Mafia AU

[misfittoys]

[ A tale of two people leading double-lives and the inevitable misunderstandings that follow ]

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[arcaico]

[ The Syndicate moves as all ancient things do: quietly, patiently, and with the illusion of slowness that masks a terrible, glacial inevitability. It has always been this way, long before he wore a name that could be spoken aloud without consequence. Long before the city forgot what it meant to fear silence.

This week, the board reshuffles once again.

Zhongli exhales a thread of steam into the crisp stillness of his tea room. Incense coils upward beside documents folded on his desk like model architecture. Maps marked in invisible ink, manifests rewritten five times, a guest list that reads like the ledger of a kingdom disguised as a city-state. The Qixing gala is no mere social affair, but it is ritual and display, a pulse check on an empire.

And yet, his phone buzzes like a little scarab on top of a pile of gold.

The message arrives like so many others do these days, cloaked in affection and casual suggestion. A ping that slides in beneath layers of encryption and deception, dressed up in emoji and warmth. He reads it once, then again. Ajax's messages pretend not to ask for too much while daring to hope. He texts as though he has all the time in the world, who smiles like he's never known the cost of it. The name glows cheerfully across the screen, accompanied by a pair of emojis as sweet and disarming as their sender.

Zhongli exhales slowly. It would be so easy to say yes. To fold into the invitation, to make a quiet little pocket of time in a life that has never been his own. An art gallery, he chuckles at the softness of it, the civility. As if men like him are allowed that kind of stillness. It doesn’t strike him as odd that Ajax would ask. The younger man is always chasing—beauty, thrill, the curl of a smile not yet earned—and Zhongli, for better or worse, has made himself easy to chase lately. Letting his collar lie just a little looser. Letting his words stretch further than his caution usually allows.

(Sometimes he does dream of it. Those moments in the museum were... very much welcome.)

The Syndicate does not deal in stillness. It is a living thing, sprawling and quiet, its tendrils curled around ports and politics, throats and fortunes. For all its elegance — its ancient customs, its blood-lined oaths and ledgers — it is still, at its heart, a creature of necessity. Survival, after all, requires teeth.

And Zhongli, Rex Lapis to the world that needs him cruel, has not had the luxury of forgetting this. Not in a while. Not since he inherited what was left and shaped it into what could not be taken again.

So he is expected. Expected to make his annual appearance at the Qixing gala, that delicate theatre where the underworld dresses itself in refinement and all the sharpest blades are hidden in teeth. An empire like his survives not through strength alone, but through the belief that its ruler never falters, never ages, never bleeds.

He thumbs the message once more. He remembers the tea set. Zhongli had, after all, admired a porcelain pattern a little too long the other week. The tea set had been blue and broken by time, with repair veins of gold lacquer that gleamed like old scars made sacred. Just the kind of metaphor Zhongli likes. Ajax had admired it with the sort of genuine curiosity that caught Zhongli off-guard — not just politeness, but wonder. As though the craftsmanship moved him. As though he understood that beauty, too, was a kind of endurance.

Middle child, he’d said once, flippant and proud.

Zhongli wonders about the house he grew up in, if it was loud, unruly, full of elbows and forgotten birthdays. If he learned to charm not because he wanted to be adored, but because it was the only way to be seen. The thought softens something in him. Strange, that a man of so many secrets should feel fondness for someone who carries his own in plain sight.

He doesn't know what Ajax does for a living. Only that he sells toys. That he texts too often. That he watches Zhongli when he thinks he isn’t looking, like he’s waiting to be let in.

Zhongli should have known better than to entertain something so...ordinary.

And yet.

He types, as though some part of him still believes that saying no softly will somehow not sound like a rejection. ]

An art gallery… You tempt me with gentler things than I deserve.
I would like that. But I have a prior engagement this Friday.
Another time? I would be amenable to a lunch and a walk.

[ He places the phone back on the table face down.

He will attend the gala. He will smile at the politicians, speak with the heads of the Port Authority, and remind the city that the Syndicate's spine is still unbroken. He will do what is required.

But a part of him, the part that once collected rare minerals for their resonance, the part that loved long walks and poetry, and the shape of laughter shared in quiet corners—

That part hopes the boy asks again. ]