen but at Theodore. “Interesting choice of ally.”

“Should we be getting Cal out of here?” Travis whispered.

“I’m fine,” Cal said. He was hot all over.

“I assure you, your Highness. I didn’t know about any of this.” That sounded true to Cal. Theodore seemed upset. Cal wondered why Rawen would have come since it had risked ruining this alliance. Maybe he didn’t need Theodore anymore. “Adam—Rawen—approached me a few years ago and asked if I’d work with him as we had similar goals. He has provided me information. That is all.”

“He thinks he can replace Theodore with Gavin,” Cal realized. The sensation that he was aflame was fading now.

Mathilda spoke over him. “If we could focus on the task at hand, rather than moral qualms about things that happened before we were born. If you and this shadow creature are in contest over these artefacts, you must know it. Tell us about it.” Cal had to appreciate her directness.

“His name’s Derel. He’s a god, or he used to be. He’s using the Sorcerer King as a pawn…” Rawen seemed contrite, submissive. It was fake. He was playing a part. Just like he had when…Cal couldn’t remember.

So Cal interrupted him, leaning forward. “To help him gather all the stones, return the gods to their power and destroy the world. We already know that part. Tell us something new.”

Rawen and Cal had a staring contest that Cal won. “Derel barely has any power to his name, that’s why he’s manipulating people like the Sorcerer King. All you have to do to stop him is just convince people not to listen to him.”

Cal suspected it was not that easy. “If it’s that easy,” Owen wanted to know, “why haven’t you just done that?”

“Because Derel isn’t the only entity out there worth being worried about,” Rawen snapped. He didn’t like being challenged. That was interesting. “How many of you have ever seen a huge centipede crawling around where it shouldn’t?”

Oh, fuck. He’d talked with Gavin about this back in Techen’s stand, too. Cal glanced at Wes and Mick, whose eyes had gone wide. Beatrice and Lillian both looked like they’d been struck. Travis and Joey were frowning. Sully and Bartholomew were looking at each other. Even Mathilda looked concerned suddenly.

There are centipedes everywhere, doomed one.

Oh, fuck.

“That’s what I figured,” Rawen said, smug. “Congratulations, you’ve all met the same demon. Not the friendly kind like Sullivan here.”

“Are you telling me,” Sully asked quietly, hands near his knives, “that there’s a higher demon just on the loose in the world? Bullshit. Cities would be sinking into the earth.”

So now there were higher demons. Great. Just when Cal’s life was full of enough bullshit as it was.

“They’re not all as impatient as you’ve been led to believe. And this one is especially dangerous. It’s also using the Sorcerer King as a puppet.” Rawen was a lot more serious now than Cal had ever seen him, and he actually thought that Rawen was being sincere. “So yes, I have reason to try and keep the stones away from him.”

Owen quietly excused himself, looking over at the door. Darby had come in the room and they started talking urgently. “Tell us what you know about this demon,” Gavin said, keeping an eye on Owen and Darby. “What does it want?”

“It doesn’t,” Rawen said, with a shake of his head. “It doesn’t want anything. At least, nothing that we can understand. Its kind are destructive forces given shape, nothing else.”

“Fine,” Gavin said, exasperated. “Then how do we get rid of it?”

“That’s…”

“Hold on,” Pax interrupted with a frown. “You’re lying.”

Cal looked at Pax, then at Rawen, who looked annoyed. “And you’d know.”

“I would. I’m very smart. If this demon doesn’t want anything, then why is it bothering to manipulate the Sorcerer King? If its only goal is to destroy everything, why is it bothering to control human events instead of just throwing us all into lava pits carved from the bones of our parents?” Pax asked. “If it’s patient like you say, then it wants something. If it wants something and is patient enough to plan, that means it’s intelligent. You’re talking about it like it’s an earthquake, so either you’re desperately underestimating it and we’re all going to die as a result, or you’re lying and we’re all going to die as a result.”

“I…”

“Pax makes a good point, son,” Sharon—Sheheren—said. “If there truly is a higher demon in this plane and it’s unfettered, the fact that it’s kept itself a secret for so long means it wants something, and you know full well what it is.”

Rawen hung his head. “Yeah. I do. It wants us.”

Before anyone could ask what that meant, Owen and Darby were suddenly moving towards the back of the room in a very purposeful way, looking right at a kid who’d come in through the servants’ door, holding a knife. He was looking right at Theodore. “Greg?” Denver asked.

The guy Gavin had been talking to before, Theodore’s thief, stood up with Denver and another guy. “Fuck, Greg.”

All three of them jumped up and over the table to get there as the kid, Greg apparently, lunged at Theodore, and Owen stopped him, pulling his arm aside. “No…”

“Greg, don’t,” Some of Gavin’s other knights were there too, but Owen was the one who got Greg in his arms, pinning him. “That’s enough, stop.”

“I can’t, I can’t, I have to, have to, I have to protect…from him! Please…” Greg seemed scared. Cal wondered how much of what was happening in the room he was even noticing. He wondered how much of what he was saying he was even hearing.

Whatever Owen said, he said it quietly, people crowding around Greg now. That wasn’t, Cal suspected, what he needed. “The fuck is this about?” Cal wondered, mostly to himself.

“Do you think Theodore hurt that kid?” Travis asked, watching raptly.

“I wouldn’t be fucking surprised.”

“If I’d known he was that much of a creep I wouldn’t have pointed you guys at him,” Beatrice muttered.

Suddenly Greg was shouting. “You don’t understand!”

“Owen!” Greg had lashed out at Owen with a knife, cutting his cheek open. Gavin was racing over there, pushing people aside.

The three of them and Darby were huddled together, voices lower again.

Mathilda put a hand on Cal’s shoulder, getting him to turn. “Now seems an opportune time to mention something I’d neglected to say previously.”

“Now?” Cal asked. “There’s kind of a lot going on.”

“Exactly. I don’t wish to deal with human moral outrage over this. For some time I have been allied to the Sorcerer King.” She said it flatly, as though it were no big deal.

“You…what?” Cal asked. At least everyone else seemed to be of a similar mind.

“You heard me,” Mathilda said. “His sire and I had an agreement to remove the matriarchs of the other dragon colonies so I could oversee all three. In exchange, I lent him some objects from my hoard. Given all of this information, I begin to feel that this alliance should be terminated.”

“Yeah,” Cal said, nodding. At least she felt like the survival of the world was more important than her being in charge of more stuff. “I think we’d all be happy if it were.”

“I have been reconsidering this for some time,” Mathilda admitted. “He used the artifact I gave him to control the mind of a male in the Amaran colony to do his bidding. I began to realize that his disregard for my species made it likely he intended to betray me.”

“A male in…” Joey looked up at her. “My sire. He was acting strangely before he kidnapped the prince. That was why, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Ultimately the blame for his condition lies with me.”

Joey’s eyes watered just a little, but mostly he looked angry. Travis was holding his arms. “Okay,” he said quietly. Cal wanted to hug him.

“In any case,” said Mathilda, waving that matter off as if it didn’t matter. “I had hoped that his offspring might be more reasonable. But he did the same, albeit with the Amaran matriarch, as planned. I grow uncomfortable with the idea of a human having that power over my people.”

“Will he be able to control more of them?” Cal asked. An army of dragons would be bad. Really bad.

“Very possibly, but I lied to the current Sorcerer King and told him that the artefact would not work a third time. I intend to go to him and retrieve it before ending our alliance. I tell you this only so that you will not think me a traitor.”

“Wait,” Mick said, holding Cal’s hand. “What if you don’t cancel the alliance?”

Mathilda raised an eyebrow, but it was Beatrice who spoke. “You want her to keep being on team evil? Are you nuts?”

“No, I mean, what if you let him think you were still on his side for now?” Mick asked. “You could spy on him. Find out what he’s up to. Tell us. If he’s got all this power on his side, we need help to take him down. Knowing what he’s up to would be a big help.”

Mathilda was silent for a moment. Cal cast a glance over his shoulder. It seemed like Owen was leading Greg out of the room. “That,” said Mathilda, “is a wise suggestion. Very well, I shall do this. I’ve no intention of wasting breath informing the others of this. You can deal with the human morality of the subject.”

She flicked at glance at Gavin as she said it, and Cal interpreted that she didn’t want to be the one to tell him that it was her fault that dragons kept trying to kidnap him. Cal nodded. “Okay. I’ll tell them about it after.”

“I appreciate that. You should know how rare it is to find such a sensible human.”

Cal smiled. “I’m nothing if not sensible. Just don’t ask anyone else their opinion.”

“I rarely do.”

“If we could get back to this,” Gavin said, getting their attention again. Owen had left with Darby and Greg, and with a few of Pax’s friends and Denver. Louis looked uncertain, but Pax whispered something to him, and he nodded. Gavin fixed his eyes on Rawen, who’d tried to blend into the wall during the commotion. “You said this creature is after you.”

“After us,” Rawen said. “My people. We fought a war a long time ago.”

“We repelled the creatures we now call demons from this world when they broke into it and attempted to destroy it,” Sharon said, nodding under her veil. “It was an extremely costly war for everyone. If one of them is in this world and is free, its goal will be to destroy us.”

“Not destroy,” Rawen said quietly. “Consume.”

“It wants to eat you.”

“It wants our power,” Rawen said.

Cal sighed. Great. It wasn’t hard to see where this was going. “You can just say it,” he said. “It wants me, doesn’t it?”

The room went quiet again, everyone looking at him. Rawen nodded apologetically. “Probably. Nathen was the strongest of all of us. Having his—your—power at his disposal would be devastating.”

“Okay,” said Gavin, clapping his hands. “So we kill the Sorcerer King, protect these stones, and stop Cal from being eaten by centipedes. What else?”

“We must find a way to destroy or banish this demon, mustn’t we?” Theodore asked, calm as if nobody had tried to kill him just now.

“That’s easy,” Lillian said, contemplative. “Well, not easy, exactly. But sorcerers have been binding and controlling demons since the dawn of time. Even I could do it, in theory.”

“That’s demons that they’ve summoned, though,” Mick disagreed. “Not once that are already here.”

“No, she has a point.” Bartholomew was standing with his arms crossed, tapping his foot. “They may be beyond our understanding, but they have to follow rules like anything else that exists. If we can bind it properly, we can send it back where it belongs. And then we just have to hope that however it got here, it can’t do it again.”

“That can work,” Rawen agreed. “As long as it’s done right. You’re going to need help from people who know about this stuff.”

“You?” Gavin asked.

“Yes.” Rawen looked at Sharon. “And my mom.”

Sharon nodded. “It is of critical importance. We must also remember to deal with Derel, and the Sea King. Derel is trapped, somehow. He’ll need to be freed before he can be killed.”

“I think I can do that,” Cal muttered, unsure. Wes rubbed his back.

“How?” Gavin’s expression was hard. He was worried.

“I have Nathen’s sword.” Cal didn’t technically have it. But he knew where it was. He was picturing the face of someone he didn’t know but who he knew was Derel. “It should be powerful enough to force Derel into the world, or out of it, and kill him.” At least that was what Jesse thought.

Gavin nodded, a sigh escaping him. He was fiddling with his wedding ring. “Okay. I’ll take any help we can find.”

“Bartholomew and I can talk to some people,” Sully said, shuffling his feet. “I think our bosses can get behind this.”

“Probably,” Bartholomew agreed. “They’re going to want to be in charge.”

Gavin smirked. “Let them try. Rawen, I’ll need to be able to contact you.”

“Knock on a door with your left hand,” Rawen said. “I’ll hear you. If that doesn’t work, Cal knows how to call me.”

Cal did not, but he was left with the disconcerting knowledge that he’d probably figure it out if he had to.

“Okay.” Gavin stood firm, though he looked exhausted. “Okay. I appreciate your help, Theodore. You’re free to return home now.”

Theodore seemed nonplussed by that. “Of course, your Highness. And of course, if there is any further help I can offer…”

“You’ll receive another summons if there is,” Gavin said with a smile. “I’m sure that you’ve knowledge of more things that are going to turn out to be important, so I have no doubt that we’ll talk again.”

“Very well,” Theodore said, bowing. “In that case, I shall take my leave, your Highness.”

Once Theodore had left, Gavin sighed. “The fact that we’re not always going to be in the same city is inconvenient,” he said. “I’d like to talk about setting up some sort of communication system we can use, or magical options for quickly travelling,” he said. “If we can teleport from the Amaran Mountains to here, I don’t see why that can’t be something useful for us broadly speaking.” He shook his head. “For now though, I’ll let you all go. Thank you for your time.” And with a glance that was definitely at Cal, Gavin left the room, some of the knights following him.

Cal sat back down in his chair, feeling like he’d been standing for hours. Rawen was still standing there awkwardly. “Well, the world didn’t end,” he muttered, so that he wouldn’t be alone with what was around the edges of his mind.

“I changed my mind,” Travis said. “I don’t think we should invite the centipedes to the orgy.”

Cal snorted. “You think?”

Sully and Bartholomew came over to join them, and they all just sat there quietly for a minute. As far as meetings went, it had been a lot more hectic than Cal had expected.

But then, so had his life. So he shouldn’t be surprised.

—

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