Oh, oh, oh it's magic (Xie and Kevin)

[xie_er]

Zhao Jing used to be a nobody, born into influence and wealth but always in the shadow of those around him. In magical circles he was even worse, a barely-remembered witch that didn't have enough power for any familiar to even consider looking twice at him.

Somehow, though, after many years (and a few suspicious deaths), he's managed to climb his way to the CEO of Five Lakes, his power - of both kinds - growing exponentially.

The previous CEO was surrounded by some unfortunate rumorus before his death, so Zhao Jing has been focused on repairing the reputation of he company and solidifying his support, mundane and magical, which means it is far too delicate a moment for Xie to be in the spotlight, even if he was promised he'd be allowed to stop hiding when the position was in Zhao Jing's hands.

He just has to wait a little longer, that's all, and it's not like it's difficult to only appear in his animal form whenever Zhao Jing is in public, just uncomfortable, and the last thing they need is for somebody to recognise Xie for any of the things he's done to help his witch get where he is today, when his position is still so precarious...

He tells himself all the excuses he's heard from Yifu, repeats them in his head like a mantra as he sits through all the meetings and negotiations, a little black cat and Zhao Jing's feet, watching the men and women he's speaking to for anything Yifu can use. He hangs around when Zhao Jing steps out the room, listens to what they say behind his back - that's his job with normal people, to be a pair of ears they don't realise are there. Even paranoid types who scan for bugs would miss him, which he finds funny, privately, because he is a bug of a sort.

Not that he's allowed to take his original animal form - a scorpion would be out of place if anybody caught sight of him, and Yifu doesn't like the idea of him hiding in pockets or anything like that. He says it's dangerous, that something could happen to him, but Xie privately thinks he just finds the form creepy. Even around other magical people, the cat is preferred - his job with them is to be a reminder that Zhao Jing has a familiar, and a relatively powerful one at that.

It's hard for familiars to change the form they can take, but he did it, for Yifu.

He tells people the cat is called Scorpion, and that somebody else named him - which is technically true, Xie does mean scorpion, and his parents named him - and that he's vaguely embarrassed to have such a fiercely named cat.

(He doesn't tell magical people anything at all, they know Xie isn't a pet so they're less likely to ask, at most they will wonder why his familiar always stays in animal form. Zhao Jing just tells them he's shy. He isn't, he doesn't care about people seeing him, but it's easier to do the things Yifu wants him to do when nobody knows what he looks like)

Xie hadn't always known he was powerful - when Yifu had taken him in he'd been told he wasn't much, but that maybe he could be useful. Later, when some witch had made an offhand comment about it, the story had become that Yifu recognised his power and took him in before anybody else could steal him away, that he just wanted to protect Xie from the people who would use him for his power. Xie was already so far gone by that point that he accepted it, that he told himself he was lucky he had Yifu to protect him, to guide him.

It's funny how easy it is to lie to yourself.

When the meetings are over for the day he finally shifts back to human form, spending a few minutes stretching out the kinks that come from forcing himself into a form that isn't quite his, especially with how much he's had to do it over the last few weeks, and then going in search of something to eat. He could probably just head back to his own apartment since he doesn't think Yifu needs anything else from him, not today, but the outsiders have all left and everybody in Yifu's manor at least knows Xie, even if they don't know that Xie and Scorpion are one and the same, so it's safe to be around them.

He likes to spend as much time here as he can get away with, likes to remind Yifu he can be useful in other ways... and maybe he likes to keep an eye on this new apprentice Yifu has taken on. He doesn't understand why he needs anybody else when he has Xie, but the last time he'd questioned somebody new in the house Yifu hadn't spoken to him for a week, so he doesn't voice that thought out loud - he just watches the guy suspiciously every chance he gets, and wonders how easy he would be to get rid of.

He's halfway to the kitchen when something makes him stop. A tug of power, the vague echo of chanting, there's a ritual happening and something about it is drawing him close. He frowns, confused, and follows the pull...

Comments

[weird_cop]

"Happiness did," she says.

"I had this plan, this mission for my life, and never really thought 'happy,' was part of the goal. And then this gorgeous man comes into my life, this ogre-parfait of layers..."

She shrugs awkwardly.

"...yeah, he surprised me."

[xie_er]

The 'ogre-parfait' reference is completely lost on him, but he understands the gist of what she's saying so he doesn't question it.

Well, he doesn't question her.

"What does 'ogre-parfait' mean?" Is requested of Kevin without context.

To Lisa, he smiles and nods slightly.

"I'm glad you're happy."

He's spent so long looking after himself that caring about somebody else's happiness is quite rare - it's a very exclusive club that he's slightly surprised to find Lisa is now definitely a member of. In fact, he think all of them might be. Even Tony, a little bit.

[weird_cop]

"Someone's got layers."

Kevin sounds amused, by the reference and the implication.

"Someone's outwardly a grouchy scary monster but inside is squishy and full of cream. Is it me or Tone?"

Kevin's remarkably good now at talking through the link without letting anyone he's talking to know what he's doing, and he doesn't break from chatting with the group.

"So am I," Lisa says, and doesn't qualify whether she means her or him.

After the meal, the Quills announce regretfully that someone's probably tired herself out, and after they've gone the Lofthouses call a cab, leaving Tony and Lisa to help pack up.

In front of them, Kevin is happy to pull Xie to him and give him a public kiss.

[xie_er]

It still doesn't make any sense but at least he understands the meaning.

"Tony. You only pretend to be a grouchy scary monster when you're undercover. You're squishy and full of cream all the way through in real life."

It is said with tones of extreme fondness.

The food is good, the conversation is pleasant, Xie manages to avoid any more missteps and melts slightly, unexpectedly, when Jessica calls him 'Xie-gege' again later in the afternoon.

When the others are gone and it's just the four of them, he's still surprised by Kevin pulling him in for a kiss. That makes him melt, too, and he wraps his arms around Kevin with a smile.

"I think that went well."

[weird_cop]

"It did. Thank you for a lovely afternoon."

"Do you want us to go or stay a bit to help clear?" Lisa calls from the kitchen, where Tony is already washing up. "We're good either way."

"Do you want alone time or to hang out a bit more?"

[xie_er]

"Thank you, the food was wonderful"

He considers the options, then remembers what he said to Lisa about Kevin not getting a lot of time to just hang out with his friends and be normal, it seems a shame to cut that short.

"They're welcome to stay"

[weird_cop]

"Stay if you want," Kevin relays back, grabbing the last empty glass from outside in one hand and putting the other around Xie's waist, before heading inside.

"I just found out Xie hasn't seen Shrek."

Lisa takes the glass off him and eyes Xie in amusement.

"Ogre-parfait," explains Kevin. "It was a movie reference."

"Oh," he adds aloud. "Jessica started talking about wicked witches. I guess we could explain some of our old cases."

[xie_er]

The comfort of having an arm around his waist softens the blow a little bit of being put on the spot. Apparently it's not just relationship experiences he's missed out on... he's starting to realise that he's actually been quite sheltered, for all he's grown up in a criminal empire.

Still, at least he appreciates the clarification - it stops him from asking what a Shrek is.

"I haven't seen a lot of movies." He says, a little grumpily.

"I wouldn't mind hearing about some of them, if you don't mind sharing?" He adds, at the suggestion of sharing old cases.

Partially because he thinks that might help him avoid any awkward subjects the next time they do something like this.

[weird_cop]

"Sorry."

Kevin apologises immediately on picking up the grumpiness, and kisses Xie on the forehead.

"Less Queer Eye more movies," he says out loud, like he's suggesting and also promising.

"Frigging Mora Losley, then," Tony decides, opening the fridge for more to drink. "Where do we start?"

Lisa had gently touched her nose, but now says:

"With the end. With Jessica."

[xie_er]

"But I like Queer Eye." He protests, though this grump is more for show than anything genuine, because all hurt feelings have been soothed away by the apology, and the kiss.

(Honestly, it's almost laughable how much he thought he was the type to hold grudges, it turns out the issue was Yifu's apologies were never apologies, and that's all he needed them to be)

Xie snags the half-finished wine bottle from the fridge when Tony opens it so he can top up his and Lisa's glasses, and suggests they go get comfortable in the living room if they're going to tell stories.

[weird_cop]

The suggestion is met with agreement, and they retire in that direction - Kevin lets Tony and Lisa sit together on the couch while he makes himself comfortable on one of the rarely used armchairs.

"Right," he says, immediately letting his tone become serious.

"So Mora Losley - our first real case as a magic specialist unit and a full on crazy serial killer. Remember how Lofthouse said that magic requires sacrifice?"

[xie_er]

Xie contemplates the other armchair for all of three seconds before deciding he doesn't want to sit that far away from Kevin, and he'd like to enjoy the fact he doesn't have to, so instead he sits on the arm of the chair Kevin is in.

"Ah, so the sacrifices in this instance were the victims?"

Sacrificing in the old fashioned sense, then.

[weird_cop]

Kevin puts his arm around Xie as he sits, curling it around his hips companionably.

"That's the kicker, that is," says Tony. "The two sets of vics. The usual serial killer fare of the footballers..."

"...and others," Lisa adds for accuracy.

"...and others, which she killed by magic means. And the sacrifices she made to perform those murders. The kids."

[xie_er]

"Wait," Xie frowns for a moment "she was... sacrificing people, children, to get the power to kill other people?"

He takes a second to process this and then just shakes his head in disgust.

"What's the point. If you're going to kill someone just kill the person you want to."

Who needs magic for murder?

(The fact that it was children is, obviously, also deeply wrong, but he's thinking about this from a professional perspective more than anything)

[weird_cop]

"Psycho," says Tony, but Kevin is shaking his head.

"Because the kids were easy, relatively. She'd pose as the social worker, scout them out, then do a relatively minor memory trick to abduct them. Not actually minor, but for her, it didn't take much power. And because it's kids, well they gave her more power.

"Then she'd use that to have her the force to go after fully grown, healthy men. Sportsmen, well guarded gang leaders. She didn't have the physical strength to take them on, without the magic from the sacrifice. The kids were just a means to an end."

[xie_er]

Physical strength? That's what poison was for.

He doesn't say that, though - he knows that they know his past and kind of still accept him for it, or at least recognise that it's his past, but he also knows he should stop himself from going too far in case they start to doubt that it's past.

"And Jessica was one of the kids?" He guesses, since that's the obvious route to her involvement, the 'wicked witch' she'd been saved from really was a wicked witch, right out of a storybook.

[weird_cop]

They nod, collectively.

"Took her almost immediately she met us. Reached into Jimmy and Sarah's heads and ripped their memories of her right out. They didn't even remember they had a kid until she was killed and the spell broken."

Kevin is leaning his head against Xie's arm as he speaks, focusing on the details of the magic rather than the general horror.

[xie_er]

That's a little horrifying, honestly. To completely forget you even had a child?

He wonders if it's worse to remember her after she died, or if it would be worse to never even know...

"Wait, she was killed?"

She definitely hadn't looked dead this afternoon.

[weird_cop]

"No," Kevin says quickly. "Mora kept her in a cage for weeks though, waiting for the time to throw her in the pot. No one looked for her, because no one realised she was missing.

"It was Losley who had to die to break the spell."

[xie_er]

"Oh, I see."

Okay, that makes a lot more sense.

That poor little girl, though, stuck in a cage for weeks waiting for a rescue that wasn't coming, would never have come if they weren't already on her trail.

And the guilt they must have felt, when the memories came back...

"You'd never realise she'd been through something like that." He says after a moment.

[weird_cop]

"You wouldn't," Lisa agrees. "She's a bit clingier than most kids, but it's remarkable."

Not that any of them is a child psycjologust. But it's her parents who carry the burden.

"She loves Lise, though," Tony adds. "After she saved her life in a dramatic rescue."

"Losley's was the place we got the sight," Kevin adds now, following up a different chain from earlier. "She had piles of soil she used to store magic, and when Jimmy touched one it activated the spell, changed the way we saw the world."

[xie_er]

He had wondered, but also Kevin had said they'd dealt with more than one serial killer so he wasn't sure it was this one.

It was nice to get answers, though, a little more understanding of what they've been through together.

No wonder they're all so close.

"Was that your first case all together?"

[weird_cop]

"Kind of," says Tony. "Operation Toto was an offshoot of Operation Goodfellow."

"My Uncle Rob," Lisa explains. "Head of the Toshack gang. I was conducting analysis, and these two were first and second UC, so we didn't actually meet until Rob was murdered in police custody and we had to work out how."

[xie_er]

Xie nods in understanding, connecting the pieces to what he'd been told before about their past.

Murdering someone in police custody is difficult, even for someone as skilled as him, so he supposes he can understand why someone would turn to magical means.

(He could do it though. Has done it)

"Did any of you know about magic before that?"

[weird_cop]

Tony is clearly ready to say no, but Lisa interrupts him with:

"I did, sort of. Losley broke my nose."