Chapter Text
Warm afternoon light slants inside to the temple's innermost sanctums. Tulio cracks an eye open. He's sandwiched firmly between his partners, with Miguel snoring into his ear and Chel's drool pooling on his chest. He can bask in their arms all eternity.
And yet...
His eyes open a little wider. Miguel snorts awake. Chel mumbles a curse into the pillow.
He senses something, same as he once stirred when travelers trod too close to his grave. He isn't alone. They all sit up and puzzle a new instinct.
"A-Are people celebrating us?"
Miguel puffs up with tentative bravado. "Of course they are. Why shouldn't they?"
Chel grins. "We did throw down the Jaguar God, banish Tzekel-Kan, and hold back a whole army."
Tulio glows at the reminder. He flops back down into bed to properly soak up the feeling. Instead he groans in dismay when his partners roll away from him. "Why?"
"They're celebrating in our honor, Tulio," Miguel chirps. "It would be rude not to put in an appearance."
"Besides, we can't spend forever in bed." Chel winks. "Only most of it."
With a theatrical sigh, Tulio smiles and stands. He can't certainly turn down a party where he's a guest of honor. Manoa hails him as a god. He lives for their faith, their reverence as he once craved human fear alone. They deserve to see their devotion is never taken for granted.
He searches the floor for his hip wrap. It dutifully manifests in his left hand. Huh. Neat. He summons his earrings and arm bands the same way. Upon tying his hair back, he glances at the golden stele of the Dual Gods...
And leaps back with a startled yelp, bristling like he's cat-shaped. His partners whirl around.
"R-Real," he blurts out. "They're actually real!"
There's a Dual God, an actual Lord of the Fifth World, staring out from that golden sheen. He looks terrified as Tulio himself, wondering why some black dog is in his temple like...
Chel strolls over to fling an arm over his shoulder. Tulio feels it, even though it's the Dual God in the gold flinching at her touch. "No Dual God here but you," she answers.
This face is a glamor that can fool even his own senses. It never changes his true reflection, only prevents most mortal eyes from noticing the black dog in the mirror. He shifts just to prove her wrong.
The Dual God at her side vanishes in flickering blue flames, solidifying as a black dog the size of a bear. There is Tulio's face, long snout, pointed ears, and all. Admittedly he can't see his rib cage any more and his eyes are still stubbornly blue, but that's him. He cocks his head. Instinctively he dwindles down into a true dog. A scruffy black terrier blinks back at him. He shifts again, and the terrier becomes a fluffy rabbit, then a ghost white cat when he does.
Tulio flows back into human shape. A long, stubbly face gawks back at him. What. The. F-
Miguel leans his head against his other shoulder. "What did I tell you, Tulio? You have a lovely face. It's handsome, roguish, and too damn handsome for its own good." He grins and waggles his brows at his own human reflection. "Of course, I'm not half bad myself."
Tulio tries and fails at a smile. "Looking divine as ever, Miguel."
Miguel squeezes his hand. "It's your face, Tulio, just not your fae one. Or your cat one, or your rabbit, or..." He trails off, then sucks in a nervous breath. "This just happens to be the face of the man I love... not the fae, or the rabbit, or... well..."
"W-W-What?"
"I... I love you." Miguel braces for disappointment, but doesn't yet pull away. "L-Like in 'I want us to be happy and healthy' sort of way and, um, not the 'drown you so I can display your body' or 'abduct you from your family' love."
...Oh.
Oh.
He gapes like Miguel slapped him with a fish. Then, before his brain quite catches up with his body, Tulio surges forward to shower this beautiful idiot with all he feels. Between laughing sobs and worshipful kisses, he stammers out 'I love you.' They tackle each other and accidentally take Chel down with them. Together they collapse in an awkward heap.
Chel smiles and tries to wriggle herself free. "I'll just let you two g-"
Someone thinks to mash her lips against hers. Chel kisses right back, and they all fall into bliss.
They do indeed make it to their own party, fashionably late and disheveled and beaming like idiots. No one is surprised.
...Except Tulio, who spews wine all over himself and his partners when Miguel innocently comments about how his mother is a lovely woman and they really should get back to the Land of Youth soon for a proper family reunion.
With Balam Qoxtok so thoroughly humiliated, even the nastiest Lords of Xibalba smile nervously when the Golden Gods 'drop by' down in Xibalba to eat and make small talk. The gods gleefully leave with every last soul, those that have burned in Lady Iztaya's fires or choked in Lord Tzinacon's smothering winds, eager for a well-deserved rest in Grandmother Turtle's verdant paradise.
The Lords of Xibalba don't often take 'guests' into their Houses anymore, not when Miguel carries every new soul directly to Lady Eupana. A few do insist on dropping by Lord Tlilihui and Lady Iztaya first, who are generous hosts beneath their scary exteriors. On those journeys Miguel gets to stuff himself at three separate feasts. He never sees Balam Qoxtok. The Jaguar God's jungle is empty and forlorn of its bones. The god himself is heard only as a distant snarl of frustration. It will not take much longer for Cortes to match out of Balam Qoxtok's realm of influence, past any peoples that believe war and conquest come as an Obsidian Jaguar.
One night, after escorting a great-grandfather into paradise, Miguel finds of the God of Xibalba awaiting him. Lord Xarayes stands on the shore where Balam Qoxtok's jungle meets his fathomless sea. His stoic face is pinched. Someone else might mistake it for annoyance. Miguel immediately knows that expression is grief. Together they watch Lady Eupana's paradise, astride the shell of a massive turtle, swim off with one new soul for the dinner table.
"Hello, Lord Xarayes," Miguel greets easily. "Lovely night we're having."
The God of Xibalba spares him no pleasantries. His fathomless eyes stare out into the domain of the Jaguar God, shoulders bowed. "My son was not always so..."
Miguel considers the lovely sorts of euphemisms used in the courts of the darkest, most arbitrary fae.
"Spoiled?" he suggests delicately.
Lord Xarayes inhales. "Eupana and I raised Balam Qoxtok as a protector, a provider. He guided our hunters and kept them safe beyond my waters. His beasts and his wars kept outsiders from ever finding his mother's city." When he exhales, the whole sea quivers. "And then our people grew strong enough to forge offensive wars, and forge themselves an empire."
"...Ah."
Does Miguel know that story. It's repeated itself again and again in Iberia alone; the Romans, the Visigoths, the Eastern Romans, the Moors, the local petty kingdoms that have united into a power yearning to envelop all the New World.
"Our power waned, as all tides must, and we tried to settle back into balance. Eupana and I believed our son... past his phase. And then came that damned Crocodile God." The sea shakes, black waves churning. "After that, Manoa chose new gods to place above him, and we thought him finally humbled."
Miguel swallows thickly. "It's... It's hard to recover from appetites like that."
As a kelpie, he had merely had the appetites and fickle whims of the river itself. The knowledgeable could always prevent his eye from turning upon them, or not pass into his hunting grounds to begin with. Even the marine water horses, far deadlier than their freshwater cousins, had simply embodied a more formidable force of nature. Their kind had been amoral, wanting only food in their bellies and the brief pleasure of watching a mortal drown.
And then there were the great fae once hailed as gods, who had festivals in their honor, and blood spilled upon their altars. Their appetites had been insatiable, and their entertainments... utterly alien toward a simple kelpie that had not yet remembered how deep human hatred can run. Mortals had not only dreaded them as mere elemental forces, but slayed them as demons. The Wild Hunt, never satisfied, roams the wild lands every winter night and collects more souls for their restless host.
In the distance, the Jaguar God yowls. His father sighs.
"The people have feared him, and revered him. They fear him still, even if they believe you and your... partners shall always keep him at bay."
Miguel bites back a grimace. Not even Chel can keep Balam Qoxtok down forever. The world outside their mountain walls is more dangerous by the day.
"Look on the positive side," he tries. "Your son can mellow out. Eventually." Miguel beams. "It only took me eighteen hundred years!"
Lord Xarayes scowls at him. Miguel laughs, slaps his back, and charges into his waters in kelpie shape.
"Come on, old boy! If we hurry we can still make family dinner!"
In Lady Eupana's vibrant hall, Miguel happily tucks in beside Chel's family. Her parents embrace him like a son. Her grandparents heap food into his plate and reminds him he and his partners need to eat more to keep their divine bellies full. Chel's big brother smirks, then slumps when his grandma reminds him being dead is no excuse to skimp on his vegetables.
At the opposite end of the table, Lord Xarayes presses a kiss to his wife's cheek, and avoids all eye contact with them.
"Your hair," a little sister gasps. "Oh, your beautiful hair."
"How we supposed to brush it now?" demands another.
"Forget about his hair!" a brother butts in. "What happened to your beard?"
"Yeah," another brother agrees. "You were so damn proud for peach fuzz, and then you barely had time to enjoy a real beard before, you know..."
"Oisin!" his siblings hiss scandalously.
Miguel splutters for a very different reason. "I still have a beard, thank you very much!"
"Yeah, on just your chin. Is that a kelpie thing?"
"It's stylish!" Many siblings, old and young, eye him dubiously. "Tell them, Tulio!"
Their partner winces. "Well..."
"Tulio!"
"Ahead of its time, definitely." A beat. "Um, so ahead of its time I don't think we've actually reached it yet."
Chel's partners descend into bickering. Miguel's hoard of siblings break out into their own arguments. Some defend him as a visionary. Others challenge the goatee is valid all on its own, fashion forward or not. Most of his siblings share his golden hair and green eyes. Even though they've just introduced themselves so her, she can't recall which is which. She is very, very glad her parents stopped at just her and Xaya. Sorcha tries her damnedest to hide her relief at only having one kid.
"No wonder Tulio insisted on meeting with me first," she mutters. "I've seen faerie courts more organized than this."
Chel grins at the adoring tide, who took one look at their unabashedly Manoan deity of a son and immediately embraced him. "They have what matters."
Despite herself, Sorcha smiles wistfully. "They do."
At which precise moment, Miguel's family recalls the visitors he's proudly brought home. Tulio is the first sucked into the tide of hugs and pleasantries. It claims Chel soon after.
Sorcha, promptly smothered by Miguel's two moms, suddenly pales with the realization she is tied to this chaos for all eternity, and hasn't even met Chel's side of the family yet. After a long moment, she slumps in happy surrender to her fate.
And then the tide of near two hundred nieces and nephews floods in.