For pierson: "Lance/Joey? Hmm. How about AU, magic, happy ending."

Joseph was the only one of them who went by his true-name in public, the only one of them who didn't care enough to hide behind layers of misdirection and indirection and protection. "I am no special man," he said, over tankards in the temple's great hall. "There is none who would care to apply such information in a malicious fashion, when it would be far easier to slip a stiletto between my ribs at Vespers than to take the time and trouble to bind me with a calling-on."

James thought it was a ridiculous lack of care for the basic precautions that anyone of the Order should take. It had been the subject of long and heated debates, well into the middle of far too many nights, with Randal and Joshua agreeing with him. They all took other names, when they arrived. It was the first thing that everyone learned. Names had power; true names had even more. Joseph just shook his head and said nothing more. He had made his arguments years before.

James slipped into the room as Joseph finished laying out the candles on the altar, stripping off his master's robe and letting it fall to the cold stone floor. The rings on his toes chimed against the slate. Joseph looked up and gestured lightly to the chalk that was sitting on the table by the door. "If you would draw the diagrams," he said, with that easy and open smile that made everyone love him. "I am almost ready to begin."

"Joseph," James said, and stopped, not knowing where he was going.

"It's all right, Lance," Joseph said, the name that only he knew to call James by, and held out his hands. He breathed a single word, and the candles flickered to life. "I will wait until you are ready."

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