Learn To Live In The Dark

by rasolomon

Summary:

In the mid 90s, a newly-divorced and sober Daniel Molloy ends up at a gay club, even though he's "not that gay." There he discovers the drag performer Ama Deo, who he swears he knows from somewhere. In the throes of obsession, Daniel Molloy starts to wonder if he is going insane. He has to find Ama Deo at all costs.

Notes:

This started as a tumblr request in my inbox. Like 2 people asked me to continue it and that's really all it takes. I'm just a chill guy.

Chapter 1

Daniel was literally tripping out.

Where the fuck did he know Ama Deo from?

As a man on the verge of 40 who had narrowly managed to unfuck himself after years and years of half-remembered bad decisions, it had been a solid few years since he had gone out to a club.

The AIDs epidemic and AA had all but put a stop to all that shit for him, but, even in his sobriety, the idea of returning to the scene for a night held a special kind of nostalgic allure now that the scenes across the country were rebuilding.

Not all those nights were bad, after all. At least, he kind of remembered some good times? Probably?

So, when a twink at the SF office in town on work invited a few of the office gays to a drag club for his birthday, Daniel said sure. He had never really considered himself an office gay, but they seemed to adopt him after his divorce and he wasn't about to turn away any potential connections, considering his whole family was essentially done with his shit.

And he couldn't blame them.

That's how he ended up at The Den with a few of his colleagues. He had been a little nervous to try sticking to his diet cokes and not go on all out bender, but fears of his past transgressions disappeared when the second performer of the night took the stage.

Ama Deo was something else.

Wholly ethereal, draped in dark green silk like a cloud which seemed to move of its own accord, tantalizingly covering and uncovering her lithe, muscular body. She wore long green silk gloves that only highlighted the curves of her arms. She looked more like a classic burlesque performer than a drag queen, with bold dark makeup smudged around her unearthly amber eyes and large lips dripping with red gloss like someone else had been chewing on them.

She was dripping in jewels and gold and impossibly tall golden heels glinted in the low light of the small stage. Ama Deo looked expensive... but also somewhat familiar. From the second their eyes met Daniel couldn't breathe and couldn't look away.

Comedy was not Ama Deo's specialty. She was stripping so slowly and so sensually that Daniel could hardly watch. He was blushing red down to his toes. Ama Deo twirled in her silks, revealing defined dark brown pecs and dusky nipples barely covered with pearls in time with a simple sensual violin track.

Daniel kind of heard his colleagues continuing to laugh and talk amongst themselves. He wished they would shut the fuck up. Their lack of complete awe for the stunning creature on the stage was offensive to him.

Daniel found himself consumed by the urge to possess Ama Deo. He realized that he would have killed somebody just to have those heels press against his face, and took a moment to do a quick mental wellness check on himself.

What the fuck Molloy?

Life had gotten busy. Daniel was one divorce down and one to go, though he didn't know it yet. He couldn't even remember the last time anything had turned him on.

I guess it's been too long since I got laid.

Daniel tried to reason with himself, on the edge of panic as Ama Deo took one of her own long gloves off with her teeth and threw it into the audience.

It hit Daniel squarely in the face and he couldn't help but breathe in.

Silk. Cold steel. Oud. Sweetness. Something floral. Something metallic. Masculine. Feminine. Frigid. Strange.

By the time Daniel opened his eyes Ama Deo had already twirled away and his colleagues were ribbing him.

"You should go talk to her after the show!" Said visiting SF office twink, and Daniel felt ill.

"I'm not that gay." He said, and a gold ring flew from Ama Deo's outstretched hand and hit him straight in the back of the head.

He pretended to ignore the knowing glances of his colleagues and preoccupied himself with picking the large golden ring off the floor. It was costume jewelry, to Daniel's surprise.

"Give that back, boy." A honeyed voice called from the stage and Daniel felt like the cold hand of death was upon him.

He couldn't breathe.

"You heard me." Said Ama Deo, petulant as a child and commanding as a warlord.

Daniel had one of her green silk gloves in one hand and one of her large fake golden rings in the other, pressed against his glass bottle of Diet Coke.

The crowd was eyeing him with envy and curiosity, but their jeering was lost on Daniel as he met the eyes of the drag queen on stage. They were yellow and orange and gold like a flame. Daniel thought of lightning striking an old tree and fire springing from it like cruel branches.

He couldn't even find the words to say. Daniel felt his feet moving toward the stage of their own accord, the violin backtrack was speeding up in intensity and felt his heart pounding in time with the rhythm.

Once on the stage beside Ama Deo he almost choked. This ethereal creature virtually towered over him in golden heels that were more like slender spikes.

"On your knees." Commanded Ama Deo and Daniel was on the ground before she had even finished speaking. His knees cracked against the hard stage. Desire pooled within him even as his joints ached. The crowd jeered and Daniel was oblivious to them.

"Eager are we?" Asked Ama Deo, though she already knew the answer. Daniel, for the first time in his own memory, was completely speechless. He stood, wholly in awe as this creature whirled around him like wind, shedding plastic jewelry and silks to reveal flawless brown skin.

Her clothing whipped Daniel this way and that, what felt like an endless kiss of perfumed silk wrapping him in a cocoon and nearly causing him to drop his bottle of coke. Up close Ama Deo was even more stunning, large eyes, lush black hair, and the sharp facial contours of a skull. Her body seemed endless from head to toe where her graceful feet met impossibly high and thorn-like golden heels.

Daniel realized his knees were killing him and that's when Ama Deo commanded that he stand. Daniel did.

"I'm thirsty." Announced the performer, looking down at Daniel and then the audience through her long inky lashes. 

The audience cheered as she swayed over to Daniel, almost entirely naked except for a final scrap of green silk. She knelt down in front of Daniel and the crowd jeered.

With shaking hands, Daniel lowered his bottle of diet coke and pressed it to Ama Deo's gloss-smeared lips. Daniel looked down into those bewitching eyes and felt something strange shift within his mind. Something beyond lust, beyond recognition, beyond desire.

He watched Ama Deo's throat work around the tip of the bottle of diet coke to suck it all down, drop by drop. Her adam's apple bobbed up and down and Daniel felt the urge to bite it. He felt like his brain was on fire.

Daniel had never wanted to be a bottle of Diet Coke so badly in his life.

Ama Deo popped off the bottle with a dangerous grin and rose, again towering over Daniel in her heels. She left a ring of red gloss around the bottle's opening. Daniel looked between the bottle and that swollen, glittering mouth.

"Holy shit," Was all he could say. The crowd clapped and screamed.

Ama Deo spun around him, rubbing against him like a cat in heat. Daniel couldn't help but touch her. Her hip, her bare stomach, the curve of her arm. Daniel was reveling in the feel and scent of her skin only to suddenly notice that crowd was cackling and cheering and clapping and the music had stopped.

The show was over and Ama Deo was almost completely naked aside from those gold heels and Daniel's black leather jacket. Daniel touched his own bare arms in shock before suddenly being pelted with money.

Oh, fuck, right, you are supposed to tip the performers, Daniel's half-offline brain supplied as he ran off stage to avoid death by paper bills only to see that Ama Deo was gone.

Daniel's colleagues swarmed him, quick to point out that he was still gripping that one green silk glove like it was his only lifeline in a cruel world.

Daniel looked from the glove in his hand to his bare arm, which should have had leather covering his skin and old tee-shirt.

"She stole my fucking favorite jacket!" Daniel bitched, but his words lacked any real heat. He was too dazed.

His drunk colleagues only laughed.

Chapter 2

Daniel’s colleagues continued to celebrate around him as employees of The Den swept all of the money Amadeo had earned off the stage and into several beat-up-looking purses.

If it weren’t for the empty lip-gloss smeared coke bottle and green silk glove in his hands Daniel would have thought he had some kind of stroke-induced hallucination.

He could still smell Ama Deo’s haunting perfume and smell her skin.

Daniel shuffled away from his group of colleagues to go back to the bar and get another Diet Coke.

The bartender was a ridculously ripped incredibly Italian-looking man, with a thick shock of dark hair that was starting to thin at the temples and the top.

Daniel could read the jealously in his eyes and had recovered enough from the full-body shock of Ama Deo using him like a prop on stage to indulge in one of his other favorite past times.

Being a prick.

“Some show!” Said Daniel with a shit eating grin on his face. He placed the empty diet coke bottle on the bar. Ama Deo’s lip gloss glimmered against the dark bottle in the low light of the bar.

Daniel watched the bartender take in the gloss with the utmost sourness, as if he’d stepped in dog shit.

“You want another?” Asked the bartender, clearly just trying to get rid of him.

Daniel wasn’t done yet. Another performer was coming on stage and he quite frankly could not care less.

“Do you know where Ama Deo goes after she performs? She took something of mine and I’d like to get it back.”

The bartender really did not like that. Daniel was thriving.

“She doesn’t like to mingle.” He said flatly, with an undertone of blatant rejection.

“So, she comes here a lot?”

In lieu of answering, the bartender placed his bottle of diet coke on the counter with a little too much force.

“She comes here and does her dance and vanishes? What, weekly? When the moon is full?”

The bartender applied a bottle opener to the Diet Coke, sliding it toward Daniel as the cap flew across the bar.

“I just want to get my jacket back, man.” Said Daniel and neither of them believed it. The bartender was quick to move on to help someone else, clearly uninterested in telling Daniel jack shit about the mysterious dancer.

Daniel walked back over to his drunken colleagues, bowing semi-ironically as he approached them.

They howled and clapped.

The San Francisco office twink, legally known as Kevin Daghy, did a straight shot of tequila and offered one to Daniel, who passed it off to Mel, a stylish lesbian in her early 40s who dressed mostly in shades of brown, and always with large shoulder pads. She downed it, no questions asked.

“How was it?” She asked after a rather disgusting tequila burp.

Daniel shrugged. “Fine.”

Mel slapped him, her long auburn hair falling out of its brown claw clip.

“Half the people in here would kill for Ama Deo to suck on their coke bottle!”

“Diet coke bottle!” Corrected Daniel and she slapped him again.

“What, is she some kind of drag celebrity or something?” It came across way more acerbically than Daniel had meant and his colleagues collectively rolled their eyes. “What? It’s been awhile since I was out in the scene, if I ever really was. Forgive me for not knowing about every drag performer in New York!”

Mel crossed her arms, her attempt at playing cross destroyed as she suffered through another absolutely massive tequila burp. “She’s becoming kind of a local legend.”

“What do you mean?” Daniel was trying hard to seem disinterested, but it was not working. Mel’s smirk was 10 miles wide.

“So, she’s known for doing shows at a few places, but no one has ever really talked to her. She just disappears.”

Daniel rolled his eyes.

“Hey, Molloy, shut your mouth when you’re talking to me!” Mel was incredibly drunk. Daniel couldn’t even be mad.

“Look, all the other performers come out and have some drinks, but Ama Deo never does. No one knows anything about her at all.”

“Do you stalk her or something?” Asked Daniel.

Mel laughed as if that was the funniest joke in the world.

“I’ve seen her at The Den before and also at Puss in Manhattan about 4 months ago. She has a group of fans that follow her around. But, you are the first person she’s ever really…talked to.”

Daniel chewed on that one for a minute. It explained the bartender’s jealousy. He wondered if Ama Deo had personally rejected or evaded him.

“Do you think she would give me my jacket back?” Daniel finally asked and the look on Mel’s face was wicked.

“I think she wants to give you something.”

Daniel scowled at her and she beamed.

“If you want to stalk her you should go rub shoulders with her fan club.”

Mel gestured toward a group of about 10 men and women walking toward the exit, cigarettes in hand. One had a large purple pillbox hat, and Daniel chose to use that to anchor his focus in the sea of people.

Daniel moved almost instantly with incredible urgency, before stopping himself from embarrassing himself any further.

Mel cackled.

“It’s not stalking!” He insisted. “I just want my jacket back.”

Mel sighed and held out a cigarette.

“Go, get your jacket back.” She parroted before starting to mime a blow job.

“That’s not even how you do it!” Ribbed Daniel and she sighed. She dropped the cigarette into his outstretched palm anyway.

“You gotta cup the balls,” Daniel continued.

“I’m sure you would know all about that, Molloy.” She said, closing his fingers around the cigarette.

“Always cup the balls.” He finished as he walked away. Mel waved him away, telling him to fuck off and never come back.

Chapter 3

Daniel walked out of the bar to see small groups of people and couples hanging out and smoking. It was a balmy spring night, but it was so hot in the bar that the outside air felt almost refreshing.    

He found the group surrounding the woman in the violently purple pillbox hat and casually strode over. He tapped a handsome and slender, yet muscled, black man with shoulder-length dreds, dressed from head to toe in the tightest black clothing Daniel had ever seen, on the shoulder. 

“Sorry, can I steal a light?” He asked, holding his cigarette out. The group was quick to expand to let him into the circle. The man even quicker to hand him a lighter.    

“Thanks, man.” Said Daniel, savoring the inhalation of his first cigarette in a long while. He handed the lighter back and their fingers brushed. Daniel shivered. 

“Some show, huh?” Asked Daniel with a blissful grin. He noted how the others were watching him closely, some excited and some jealous. “What was her name, again?” He asked, though he remembered well. He just wanted to get them talking. 

“Ama Deo.” A few of them said, slightly out of sync with each other. 

The man beside Daniel looked at him a little bit suspiciously. “You mean, you don’t know her?”   

Daniel shook his head. “I don’t party much anymore. I haven’t been to a bar in a while. Came here for a friend’s birthday.”            

The man looked disappointed. “We thought maybe you knew her.”         

“My friend said that nobody knows her, but that doesn’t make any sense.” Daniel took another long drag. “I would like to get my jacket back, but it seems like it’s gonna be impossible. She’s like the fucking Phantom of the Opera or something.”       

Some of the people in the group laughed. Others looked offended. 

“I’ve seen her 15 times.” A redheaded woman in a long black silk slip added on a dreamy smoke-filled exhale. “Never seen her before or after the show.”    

Bingo.   

Daniel knew who would talk. 

 “15 times? Were all 15 of them here at The Den?”        

The redhead shook her head. “She’s at The Apostle most Saturday Nights. Here sometimes, though.”    

“The Apostle?” 

“It’s an abandoned church they converted into a venue in Brooklyn last year.”   

Daniel couldn’t believe it. That was in his neighborhood. How did he not even know it was there?   

Then it clicked. "I think I heard something about evangelical protestors over there or something, right?"

A few of the people in the group chuckled.    

“Yeah, I hit one of them with my purse and they didn't stick around.” Said the redhead. The group laughed.

“I'm Claire." She offered.

“I’m Daniel,” He said, holding out his hand. “Great to meet you.”      

She shook it quickly."At least some of us go to The Apostle most Saturdays. Maybe you should come with us and see if you can get your jacket back.” 

The others laughed at her joke and introduced themselves in short order, everybody shaking hands.   

Finally, the man next to him, who introduced himself as John, held out his hand.      

“I still can’t believe you didn’t know Ama Deo until tonight.” Said John. 

Some part of Daniel’s mind registered that they had been holding hands for way too long, but he was not ready to let go. His skin was deep and smooth and his eyes even darker, almost black in the moonlight.     

“Honestly, I feel like I know you all better than her.”    

There was some light laughter. John’s thumb caressed the back of his hand and Daniel felt the sensation spread up his arm to his chest. 

Well, fuck.    

“I’ll give you my number.” John held out a card and Daniel took it. 

“Dr. John Delaney, Zana Wellness,” He read aloud. “It’s always good to have a doctor on call.”           

“Yeah?” Asked John. 

“Yeah.” Daniel replied, their hands still clasped.

Chapter 4

As the weekend came to an end, Daniel’s Sunday night was more or less just a gay panic with ignored reruns of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air playing on his large, ancient TV in the background. 

He could still feel the ghost of Ama Deo’s body pressed against him. He could feel the warmth of John’s long fingers caressing the back of his hand.   

The business card and green glove seemed to pulse mockingly on top of the pile of miscellaneous shit on top of his coffee table, like two hearts pounding beneath the floorboards.           

This was already getting complicated. 

If he called John, it would come with some expectations .    

Wouldn’t it? 

Was Daniel ready to fulfil those expectations?     

Part of him felt a little hot just thinking about it. 

He grimaced. 

Daniel felt almost histrionic, like a shy middle school girl going to her first dance with a boy. He slapped his own thigh and rubbed his temples, shifting in the worn green leather chair in front of his TV.    

Reminding himself that he was doing all of this just to get his favorite jacket back calmed him down a little bit.   

It all wasn’t that deep in the end. What was some friendly flirting between some guys, in pursuit of such a noble end goal?     

He had, had that jacket since 1971, he bought it on the Haight with his first paycheck from an actual published article. It mattered. 

Everytime he closed his eyes he could see Ama Deo’s eyes burning into him, like million year old amber struck by lightning, preserving something terrifying and irresistible within.    

It was almost midnight by the time he shuffled off to bed, feeling restless and unsettled.   

Suddenly, Daniel saw himself sitting infront of the kind of TV he hadn’t seen in decades. Johnny Carson was on. And pain bloomed behind his eyelids and every last inch of his skin. 

He wasn’t tied up or restrained, simply in too much agony and too exhausted to move. 

But, through the haze of agony, he registered that he was being watched. 

Those haunting apocalyptic eyes burned into him still, owl-like and predatory, their reflection gleaming off of Johnny Carson’s desk on the old school TV.      

Then, suddenly, the pain was replaced by pleasure, he was tied up. His arms were tied to a bedframe above his head and each leg tied to something else. 

Daniel could feel a soft bed beneath him, but see nothing. The world was endless darkness. 

Then he felt that something was covering his eyes. 

“Do you see what happens when you disobey me?”    

That voice was unmistakable. Petulant and regal, commanding, demanding, and icy.     

Ama Deo.   

Daniel started to struggle against his bindings, only to feel a harsh slap against his inner thigh. Something sharp traced the meat of his thigh, and Daniel gasped. 

Then he smelled blood. 

His own blood. 

Daniel’s cock twitched against his sore thigh.    

Ama Deo’s laughter seemed to echo in the darkness.     

Daniel woke up, half hard and feeling fully insane mere minutes before his alarm, only to realize that the smell of blood had followed him into the waking world.  

Daniel kicked off his blankets to see a long, singular scratch on his inner left thigh.     

A little bit of blood trickled from it, staining his grey sheets.       

He pressed a finger to the wound and then placed the bloody finger right on his tongue. 

Silk. Cold steel. Oud. Sweetness. Something floral. Something metallic. Masculine. Feminine. Frigid. Strange.  

The scents and flavors burst in his nose and in his tongue. 

Daniel groaned. 

He was fully hard. 

Chapter 5

Notes:

A little surprise Valentine's Day update! This one is dedicated to you if you have also decided to be single for the rest of your life. Happy Valentine's Day to my fellow bi yourself bitches who aren't on apps and don't really go outside either. Love y'all.

Daniel had spent years of his life showing up to work hungover, or when he was young playing it cool through a trip, and this was somehow worse.    

He felt on edge, lost, and deeply unmoored in the usual rhythm of his life. It was like there was a splinter in his mind, something sharp and buried deep that he couldn’t scratch.    

He had been asked to complete some editorial work for the magazine, and even that felt like too much. Though he knew the mechanics of language like the back of his hand even that skin felt foreign to him. 

There was still a strip of white skin where his old wedding ring used to sit.          

He found himself poking at nothing, thinking only about The Apostle and Ama Deo and those eyes, and the glove sitting on top of a pile of shit in his apartment.    

He thought of maybe calling John to strike up a chat about it all, but he realized that he had left the business card at home too.   

Daniel groaned, it was going to be a long ass Monday.     

He barely had completed half of his tasks by 5, and decided to walk home from Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a sunny, mild spring day and he hoped that some fresh air would  breathe some life into him.   

It didn’t.   

He stopped at a halal cart a few blocks from his apartment and picked up some chicken and rice, drowned in so much red and white sauce that leaked onto the ground beneath him as he walked.  

Daniel grumbled stuffing the already-saturated napkins along the seams of the box before he walked into the bodega by his house to grab a Diet Coke.      

He carried both up into his building and to the roof of his apartment. He was thankful to be alone up there and tore into his chicken and rice. 

Popping the cap off the top of the glass coke bottle made him think of Ama Deo. His pornographically gloss-smeared lips seemed to be caressing the neck of the bottle.  

Daniel rubbed his temples, bitter that even after kicking rampant alcoholism for over a year somehow his only socially acceptable crutch was now also colored with a desperate ache.   

“I should just start smoking crack.” He muttered to himself, the wind ruffling his greying dark curls.         

“Only if you share.”    

Daniel became aware of the smell of cigarette smoke suddenly. He could recognize the voice of his downstairs neighbor, Carol, anywhere.  

Instead of being polite he jammed another spoonful of chicken into his mouth. White sauce dripped from his mouth, hitting his shirt.           

He let out a short string of mumbled curses. 

“Bad day, Danny?” The older woman asked, white fur coat rustling in the breeze. She was decked out in costume jewelry, large sunglasses, and crooked red lipstick.         

Daniel said nothing again, listening to her low heels click against the roof.      

“What’s her name?” Asked Carol, and the finally got Daniel’s attention. He knew she just wouldn’t let it alone. Carol had probably never let one thing alone in 70 years. 

Daniel really didn’t know what to say to that.    

“What gives you the idea that it’s a woman?” He tried for sarcasm but Carol beamed. 

“What’s his name, then?” She said, her laughter turning into a painful-sounding cough around her cigarette. She kept smoking.    

“I’m not that gay.” Daniel insisted. Carol said nothing for awhile enjoying her cigarette and the sun starting to set over the city.   

“You were up here like this every night when you were having problems with Annie.”     

“It was Alice.” Corrected Daniel. Carol shrugged.    

“The worse you are doing in love, the saucier the shawarma.” She said, pointing at his container. “That’s a soup, Danny.”                 

Daniel could only huff.    

“Based on how much sauce that is, I’m guessing unplanned pregnancy?”     

Daniel chuckled. “Only if the baby is Christ.”          

“A modern miracle, indeed.” Their comfortable silence stretched on as the sun continued its descent.   

Daniel felt a little less sour and a little less unmoored.    

“You know, it’s been a long time since I was with anybody at all.” He started. Carol waited for him to continue. “But, I think I might be…interested in somebody. It feels…”    

“Terrifying?” The older woman supplied. Daniel could only shrug.      

“Infatuation can be fun.” Said Carol, as she ashed her cigarette on the roof. “Ride it out.”  

Daniel could not think of anything in the universe that he would like to do more than that. He disappeared in flashes of those long flawless dark legs sliding down into their knife-like golden heels.     

“Yeah.” Was all he could say, as sauce dripped down his fingers. 

Chapter 6

It was Thursday by the time Daniel called John. He was sitting alone in his living room in the evening, eating a chopped cheese from the bodega by his house and drinking a Diet Coke.           

His sound system was playing a Rolling Stone’s Greatest Hits tape on low. He turned down Sympathy for the Devil just a little bit as the phone rang and rang. 

It got put through to the voicemail for Zana Wellness, which he was surprised to learn was a psychologist’s office.   

A lot of people, Alice included, had told him to get psychological help over the years.      

Maybe they would still be together if he hadn’t made their first (and last) marriage counselor cry. 

“I guess it’s never too late to start.” He muttered as the prerecorded voice, which was John’s, smooth and deep, told him to leave his information and he would get back to him as soon as possible. 

“Uh, Hi John, it’s Daniel.”   Daniel paused, hating how nervous his own voice sounded. John’s voice sounded incredible and he felt like a prebuscent boy, voice cracking like a sidewalk on the verge of returning to dust. 

Get a fucking grip Molloy.   

He said that it was nice to meet John and left his own number, you know, just in case maybe he wanted to reach him or something. Ah ha, no pressure though. Have a nice day. 

Daniel was possessed by the urge to throw his phone out the window after he hung up.   

Who the fuck tells somebody to have a nice day at 8 pm?                                

Daniel had spent his Friday night wandering the streets until late, lost in his thoughts, thinking of Ama Deo and thinking of John.

But mostly of Ama Deo. 

Those lips, those eyes, the endless expanses of flawless brown skin wrapped in green silk.  

Daniel wanted to fucking punch something. 

He kept the green glove in his jacket pocket as he walked, a black leather blazer which didn’t do much against the evening chill. One of the deep green fingers poked out of his pocket, unbeknownst to him, as he stalked around smoking cigarette after cigarette with no particular destination.       

He could almost feel John’s large hand wrapped around his own as he walked, and Ama Deo’s gaze burning into the rest of his body. 

He walked until he was exhausted, coming home at nearly 3 am and passing out in his living room chair fully dressed in his dark jeans. He unbuttoned his fly gracelessly with exhausted, stupid fingers and didn’t even bother to take his filthy white sneakers off.     

He plopped them on top of the pile of shit on his coffee table, causing papers and an empty cup to fall onto the floor as he collapsed.  

That night Daniel dreamed.        

Hungry mouths bit and licked and kissed him from head to toe. He writhed against them, a being of pure sensation.       

Then he smelled it again. The iron tang of his own blood. 

He opened his eyes to John’s teeth sunk into his left pec and Ama Deo hovering above him, those skeletal hands wrapped around his throat. 

Daniel’s moan was choked into reverant silence as they squeezed around his neck. 

His mouth opened of its own accord, gaping in the shock of being lightly strangled, and Ama Deo spit what looked like a glinting ruby of dark blood right into his mouth.   

Silk. Cold steel. Oud. Sweetness. Something floral. Something metallic. Masculine. Feminine. Frigid. Strange. 

Pure addiction.    

Ama Deo's hands loosened just enough for Daniel to swallow the blood. 

Daniel swallowed it down, feeling hot energy bursting through his limbs. The world was pure starlight. Narrowed down to a white-hot pinpoint of sensation.     

Daniel looked up at Ama Deo, dazed through his own dark lashes. His body was thrumming, that little trickle of blood burning along his every nerve ending.     

She smiled, revealing fangs gleaming as white as the pearls decorating her nipples.    

Daniel reached up with one barely functional hand and pressed the meat of his thumb into the tip of one of those little, pointed fangs.    

The pain of his skin being pierced was eclipsed by the ectasty and Ama Deo taking his bloody thumb fully into her mouth and starting to suck.     

Daniel whined long and low and sweet. 

Chapter 7

Daniel awoke late Saturday morning with a gasp and a curse. 

He didn’t remember passing out in his TV chair, and his body was killing him. It took him a solid minute to realize that his phone ringing had woken him up.  

“Fuck you,” He grumbled at the phone, wincing as he moved his neck and shoulders and they violently cracked.             

He was halfway into miserably stretching a semi-cramped long, thin leg when John’s deep voice sounded from his answering machine. 

Daniel paused mid-stretch, paralyzed. 

“Hello Daniel,” Began John. “It’s great to hear from you. We heard that Ama Deo won’t be performing at The Apostle tonight, but some of us are going to meet up at The Golden Year Diner tonight at 8 if you want to come. It’s in Chelsea.”     

Daniel felt his heart pounding in his throat. John continued, leaving his own personal number.   

Daniel grabbed a pen and scribbled it down with a half-dead pen on one of the dirty napkins on his coffee table.       

He then flipped through his address book, looking for Mel’s number. He found it and called her before he could even think about it. 

On the third ring, he debated hanging up and hoped she wouldn’t answer at all. 

By the fifth ring, she had picked up. 

“Yeah, you’ve reached Mel Torres.” She said.  

“It’s Molloy.”     

“Wow, and I was almost having a good day.” She said. Daniel could hear faint music and what sounded like plates breaking and pans banging in the background.             

“Were you? Sounds like you’re being robbed at gunpoint over there, Mel.”     

“Tracy’s washing the dishes.” Mel sighed.       

“She’s a shit housewife.”     

“You’re just jealous that I have a housewife.”   

“Wow, and to think, I was going to invite you out tonight.”         

Mel’s tune changed quickly. “Why? What’s going on?”     

He quickly explained the situation with the Ama Deo fanclub to her, without saying too much about John. That did not stop Mel at all. Sometimes he hated only knowing other journalists.    

“Ah, so one of the men is into you and you want me to come and protect your virtue.” Daniel started to protest and Mel cut him off. “Didn’t take you for the blushing virgin type, Molloy.”    

“Hey, fuck off!”       

“If he starts rawing you over the egg creams can I watch?”    

“I think I just heard Tracy put a knife in the garbage disposal.”        

Daniel heard Tracy yell something in the background. 

“Babe, you wanna go out tonight?” Mel yelled back. He half listened to Tracy and Mel’s meandering conversation, debating whether they should go or not and what they should wear for almost ten minutes before getting sick of it.     

Tracy was asking a million questions. Like if the people they were meeting up with were goth or hippies or something, so she could bring out her Stevie Nicks boots.  

Daniel had enough. 

“Look, we are all gonna meet up at The Golden Year in Chelsea at 8. Come if you want. Or don’t come. I don’t care.”       

“Wow, I’ve never felt so wanted.”       

Daniel hung up.      

Chapter 8

The Golden Year was a place that hadn’t updated anything since the 70s and was open 24 hours, with people popping in and out almost constantly. It had a classic dining car facade and brown booths inside, as well as a long counter that was almost full of customers having cocktails and beers.    

Daniel spotted John through the window, as well as Claire. He had run a little late, spending an embarrassing amount of time deciding what to wear. 

He had settled on a pair of black jeans, black loafers, a Led Zeppelin tee shirt, and a long grey trench coat.    

He waved back to John and entered The Golden Year, feeling like his heart was rattling against his ribcage.        

John was dressed in suit so red that it was almost black, with nothing underneath. Daniel pointedly did not look at his smooth, lightly muscled chest.       

Claire was sitting right in the corner of the corner booth, red hair tied into plaits, with John next to her. Daniel slid in next to John, and though he did not touch him, the heat of his body was like a physical presence.    

“Hey,” Said Daniel and they both gave him a little welcome toast, holding up their beers before drinking them.          

“Reid is coming too, but he’s running late.” Said Claire. Daniel only vaguely remembered who that even was. 

“I invited two friends, I hope that’s cool.”        

They were interrupted by the server and Daniel asked for a Diet Coke and a basket of wings. Extra hot. With blue cheese. John asked for a turkey club and and Claire a cup of french onion soup.    

“Who did you invite?” Asked John.     

“My colleague Mel and her partner Tracy. Mel is a killer journalist. She came to the the show with us last weekend.”         

“Speaking of the show,” Claire started, sporting a dangerous grin that was all teeth. “Did you keep the glove?”          

Daniel nearly blushed and they both laughed at him. It had somehow migrated from his coffee table to his nightstand. Not because he was slowly inching it closer to his bed, though.       

“I still don’t believe that you all don’t know anything about her at all, and no one has ever seen her off stage.” Daniel changed the subject as his Diet Coke arrived and he wrapped a hand around it. “It just doesn’t make sense.”          

“There are some rumors, but nobody really knows anything for sure.” Claire offered. 

Bingo.    

Daniel really loved Claire. 

“Let me guess, she’s the lost duchess Anastasia?”       

At some point John’s hand had moved onto the seat between them, and Daniel wondered what would happen next. Would it keep coming closer to him? Would he touch him? Was it a casual accident?     

“I heard that she is a disgraced Arabian prince. Also that she is some kind of succubus.” Claire waved her hands with glee as her soup arrived, piping hot and smelling incredible. 

“A succubus?” Asked Daniel. What the fuck was that?    

“I think it’s some kind of sex demon. You know, like they feed off of the desire of people.”    

Daniel couldn’t help but think of the weirdly bloody and erotic dreams that had been torturing him regularly ever since Ama Deo had used him like a prop on stage.       

Claire took his response as an excuse to keep talking. She loved to talk, mostly about Ama Deo, and Daniel loved to listen.     

“She has really gotten a lot of attention in the drag scene here. There’s not really anyone out here right now like her, so people like to talk. I think she is probably just some normal guy, or maybe closeted. 

‘Maybe she puts on the perform and vanish thing to build interest and mystique. Maybe she just really doesn’t want anyone to know what her day job is.    

‘Either way, it’s fun to go see her. And there is a little community building around her. Maybe she’ll be famous one day.” 

“I could probably find out.” Said Daniel and suddenly one of John’s larger hands slid into his own beneath the table. Daniel could feel the cold metal of a few rings pressed between John’s warm skin and his own colder hands.   

“Yes, you said you’re a journalist, right?” Asked John, his voice carrying a strange undertone.        

Daniel could only nod, shocked by the contact. His plate of wings clanked down against the table in front of him and he could hardly even smell it. 

His pinky had started to rub against one of John’s fingers and Daniel could feel John’s thumb rubbing circles onto the back of his hand. 

How was this alone making him so fucking horny? 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Said Claire. Daniel didn’t say anything at all, simply waited for her to fill the silence.   

“Somebody who we used to hang out with hired a PI to find her last winter.” She started, pausing to eat more soup. “Nobody really knows what happened to him.”         

“The PI or the crazy fan?” Daniel dipped a piece of celery in the hot sauce at the bottom of the plate and then the little cup of blue cheese. 

John intervened. “Adam Lee? I heard he got a job in Chicago. People move away all the time, Claire!”   

“Ok, but do they move away without ever mentioning it to anyone? And then no one ever hears from them again? Tell me, what job did he even get at Chicago?” 

“He was a banker here, so I’m guessing the same thing there. It’s not rocket science.” John sighed, his own sandwich arriving. He took his hand back to start to eat and Daniel felt strangely naked without it.     

“Do you guys know which PI it was? Maybe I know him.” Offered Daniel. After all, he knew all kinds of people in many places.      

“Jim Cairnes.” Said Claire. “If you call his office now it just rings out.”     

Daniel felt truly alive in a way he hadn’t since he had taken his high-paying bullshit magazine job. The hunt was on .   

Ama Deo was going to be his. 

It was only a matter of time.   

The conversation turned back to more normal topics as Mel (without Tracy) and a few people from the Ama Deo fanclub filtered in. 

Chapter 9

 

Shout out to DaddyLongLegz for this incredible art! No one has ever made art of anything I've written before and you have deeply touched my spirit. 

 

On Monday at work Daniel started going through their massive collection of telephone books, looking for one Jim Cairnes, Private Eye.  

Sure enough, he found two of them. One in Harlem and one in on Staten Island.    

The assistant of Staten Island Jim Cairnes answered in a flash, and Daniel was delighted to find out that his assistant was a secretery he used to work with about five years ago. 

They had a lot of fun flirting with each other but that was that. Alice hated her.      

He chatted her up for a while and she giggled, before he went in for the kill. 

“Can I ask you a personal question, Anna?” He said, twirling the phone cord in his fingers.   

“Anything for you Danny.” She said.   

“Last year, did you guys do any work for a banker named Adam Lee? Tracking down a drag queen?” 

Anna laughed and Daniel knew that this would be a dead end. 

“God, what are you even involved in this time, Danny?”        

“Just checking something out for a friend.”     

Anna laughed again. “You know, we are supposed to keep everything confidential here, but I’ve NEVER heard of anything like that. And I’ve been here for almost 3 years.” 

Daniel sighed. “Alright, thanks Anna.” He said. She kept nattering on and he kind of wished that she would stop. When they finally parted with vague promises to meet up sometime, Daniel immedeatly dialed Harlem Jim Cairnes.      

This one rang on and on until the line went dead. 

Daniel wrote down the address of Harlem Jim Cairne’s office and decided to take the subway there after work. Just to pass by and see the place, maybe knock on the door and see if anybody answered.      

It was the longest work day of his life, making bullshit edits on bullshit stories about professional golf that probably 12 people would read. And they were 12 people that Daniel hoped he would never have to talk to.     

At 4:30 he walked out, zooming up to Harlem before the after work rush. He figured he would hang out in Harlem and have dinner there until rush hour died down. 

He counted his blessings, for having avoided conversing with any of his colleagues on the way out. He knew that most of them wouldn’t go to Harlem, because they were terrified of black people, poor people, queer people, basically everyone. 90% of the population was an unimaginable terror to them.    

“Assholes.” He muttered to himself as he got on the subway. He had the address of Jim Cairne’s office in his head and a vague idea of where it was.     

Daniel was so engrossed in his thoughts that he missed his stop, and had to walk almost 40 minutes to backtrack and reach the office of the PI.    

Daniel wondered in Cairnes’ office was just his living room. How professional. 

Daniel didn’t smoke all the time, but he usually did when he wanted to have a reason to hang out somewhere, and see who would talk. He walked to the front doors, looking at the call box with all of the names and numbers of the apartment’s inhabitants.     

There was no Jim Cairnes.         

Daniel stood on the sidewalk nursing his cigarette, waiting to see who passed by. People would be coming home from work anytime now, and maybe someone knew Jim. 

Finally, a man in a suit got out of a cab and started walking toward the building. He was an attractive hispanic man, who Daniel roughly guessed to be about his age, with stunning hazel eyes and nearly shaved down black hair. 

He stopped beside Daniel, holding out a cigarette in one brown hand. “Can I get a light?” 

Daniel was delighted to provide. 

“You new in the building?” Asked the man. Daniel picked that moment to inhale, hoping the man would fill the silence. His voice was melodic, his accent quite light, but present. “They’ve been trying to fill Jim’s place for 6 months. Did you take it?”   

Bingo.         

“Jim Cairnes?” Asked Daniel. The man nodded. 

“What a nut job!”     

“Why do you say that?” 

The man took his time, inhaling and exhaling smoke. Daniel watched it curl around his full lips. “He had to have been the worst private eye in the city. At least he was the worst one I ever saw outside of a telenovela. At first I thought it was just a lie he was telling chicks in order to get laid. Man couldn’t have investigated the inside of a paper bag. Definitely he wasn’t getting laid either.” 

Daniel laughed at that and the man smiled at him. 

“What d’you mean, was ?” Daniel asked. “He finally bite off more than he could chew and somebody get him in the ole’ cement shoes?”     

The man laughed at that. “It’s really very strange, you know. One day he was just gone. Left without any notice and never came back. The building administrator was livid .” 

Daniel chewed on that one.       

“They reported him missing, just to find him and get the rent, but no one ever figured anything out. It’s been months and I think they just gave up and are trying to find somebody else to rent the place.”           

“When did he fuck off?” Asked Daniel and the man looked a little shocked at his colorful language, but also charmed. 

“It had to be last winter, I think. Anyway, hope I didn’t spook you too bad, if you’re thinking of taking the place. The police kept bothering me about it, but they haven’t been around in a long time either. I don’t think Cairnes really had any family or friends. Nobody has come around looking for him at all.”    

“Why were the police bothering you? You look like an upstanding citizen to me.” Said Daniel. The man sighed. 

“One of the NYPD's favorite games is screw with the Mexican guy.”                

Daniel nodded, exhaling smoke.    

"Crazy how much we gotta pay for that shit, huh? Fuckers."     

The man sighed and they smoked in silence for a while, before he started talking again. 

"Anyway, I guess since you seem like an alright guy, don't take Apartment 401."    

"That was Jim's?"   

The man nodded. "They found some cursed objects in there. And a lot of blood."      

"What do you mean by cursed objects?"     

"Listen, Jim was into some dark stuff. And it caught up with him. That's what they say. And that's all I know." 

"Are we talking like the criminal underground? Makes sense that a PI would have a lot of enemies." 

The man's jaw tensed as he shook his head. "Not stuff with the mob or anything like that. Something with the devil. I don't want any part of anything. I'm just telling you something. It's up to you whether you listen or not."    

The man crushed his cigarette under his heel and went back into the building. 

Daniel made a mental note to reach out to one of his old contacts at the NYPD and see if any reports had ever been made regarding Jim Cairnes and Adam Lee.       

"If only I had some contacts in the 7th circle of hell to check in with too." He muttered to himself as he headed back to the subway.  

Chapter 10

At night Daniel dreamed of being suspended from great heights in a woven net of green silk, his arms and legs wound into the net, aching in a way that one should not be able to ache in dreams.

Lava dripped from the walls and filled the expanse below him. Was he in hell? Was he hanging in the chamber of a volcanoe? Daniel didn’t know.

Lava churned beneath him like a stormy sea.

Suddenly, he felt long cold hands on his face and his vision was obstructed by the skeletal and statuesque face of Ama Deo, brilliant white teeth and eyes gleaming like a deep sea predators in the dark.

The kiss pressed against his lips was punishing and he strained against his full-body bindings to pour himself into it.

That’s when he noticed the smell of blood. It hit him before the sharp pain in his lip did.

Ama Deo had bitten through the skin of his lip, and was sucking the blood out of it.

Daniel reeled, feeling as if his entire consciousness had been narrowed down to the point where those sharp teeth pierced his skin.

Daniel moaned so long and low that the lava around them seemed to vibrate with it. It pulsed with a strange light that is only found in the logic of the dreamscape.

“It is my greatest pleasure to watch you surrender yourself to the hunt.” Said Ama Deo and it took Daniel’s pleasure fogged mind a minute to catch up.

Or did he say it? How could he have? His mouth was still sucking on the wound on Daniel’s lower lip, feasting on his blood.

The words had rang in Daniel’s mind sharp and clear as a bell.

“Do you really wish to know me?” Asked Amadeo again without asking. Daniel nodded only just barely, as much as he could with his bottom lip caught between cruel teeth.

Finally, Ama Deo popped off his bottom lip. Her own lips painted red with fresh blood.

Daniel had never seen anything so beautiful before.

“What if it kills you?” Asked Ama Deo, lips shining with spit and blood.

Honestly, dying had never concerned Daniel much. He had spent the whole 70s watching what felt like at least half the people he knew die of drug overdoses, and the 80s watching what felt like at least half of the people he knew die of AIDs.

He didn’t know why the fuck he of all people, was still kicking. Maybe it was just to prove that it was true that only the good die young.

Overall, Daniel Molloy felt like a man on borrowed time who didn’t really have much tethering him to society except the desire to know what would happen next.

“Take me out, if you want.” Said Daniel, voice hoarse with desire. “Go for it.”

Suddenly his restraints vanished and Daniel found himself tumbling toward the sloshing lava. He closed his eyes, waiting to be burned to death.

Daniel woke up in his bed in boxers and an old faded white tee-shirt with a red cartoon beaver on it, which he had sweat through to the point of complete translucency.

His bedside alarm howled like a monster. Time to get up for work.

“Fucking hell,” He groaned, throwing off his dripping wet clothing before padding into the shower, not bothering to turn off his morning alarm.

He felt exhausted and almost hungover as he leaned against the shower wall and let the spray hit him.

His body was still long and lean, with the smallest hair-smattered belly starting to poke out due to the fact that he was a man in his 40s and 60% of what he ate came from the bodega by his apartment building.

He groaned as the freezing water hit him and quickly warmed. What a Monday morning.

Chapter 11

Daniel was pissed off to have several days of long ass meetings where nothing important happened. He smiled and nodded and thought about all the sauce-drenched shawarma he could buy with his big boy paycheck while wishing that every golf course on earth would catch fire. 

  It wasn’t until Thursday that he had enough time doing absolutely nothing in his office to make his call to his old rehab buddy, policeman Greg Perth.   

Greg was one of the tallest and most jacked blonde man Daniel had ever seen. He was a real Hitler youth wetdream with an unfortunate penchant for crack rock and cock, which had once united them. Back when Greg was skinny and fun. 

And not a fucking cop. 

Daniel respected him more back then honestly, even though he would prove far more useful now. 

They had struggled through rehab together, come out on the other side, and Daniel knew that if anyone would do him a solid it was Greg Perth.       

Greg picked up instantly. 

“Perth.” He said. 

“Hey, it’s Molloy. How are things?” 

Greg’s gruff policeman persona evaporated instantly. 

“Molly! Brother! Can’t complain, how are you?” 

They shot the shit for awhile. Greg had just gotten engaged and he wanted Daniel to come to their wedding next year. Daniel said that he would go, and he meant it. 

After awhile, things petered out and Daniel felt like it was a good time to make his request. 

“So, Perth, I was wondering if you could help me out with something…” 

“As long as it’s legal, sure.” 

“You’re no fun anymore.”    

“Thank you. That means a lot to me.”       

Daniel couldn’t help but smile into the phone. He really was proud of Greg, even though he would under no circumstances ever tell him that.     

“Something weird is going on. Two people in the drag scene have gone missing in the past few months.” 

“Oh, come on Molloy. That’s why they call them fairies. Now you see em now you don’t. Poof! What else is new?”   

Daniel bit his tongue to stop himself from burying the lead. It was an agonizing experience for a man who hadn’t shut the fuck up since birth.    

“One of them was a PI. He wasn’t even in the scene, just hired to look into somebody. Then he vanished. Weird shit, Perth.”      

Greg sighed on the other end of the phone. “Didn’t you just tell me you are working for Golf Monthly or something now? A dream job for any man! Why do you care about what some faggots get up to? Shouldn’t you be on a golf course somewhere?” 

Daniel said nothing about his vivid memories of Perth sucking dick for rock and ending up with a mouth so full of sores he could have ended up in a medical mysteries pamphlet.    

“You know, I do some freelancing on the side. And I’m working on a story. Trust me, I didn’t pick it. If you could look into these two guys for me I would really appreciate it.”      

“Of course, Molloy. Anything for you.”    

Bingo.     

“Their names are Jim Cairnes and Adam Lee.”    

Perth asked Daniel to spell them out, and he did.        

“Adam Lee hired Jim Cairnes, a private eye, to stalk some of the local drag queens for him last winter. No one has seen either of them since.”     

“Maybe his wig was too tight.” Daniel rolled his eyes and offered a weak laugh to grease the wheels. Perth cackled until his voice was hoarse.                

“Ah, I missed you Molloy.” Perth said through a chuckle. “But, I’ve got to go now. Some of us have real jobs, you know. We don’t just golf all day.”      

“Blow me.” Said Daniel. And Perth laughed again.     

“Oh, sorry. Write about golf all day. Not even play golf.”      

“Blow me twice,” Daniel replied. “Also, let me know if you find anything on Tinkerbell and Badcop.”    

Perth let out a long cackle and it deeply grated on Daniel’s nerves. 

“Sure thing, Molloy. Blow me three times.”   

Daniel was simultaneously pissed off that Greg had gotten the last word and delighted that he had hung up.         

He was ready to explode when there was a knock on his office door and had never been more relieved in his life to see that it was Mel.           

If he had to talk to some other DL nightmare cop-type he would have thrown himself out of his office window and died with unmeasured delight.       

He pushed down his relief at not having to play it straight for at least 15 minutes, because that was definitely not a thought that your average heterosexual middle-aged man would have.   

“Your locker room talk sucks.” Said Mel as she closed the door behind her and sat at the chair in front of his desk.        

“Blow me.”   

Mel grimaced. “You couldn’t pay me enough.”     

Daniel couldn’t help but smile at that. 

“I’ll have you know, I used to fetch a high price back in the day." 

Mel rolled her eyes.

"Anyway, how long were you listening in on my damn private conversation?”      

Mel crossed her arms and Daniel noticed that she was holding a manila envelope in one hands. 

“What have you got for me?” He asked. 

“Tell me what you found out about Tinkerbell and Badcop first.” Mel did not look happy with him. Daniel was not happy with himself either. 

“I’m putting our tax dollars to work for the people, actually.” Replied Daniel. “I’m like a modern-day Robin Hood or Che Guevara.”     

“Sometimes I wish we didn’t meet on the job so I could beat the shit out of you.” Said Mel and Daniel blew her a kiss.     

“Actually, I don’t know anything yet. I’m having my old buddy at the NYPD check on a few things. He’s usually pretty fast.”     

“How do you know everybody?” Asked Mel. “You are the biggest yenta on earth.”       

“I used to be a real journalist. That’s professional yenta to you, Mel. Now, tell me what you’ve got for me.” 

“Nothing much, either. Boss wants you to have this edited and ready to print by the end of the week.”  

She placed the file on his desk, which was piled with other papers and trash.    

Daniel moaned in misery.        

“Yeah, it must be hard to do your actual job instead of just constantly talking shit with everybody you meet.”    

“I am Sisyphus and Golf Monthly is  my rock.” Insisted Daniel. “Why don’t you go do something instead of sitting here bothering me, since you are so dedicated to Golf Monthly?”   

Mel sat in front of his desk, giving him a little grin. “Did you hear what happened with Bruce and Manzano?”       

“The guys in marketing?”      

Mel launched into a telenovela worthy tale of office affairs and betrayals. Daniel did not even open the folder on his desk for the rest of the day.   

Chapter 12

Daniel came home from the office and checked his messages for the first time in about two weeks, mostly just hoping to hear from Claire or John that Ama Deo was going to be back at the Apostle this weekend.    

The first message was from his mother, who was angry that he hadn’t called her back in some time. 

The second message was from his ex-wife Alice, who was also angry that he hadn’t called her back in some time, and threatening to throw all his records in the trash if he didn’t come pick them up by the end of the week.   

Daniel figured he would just let her toss them. He had moved on with the times and had a vast library of cassettes.     

The next was some Avon weirdo cold calling him, and he wondered what exactly made the woman think a man named Daniel Molloy was looking to even out his complexion with a miracle foundation?   

Once a drunk woman in a bar had told him that he looked like Tom Waits voice sounded, and spent all night riding him and screaming like was a mechanical bull. He wasn’t trying to cover up shit.    

There was also somebody who had clearly called a wrong number, saying that a woman named Dorothea owed somebody money.      

“Granny crime syndicate. Cool.” Daniel muttered to himself as it played out. Then, finally, a message came from John. 

“Hi, Daniel. Was just wondering how your day was? Call me back when you can. Thanks.”    

Daniel felt a mix of emotions. There was a strange warmth in his chest at the thought of somebody calling just to find out how he was doing, about the dumb little minutea of his boring ass life working for the world’s most Dentist Office waiting room approved magazine.       

However, that sweet message contained absolutely nothing about Ama Deo.      

Before Daniel could think much more he turned off his answering machine and was checking his address book for John’s number.   

He dialed it. It rang a handful of times. 

“Hello?” John answered and the sound of his deep voice made Daniel’s toes curl. 

“Hi honey, how was your day?” Asked Daniel with just a little touch of the wry and facetious. John laughed.    

“Normal more or less. My book is basically full so I see the same people on a schedule. No suprises here.”     

“No surprises from all the town crazies, huh? I don’t believe you.” Daniel chimed back. 

“Yeah. Usually I like to take a break from talking to the insane when I am off the clock, but I guess you can’t always get what you want.”           

“As the philosopher Jagger says.”            

“You definitely talk like a writer.” Said John and Daniel felt a little bit warmth color his cheeks. Most people did not appreciate his humble genius and usually just told him to shut the fuck up.  

They just didn’t get it. 

A silence stretched between them. Daniel waited for John to fill it. 

“I heard Ama Deo will be at The Apostle Friday night.” He finally said. 

Bingo.     

“Is the gang all going?” Asked Daniel, nervously twirling the phone cord between his fingers.        

“Yeah, I think so. We will all filter in around 8 or so.”      

“Sounds great.” Said Daniel. “See you there.” 

Daniel thought that, that ended the coversation, but could feel that John was not done with him yet. 

“What are you doing right now?” He asked.    

“I just got home. I’ll probably eat something and stay in tonight. School night and all.”       

“How about I drop by?”   

Daniel felt his stomach drop out of his asshole.      

“I’ll bring something to eat.”       

“Chinese takeout?” Asked Daniel. 

“As you wish. What do you like?”  

His tone was dangerous. Daniel knew he wasn’t talking about Chinese food.    

“I’ll take a combo with orange chicken and pork fried rice.” He said. “What do you like to drink? I’ll run to the bodega.”         

“Diet coke.” Was all that he said and the words made Daniel feel like he was absolutely on fire. His place was kind of a shithole, but he didn’t even think to make it habitable. 

His bed was fine, after all.   

He gave John his address and barely knew how he formed the correct words.  

--- 

Just wanted to include this little moodboard I made when I had writer's block to help me get back on writing. These are the vibes of this whole mess hahaha. 

Chapter 13

Daniel put a few bottles of Diet Coke in his fridge to chill right before the buzz announcing John’s arrival sounded. He had changed his shirt 5 times before settling on deep green long-sleeved henley. He had tried to comb his hair just as many times, making a mess of the curls.

He nearly tripped over a pile of books, looking rumpled and pre-fucked by the time he buzzed John in, and unlocked his own front door.

Daniel was panicking. He hadn’t fucked anybody in a million years. In the last half of their relationship, he and Alice basically couldn’t even be in the same room having a conversation, let alone in the same room banging it out.

Thankfully, when John arrived, he did not leave Daniel much time to continue panicking. He placed the bag of takeout on the floor, and once the door was shut, he took Daniel’s face in his hands, kissing him.

His lips were plush and warm and his skin smooth. Daniel noticed that he tasted like toothpaste and smiled into the kiss, imagining him brushing his teeth beforehand.

Daniel snaked a hand around the taller man’s waist, feeling the hard muscle of his back through his thin denim shirt.

Daniel didn’t know how it happened, but suddenly John was seated in his old green TV chair and he was sprawled across his lap, legs dangling off either side.

John had one large hand on his ass, holding him in place. They were rocking together, kissing, completely delirious. Both of Daniel’s hands were behind his neck and shoulders, holding on as John rocked them together.

Both of them were hard.

Without saying anything, Daniel started fiddling with the fly on John’s slacks. They worked together to free his cock. It sprung about between them, of an average width but unusually long. It was beautiful and dark like every one of its owner’s graceful appendages.

Daniel wondered if he would even be able to suck it, or how it would be taking such a long cock.

Unbeknownst to him, he had voiced his concerns aloud and John laughed, low and dark.

“If you’re scared, princess, I can take care of you.”

Being called princess really did something for Daniel. No one had talked to him like that since he was a much younger man. Part of him wanted to say something snarky back, the other part wanted John to take care of him more than anything in the world.

“How gallant.” Daniel said instead, disentangling himself from John and standing on shaking, aching legs.

Worry flashed clearly in John’s eyes and Daniel took his hand.

“Come take care of me in bed. We’re too old to dry hump in the TV chair all night.”

John didn’t need to be told twice. He stepped out of his pants, shoes, and underwear, following Daniel into his bedroom half-naked.

John was a skilled lover, sucking Daniel off and taking him to the brink only to pull away so many times that he thought he was going to completely lose his mind by the end of the night.

Daniel was squirming, dripping sweat, and on the verge of insanity when he noticed that John had stopped.

He opened his eyes, ready to complain, when he noticed that John had picked Ama Deo’s glove up off of his nightstand.

He looked between Daniel and the glove, smirking and absolutely wicked.

Daniel could have died of embarrassment. His cock throbbed.

“Do you touch yourself with this?” Asked John and Daniel had no answer. Even though he had not yet done it, it had been on his mind. It was only a matter of time.

John placed the glove over his own naked arm, clearly there was no way his hand would ever fit inside it.

“A shame.” Said John, and instead wrapped the glove around Daniel’s cock, stroking up and down.

All of Daniel’s wires were crossed. While John lay in bed with him touching him, all he could see was Ama Deo’s haunting eyes and his pointed gloss-smeared lips whispering unintelligible sounds to him.

“Come for me Daniel.” Commanded John, but all Daniel could hear was Ama Deo.

“Come for me, now.” She whispered.

Daniel did, unable to disobey, his body convulsing with the pleasure of pure possession. He whined in agony and ecstasy as he painted their bellies with cum.

Daniel nearly passed out in the bed with John beside him, stroking his side, his arm, and his chest.

“Ssshhh.” Said John. “Shhhhh.”

Daniel leaned into his touch as the man carded his fingers through his sweat-damp salt and pepper curls.

Late in the night they shared their chinese food, half-naked in Daniel’s cluttered living room. He popped in a Ziggy Stardust cassette tape.

They talked of their lives, the little minutiae that only lovers really share. Daniel ended up jerking John off as he sat in his old green TV chair. John came halfway through Moonage Daydream, all over Daniel’s hand, arm, and stomach.

Reluctantly, John called a cab and took it home a little after midnight. They both had to be up for work in the morning, after all.

They shared a last, lingering kiss behind Daniel’s door before John took his leave. Daniel popped in the shower briefly and popped into bed, Ama Deo’s soiled glove resting on the pillow on the empty side of the bed.

Daniel curled his hand around it and drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 14

The rest of the week passed by torturously slowly for Daniel. All he could think about was going to The Apostle on Friday night to see Ama Deo…and John. 

He was in his office working on some last minute edits on Friday morning when Mel swung by.      

“Any news?” She asked. Daniel shook his head. He hadn’t heard anything back from Perth about the guys. 

“Damn, I thought you said that your pet cop worked fast.”          

“Look, you’re lucky if you can get more than housetrained out of em sometimes.” Responded Daniel, taking a minute to crack his neck and shoulders.                

Mel sighed. “Nothing about Ama Deo at all?”     

“Well, she’s on at The Apostle tonight.”      

“Are you going?” Asked Mel.    

“If I don’t hang myself by 5 today, probably. Why, you in?”    

Mel wound her thick red hair back around the pencil behind her head, keeping it all out of her face. “I would, but Tracy’s cousins are in town and we are showing them around. They wanted to go to Times Square–” 

“Gross.” Interjected Daniel. 

“Yeah, tell me about. Leave me some rope if you’re in a generous mood.”     

Daniel gave her a thumbs-up as she walked out of his office.         

The rest of the day seemed to pass in the span of a year. Daniel ducked out of the office at 4 pm and ran to catch the subway back to Brooklyn, as if that would make the evening come faster.   

He picked up a chopped cheese at the bodega by his building and didn’t eat it. He showered twice and scrubbed his skin until he was raw and pink. He changed outfits 3 times and spent over an hour pacing his apartment naked while his forgotten chopped cheese congealed on top of the pile of shit on his coffee table.  

He shaved his face and in his strange and distracted state, he nicked the underside of his chin.    

It brought to Daniel’s mind vivid images of Ama Deo sucking on his bloody lip and he groaned. Daniel could almost feel that soft, cold skin against his.  

Then, all of the sudden it was time, and he had about a 20 minute walk ahead of him.            

Daniel ate about a quarter of the cold and borderline cemented-shut chopped cheese before throwing it in the trash.    

He was a rich man now, he didn’t have to eat shit he didn’t feel like anymore. 

Though, a part of him did wrestle with the waste. 

He decided to let it go and instead focus on getting his ass to The Apostle.    

It was a cool spring night, and Daniel dressed in black jeans, black leather boots, a black leather blazer, and a black T-shirt.   

He was nervous enough, and at least if your whole outfit is black, you know that it works together, right?      

“Hard to fuck up an all black outfit,” Daniel muttered to himself as he locked his front door and headed down the hallway.    

He seemed to arrive at The Apostle almost the second he left his building. It was, indeed, an old church with a sloping roof and little green lawn. It was clearly made of old stone, and had two large stained glass windows on the front, which lights could be seen flashing through. 

Daniel saw Claire outside smoking a cigarette and walked up to say hello.       

They shared a little conversation and she informed him that Pussy Bow, Chichi Miami, Miss Cummings, Candy Kane, The Nun, and a drag king who just went by Dave were also performing that night.         

Daniel didn’t really give a shit about any of the other performers. He just wanted to see Ama Deo.     

“It’s still early, but it’s gonna get crazy. The Nun and Ama Deo are super popular.”        

That’s when it clicked for Daniel. 

Wasn’t Amadeo a name?            

“Isn’t Amadeo some kind of old school name, like, from the bible or something?” He asked and Claire lit up, always excited to talk about the performer. 

“Yeah. It’s Italian. It means lover of God.” 

“So, you’re telling me the two most popular drag queens are the most catholic ones?”      

Claire laughed at that. “Nothing brings the crowd in like religious trauma. Ama Deo actually does have crucifixion striptease. I have seen it twice.”    

Of course he does.  Thought Daniel.      

“Maybe she’ll do it tonight. Anyway, some of the guys are already inside.”         

Daniel headed in, shocked to see that they had done almost nothing to actually convert the Church into a performance venue. 

All of the pews were still there. The pulpit was still there, but a petite hispanic man in full drag, purple jumpsuit glimmering in the low light, was on stage cracking jokes about fucking white guys and how much she loved pink dick instead of a preist delivering mass.     

Daniel could tell that the crowd loved her, chanting ChiChi at her whenever she did something particularly funny. 

People were sitting in the pews drinking and laughing and kissing.  

There was something that could kind of be considered a bar along one of the walls. Daniel saw John talking to someone over there and came up. 

He was surprised when John spotted him and immediately wrapped an arm around him. Daniel felt small somehow, pressed against his side. 

John introduced him to the other man, a much younger man dressed in full glam, but Daniel couldn’t really absorb any of it. John felt so warm against him.       

Suddenly there was a loud scream and Chichi Miami fell over behind the pulpit. The crowd laughed and cheered from the pews, throwing money at the stage. She pulled some of the stuffing out of her bra and starting shoving the money in.  

Daniel couldn’t help but laugh.       

There was a little pause, some more conversation that Daniel barely engaged in, and then on went The Nun.                 

She was a very fat man, with a full beard, in the tiniest and sluttiest fresh-from-a-porn-set nun costume that Daniel had ever seen. 

More people started filling in the pews, and they went absolutely insane when she started to dance.  

Daniel could not deny that he respected it. He would never have the balls to show up anywhere in public half naked like that.  

When John handed him a Diet Coke and said that they should grab a seat, Daniel nodded and followed him.    

They sat next to a lesbian couple who were so busy looking into eachother’s eyes that Daniel doubted they even knew where they were.    

John put his arm around him again and Daniel leaned into him. 

“You’re quiet, tonight.” John whispered into his ear and Daniel shivered, taking a sip of his diet coke to stall. 

“I guess even assholes need a day off sometimes.” Was all he said, and John laughed.            

“I always enjoy that about people like you.” Daniel stayed quiet, waiting for him to go on. “You have all this bark but no bite.”      

“Blow me,” Said Daniel automatically, before remembering the context of it all. He didn’t blush, but he felt like he could. “Is that how you think of me? Like a little dog?”   

John responded by biting his ear. Daniel shivered. 

“I’m displaying dominance.” Whispered John into the exact same ear and the instinct to flee warred with the instinct to let John fuck him raw over the back of a church pew.   

I’m so fucked. Thought Daniel.  

Chapter 15

Daniel had nothing at all against the Drag King who just went by Dave, or Miss Cummings, but he really just wanted to see Ama Deo.      

Over the course of the night Daniel noticed the other queens coming down into the crowd to drink and mingle after their sets, and wondered why exactly Ama Deo never would.     

He wondered if there was some kind of drag queen dressing room he could sneak off into and catch a glimpse of her.       

Finally, when the MC announced that she was up next, the room exploded in cheers.   

Their bellowing rang off the ceiling, and Daniel realized that The Apostle was truly packed. He had never seen a church so full in his life.   

Suddenly, all the lights in the entire church went off. It was pitch black. A few people screamed. 

Daniel himself jumped and John took the opportunity to pull him closer and rub soothing circles into his mid back. 

The lights above the stage went back on, revealing the long lean limbs of Ama Deo.   

Daniel couldn’t fucking breathe, and when he noticed what Ama Deo was wearing he almost had a heart attack. 

The performer wore nothing except thigh-high black boots, a black thong, and a leather jacket. 

His favorite leather jacket.     

Daniel nearly choked on his own tongue.    

Ama Deo said nothing as some simple violin music began to swell, simply perching on top of the pulpit with incredible grace and balance, spreading his thighs for the crowd, who screamed.    

Daniel’s throat felt dry. Even soft, there was a noticeable bulge barely contained by that black thong.     

Ama Deo seemed to stretch, somehow commanding even in barely any clothing at all, spread across the pulpit of an old church, half-naked.    

Daniel watched in awe as Ama Deo moved this way and that, teasingly semi-removing his jacket in what seemed like a thousand ways before ultimately keeping it on. The crowd howled.     

Coming off an intricate spin he stopped and froze fully bent over, incredibly round ass displayed to the audience, who started throwing money on the stage. Daniel couldn’t look away.     

Ama Deo looked back to the audience and winked, his enchanting eyes glinting in the low light. Daniel felt like he was looking right at him. And only him. 

Get a grip Molloy Get a grip Molloy get a– 

His panicked internal monologue was interrupted by John’s hand on his thigh. Daniel put his own hand on top of it.          

Daniel watched in complete awe as Ama Deo swayed across the stage, perfect ass peeking out beneath the edge of his slightly too large jacket.     

That was when he finally took it off and took it in his arms, acting as if the man wearing it was behind him, grinding on him and touching him and teasing his nipples, which looked to be pierced with little diamonds.     

Daniel was starting to get hard. And he knew that John could feel it. He wanted to be back in that jacket rubbing up behind Ama Deo so badly that an ache formed deep in the pit of his stomach.      

Ama Deo swayed against the jacket he had wrapped around himself so evocatively that Daniel could feel the ghost of his divine body against his all over again, like he had weeks before.      

“Did you miss me?” Asked Ama Deo, lounging all over the pulpit like a cat in heat, sprawled out for all to appreciate every last inch of him. The crowd screamed.       

Through those screams, that’s when Daniel heard that voice all over again, spoken clear and plain as day, though Ama Deo’s lips did not move. 

I missed you, Daniel.     

Daniel felt sick. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. His leg was shaking something awful. So much that John leaned closer to ask if he was ok.    

Daniel mumbled that he needed to take a walk and fled from the Church. Before John could follow he ran around to the back of the building, and saw that only one door was open. It had to be the one that Ama Deo would exit through when he left.      

Daniel waited 10 minutes. 15 minutes. 20 minutes. Eventually he could see the light inside the building turn back on reflecting on the lawn, meaning that Ama Deo’s set was over.    

The man simply never came out, even after 20 more minutes had passed. 

Daniel circled the building a few times, noting that there were only 2 exits and Ama Deo did not leave through either of them.   

“I’m acting fucking insane!” Daniel muttered angrily to himself, deep in misery before suddenly seeing one of the back doors of the church slam open on the night breeze. 

Daniel gasped with delight only to see no one enter and no one exit.   

The night air blew past him, carrying that familiar scent. 

Silk. Cold steel. Oud. Sweetness. Something floral. Something metallic. Masculine. Feminine. Frigid. Strange.   

The night air seemed to kiss his skin, card through his hair with long, cold fingers. 

Daniel shivered. 

Almost as soon as the sensation visited him it vanished, the back door of the church still swinging open and closed, back and forth before coming to stillness.  

Daniel blinked up at the sky, smog obscuring most of the stars. He traced his hands over his cheek and through his hair, which the strange wind had caressed. 

“What the fuck?” He asked nobody at all before pulling his jacket tighter around himself and heading back toward the church.  

"Am I chasing some kind of sex witch or something? That would be cool. One can only hope." 

He walked back into The Church to see Candy Kane on stage, humping a giant prop candy cane. Ama Deo was nowhere to be seen.   

If she didn’t go out the front or the back where the fuck is she? 

John was standing with Claire and some other people by the front doors. Daniel came up to join them, standing beside John, who put an arm around him again. Daniel barely even reacted, not molding his body to lean against him, and John let him go. 

“Are you ok, Daniel?” He asked, all concern. Daniel couldn’t help but wonder why he let him disappear for almost an hour without looking for him if he was really all that choked up about it.      

“Yeah, sorry. I get migraines sometimes and I thought I felt one coming on. I think I’m gonna head out.” 

Lies are always simple.  

Daniel couldn’t help but notice that John’s first reaction was pure annoyance, before he smoothed it out.    

“Are you sure you are ok? Do you need any help getting home?”        

Daniel waved him off, said good night to the others, and headed to the main avenue in search of a cab.        

Chapter 16

Notes:

It's my birthdayyyy!!!! Celebrating with a lil update. Thanks for reading<3

Daniel spent almost all of Satuday and Sunday out of the house for no real reason. If John called him it just so happened that he wouldn’t be able to pick up. 

Oops .   

He walked the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan and took the ferry to Staten Island. He left early and came home late, ignoring the violent flashing of his answering machine.    

He knew that it was probably his mother, Alice, and now John too. Instead, he spent his time walking and drinking coffee and nibbling on various little snacks in cafes and food trucks.  

He wandered with the heavy, aimless gait of one who is out only to escape their own home. 

Sunday evening found him in Chinatown, sitting at a table alone in a restaurant that didn’t even have a sign out front or letters by the door. A pot of tea and plate of lamb dumplings that the he was barely eating sat in front of him, cooling.   

The inside of the restaurant was small, dark, and sticky. It had a nearly all red interior with red faux-leather booths that looked like they had been getting gnawed on for 20 years, and smoke curling up against the violently yellow lighting peeking out of the peeling ceiling.        

It was then that Daniel saw a figure dressed in black walking toward the counter.   

They were slender, androgynous, and moved with a preternatural animal grace.    

Lush dark curls poured down his neck, resting against sharp shoulders.       

Daniel watched through the smoke, catching an unmistakable profile. 

Ama Deo.   

Daniel watched as he was guided toward a booth across from his, taking note that there was no way it could be Ama Deo. Instead of golden eyes they were a simple black-brown, common amongst people of his complexion.        

Daniel still couldn’t look away. Amber eyes or brown eyes, the man was striking. He looked like a high fashion model in his black turtleneck and jeans, his limbs impossibly long. 

The shirt was tight-fitting enough that Daniel could appreciate the architecture of his body. He would recognize those arms, that long neck, and that beautiful chest anywhere. 

He watched as the man sat a booth alone, just like him, seemingly oblivious to Daniel’s scrutiny.   

Daniel looked away, thinking about how he should approach him. What was his attack plan? What should he even say? 

He knew that it simply had to be Ama Deo. Even completely un-made-up and in simple black like any other man he was ethereal. He seemed to radiate a strange power. It was almost like he had his own gravitational pull that Daniel was helpless to resist.   

Daniel glanced over again to watch as he lit a cigarette. He burnished it as if it were an extension of his exquisite fingers. His first inhale was so sensuous that Daniel could feel it from across the room. 

Daniel checked his own pockets to see if he had an emergency pack on him just for such situations. He found a pack with only one left, and decided to stop thinking about it and just fucking go for it.     

He walked across the small restaurant, passing by two tables of smokers on his way.      

“Hey, sorry, can I steal a light?” He asked, and suddenly the man was standing in front of him. The room seemed to melt away as he stood before him, his own cigarette between his lips.       

Daniel could only watch, seemingly frozen as those beautiful bone-like fingers placed his own cigarette between his lips. Daniel held it there, watching as the man leaned to press the tip of his lit cigarette against Daniel’s own unlit one. 

“Inhale.”    

That was it! The familiar voice! Daniel breathed in with the joy of someone whose entire universe had narrowed to a single focus, all things sliding into place. 

He watched as his own cigarette started to smolder.       

It was if the earth had stopped moving beneath their feet, the pair of them frozen together in a moment of unbearable intimacy. 

Daniel felt lost in those dark eyes, drowning in sensuality past the point of death.       

Then, suddenly, the moment passed. 

The noise of the restaurant returned. The smell of sizzling meat and cigarette smoke smacked into Daniel like a car crash. 

He looked into the booth and the man behind Ama Deo’s glamour was gone. The booth where he had just been was empty. 

Daniel wondered if he was genuinely going insane, until he looked down at the lit cigarette smoking between his fingers.       

Daniel blinked at it as if it was an alien thing, as if he had never seen a lit cigarette before, before slamming down enough cash to cover the dumplings and tea he hadn’t touched at his table and storming out of the restaurant.    

That night, Daniel feared and hoped in equal measure that he would dream of Ama Deo again. 

After a peaceful, dreamless night, he awoke Monday morning in the worst mood of all time.    

He got ready in the most passive-aggressive manner possible, barely cleaning himself and not bothering to shave, leaving a salt and pepper stubble.    

He got to work late on purpose just because he was so pissed off. Co-workers took one look at him and decided to let him be.      

He holed himself up in his office and looked at the blinking answering machine like it was his sworn enemy. 

Something about Daniel Molloy, he hated fucking returning calls on the best of days. 

On shit-fuck Mondays it was more likely that he would throw his phone into the Hudson.             

Regardless, he pressed play. 

Chapter 17

Daniel was quick to realize that it had been over a week since he had listened to his messages, and there were a lot of them. If anyone at this fuck ass golf periodical knew anything they would probably can him soon.       

Most of the messages made him feel like his brain was slowly turning to soup in his head, but then came the one he had been waiting for.   

Perth. 

“Hey, uh, Molloy, I looked into what you asked and it’s..uh…it’s really something.”   

Daniel felt his heart skip a beat in the long ‘uhhhh.’  

Fucking bingo. 

“Anyway, call me back and we can set up lunch for next week. You’re buying.”        

Daniel didn’t even finish listening to his messages. He called Perth, only to reach his answering machine. 

“God fucking damnit!” Daniel moaned, waiting for the recording of Perth to stop playing so he could leave a message. 

“Perth, it’s Molloy. I can do Tuesday or Wednesday, lunch at 1. I’m thinking Klein’s in Midtown. Let me know.”        

Daniel knew that unlike him, Perth was a responsible adult who would get back to him quickly. He strategically decided to camp out in his office and wait for the return call.    

He didn’t expect it come 15 minutes later.         

“Perth?” He said instantly, trying not to sound as ecstatic as he felt.    

“Yeah, Molloy. Klein’s sounds good. For all this mess you better get me a corned beef special so fat that it instantly kills me.”       

“Instant coronary by corned beef, got it.”         

“What are you even working on, brother? This is the weirdest shit I have ever seen in my life.”

“Don’t fucking say that and make me wait, you’re killing me.” Daniel said, knowing that Perth loved these games as much as him.       

“Alright, Klein’s tomorrow at 1 pm, then?”     

“Yessir.” Replied Daniel instantly and Perth laughed. 

“You really want to know what I’ve been up to, huh?”    

“More than anything in the world.” Insisted Daniel, and Perth laughed again.     

Perth kept him on the line for a little while longer, talking trash. Daniel pretended to be interested to maintain appearances and keep their rapport going strong.   

The rest of the day passed like complete torture for Daniel. He said almost nothing in either of his meetings, and afterward was taken aside by his boss and asked why he didn’t give a fuck about his job, in a far more corporate and polite manner.  

Daniel blamed seasonal allergies because he really didn’t give a fuck whatsoever and his boss simply gave up and walked away.   

What? Was he supposed to tell his boss that he was being haunted by a gorgeous evil drag queen with magic powers? And all he cared about was abusing his police connections to stalk her? So he could 1) get his favorite jacket back and 2) rail her to death?   

Thinking about it like that did put some pep in Daniel’s step. He stopped at the bodega by his building to grab a Diet Coke and a turkey hoagie on his way home, heading up into his apartment only to have his mood ruined by the blinking answering machine light.    

He deleted the messages from his mother, and the multiple messages from Alice. First she begged him to get his records back. Then, after a few messages, she left one screaming that she threw them out and cursed him out for ignoring her after years of marriage.     

There was a message from his oldest daughter, Caroline, asking that he come to her 11th birthday party in a small little voice, like she didn’t believe he would really come at all. 

That one hurt.     

It hurt even more when Daniel realized that her party and her birthday had already passed, and he had said nothing to her at all.      

After some telemarketers there was Alice again, telling him that she couldn’t believe that she was still buying her daughters presents and pretending that they were from them both.        

“What the fuck is wrong with you Daniel James Molloy? Why did you beg me to have fucking children with you? Why did you beg me to marry you? WHY-”        

Daniel moved the phone away from his ear until the screaming stopped and the message beeped. Onto the next. 

It was John.   

Daniel fought the urge to strangle himself to death with the phone cord.        

John started to ask if Daniel was ok. The second he started expressing worry for him Daniel paused the machine and put his head in his hands. 

“Bullshit, I was outside for a half hour at least. I could have been fucking kidnapped in that time and you didn’t fucking bother.”      

Daniel bit into his turkey hoagie, but barely tasted it.

Chapter 18

That night Daniel dreamed of graceful brown hands around his neck choking him to the brink of passing out, only to stop right before his vision went black time and time again. 

Again and again the cruel hands slid around his throat, squeezing and squeezing. 

Daniel writhed in those hands, helpless as cold pointed lips pressed against his own, kissing him softly. Those soft lips and relentless hands drove him insane. 

Through it all those molten amber eyes loomed large above him, like a pair of burning suns in an endless inky sky.          

Daniel felt suspended in his own body, his soul hammering against his ribcage, as those lips parted above him and a thick rivulet of spit and blood leached into his own mouth. 

The hands around his throat loosened, encouraging him to swallow. 

Daniel did and felt like every inch of his body was burning with otherworldly electricity. Those hands remained on his chest, still pressing him down against dark purple sheets.    

“You’ve done so well, my love.” Said Ama Deo, voice sliding across his hot, sweat-soaked skin like a cool breeze. 

The praise settled in Daniel’s stomach and filled him with embarrassing warmth. 

“Don’t I always give you everything you wish?”               

Daniel found himself agreeing in an utterly wrecked voice. He sounded like a man who had been strangled almost to the point of death. 

A young man who had almost been strangled to the point of death. 

Daniel looked up at his own reflection in those impossibly large eyes and was shocked to see what looked like a full head of dark hair, without a speck of grey, and an unlined face. 

He looked down at his hands, still soft and young. His nails jagged from when he used to bite them. He looked down to see that his own chest was hairless, where wiry salt and pepper curls had had been for at least 5 years.     

Jagged bites that looked like they belonged to an animal decorated his smooth pale chest, blood still ran from some of them.         

He watched as Ama Deo, still fully clothed in a simple white button up shirt and black slacks, knelt down to lick at the bites on his torso. 

Pleasure and pain spiked though Daniel and he woke up in his Brooklyn apartment with a start, screaming into the dark of the night with an achingly hard cock.         

Before Daniel could think he was furiously jerking off, already dripping wet.     

“What-the-fuck-what-the-fuck-what-the-fuck?” He repeated furiously as he savagely stroked himself with one hand, the other around his throat, a teasing ghost of where Ama Deo’s punishing grip had teased him with sweet death. 

The image of Ama Deo licking at the swollen blood-red bites on his chest like a kitten lapping up milk and a hand barely touching his balls was all it took for Daniel to cum.       

He nearly howled as he spilled into his fist, his vision whiting out as his body convulsed, twisted in his bedsheets.    

“What the fuck?” He whispered again, before passing out.     

 

Chapter 19

Tuesday morning Daniel awoke feeling languid and satisfied in ways he had not in a long time. He nearly skipped through his morning routine, skipped to the subway, and skipped into his office almost 10 whole minutes early.     

Several co-workers noticed his unusually good mood, and Daniel didn’t even snap at them or make some dickhead sarcastic comments at them for pointing it out.                      

He got through his daily edits without issues and zoomed over to Klein’s when the time came.    

He was happy to see Perth already sitting there, balder and more jacked than ever, thankfully in plainclothes and not his police uniform. 

Even years later, Daniel still got a little unpleasant jolt whenever he came across a cop in uniform.        

Daniel also noticed that there was a pair of massive corned beef specials sitting at the table and two Diet Cokes. 

Perth was already chowing down with the grim determination of somebody in a high stakes eating competition. 

Daniel sat across from him at the green plastic table. 

“Leave some for the rest of the city.” He said instead of hello, surprising his friend, who nearly choked on his sandwich.      

“What a way to talk to somebody who just did some big favors for you!” Said Perth, after he finished choking. 

“You know, I’m kind of a dick. That’s my charm.”              

“Sure, charm. That’s what they call it.” Returned Perth. “Anyway, let’s get down to brass tax.” 

Daniel’s interest was piqued. Perth could spend hours beating around the bush. Whatever he had found out was clearly weighing on him.       

“Ok, so first off, the private eye you told me to look into, Jim Cairnes…that man has actually vanished. He is long gone, Molloy.”     

Daniel stayed silent, waiting for him to continue. 

“The last time anybody saw him he was entering that apartment building in Harlem. When he had been pronounced missing long enough for the building to clear out his apartment for the next idiot, they found out that there was almost nothing in there.”  

“Wait, what do you mean?” Asked Daniel. 

“It had already been cleared out except for a coffin. There was almost nothing else. Just some knives and weird occult objects. A fucking goblet. No furniture. Like he hadn’t even been living there.” Perth looked disturbed. 

“Was there anything in the coffin? Or who has it now?”            

“It was empty. And god knows who has it now. Probably it’s at a pawn shop or something. You know how landlords are.”      

“Yeah, maybe the landlord kept it to sleep in.” Said Daniel. Perth chuckled a little, but it was hollow. 

They paused for awhile, each eating their sandwiches.    

“And, what about the other guy, Adam Lee?” Daniel finally asked. He watched as Perth finished chewing and his mouth made a hard uncomfortable line.   

“I..uhh…so, I found him.” 

Daniel’s leg started to vibrate under the table and he had to stop it. “Where is he?”     

Perth leaned forward, lowering his voice. “In the fucking nut hut, Molloy.”            

“So, you are telling me, Jim Cairnes disappeared, leaving only an empty coffin and Halloween decorations in his apartment, and the guy who hired him is in a mental hospital?”         

Perth nodded, returning to his sandwich. 

“So, what happened there?”             

Perth looked incredibly uncomfortable. “According to the reports, he tried to eat his maid.”      

“What the fuck do you mean?”       

“One day she came in to clean and he bit her fucking ear off!” Perth whispered. “When he was arrested, he tried to bite the cops too. A fucking maniac! Real life Hannibal Fucking Faggot Lecter!” Perth crossed his arms.      

Daniel couldn’t fucking believe it. He had not felt this alive in ages. “Can you tell me where they sent Adam Lee?”                 

“He’s at Holmewood Gardens out in Cherry Hill.”    

“Fucking New Jersey?” Asked Daniel and Perth nodded. 

They sat in silence for a little while, while Perth demolished his sandwich and Daniel picked at his own. 

“What shit is this Molloy? What are you looking into with all these coffins and crazy fags?”                 

“I’ll let you know when the article comes out.” Said Daniel. 

Perth shook his head. “I am not interested in reading trash like that. Not at all.”       

Daniel smiled into his Diet Coke.   

Chapter 20

Daniel spent his week biding his time. First, he called Jim Cairnes’ old apartment building to find out what had happened to the coffin they found.  

He spent a few days getting jerked around by the building administration before finding out that it was still in the basement of the building, because they didn’t really know what to do with it. 

Daniel was able to book an appointment with the building administrator to see the coffin on the following Monday evening. The waiting game on that one was driving him absolutely insane.    

He also called Holmewood Gardens to find out about their visiting hours, and was trying to work it into his work schedule. He thought of maybe even taking a sick day and heading out there.     

Fuck it, it’s not like any of those golf courses were gonna go anywhere, right?            

His friday night passed uneventfully, and largely uninterrupted. He mostly just paced his apartment lying to himself about cleaning and waiting for Monday night to come. He popped up onto the roof to enjoy a cigarette and watch the sunset and was joined by his favorite neighbor,  Carol for some grandmotherly roasting and prodding into his life. 

Daniel was all for it. They talked long past twilight, and into the dark. 

Bits and pieces of his dreams reoccured to him as he did his mundane daily tasks. He thought of seeing his own young, hairless chest bloody and bitten and bruised.    

Halfway through doing the worst job at vaccuuming imaginable, he paused and went to the mirror in his room. Daniel ripped off his old Jethro Tull tee as if the very fabric had burned him. 

He looked at his body in the mirror, still quite thin, but with a little belly, much older and much hairier than the body in his dreams.       

He traced his fingers over his chest, seeing the old scars through his salt and pepper hair. 

Bite marks. 

Daniel felt sick. He felt dizzy. How had he never thought of all those scars before?  

Or at least he hadn’t in a long time. 

There was the one on his neck, the one that never quite seemed to heal. He slipped out of his old gray sweat pants, naked underneath. 

There were scars between his thighs, under his arms, and even on his ass. 

Daniel searched his mind for what caused them, and came up with nothing. He was ringed with faded bite marks like he had been violently chewed on like a dog toy in his youth.                   

It was probably something fucked up that happened during one of my many benders.   

After all, not remembering large portions of his younger years was kind of the Daniel Molloy special. No one really remembered the 70s who was actually there anyway, right? 

Right? 

Chapter 21

Saturday morning began with Daniel crawling out of bed, largely against his will, drawn to the telephone by the brutal sound of it ringing. 

In his waking life, Daniel was a master of ignoring phone calls. Half asleep Daniel’s only thought was to do whatever it took to make the ringing stop. In a fugue state, he padded naked across his apartment, almost tripping on several things and kicking them across the floor. One was a mug from Disney World which shattered against the wall. 

Daniel was completely naked except for one sock.  

Daniel cursed at it before sitting on the floor naked beside the little old wooden table that his telephone was on. By the time he sat down next to it, it had already stopped ringing. 

Daniel sighed with relief, only for the phone to start ringing again. Unbeknownst to him, it had been ringing for 20 minutes while he slept.   

Daniel picked it up with the intention of saying the nastiest shit he could think of and slamming it down in the caller’s ear, only to be halted by the sound of sobs.    

A woman was openly weeping into the phone. His first thought was Alice, but Daniel knew the sound of Alice breaking into pieces better than anyone, and this was not his ex-wife. 

His “Fuck you” died on his wicked tongue instantly. 

“Uhhh….hello?” He said again and the sobs continued. “If this is a prank call it’s really fucked up.” He said, but there was no venom in it. 

“Is…is this Daniel Molloy?” It was a woman’s voice, one he had never heard before.   

“Uh, yes. Who is this?”        

“Kim Delaney, John Delaney’s wife.”    

Daniel sat perfectly still, naked on the floor of his house, not even daring to breathe. 

John Delaney’s wife? 

Daniel stayed silent, waiting for Mrs. Delaney to fill the emptiness.  

“Were you one of his patients?” Asked Mrs. Delaney.      

“Just for a session or two.” Daniel said quickly. “Why?”    

Mrs. Delaney only continued to sob. 

“What happened? I didn’t know your husband that well, but he seemed like a nice guy to me. Did something happen?”    

“They found him dead in one of THOSE clubs last weekend!” She burst into tears all over again and Daniel waited it out.      

“My John was not one of THOSE people!” Wailed Kimberly and Daniel found his sympathy running thin. 

“What are they saying killed him?” Asked Daniel, already feeling boredom itch at him. He was sure he already knew, but evidence is always necessary.  

Daniel started to squirm his foot against the floor, playing with the sock until he turned it around to discover a hole in it.      

“The coroner said something sucked all the blood out of him!” Wailed Kimberly and Daniel stopped squirming his toes, a smile curling his lips.        

Bingo.

“They couldn’t even test his blood because there was none left in there!”  

Daniel said nothing.  

“I thought one of his patients did it! So I started going through his patient phone book and making calls. Turns out he has the number of every gay man in the fucking city. Including yours, Daniel Molloy .” 

Shit.

Daniel sighed. “Ma’am, I’m sorry for your loss, but I hardly know your husband. And I don’t think calling up all the town crazies and accusing them of being the Flatiron Fag Chupacabra is going to fix anything. It will probably just put you in danger if one of them actually did it.”     

“I know that you were fucking him!” Wailed Mrs. Delaney. “You were in his book of patients but he NEVER had an appointment scheduled with you! Not in a single calender he ever had!” 

Fuck. 

“There’s a hundred names and numbers in his fucking patient book and half of them don’t even know where his office is. Which one of you did it? Why did you want to destroy our family? Is your own disgusting life not enough for you?”  

Daniel began blindly searching the cluttered surfaces around him for a cigarette.  

“If you were really his patient tell me where his office is!”  

“If your huband wasn’t one of THOSE people how was he out there gargling my balls at the same time? Pick a story Mrs. Delaney .”         

She sobbed. 

“Sorry I went to a few therapy sessions after a bad divorce with your closeted disaster of a husband. Wonderful to know the same guy who was humping half of Manhattan behind his wife’s back is charging out the ass for his advice.” 

She let out an enraged wail before hanging up the phone.    

Daniel placed his phone back down on the receiver and let his head rest against the wall. He spotted a cigarette sticking out from beneath his couch and grabbed for it, dusting it off before reaching for the lighter next to his phone.   

“Sucked out all his blood, huh?” Daniel asked no one as he lit up, inhaling and letting the smoke curl through his insides. 

“If only somebody knew something.”    

Daniel let the back of his head rest against the wall. 

Chapter 22

The Building Administrator of Harlem Jim Cairnes’ building was a plump woman in her mid 50s with a shock of box-dyed auburn hair that could rival Ziggy Stardust. She made Daniel wait outside the building for almost a half hour. 

He had smoked his last cigarettes, mostly out of nervous excitement, feeling wound tighter and tighter by the minute. By the time she appeared, he was nearly bouncing in place and the sun had nearly set. Daniel had bruised his own leg bouncing his mostly empty leather satchel against it.   

“Good evening Mr. Malloy,” She said, sounding less than pleased to see him. Daniel wondered if she said his last name wrong on purpose.“I’m Leonora Brown. You can tell me how much that coffin is worth?”     

Daniel blinked. Had he told her that he was some kind of antiques expert to get a look at the coffin? He didn’t remember. 

“Yup.” He said after a beat. “Usually I specialize in Edwardian and Post-Montenegrin stuff, but I could give you a ballpark.”         

She clearly didn’t know what he meant. Daniel didn’t either. 

“Great. I have no idea what to do with it or what I could even sell it for. Should I just put it on Craigslist? I kind of just want it out of there, to be honest. I hate it. It’s got the devil all over it.”    

“Well, let me see what I can do for you.” He said and gestured for her to lead the way.       

Daniel was at first taken aback by the musty smell of the inside of the apartments. Everything in there looked like absolute shit, with paint peeling off the sickly yellow walls that looked like they may have been white at some point.     

He followed Leonora Brown through a door that looked like it was about to snap off it’s hinges at any moment down a flight of creaking (borderline screaming) stairs that looked like they were right out of a horror movie.  

Daniel felt glad that he was behind her for a minute, before shaking himself a little for being such a huge pussy.      

Leonora’s hand went to the wall at the bottom of the stairs. She flicked a switch several time before one light in the entire basement went on, a naked bulb over what was unmistakably a large black coffin.       

“Holy shit,” Said Daniel, and Leonora looked at him suspiciously. She probably thought that antiques dealers didn’t say shit. Do they? Daniel didn’t know.          

“You go,” Said Leonora. “I am going to stay back here. I don’t like being near it.”         

“No problem,” Said Daniel as he made sure to measure his steps and not skip excitedly up toward the coffin. 

What would one of those antiques guys do right now? 

He thought to himself and placed his hand on his chin, trying to look thoughtful as he circled the coffin slowly.         

“It has quite stark flying buttresses.” He called out to Leonora, not quite sure what those are but remembering reading the phrase in something related to design. 

“Great.” Replied Leonora, clearly unimpressed and not even wanting to be down there. 

“Can I open it up?” Asked Daniel and Leonora looked sick.       

“Yeah, but um, I heard someone calling me. I’ll meet you outside when you’re done.”   

Before Daniel could say anything she was running back up the stairs. The basement door slammed shut behind her.    

Daniel breathed for a second, standing on the edge of the circle of light cast by the naked bulb on the ceiling. He took in the details of the outside of the coffin. 

It was a large traditional coffin, narrower at the feet and made of almost blackened reddish wood. It was heavy and grand, looking like the kind of thing you would need a truck to move.     

Mostly, the smooth wood gleamed on its own, but tiny angels and demons were carved into the sides and on the top, which appeared to be eating eachother.   

Daniel reached out a hand and touched it, brushing away the images that flashed behind his eyes of himself laying inside it, a younger him with paler, softer, unlined hands fucking with an…internal lock?       

Daniel blinked away the images. Who the fuck puts a lock inside a coffin?    

He turned his attention to seeing if he could open it. The lid was heavy, but loose enough to nudge up. He used all his strength to force open the lid, losing control and having it fall open on its hinges.     

It was lined with sky blue silk, where there was a clear indentation, showing that a body had been there for a long time.     

Daniel could see from the impression that whoever it was either had no arms, or laid with their arms crossed and their left ankle crossed over their right.    

Then, Daniel noticed the impossible. 

His fucking leather jacket. 

Daniel blinked and rubbed his eyes. 

“What the fuck?”  

He ripped the jacket out of the coffin. 

He looked at the label. It was from Love and Haight. The very same one he’d pulled out of a dumpster in San Francisco a million years ago. It was in his size. There was a lighter in the left pocket and a packet of mayonnaise and $20 in the left.   

He pressed it to his nose.    

Silk. Cold steel. Oud. Sweetness. Something floral. Something metallic. Masculine. Feminine. Frigid. Strange.   

Daniel felt the urge to scream.     

His attention turned back to the inside of the coffin, where there were indeed several latches halfway down, where he had seen the locks in his mind. 

Where he had definitely felt them before with own hands.       

He touched them again and could hear his own voice.    

“Babe, let me out!”      

And the muffled return of “You know very well it only opens from the inside,” from that unmistakeable voice.   

Ama Deo.   

Daniel jammed his own jacket into his satchel and dropped it on the ground, deciding to do one final test.     

With incredible effort, he laid himself in the coffin and closed the lid on top of himself.     

It was pure darkness; soft and comfortable.    

Daniel imagined that this must be how it felt to be in the womb. He wiggled his feet, feeling the fabric of his shoes slide against the silky interior.     

Without thinking, as if the memory of it was in his very bones, he locked and unlocked the coffin from the inside, sliding the latches into place in the dark in an instant.        

Daniel knew that he had definitely been inside this fucking coffin before. 

He rolled over onto his stomach, testing the spaciousness. Two people (or people shaped things) could easily fit in there.        

He could feel it, cold naked skin on top of him, pressing him down into the silk, clawed hands in his hair, accidentally scratching the shell of his ear and drawing blood.     

His suprised curse was swallowed as a hungry mouth latched onto the shallow wound, drawing his blood in.   

“What does it taste like?”     

Daniel heard his own voice, needy, whiny, pathetic, less weathered by time and cigarettes. 

“Holy wine…and cocaine…”          

“Hey, man, I told you, I’m not using anymore! I just need you.”  

Daniel drove his clenched fists against the silk, trying and failing to banish the thoughts that were drowning him. 

He couldn’t deny it…laying alone in the dark he was getting horny. Shame burned within him even as that unmistakable voice whispering to him about holy wine and cocaine caused a different heat to curl within him with cruel and insistent fingers.                

Daniel locked and unlocked the coffin again, struggling to pop off the lid with shaking hands, but eventually getting it done. 

He was greeted by an ear piercing scream from Leonora Brown.       

“WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING, MR. MALLOY!” She bellowed, looking to be on the verge of tears. 

Daniel simply sat up in the coffin, smiling at her. “You have something very special here.” He said and she looked like she was about to faint.   

“This coffin is made of pure wood. Likely oak. It’s heavy, and old. At least 100 years. This is a true vintage coffin with hand-done workmanship.”        

“WHY ARE YOU INSIDE IT!?” Howled Leonora and Daniel gestured for her to come closer. She shook her head. 

“Please, I promise it’s relevant.”   

She stepped forward, looking like she was being beckoned forth to the gallows. 

“Tell me, what do you see?” Daniel asked, gesturing toward the internal little latches.   

“A grown man playing around in a coffin!”  

Daniel sighed and got out of the coffin, fighting the urge to stay in its soft familiarity and dream. 

“Ms. Brown,” Daniel started again, seriously. “This coffin has been…modified in an incredibly odd way, and it could either harm or help its value, depending on the consumer.”              

She said nothing, wiping a tear from her eyes with a long red nail.     

“That’s why I was in the coffin. This coffin is the first one I have ever seen that locks from the inside.”    

Ms. Brown looked visibly paler. She took a step back. “L-locks from the inside?”
  “Yeah. It locks from the inside.” Daniel repeated. “I can show y–” 

“Please leave!” Leonora appeared to be on the edge of a panic atack. “Get out now!” 

Daniel didn’t need to be told twice. He sped out of the building with his heavier satchel slamming against his already bruised leg. 

Chapter 23

Daniel spent the rest of the week torturing himself thinking about whether or not he should take a sick day or not to go visit Adam Lee in the mental hospital in Cherry Hill or not.   

He ended up just shuffling into work, paralyzed with fear and taunted by increasingly violent and erotic dreams featuring Ama Deo. 

What the fuck did it all mean?     

Daniel appeared hard at work at his desk, taking notes. But he was actually trying to work out what the fuck was going on.   

Was that Ama Deo’s coffin? Why was his jacket in there? Why is the fucking coffin baked into his muscle memory? Why was it in Jim Cairnes’ House? Daniel began working out a timeline to try and make sense of any of it.   

How deep did things go between him and whatever the drag queen is, and why can't he remember anything? 

What did she do to him? 

Pre-winter 1995: Adam Lee hires Jim Cairnes to find Ama Deo 

Winter 1995: Jim Cairnes Disappears and Adam Lee attacks his maid and gets sent to a mental hospital 

Spring 1995: I see Ama Deo for the first time, hunt begins. I am having either vivid nightmares or memories. I remember her coffin. I remember her voice. She took my jacket and left it in her coffin for me to find.     

Did I know Ama Deo in the 70s, but I don’t remember? Does she already know me? Why does she sleep in a coffin that locks from the inside? Why the fuck was it in Jim Cairnes’ house? Did she kill John? Thos can't literally be some crazy vampire shit, can it?          

“Daniel-”    

Daniel was taken out of the zone with a violent gasp, dropped back into his present reality in his shitty office and at his stupid magazine job.              

“Jesus, sorry Molloy.” It was Mel, leaning in his doorway. “You look like shit, are you ok?”                 

Daniel didn’t even know what to say. 

“Is something going on with Alice?” She asked and Daniel nodded. 

“Yeah, sorry. I don’t really want to get into it. I’m just in a fuck ass mood today.”          

The silence between them was far from empty.   

“Well, you’re gonna love this news then. Boss sent me to get you for the weekly meeting.”   

Daniel groaned like a child being forced to get out of bed early for school.      

“Shut up, Molloy.”    

Daniel blew a raspberry at her. “Why does he always send you to get me? What are you, my mom?”      

“Unfortunately, he has decided that I’m your handler.”    

“But Moooooooom,” Whined Daniel.      

“Get your ass up or it’s out in the shed again.” 

“The shed? What are you, Leather Face? Have you ever even seen a child in person before?”     

“I try not to.” Replied Mel, walking away and waiting for Daniel to follow. He did.   

The meeting was so long and boring and such a complete waste of time that Daniel decided that they first thing he was gonna do the next morning was call in sick, rent a car, and drive out to Cherry Hill to see Adam Lee. 

If he had to listen to his boss rant any more about capturing the spirit of the modern golfer Daniel was sure he would end up in the nut hut right next to Adam Lee, chewing on bumblebees just to feel something.   

Chapter 24

The next morning, Daniel woke up at 5:30 am, rolled over, and made sure to call his boss instantly, knowing that he was likely not in the office and would not have to speak with him. 

He trekked out of his room in his boxers, bare feet slapping against the floor as he made his way to the phone. He dialed the number, preparing his best ill voice and flipping through his rolodex of mental excuses. 

He nearly cheered when he hit the voicemail of Lance DeBiers, Editor in Chief, but instead made sure to focus on projecting the energy of the severely food poisoned.    

“Hey…Lance…I’m sorry. I ate some bad seafood last night and it’s really killing me…I can’t make it in today.”         

Daniel hung up and felt the urge to do a triumphant little dance pass through him. He nearly skipped into the kitchen to get started on making an instant coffee, only to find that all of his three mugs were dirty and also he had put back his can of instant coffee empty at some point and forgot about it. 

“Damn,” He groaned, giving up, and putting the empty container of instant coffee right back in his cabinet. Daniel showered, got dressed, wrote down the address of the Holmewood Gardens mental hospital on a napkin and headed out the door to a car rental place that was about a 20 minute walk away. 

In no time at all, Daniel was on his way in a black Toyota Camry in the general direction of Cherry Hill, figuring he would stop and pick up a map and get something to eat at rest stop somewhere on the way.     

About an hour later, Daniel found himself at a Jersey rest stop with a map spread out over the hood of his car, held down with one hand, and a borderline inedible ham, egg, and cheese crescent sandwich from Roy Rogers dripping grease down his other hand.           

“Ok, so it’s on Hobbes Drive off 95,” Daniel muttered to himself, tracing his route with a pen. He worked it out as he ate, eventually deciding to throw most of his breakfast sandwich in the trash.     

Before long he was off, headed down 95 toward Cherry Hill.       

After about another hour and a half, he finally passed by Holmewood Gardens, and decided to drive around for awhile, knowing that he had a little while until visiting hours.     

Daniel began to make a plan of attack in his head. What would he ask? Exactly how crazy was Adam Lee? He had taken up the same pastime as Daniel, trying to find out who Ama Deo was. 

Was he crazy? Or did he get in too deep and something so fucked up happened to him that he finally snapped?  

Was Adam telling everybody the truth about what he had seen and in response they medicated him up to the gills for it and locked him up? 

Daniel thought of his own dreams, whether or not they could be memories, the scars on his body, and his muscle memory activating in the coffin, which had to have been Ama Deo’s.   

All he knew for sure is that he was never gonna tell anyone shit about any of this.     

The hour or so seemed to pass in an instant, and before long it was time to head into Holmewood Gardens and see Adam Lee. 

Daniel’s palms were sweating. 

Chapter 25

Holmewood Gardens was definitely a mental hospital for the wealthy. It matched the clinical soulessness of a hospital with the false casual soulessness of bourgeouis taste. Everything was white. Daniel felt like he was entering the void.   

He told the front desk that he was a part of the group Adam Lee had been a part of, and was coming to check on his old friend.       

They led him to lush back garden with people in grey sweatsuits milling about. It seemed deceptively calm, more like a retirement home than a mental hospital.   

They led Daniel to Adam, who was sitting on a bench surrounded by honeysuckle, enjoying the spring morning. 

“Hello Adam.” Said Daniel as he clicked on the tape recorder in his pocket. 

The man had short dark hair that was beginning to grey at the temples, and somewhat tanned skin. Daniel bet that he spent a lot of time in the garden. His dark eyes were dreamy, obviously drugged, and his cheekbones were high and knife sharp. 

Adam was painfully thin and looked much older than his years.   

“Hello Daniel.” He said and Daniel masked his shock. 

How the fuck does he know who I am? 

“Can I sit?” Asked Daniel and it took Adam a second to process it, but he nodded. Daniel sat beside him.     

“He told me you were coming.” Adam then tapped his head with his finger, moving like a man under water.     

“Ama Deo?” Asked Daniel and Adam smiled wistfully, swaying a bit even though he stayed seated.      

“He said that you would believe me.” Said Adam, with a little laugh. “No one else believes me, that’s why I’m here.”

Daniel watched, masking his unease as the man laughed until he grew tired of laughing and seemed to forget what he was even laughing about.     

“So, tell me what happened last year.” Said Daniel. Instead of talking Adam’s eyes locked onto the old raw wound on his neck. Daniel found himself fighting the urge to cover up his neck.       

Daniel repeated himself, and Adam seemed to return to the present. 

“I saw Ama Deo at The Apostle, his club, you know, and I became obsessed with him. So obsessed! Can you blame me?”       

Daniel shook his head. He really couldn’t blame Adam.   

“For months I tried to find her after the shows, to talk to her, but nothing worked out. He just always seems to disappear.”    

‘I used to work at the bank, made good money, and never really spent any money on anything for myself. Decided to hire Jim Cairnes to find her.”    

Daniel simply sat and waited for him to continue.        

“From there everything got…weird.” Adam started to slip into his own dream world and Daniel pulled him back by clearing his throat. “I paid Cairnes almost $1000 dollars and he stopped answering my calls. Once I broke down the door to his apartment and went in. It was empty except for a big coffin. He was sleeping in it.”         

“A big dark wooden coffin with angels and devils carved into it?” Asked Daniel and Adam nodded. 

“And bright blue inside, like the sky.” Adam took his time. He watched the leaves rustle the flowers for awhile before he spoke again. “He put on this whole Dracula act. Claimed that Ama Deo made him a vampire and that he could make me one. Kept yelling ‘Come to me, come to me.’”  

Adam waved a bony hand dismissively.     

“Did he hurt you?” Asked Daniel and Adam shrugged.    

“Took a chunk out my arm with his teeth, I guess.”  

Daniel looked between his arms which were fully covered by his grey sweatshirt. He couldn’t see anything.            

“Maybe it was the shock of that, but I think I went a little insane for a few weeks.”      

Daniel thought back to what Perth had told him about Adam trying to chew his maid’s face off.       

“And, my family found out that I’m gay, on top of everything else, and sent me here. It was all settled out of court, you know how it is. They can’t let anybody know.”           

They sat in silence, Daniel waiting for Adam to continue.    

“And now that I’m on horsepills, I don’t have the dreams anymore.” 

Bingo.  

“What dreams?”     

Adam let out a long low moan, stretching his arms up high over his head, showing the emaciated points of his hip bones through pale skin. Daniel couldn’t help but look.    

“Being tortured. Being fucked. Always Ama Deo.” 

Daniel couldn’t breathe. 

“Drinking-drinking-drinking my blood. It was lovely.”           

Daniel’s fists clenched. 

“Because of the pills I don’t get erections anymore but I used to. Let me tell you, Daniel.”    

Adam’s smile was wistful and wicked. Daniel imagined that he used to be an even more striking man.       

  “Do you know what happened to Cairnes to make him go crazy? He’s pretty much disappeared, Adam.”        

Adam laughed again, as if that were a hilarious joke.      

“Did he ever tell you if he found anything?” Daniel tried again and Adam sighed. 

“He said that Ama Deo was a vampire and was going to make him his servant so he could live forever, but you and I both know that, that would never happen ever.”       

“Yeah, because vampires aren’t real?” Asked Daniel and Adam fixed him with a sharp look.    

“Because Ama Deo killed him.” 

Daniel continued smoothly. “Did Ama Deo tell you that?” 

“He didn’t need to.”  

“What else has he told you?” 

“Some things about you.” 

“Like what?”    

“That you’re his favorite.” 

Daniel sat in the silence, waiting for Adam to continue. 

“That’s why he killed your psychiatrist.” 

Daniel shivered.  

“He doesn’t like to share his favorite things.” 

Daniel started to ask what Adam meant, but before he could get the words out Adam began to cough violently, his bones and lungs rattling until he spat blood onto the ground. 

Daniel backed away, calling the staff for help. He watched as the man was carried away on a stretcher, body convulsing and blood squirting out of his mouth into the air.    

Daniel saw himself out, clicking the tape recorder off as he made his way back into the building.       

Chapter 26

Daniel drove for about a half hour before he had to stop. His hands were shaking. He pulled onto the shoulder of I-95 somewhere in the middle of New Jersey and got out of his car, staring into absolutely nothing as waves of nausea overtook him.     

He wondered if he would actually throw up, before it passed. He leaned against the trunk of his car, wondering what the fuck to do now.       

Sure, he had a better idea of what had happened, maybe, but he was no closer to finding Ama Deo. 

Daniel wondered if he even should keep trying to find Ama Deo. The last two people who tried to do exactly what he was doing had met horrible fucking ends.   

One disappeared, and the other was shut up in mental hospital forever coughing up his own organs.      

Daniel took out the tape recorder, rewinded it, and pressed play. 

“Hello Daniel.”  Adam’s voice played back at him, a little distant but perfectly understandable. 

“Can I sit?”   

“He told me you were coming.”      

Daniel paused the tape. “The staff probably just told him that I was there to see him.” He said to himself before pressing play. 

“Ama Deo?”      

“He said that you would believe me.” Adam’s laugh seemed to fade in and out of the recording. “No one else believes me, that’s why I’m here.”  

Daniel kept the tape playing as he got back into the car and continued down the highway.     

“So, tell me what happened last year.”   

“I saw Ama Deo at The Apostle, his club, you know, and I became obsessed with him. So obsessed! Can you blame me?”       

“For months I tried to find her after the shows, to talk to her, but nothing worked out. He just always seems to disappear.”      

Daniel hit pause. Then he rewound it and hit play aain. 

“–else believes me, that’s why I’m here.”  

“So, tell me what happened last year.”   

“I saw Ama Deo at The Apostle, his club, you know, and I became obsessed with him. So obsessed! Can you blame me?”       

  Daniel hit pause again. 

"His fucking club!”  

Daniel couldn’t fucking believe it. “Ama Deo owns The Apostle?”      

Daniel’s mind was spinning. Property ownership records are public record. So are the records of legally registered businesses. Would finding Ama Deo be as easy as finding out who owned the church itself, or who the business was registered to?     

Would Daniel finally have a fucking name? 

He didn’t care if he ended up thrown into a tar pit or locked away coughing up blood until the end times. He was going to fucking find Ama Deo.     

Daniel had never been so excited by the prospect of spending days going through government records before.    

Notes:

Hey, I did not give up on this fic and will finish it out. Sorry I disappeared for a bit. Life be lifing forreal and I have been consumed by another project. But then I snapped out of it and remembered Devil's Minion is the priority. Thanks to anybody who still keeping up with this.

Chapter 27

Unfortunately, the trials and tribulations of normal adult life kept Daniel from the hunt for Ama Deo for the rest of the spring. He dreamed of him less and less, forgetting all about John and the scene as Golf Monthly sent him all over the US interviewing country club owners.   

Daniel hated every second of it. He was a horrible combination of basically brain-dead from talking to the most self-centered and bland people and having to stroke their ego all day long, and exhausted from constant travel.   

He was simultaneously understimulated and overstimulated. While Daniel wasn’t that old yet, he was no longer that young either, and the constant travel had him dying to jerk off in the comfort of his own bed.       

While he really wanted to earn enough to buy a place of his own and stop renting, he didn’t know how much more he could fucking take of his job.    

He was in the middle of Orange County, chainsmoking in his hotel room and praying for death, when it finally hit him that he needed some kinda real stimulation in his life, or he was going to fucking lose it. 

But what damage can a sober man in his 40s really do on a Wednesday night, when he had an interview scheduled with some asshole bright and early the next morning?     

Daniel checked the time. It was barely 8pm and he had the crazed and desperate energy of someone who had been awake a whole night already.    

He walked down to the hotel’s restaurant, pretty sure that he had skipped a meal or two, and at least ordering a shitty meal would give him something to do.     

Daniel nearly snapped at the waiter, ordering a diet coke and a burger as if that was the foulest thing he could imagine. When the mediocre overcooked burger and undersalted fries failed to provide him with any real stimulation, he fought the urge to throw them on the ground and scream.      

That was when the sound of a throat being cleared distracted him from his desire to kill everyone in the restaurant and himself.       

His eyes traced a cigarette to the long slender brown fingers holding it aloft, to the lines of a familiar body, long slender neck, and skeletal statuesque features of one Ama Deo. 

“Do you have a light?” Those black eyes were fathomless and those thin, wry lips curved into a little smile. 

His voice was melodious, faintly English but faintly something else. Daniel felt like his brain was short-circuiting. 

He couldn’t move. The obsession, the desire, the all consuming passion that had all but escaped him and left him feeling like he was trudging through a colorless world for months suddenly blew through his senses like a hurricane. 

“Do you have a light?” Repeated Ama Deo, and Daniel scrambled to fetch his lighter, feeling like he was trying to pilot someone else’s body from above.   

He fumbled with the lighter and it fell on the ugly hotel carpet next to his table, between Ama Deo and himself.    

Ama Deo only flicked a glance at the lighter and Daniel was instantly scrambling to pick it up. He held it out, his hand shaking, and watched as the man bent to press the end of his cigarette to the flame.  

Daniel noted that he was dressed in a suit that was so deep purple that it was almost black, with a crisp white shirt underneath. It was unbuttoned, and Daniel couldn’t help but admire his chest where the shirt gaped as he bent to inhale.      

The moment seemed to stretch into a single instant and an eternity at once, Daniel was enamored with his sharp collarbones and miles of flawless brown skin.      

When Ama Deo stood up, exhaling smoke, and Daniel could no longer see so much of his skin, he felt it like a loss.   

That was when his brain came back online. 

Why was he here? 

Was Ama Deo following him too?   

Were they both stalking eachother? 

What the fuck was even going on? 

“Are you…?” Daniel started, but he didn’t even know how to finish the sentence.   

Ama Deo looked down at him, smoke curling around him like it also couldn’t help but touch him.     

“Am I what?” Ama Deo returned, a little bit playful. Daniel had so many questions that it rendered him absolutely speechless.   

“Are you going to invite me to join you?” Asked Ama Deo and Daniel nodded dumbly. He watched as the man sat across from him with all the sensual grace of a dancer.                      

“Are you Ama Deo?” Daniel finally blurted out.      

“Occasionally.” He returned, smoothly. Something about his placid air grated on Daniel’s nerves. He could smell bullshit from a mile away and something about all of this felt so manufactured that Daniel half expected sets to start falling away around them.  

“And, how about the rest of the time?” He asked, no longer struck dumb, his usual sharpness returning.       

“That depends on who you ask.” 

That was when Daniel felt the toe of a leather shoe pressed against his ankle under the table. Even through the layers of the shoe, the touch sent a familiar spark up his leg.   

Familiar?        

Daniel frowned even as he felt a frisson of desire spark deep within him. 

Familiar like the inside of the coffin in the basement in Harlem.

Something absolutely bizarre was going on. Daniel felt like he was on the cusp of figuring it all out. He had almost all of the pieces, but for some reason it was impossible to assemble them into any kind of coherent puzzle.    

“You get one question.” Said Ama Deo, still smiling his barely there Mona Lisa Smile, deep eyes knowing. “I shall answer honestly.” 

That sent Daniel’s wheels spinning. What kind of game was this? What was he involved in? What had happened to him? 

Daniel thought of so many questions he could ask. About Adam. About the private eye who disappeared. About John. About if he really owned the Apostle. For his real name. 

But, all of them paled in comparison to what he most deeply wanted to know. Daniel’s hand moved to the partially healed scar on his neck, he thought of the bite marks all over his body.       

“Have you missed me?” Asked Daniel and he watched with a feeling of great triumph as that placid facade shattered. The shock and the pain was visible in those large, haunted eyes.    

A strange noise shattered the moment and Daniel tracked it with his eyes to see clawed fingers digging into the wooden table, creating dust.    

He couldn’t help but imagine those monstrous nails in his own flesh, the smell of his own blood and sweat mixing with strange ethereal scent of Ama Deo, this creature, whatever he was.     

Daniel could feel that he knew the curves and the harsh lines of that body, of those sharp lips, parted as if on the verge of an aborted gasp. He could not remember but he knew.   

“Have you missed me?” Daniel repeated with a sharper confidence and Ama Deo had the look of a hunted animal, heartbreak evident. There was history there, which Daniel could not remember. He removed his hand from his neck and watched Ama Deo’s eyes move to the scar there. 

The possessive heat in that gaze felt like a brand. Ama Deo did not even need to answer. His reactions told Daniel all that he needed to know.      

“Yes.” Said Ama Deo eventually, his voice pained and deeply sad.   

There was an instinct in Daniel to comfort him, to soothe the hurt, so deep and strong that it almost shocked him. The urge to pull the man into his arms was so strong that Daniel slapped a 20 onto the table next to his nearly untouched shitty burger.       

Instinct, or something else, told Daniel that if he carded his fingers through the hair at the nape of the man’s neck and scratched down his spine he would melt against him.  

Why the fuck do I know that?    

Even as those long fingers and claw-like nails turned the top of the table to dust Daniel could only imagine holding him close. 

“Come with me.” Said Daniel as he stood up abruptly, knocking into the table. “Come with me right now.”        

Daniel started to walk away and when he looked behind him, the space that Ama Deo had occupied was empty.  

Disembodied tendrils of smoke circulated freely where he had sat only seconds ago.  

Daniel clenched his fists.  

On his way out he stopped at the front desk. The woman behind the desk was no more than twenty, barely a woman at all. Daniel wondered if it was her first day. She looked confused.      

“Did you see an Indian guy in a dark purple suit walk through here and go to the restaurant?”       

The woman only blinked at him. It was then that Daniel noticed there was something strange and glassy about her green eyes. He snapped his fingers rudely in front of her face and it was as if her consciousness returned to her body.   

She blinked up at him and straightened up.            

“Hello, Sir,” She said.  

“Hello…” He said, trailing off to read her nametag. “Celia, did you see an Indian guy in a dark purple suit walk through here and go to the restaurant?”    

She didn’t answer, looking suspiciously at him. 

“My boss said one of his friends is gonna meet me for dinner here tonight but he’s been a no-show.” He gave her an exaggerated sigh and he could tell that she was on his side. Celia gave him an understanding smile.    

She was plump and cute, like a little porcelain doll. Daniel kept talking. “You know how it is. If we don’t show up we get canned but the boss and his buddies can do anything they want, huh?”    

Celia giggled a little. “Are you Daniel Molloy?” She asked.    

“The world famous,” He returned dryly and she giggled again.      

“Last night when I was working an Indian guy did drop off something for you and asked me to give it to you, but I think I missed you. I asked Ralph to give it you today but I guess he forgot.”        

Daniel felt a little bit of anger at that and instantly tamped it down. He wasn’t sure who Ralph was but he wanted to hit him with a car. Celia continued speaking.    

“Is he…like a model or something?” Asked Celia. “Do you work with IMG or something?”   

Daniel shook his head. “Sorry, I’m just a journalist. If you want to work with IMG Models I can’t help you. If you are into golfing though, I do know a guy.”        

Celia shook her head. “I only‘ve been to mini golf a few times.” She kept talking about how bad she was at minigolf as she searched under the desk for something, only to come out with a long, thin black box.      

“You know, it’s weird, I can’t remember his name.” Said Celia. “He must’ve told me.”    

Daniel leaned against the desk, lowering his voice. He veritably towered over Celia, who couldn’t have been five feet tall. She looked up at him with wide, clear green eyes, blinking at him through inky lashes caked with flakes of crumbling mascara. 

“Can I tell you a secret, Celia?” He whispered. She nodded, obviously excited, barely breathing. “He’s kinda a weirdo.”  

Celia’s eyes widened as if he had told her something sordid and incredible. Daniel slid the box toward himself and backed away from the desk.   

“At the office we say if you look into a mirror at midnight and say his name three times he fuckin’ pops out and eats you.”                 

Celia laughed. “I guess it’s a good thing I can’t remember his name then.”      

Daniel nodded with a comic seriousness. “So, you definitely didn’t see him tonight, right?”     

He watched as that strange glazed look came over her face again. Daniel snapped to bring her back.   

He would bet money that she saw him. And that he did something to her.  

Isn’t it fascinating that no one can remember this asshole? 

“You know, it’s weird, I’m not sure.” She said. “And I never forget a hot guy.” 

She looked right at Daniel, round and youthful face turning red as a tomato. Before he could answer she got embarrassed and picked up a phone that had not even been ringing, looking anywhere but at him. Daniel took the hint and walked away with the little black box.      

Chapter 28

Once back in his hotel room, Daniel rubbed the wooden box with his hands. It was cool to the touch and heavy for its size.   

He opened it to find that the inside was black silk, with the other dark green silk glove inside.     

Daniel took it out and pressed it to his face immediately, inhaling and savoring the scent and feel of it. 

Silk. Cold steel. Oud. Sweetness. Something floral. Something metallic. Masculine. Feminine. Frigid. Strange.

Daniel felt arousal curl low in his gut and threw the glove and box onto the bed. 

What the fuck is going on here? 

Daniel was a pretty open-minded guy, he had seen a lot of shit, and it was undeniable that something supernatural was occurring here.     

“What the fuck has claws and can control minds?” He asked the ugly yellow lamp in the corner. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t have much to say to him. 

He paced the ugly hotel carpet in front of his bed.   

What the fuck is incredibly sexy, has claws, bites people, can control minds, and owns a coff… 

Daniel couldn’t help but laugh. It was so fucking obvious. So fucking impossible. 

“I can’t literally be stalking a vampire?” He asked no one, looking at the mirror stuck to the far wall. He cackled again, picking the green silk glove up from the bed. 

“Is a vampire fucking stalking me?”   

He held the glove up to the mirror, seeing that it did in fact have a reflection. He was halfway through another unhinged cackle when it hit him like a ton of bricks.    

The vampire misses me.    

The old wound in his neck throbbed as if that was an answer in itself.     

It’s not just me. Celia can’t remember him. Adam went insane. That private eye vanished. He has his own fanclub. Adam said that he killed John and drank him dry. He invites obsession. In all of my dreams we exchange blood. I’ve seen him vanish. Watched him sink his claws into a wooden table and take a fucking chunk out of it in real-time…. 

Daniel bolted upright. Virtually running out of his hotel room and back down to the restaurant, where the doors were closed. He could see employees inside cleaning up for the night and knocked.     

One of the servers came to the door and cracked it open. 

“Hey, uh, I lost my wallet.” Daniel lied easily, knowing that his heavy breathing and obvious agitation was perfectly fitting for a man whose wallet was gone. 

“Can I please go in and check? Has anybody seen an old brown wallet kicking around? Please, man–” 

The server let him in just so he would stop talking. Daniel bolted over to the table he had sat at, finding no wallet but staring squarely at the gouges Ama Deo had taken out of the table with his inhuman claws.   

I’m not fucking crazy. He was right there. We were here together. He’s a fucking vampire. He misses me.   

“Fuck me!” He yelled before storming out of the restaurant and  bolting back to his hotel room.   

Daniel was so wired that he could hardly sleep, and around 2 am when he finally drifted off his dreams turned bloody and dark and perverse. The other glove was clutched in his pale hand, flung out by his side.   

Absent of all of his burlesque attire, the vampire stood before him, dressed head to toe in a white suit, gleaming like a lighthouse in the middle of pure inky blackness.      

Come to me.   

He spoke without speaking, eyes burning like a castle on fire, long clawed hands outstretched in the dark.  

You’re so close, my love.   

Daniel was running to get closer to him in the darkness, but getting nowhere. He sweated, but it was a frigid sweat. The icy air felt like knives in his lungs. 

Come to me.                     

Daniel felt like he was going to pass out, like he was going to die. And then suddenly he was falling through the void. 

I don’t want to wait much longer. I CANNOT wait much longer. Come to me. 

The words echoed as Daniel fell through the void, unable to even scream.     

His naked body twitched, trapped in the sheets in his shitty hotel bed. His salt and pepper chest hair was matted to his skin with sweat as he writhed, calling out in his sleep.       

“Armand…” He moaned, miserable, alone in the dark. “Armand, please…” He whined.    

In the chair across from the bed, next to the TV, a pair of burning amber eyes watched him from the dark.            

Armand walked across the hotel rug without a sound, leaning over Daniel as he writhed and moaned in his sleep.  

Armand smoothed one graceful finger along the deep lines in his forehead, smoothing them out. Daniel’s entire demeanor shifted beneath his touch, relaxing back into the mattress.      

“Why must you demand these games of me?” Asked the vampire, placing a slender hand against Daniel’s pale chest, which seemed to gleam against his darker skin.        

All tension had left Daniel. He was sleeping peacefully and let out a long low snore.      

Armand grimaced. He softly traced Daniel’s jawline and lips with his fingers.  

He looked at the green silk glove in Daniel’s sleeping hand, exposed in the dark by a strip of light sneaking in through the curtains.  

“You are such a horror, Daniel Molloy.”

In Daniel’s dreams they kissed long and low and sweet, blood passing between their tongues and teeth like holy wine. 

“You are killing me.” 

Chapter 29

Notes:

Got a Learn To Live In the Dark playlist up that you are legally obliged to listen to while you read this fic pls and thank: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5mqFc0JfYeSDgK2ouq2Wmm?si=9b266e0b44984a36

Daniel found himself suddenly standing in a stark white room. It was spare in the luxurious way only found in high class hospitals.             

The only thing that betrayed that this wasn’t exactly a normal hospital was the bars over the windows. 

Beneath the large windows with deep grey curtains rested a skeleton of a man, clearly in the stage of REM sleep, his eyes slithering back and forth rapidly under paper-thin eyelids. 

“Adam?”   

Daniel thought to himself, trying to take a step forward and realizing that he couldn’t move. 

“What the fuck?”   

For one, Daniel felt himself unable to do so much as turn as head. It was like he was a half smashed fly dying against the wall of Adam’s hospital room.   

For another, Adam looked like he was about to die. For a man who had already been thin when they met for the first time, at this point, he looked like a skeleton wrapped in a transparent layer of skin. Daniel almost imagined that he could see his heart beating through his chest. 

That’s when he realized that he wasn’t imagining it at all. Beneath the man’s skin he could see blue blood rushing through viens and cirulating through his body as he slept.      

Daniel would have jumped out of his skin if he could, what the fuck was he even looking at?    

He could hear Adam’s heart beating, faint and slow. 

Holy shit? Is he dying? 

Daniel was far from being a doctor, but that shit did not sound great. 

Before he could spiral into complete panic, Adam shot up in bed, sitting straight up, back arched and eyes opened wide.     

Daniel watched as the window slid open, a gentle night breeze splaying the curtains and revealing the silhouette of a slim, familiar figure with burning red eyes.   

What the f–  

Daniel fell silent as the familiar creature slipped into the room through the open window casual as anything, long deep burgundy trench coat completely unruffled and hair slicked back revealing a slightly receding hairline.   

Daniel felt hot jealousy poison him from the inside out as Ama Deo stood beside Adam, taking his face gently into his clawed hands.         

“My first man.” Said the creature, softly, and with definite fondness. Adam curled into his hands like a large housepet. Daniel felt his blood pressure rise. 

What the fuck does that mean? 

Adam said nothing at all, worshipfully basking in the attention as moonlight filtered into the room.      

“You’ve stopped eating.”     

Daniel almost couldn’t hear it over the sound of Adam’s blood sluggishly slithering through his veins.   

“I know what I want to be, now.” Replied Adam, bending his head to the side, splaying his long and bony neck. “You said that you can make it feel like slipping into a warm bath.”    

Like slipping into a warm bath.   

Daniel knew he had heard that before.     

“I know it was an accident,” Adam said again. “But that ridiculous detective–” 

Ama Deo sushed him with a slender finger against his lips. Daniel’s initial instinct was anger. His second was realizing that he had never heard Adam be so coherent before. Was he putting on an act during the interview? What was being done to him? 

Daniel watched, enchanted as Ama Deo nicked his lip open with his sharo thumb nail and red blood began to spill in the moonlight. Ama Deo licked it away, which turned into a heated kiss. 

Daniel wanted to close his eyes or look away, but he could not. The jealousy, the anger, the longing, the undeniable intimacy; it all was suffocating.            

“I’ll give you everything that you desire.” Said Ama Deo, voice soft and sensuous. “Everything that I am.” He cradled Adam in his arms, the starving man looking small as a doll resting against his chest. 

Daniel watched as all the tension left Adam’s body, his head lolling back, Adam’s apple sticking up toward the sky like a knife beneath his skin.     

“All that I have to give.”   

Adam’s sigh of relief and ecstasy was almost masked entirely by a heinous, tinny beeping sound.      

Chapter 30

Daniel woke up with an agonized groan in his shitty hotel. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck. The alarm clock on his nightstand seemed to scream as if it had a personal vendetta against his sanity and he fought the urge to throw it against the wall. It was 4 am.     

“Who the fuck wants an interview at sunrise?” Daniel groaned. He hated the wildly rich and their ways, which seemed to only exist to piss everyone else off. 

If he had to interview one more person who had absolutely nothing to say he was going to become a terrorist. Truly.     

Daniel Molloy was not a morning person at the best of times, the worst of times being any time before 11 am. He was less than excited to wake up at 4 am and do an hour drive to interview some green juice ass prick who had asked to conduct the interview at dawn so it wouldn’t interrupt his morning meditation hour. 

Daniel dallied in the shower, passive aggressively already planning to be a little bit late, because he hated this guy already. He used the shitty hotel soap and shampoo, knowing that it would turn his hair from curly to borderline-electrocuted-looking. 

It suited his emotional state. 

If there was one thing that Daniel Molloy did not give anymore, it was a fuck. He had a vampire to find. Who was also potentially hunting him? And also cheating on him?   

Daniel clenched his fists in the shower as shitty hotel soap slid down his aching body. 

“That wasn’t a fucking dream.” He said to nobody, accidentally swallowing shower water and spitting half of it out.           

Still wet, he left his hotel room and took the elevator down to the lobby to swipe a free coffee before getting into his rental car, a boxy maroon volvo with all the subtlety of an alien spacecraft.   

Daniel knew he was running a bit late, considering traffic, as he got in the car, but it gave him a bit of joy. If Golf-club owner #75 missed his morning meditation, well, Daniel hoped he cried about it.    

“Meditate on my fucking balls.” Daniel muttered to nobody as he cranked up the radio to ungodly levels. Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin blared so loud that it made the parkinglot shake as he peeled out of there, hoping that if he drove recklessly enough he could die at an intersection and avoid the whole interview.      

Daniel got stuck in traffic due to an accident and by the time he got to Woodrow’s Golf Club, a sprawling green nightmare with all the warmth of a hospital, he was informed by staff that Mr. Fontaine would not be seeing him today, because he had already retired to his meditation wing for the morning. 

Daniel had perked up at that, only to be told that he would see him the following day, and was welcome to stay on the grounds as a guest on his dime until then.       

And, honestly, how could Daniel say no to that? He planned to spend the day wandering the green being an absolute nuisance and stuffing himself with caviar until he threw up. 

Sure, he couldn’t drink anymore, but if you are dedicated enough to your craft there are hundreds of ways to rack up a bill.    

“What about my things at the hotel?” Asked Daniel and he was assured that all of that would be sent to his rooms.       

And so, Daniel ended up wandering to what appeared to be a massive southern-style house, totally at odds with the rest of the grounds and its location.  

To call it a house did not do it justice. It was truly a mansion, with multiple levels of large doors opening to spacious balconies.           

“Hey, wait,” Said Daniel as they stood at the threshold. It was just him and one staff member alone, a boy half his age with deep brown eyes, golden blonde hair curling around his ears, and lovely tanned skin. “What’s your name?” Asked Daniel.   

“Oh, sorry, Mr. Molloy. I forgot to introduce myself. I’m new. It’s Will.”       

He smiled a little bashfully and Daniel held out his hand.   

“I already know that you’re Mr, Molloy,” said Will, but he shook his hand anyway.             

“Daniel,” Daniel corrected and the boy shook his head.   

“I don’t think I’m allowed to do that, Mr. Molloy.” He said and led him into the house. 

Daniel was surprised to see that the house was full of all manner of interesting trinkets. The things themselves looked to be from all over the world, some of them clearly very old. 

There was everything in the house from pottery to paintings to…  

“Shrunken heads?” Daniel asked Will, pointing suspiciously at a bunch of small heads in a case.          

“Mr. Fontaine has a lot of stuff like that.” Will shrugged. “He sells art and antiquities I think.”      

“You think?” Asked Daniel, teasing and Will looked very embarrassed. “Don’t worry about it, I know you said you are new here.”        

Will nodded. “Started a week ago.”        

“And, how’s it been?”    

Will shrugged. “It beats being a model. I got leg cramps from standing for so long. At least here I can sit sometimes.”     

“A model?” Asked Daniel.      

“Yeah, for artists. Not, like, Gucci or something.”     

They were climbing up the stairs and Daniel couldn’t help but notice, as he followed the young man, that Will would likely make a stunning model for any kind of artist or garment. 

“Is that how Mr. Fontaine found you?” Asked Daniel and Will nodded. 

“Yeah, he hosts artist workshops in one of his houses sometimes. Came in as the model, left with a job offer.”           

Daniel had some questions about Mr. Fontaine, which he believed that he already knew the answers to.      

“Honestly, the benefits are so good that Mr. Fontaine could hit me with a car and I wouldn’t complain. Free hospital stay would be my first vacation. I’ve never even left California before.” Said Will.   

“You got dental, kid?” Asked Daniel and Will nodded.   

They walked the rest of the way in a companionable silence before Daniel was led to a grand Scarlet O’Hara-style room with a large 4-poster bed and gorgeous bay windows.      

“Wow,” Said Daniel, only for his eyes to come across his luggage, already neatly arranged by the bed.    

“It’s like you all knew I was coming to stay.”       

Will shrugged. “They say that Mr. Fontaine knows everything, Mr. Molloy.”        

Daniel liked Will. Not only was he beautiful, but he was a talker. He had the naive and confident openness of a child, saying whatever he thought at any time. He bet that he could learn all sorts of off-hand things about Mr. Fontaine from the kid.        

“Want to show an old man around? Or do you have a busy day ahead?”       

“Mr. Fontaine told me to show you around and answer your questions.” Answered Will.    

“Great, lead the way.” Said Daniel.    

It turned out that Will didn’t actually know that much about Mr. Fontaine, or that much about anything at Woodrow’s. But, he did at least give Daniel a solid lay of the land and introduce him to some of the staff. 

And he had the added benefit of being staggeringly beautiful. He was lithe and expressive, like an actor.  

At one point he asked Daniel if he wanted to play some golf and Daniel had shook his head. 

“Can I tell you a secret?” Asked Daniel, leaning in slightly closer than was professional. Will nodded. “I hate golf.”   

Will laughed until his voice cracked, “Me too.”        

They laughed together on the sprawling green under the sun, when Daniel felt his stomach grumble. It was so loud that Will heard it. 

“There are a few restaurants here. What are you in the mood for?” Asked Will. 

“Surprise me,” Said Daniel and Will led him on a 15 minute walk to a sushi bar.        

“The chef here is a famous one from Japan.” Said Will. 

“Which one?” Asked Daniel and the boy shrugged as they sat at the counter.  

Daniel enjoyed some of the most succulent sashimi that he had ever had the pleasure of eating. The salmon almost seemed to burst against his tongue. He couldn’t help but moan.     

Will was openly watching him consume 3 months rent in octopus with orgasmic glee, and Daniel couldn’t even be bothered to turn it down. 

“Fuck, man.” He nearly whistled as a plate of yellowtail and tobiko dropped in front of him.    

Then he noticed that Will wasn’t eating. 

“Hey, kid aren’t you going to eat anything?”   

Will looked between him and the plate of raw fish suspiciously. “I’ve never had sushi before. I don’t like it.”     

“Which is it?” Asked Daniel, holding his chopsticks in the kid’s face. “You’ve never had it or you don’t like it?” 

Will wrinkled his nose and Daniel pushed a piece of raw salmon over toward him.   

“Eat this, right now.” He said, pointing at it with his chopsticks.    

“Do I have to, Mr. Molloy?”    

“Yeah, or uhhh, I’ll tell Mr. Fontaine you…uhhh…displeased me.”  

Will rolled his eyes but picked up the piece of salmon between his fingers and plopped the full piece into his mouth.   

The look in his eyes changed from distrust and disgust to wonder. 

“Hell yeah,” Said Daniel. He looked back over the bar. “Excuse me, some salmon sashimi and eel for the kid.”               

“Right away, Mr. Molloy.” Sounded from the kitchen behind the bar.              

“Thanks, Mr. Molloy.” Said Will, tucking a blonde curl behind his ear. 

“Don’t thank me, thank your boss.”  

Will smiled. 

“Also, try to be more open minded, kid. It won’t kill you.”        

The pair ate their weight in sushi in a companionable silence.

Chapter 31

Daniel had returned to his room after the sushi feast beyond exhausted. He collapsed in his bed, nearly passing out before his body jolted awake.     

Adam Lee.  

Daniel tore through his luggage for his little phone book, finding it in a boot and turning the pristine room into a disaster zone before plopping back in bed and picking up the corded phone on his nightstand. 

He found the number for Holmewood Gardens and called them. A few rings later, the receptionist picked up. 

“Holmewood Gardens, this is Jennifer speaking. Who may I ask is calling?” 

“Daniel Molloy. I came to visit my friend Adam Lee a few months ago. I wanted to check your opening hours because I’m thinking of stopping by again soon.” 

Jennifer’s silence said everything. 

“That won’t be possible…” She said, trailing off.         

“Why not? Is he ok?” Daniel made sure to inject concern into his voice.      

“I…uhm…Mr. Lee has passed away.” 

Holy shit.    

“I…what do you mean? He wasn’t that old.”        

“I am sorry Mr. Molloy. We aren’t permitted to share details.”  

Don’t need ‘em.  

“I…thank you Jennifer.” Was all Daniel said before hanging up the phone and collapsing in bed, on top of the covers. 

“My first man.” Said the creature, softly, and with definite fondness. Adam curled into his hands like a large housepet. Daniel felt his blood pressure rise. 

“First man!” Daniel ground out, exhaustion overtaking him as the dream flashed behind his rapidly closing eyes.   

“My first man!” 

Was the last thing that Daniel said before completely collapsing into a dreamless sleep without even bothering to take off his shoes. He was spread on top of the duvet, occasionally letting out a little snore as his body shut down completely.       

He had fallen asleep by accident, and was incredibly disoriented when he woke up in the dark in an unfamiliar bed.    

Then the last day slammed into him.      

“Right. Came here to interview Mr. Fontaine. Had a sushi feast with the office twink instead and a nap. Not a bad day.”    

Daniel stretched in the bed, still feeling absurdly full of sushi and soft and lazy from his afternoon in the California sun.    

Then he remembered that Adam “My First Man” Lee was dead. Had been killed.       

By the thing he was stalking. 

It was pitch black in the room and he reached across the bed to the lamp, which also looked to be at least 100 years old. It didn’t do much against the dark of the room. 

In the dim light, Daniel looked to a clock on the wall to see that it was just past 8 pm.      

He stretched and sank back into the bed, pulling off his clothes before drifting back to sleep.     

He dreamed he was suspended from a high ceiling, completely naked except for where he was tied in place with green silk, his arms and legs spread.     

Daniel felt cold fingers caressing his flesh, followed by mouths. Lips and teeth against his forearms, his chest, his calves, the meat of his thighs. 

He smelled the tang of his blood before he felt it. As a cold tongue circled his nipple, teasing it to hardness, sharp teeth sank into the meat of his thigh.   

He could feel the vital blood being pulled from him. He was weak, dizzy, electric, alive; he felt as substantial as a wisp of silk.     

Daniel strained against his bindings, not because he wanted to escape, but to relish the delicious sensation of struggling.          

There was a mouth teasing and biting each of his nipples while another hungry mouth sliced clear through his chest. Daniel could feel blood dripping down his arms and legs and torso only to be licked away by hungry mouths. 

Not a drop of him was wasted. 

He groaned at the thought, even as he felt his tether to consciousness slipping from his fingers.    

Before all sensation passed into nothing, he felt hot skin pressed against his lips and hot blood against his tongue. 

Daniel violently latched on, sucking down the blood automatically, thoughtlessly gorging himself as shocks of pure electricity wracked his bound body.  

The blood was not human. It was like nothing he had ever tasted before. Daniel revelled in it. Lost to pain and pleasure.   

From the brink of death to the farthest reaches of human experience, intoxicatingly alive, the universe glimmering with the damned and the divine, Daniel writhed against his silk bindings and the hungry mouths attached to his flesh.    

From the darkness of pure sensation to blinding light, Daniel watched as familiar fathomless black eyes flickered their inhuman burning amber.    

Come to me.   

Daniel heard the familiar voice and began to strain against his bindings in earnest. 

Come to me. 

Daniel thrashed, the silk bindings cutting into his raw open wounds from being chewed on like a piece of meat, feeling like thorns.          

The struggle was no longer something to savor. The pain of separation was an unbearable agony.         

His moans turned to grunts and to cries, only to be interrupted by the shrill ringing of a phone.  

Daniel snapped into the real world with a jolt, struggling to remember where exactly he was and what had happened over the last few days.    

He reached for the phone on his bedside table with clumsy hands, nearly knocking the whole thing off the table before grabbing it. 

“Yeah?” He ground out, sounding like hell. 

Will’s sweet voice sounded from the other end of the phone.  

“Good Morning Mr. Molloy,” He said and Daniel could only grunt back.        

“Is everything alright? They tell me you’re screaming in there.”        

Humiliation washed through Daniel. Then he noticed that he was rock hard, his cock tenting the blankets.     

“Uh, what?” Was all Daniel could muster. What time was it, anyway? 

“Mr. Fontaine will see you tonight at 8 pm.”    

“Uh,” Said Daniel.    

“If you need anything, my number is written on the paper on the table in your room. I’ll come get you around 7:30 tonight. Have a good day, Mr. Molloy.”   

Will hung up and Daniel took a few deep breaths, staring at the ceiling. 

What the fuck?       

Chapter 32

Notes:

Assad and Eric forced me to update this by being INSANE at that panel. Assad picked up that old man like he was groceries and I lost all sense of identity for a second. I went full serial experiments lain. Assad Daddykink Zaman over there is a menace to society and I salute him. I am dying but also I live. I laugh. And I love.

The day passed quickly and slowly for Daniel, who spent most of it wandering Woodrow’s alone.     

Daniel felt the urge to run from Woodrow’s and disappear entirely, dedicate his whole life to tracking down this asshole with no questions asked and never visit another fucking golf course again.   

But, this place did pique his interest.  

Daniel voted to bide his time and ask if he could be back in the office when he got back to New York. He was sure that this was some kind of punishment, and if he could play the penitent employee for at least half a meeting with his boss he could get out of it enough to be back home and back on the hunt. 

For the moment, Daniel set his attention on his very interesting surroundings. Woodrow’s was certainly something, and he was looking forward to meeting the guy behind it all. Something told him that Mr Fontaine was different.  

It was a Thursday, so there were not very many people there, except the staff and a few families enjoying an early summer vacation.        

Daniel smoked a few cigarettes to pass the time on his terrace, enjoyed some delicious coffee in a cafe on the grounds, and even enjoyed an afternoon in the onsite spa. He boiled himself in the sauna until he nearly passed out, and exited looking as red as a lobster.     

Daniel had been sitting by the course enjoying a few afternoon coffees and a plate of fruit when Will arrived and sat beside him.    

“Good afternoon, Mr. Molloy.” He said and he looked a little bit more exhausted than he had the day before.    

“Long day, kid?” Asked Daniel and Will sighed.       

“One of the other guests keeps inventing things for me to do. I think she just wants to see me.”      

“The struggle of being young and beautiful.” Returned Daniel dryly. “Poor you. My heart aches for you.”    

Will looked a little embarrassed at that and tucked a strand of golden hair behind his ear.         

“I told her that I had something urgent to take care of.” Said Will and Daniel chuckled a little, waving over a waiter.   

“A plate of fruit and a cappuccino for the kid.” He said.  

“Right away, sir.” Said the waiter before heading back to the kitchen. Will looked surprised. 

“Don’t give me that look. I know you only keep coming back because I feed you.”     

Will did not confirm or deny. “Mr. Fontaine invited you to his private library tonight.” He said instead.   

Daniel could tell that Will was excited by this. “Is it really cool in there or something?”           

“Most of the staff isn’t allowed in there, I don’t know. You have to tell me what it's like.” 

"Why would I tell you, kid? Do I work for you?" 

Will's pout was genuinely heartbreaking. His warm brown eyes seemed to glisten with unshed tears, only to instantly perk up as a cappuccino and a beautiful plate of fruit slid infront of him. He began to devour it like a starving man.

Daniel wondered if he was the single most expressive man who had ever lived.

Will barely finished chewing on a piece of melon before speaking again, juice dripping down his slender fingers and wrists.

“It’s only Rashid and like 3 other guys. Nobody else goes in his private study.”    

Rashid. Daniel filed that away for later. 

“Only men?” Asked Daniel and Will shrugged.   

“I don’t know, honestly. But everyone told me to stay away from Rashid. He’s the only one that matters.”       

“Who’s that?”    

“He is one of Mr. Fontaine’s top guys. Rumor has it they have something going on.”     

Daniel loved that Will had only been there for a week and he was already in on the Woodrow’s gossip. He had to be the worst employee ever, not knowing really anything about the golf club itself; but knowing who his boss was fucking and excited to tell a guy he met less than a day ago about it. 

Daniel loved him. It was the Will’s of the world that made life worth living.       

“Why do people say that?” Asked Daniel, watching as Will popped strawberry after strawberry into his mouth, well proportioned lips wrapping around each one. 

“Once somebody they hired made a pass at Mr. Fontaine and Rashid threw him out the window…so they tell me.”     

“So, Rashid threw a guy out the window and he’s just kept on working? No police involved? Nobody investigating the murder? Nothing?”     

Will shrugged. “It’s just a rumor. Like I said, I just got here. I don’t know what really happened. There are lots of rumors. They say that Mr. Fontaine's fortune was built on bones.”   

"Yeah, that's how capitalism works, kid." Daniel replied. "Every boss out there is picking their teeth with a human femur as we speak."   

Will looked confused. He was clearly so lost that he stopped eating. "You think rich people eat people?" 

Daniel decided to not even field that one and changed the subject.     

“Will, if Rashid is out here killing people wouldn’t somebody have said something by now?”      

 “Like I said, the benefits are really good.” Will offered, fruit juice dripping out of his mouth. He sounded like he couldn’t care less about whatever had happened or had not happened. “Just wanted to give you a heads up, because you seem kinda cool and gothic, I guess.”    

Daniel thought about that. Was Will worried about him? 

“Kid, I’m here as a journalist. Not an escort. I’m already going grey. Nobody is paying for that. I'm here to conduct an interview, not make a pass at anybody.”    

Will did not look convinced. It was both flattering and concerning. “Also, don’t look him in the eyes maybe.”   

“Rashid or Mr. Fontaine?”   

Will nodded, too busy gorging himself on delicious fresh summer melon to answer.    

“Fuck, this is good.” He moaned, before reigning himself in, looking horrified at the breach in propriety.      

“I live to serve,” Said Daniel, dry as the desert. “Is there anything else I need to know to be ready to interview Mr. Fontaine? He agreed to this to promote his business. He called us, so I’m not expecting him to literally eat me or something, even if he is rich as hell. The story can’t get out if his unhinged common law assistant puts my head through a window.”   

Will obviously was wracking his brain, trying to remember what he had been told. Daniel watched the gears turn and the lightbulb spark in those gorgeous bambi eyes.        

“There’s a suit for you on the bed in your room. I’ll take you back to put it on later. Then we will go to Mr. Fontaine’s home.”      

What?  

“What am I? A Barbie doll?”     

Will laughed. “I feel like that sometimes. You get used to it.” He had finished the fruit on his own plate and started on Daniel’s, sticking a fork right into a slice of peach and sticking it into his mouth without ceremony. 

“Aren’t I a little old for that?” Asked Daniel, crossing his arms and doing nothing to stop Will from eating his fruit. 

“My mom always says that age is just a number.” Will offered. “She also always says that she looks like my older sister though, so, I don’t know.”    

“If you were a girl she’d probably be stealing your dresses.” Offered Daniel and Will’s look soured. 

“Only I can say mean things about my mom, Mr. Molloy.”    

Daniel said nothing, spearing a slice of peach and putting it in his mouth. 

“And, who says I don’t have dresses for her to steal anyway?” He said in the same pouty, put out tone of voice. “I’ve been a model for many years.”   

Daniel did not like the sound of that. He doubted Will was old enough to legally drink, but kept it to himself. 

The thought of him in a dress was a simply fascinating idea that Daniel refused to entertain at the moment, as he had other concerns. 

“Does you boss know that all you do is hang out on his dime talking shit and eating fruit like some kind of yenta golf course nymph?”        

Will laughed a little. “Don’t be mean to me because you’re jealous.”  He pointedly ate a handful of blueberries with all the grace of a toddler. “Also, what’s a nymph?” He asked through the mouthful of berries, dark juice dripping down his shapely lips. 

Daniel took a sip of his cappuccino instead of answering. 

Chapter 33

Notes:

Shout out to everybody who voted in the 'should Will and Daniel fuck?' poll on my tumblr. This one's for you.

Daniel found himself back in his room as the sun set, where a rich brown suit with red undertones awaited him on his bed. A pair of leather shoes in the exact same tone waited for him, as well a shirt so sky blue that it was almost white, a burgundy tie, and burgundy socks. 

Daniel threw the tie on the floor instantly. He would not be doing that.   

No thank you.   

There was a knock on the door as he took a look at the exquisitely cut suit.    

“Yeah?” Called Daniel and Will entered.  

“Do you need any help?” Asked the kid, and Daniel couldn’t help but laugh. 

Is he serious?  

“Does Mr. Fontaine think I can’t dress myself?”      

Will gestured toward the tie on the ground. “I can tie it for you if you want.”   

“No thanks,” Said Daniel quickly. “If I wanted to hang myself I wouldda done it already. I’ll meet you downstairs.” 

Will looked like he had something else to say, but thought better of it, biting his lip and exiting. Daniel got dressed quickly, but couldn’t help but stop and admire himself in the mirror which took up nearly half of a wall in the room.  

The deep brown made his skin look brighter, and the blue of his eyes truly pop. He raked his hands through his thick salt and pepper curls, hoping it would do something, but it just made him look dissheveled.    

He decided that the only way to balance it out would be to unbutton a few of the buttons of his shirt, hoping to look more like a rockstar and less like he was a groomsman on a pre-wedding bender.    

His body looked lean and endless, stretched between expensive leather shoes and a shock of wild dark curls.    

“Damn,” He said. Looking at himself. “Maybe I should get a fancy suit when I get back home.” 

Daniel knew he would not do that. He was a grass stained denim kinda guy, even if that did nothing whatsoever for his ass.     

The suit, however? 

It was working.       

Daniel left his room with his notepad and pens under his arm, and walked down the art-lined hallway to the large staircase which would take him down to the first floor. 

He could see Will waiting for him by the front door, glancing up at him wide-eyed. 

Hell yeah, he wants it. You still got it. 

Daniel fought the urge to skip down the stairs and instead make a smooth cool-guy entrance like the smooth cool guy he definitely was. 

Hell yeah.

“Ready kid?” Asked Daniel and Will only nodded and led him through the doors to a black Jaguar. Will locked the door behind them and walked over to open the passenger door of the sleek car. 

Daniel whistled, admiring the car. “Who am I, Princess Diana?” He asked, but got into the car and sat still as Will closed the door for him and got into the driver’s side. 

“I can open and close my own doors, I’m not your prom date.” He said and Will started the car. He drove smoothly down a long private road leading to the entrance parking lot.     

“Mr. Molloy, I am 25 years old.” Insisted Will, with all the frustrated petulance of a 3 year old who doesn’t understand why he isn’t old enough to drive.     

“Wow, you got the fountain of youth in here? I thought Mr. Fontaine was practically breaking child labor laws with you.”    

Will groaned. “You’re so fucking annoying.” Then he turned bright red again, obviously horrified by the breach in propriety and knowing that if Daniel wanted he could definitely have him fired.            

“Wow, does Mr. Fontaine tell you to tell off all the guests?”    

Will looked miserable. 

“I changed my mind, my piece is gonna be about how much you suck.”   

Will took a sharp turn deftly with such expressive full-body misery that a Shakespearian actor would have killed for it.   

“Fuck Mr. Fontaine. The real story is that you suck.” 

Daniel could see when it dawned on Will that he was just screwing with him, and his obvious relief turned back to playful annoyance.    

“Get ready for the next issue of Golf Monthly, Will Sucks Edition.”          

“You just want an excuse to have me pose for a centerfold.” Returned Will.   

“I work for Golf Monthly, not Playboy. I feel like you don’t really understand what I do.”    

“You don’t either. All you do is gossip and eat raw salmon.”    

“Wow! See if I ever share my salmon sashimi with you ever again.”     

They continued bickering as the Jaguar pulled into a hilly green drive, then wound up and up to the front of a grand old house with a white facade. 

“We’re here, Mr. Molloy.” Said Will and Daniel felt like he was hit with a bucket of ice water. He had forgotten that they even had a destination in mind and that he had a job to do. 

Daniel sat tight, waiting for Will to get out and open the car door for him. He watched as the man crossed in front of the car and walked toward him, his golden waves seeming to catch the last rays of the setting sun.         

He opened the door with a grim expression. “I’m not allowed inside, but I’ll be waiting out here for you when you’re ready to go.”       

Daniel could not shake the feeling of dread in his stomach.    

“Uh, thanks, Will.” He said quietly, heading toward the large house alone, pens feeling slippery in his sweating palms.    

Chapter 34

Daniel stood before the front doors and watched as a pair of middle aged white women dressed in black opened them. One was tall and thin with long dark hair slicked back into a ponytail. Her face was sharp and her green eyes even sharper. The other was short, stocky, and blonde with an overwhelming amount of face makeup. 

“Good evening, Mr. Molloy.” Said the short blonde, her face nearly orange and her neck white. 

“Hi,” Replied Daniel.       

“Please follow me to the library.” Said the blonde and Daniel nodded, following her through a house tastefully decorated with all manner of art and antiques. The rugs beneath their feet were extensive, intricate persian rugs. The banisters of the house were custom made, intricate wood carvings showing flowers and their thorns.       

“Some place,” Daniel said, as they walked past some large modernist paintings and that’s when it hit him.   

“Is this a real Rothko?” Daniel asked the woman. It was massive blocks of color, somewhat resembling a giant tub of neapolitan ice cream, if there was a block of orange instead of chocolate.   

Daniel didn’t know much about art, but he figured almost any idiot could recognize a Rothko. The CIA didn’t pay big bucks for those big squares for nothing.         

“Probably, Mr. Molloy.” Said the woman. Unlike Will, she clearly had no real interest in conversing with him, which only made Daniel want to dig deeper. 

“What’s your name?” He asked.        

“Dana,” Replied the woman, professional and flat. 

“How long have you worked for Mr. Fontaine, Dana?” He asked.  

“About 5 years.”        

“So, Woodrow’s has been open that long?”     

“Only about two. I used to work managing his restaurant in New Orleans.”  

Daniel thought of the somewhat plantation style house he had been staying in, very southern, which suddenly made more sense. Fontaine was a French name, right? Maybe he would be dealing with an old New Orleans family and not an old French one.     

“What was it called?” Asked Daniel.   

“Sister Clau’s. Modern Creole food. Good stuff.”   

Daniel wondered who exactly he was dealing with. Some deeply weird guy with money money.      

He had, had his share of interviews with these assholes, and this was nothing like that. For one thing, he took care of his people so well that they didn’t care if his unstable boyfriend, who was also a staff member, was rumored to be out there fucking defenestrating their coworkers.   

This man owned a golf club with a fucking spa and sushi bar in it, a restaurant, a fucking Rothko, and god knows what else.             

But, considering how well taken care of the staff were, Daniel doubted this was a man who had always been wealthy. This was not the kind of business somebody who had never struggled would run. 

For the first time in a long time, Daniel was actually interested in the subject he was interviewing. He had a lot of questions for one Mr. Fontaine.    

He and Dana stopped in front of a beautiful door carved intricately with angels and their sprawling ethereal wings. Dana knocked three times and a smooth voice called from within. 

“Come on in.”    

Daniel couldn’t help but swallow nervously as Dana opened the door. 

Notes:

Been going through it lately not gonna lie, the struggle is REAL. Doing some final edits on this, it should wrap up by the end of the year. Thanks for sticking through this long ass monster of a fic.

Chapter 35

Notes:

Shout out everyone who has been glazing me up on tumblr I'm so happy that some of y'all enjoying this so much. It makes me WEEP OPENLY with JOY.

Daniel was greeted by an incredible sight. The inside of Mr. Fontaine’s library was vast, books were stacked from floor to ceiling in dark wooden shelves.     

The library itself had three levels with walkways, all connected by spiraling staircases in the same dark wood. An unlit fireplace full of candles burned at one end of the room, with various couches and chairs comfortably arranged on the largest Persian rug that Daniel had ever seen.      

Then there came an even more arresting sight, Mr. Fontaine himself.  

Daniel was rendered utterly breathless, he had only seen one person in his entire life that could rival the beauty of the man before him.      

He was long and lean in a burgundy suit, skin as clear and smooth as a mirror and a stunning shade of light brown. His face was well proportioned and sharp, lashes long and effeminate, and eyes the most stunning and unearthly blue that Daniel had ever seen. His hair was cut short, close to his scalp, sharply elegant.  

The advice to not look Mr. Fontaine in the eyes vaguely occurred to Daniel as he made direct contact with those large, luminous eyes, that burned with a preternatural fire.   

Fuck it.

Daniel looked down at Mr. Fontaine’s hands, finding the nails long and sharp and taking note.   

Is this some kind of ambush or something? Are they working together? 

“Hello, Mr. Fontaine,” Said Daniel easily. It was simple to keep composure when he was at work. Daniel knew he only had two options. 

He was either locked alone in a remote property with a pair of vampires, or going completely insane.     

Either way, he would deal with thinking about that when he was off the clock. 

“Good evening, Mr. Molloy.” Said Mr. Fontaine. “Can I offer you something to drink?”        

“A diet coke, if you have one.”     

Mr. Fontaine sat on one of the large leather chairs, next to a reading table with a phone on it. He moved with the languid grace of a ballerina performing at the bottom of the ocean. He called a member of the staff to bring them a Diet Coke. 

“Do you want ice?” He turned to Daniel.   

“Yeah, sure.” Daniel replied and Mr. Fontaine finished his order, placing the phone back down, his long claw-like nails gleaming in the light. 

“Please sit, Mr. Molloy.” 

Daniel did instantly, sitting across from him on a leather sofa, propping his notebook in his lap and opening to a fresh page. “Call me Daniel if you don’t mind.”       

“Mr. Molloy is your father?” Quipped Mr. Fontaine and Daniel shrugged. 

“Something like that,” He said and Mr. Fontaine smiled. He had the most beautiful smile that Daniel had ever seen. When he smiled Daniel forgot that he was in danger for a long moment.      

“Call me Louis, then.” Said Louis. “I hope this profile does great things for my business. As you can see, I’ve invested a whole lot in this place.”     

“Yeah, and it shows!” Said Daniel, honestly impressed. “You have the best sushi I’ve ever had in my life.”     

Louis laughed a little, obviously proud. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your time here. I appologize for keeping you waiting. I had some things to take care of.”                 

“It’s no problem at all,” Said Daniel. “I’ll be sure to include how good the sushi is in the article.”    

Louis laughed. “You know, I have a number of businesses around the world, but this is my first time doing anything like this. I really wanted to try something new. A sort of all-inclusive golf resort with things that interest a diverse upscale clientele.”     

Daniel quickly took some notes. “So, that’s why you have all of this in one spot?”     

Louis nodded. “It seems to have really taken off with upscale clientele in Asia, purely through word of mouth, but we don’t have a ton of domestic interest yet.”     

“How does it feel to be big in Japan?” Asked Daniel and Louis shook his head with a fond little smile.     

Daniel couldn’t help but note the warmth spreading through him at that familiar smile. It was like falling in love all over again.   

Interesting.    

“I’m happy about it, but I’m always looking to grow.”        

“Well, hopefully this will help spark the interest of our readers.”      

They sat in a companionable silence for a second before Daniel started things up again. “So, tell me about you. This is a profile on Louis Fontaine, after all. Let’s start at the beginning. Where you were born? Tell me about your family…” 

Louis had a sad, faraway look in his haunting seafoam green eyes.  

“I was born in 1959 in New Orleans, Louisiana, so they told me. I was an orphan, left outside a hospital, so nobody really even knows what my actual birthday is. I just picked October 3rd one day as a kid and I’ve been sticking with that…”   

Louis began and Daniel took notes, even though something told him that all of this was basically bullshit.   

They passed a comfortable few hours together, Louis spoonfeeding him a heartwarming story of overcoming many obstacles, a rags-to-riches tale that would charm anyone who came across it.   

Louis magnanimously kept the Diet Cokes flowing.       

Daniel wrote it all down, even though he didn’t believe most of it. He would have exactly what his boss and what Golf Monthly wanted, more bland shit for bland people to read.        

He had a lot of real questions about how a black man, if he was, in fact, mortal, had been born under legal segregation and in the age of lynchings and had become a bonafide business magnate at such a young age. 

But Golf Monthly was not the place for that.  

At the end of the story, Daniel stood up and stretched. His neck cracked audibly and Louis looked far too charmed by it.           

“Do you mind if I ask you a few follow up questions?” Asked Daniel, noting Louis watching his body move in the suit pants and shirt. His jacket had come off and been flung somewhere hours ago.   

Looks like he likes twinks but he also likes whatever this is. Guess when all you have is caviar you crave a TV dinner occasionally.  

“Sure, shoot.” Said Louis.   

“How did you come up with the name Woodrow’s for this place?”  Asked Daniel.   

Louis smirked a little. “Can I give you an on the record and an off the record answer?”   

Daniel nodded, picking up his pen again.   

“On the record, it was the name of one of my mentors when I was young. One of the people who believed in me when nobody else did.” 

Daniel took his time writing that complete load of horseshit down. “And off the record?”    

Louis grinned at him conspiriatorily. “Honestly it just kinda seemed to me like something an older white man would name a golf resort.”       

Daniel laughed, a completely genuine cackle. 

Louis laughed with him.         

“You’re a better white man than me,” Said Daniel. “I can’t even golf.”         

“Honestly, they can’t either.” Said Louis, dismissively waving a hand.          

The interview was clearly winding down, and Daniel knew he was running out of time to ask what he really wanted to know, and that it would be a giant risk to do so. 

But Daniel was always a man who lived dangerously.      

“One last thing,” Daniel said, putting down his pen.   

“Off the record or on?” Asked Louis. 

“Off.” Confirmed Daniel. “The rest off the record.”      

He could tell that Louis was interested in whatever he had to say, in him. There was a sort of mutual fascination between them as dense as a physical presence. Daniel put his notepad and pen on the sofa beside him, crossing one leg over the other.         

“Are you wearing contacts?” Asked Daniel and Louis laughed, long and low, before his face became strained and serious. 

“Really? That’s your big question?”  

“Not the biggest one,” Replied Daniel. “But your eyes do stand out to me.”  

Daniel wondered if that came across as flirtatious briefly before deciding that if Louis decided to take it that way he would not stop him. If he got thrown out of a window for it it would be a worthy way to die. He’d spent his life doing far dumber shit for less. 

“I could say the same thing to you, cher.” Louis replied and Daniel felt profoundly bashful, like he hadn’t in a long time. He felt like a kid again. “Maybe we’ve met before.”  

“I think if we did, I would remember.” Daniel replied, even though he could not shake the feeling that they had. Maybe they had met on some drunken night long ago as Daniel roved the US bumming around.   

Louis’ gaze sharpened. Daniel felt nervous, every nerve alight as only a creature who know’s their being hunted can be.         

“Also, don’t flatter me. I have normal blue eyes. Nobody has eyes like you both.”      

“Like you both?” Asked Louis and Daniel felt his heart drop into his stomach. 

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.     

Louis picked up the phone and pressed a few buttons.     

“Rashid.” Louis breathed into the phone and it was low and dangerous, clearly displeased.    

Daniel felt his heart in his throat. Was he about to get thrown out of a window? It suddenly felt less worth it.     

“Come to the library, now.” Louis’ voice was icy and Daniel felt it creep down his back. Louis put the phone back down and a familiar thrill shot down Daniel’s spine. 

It seemed like hours and seconds passed together, then the old brass doorknob started to turn.      

Daniel steeled himself, already knowing who exactly was about to pass through.    

Chapter 36

Daniel had never been so happy to finally return to New York City. He swore the Modesto curse hit him like a train whenever he entered California borders and something fucked up always happened to him.     

While he worked to complete turning Louis Fontaine’s completely bullshit backstory into a boring inspiration porn article for the soft and braindead readership of Golf Monthly, he thought about what he could reasonably even do with all of the information he had been getting, and if it was even worth continuing to pursue Ama Deo, Rashid, and/or Armand. 

He had his ultimate answer, Ama Deo was actually the homicidal assistant/concubine of the mysterious mega-wealthy entrepreneur Louis Fontaine, living a double life as a NYC drag queen.      

The words that Louis had said kept ringing in Daniel’s head.    

You’re doing it again. I told you to leave the fucking boy alone!

“There’s a history there that I can’t remember.” Daniel muttered to himself in his office. “Did he take it from me?”   

Daniel thought of it all. The eyes, the powers, the coffin, the strength, the blood. He started to laugh.   

Daniel put his head in his hands and finally bent over his desk. 

“Vampires.” He said, nearly choking on laughter, when his hand returned to his neck, with the strange wound which never fully healed.   

The bite mark.     

Daniel thought of Rashid’s nameless defenestrated victim, the Private Eye who he probably also killed, and Adam Lee who he had also killed. His nail marks which had taken a chunk out of the table burned bright in Daniel’s mind’s eye.       

Dabbling with supernatural evil would either kill you or make you insane, probably. 

Knowing this did not phase Daniel at all. And he was tired of playing nice, and gathering facts, and ending up at such a series of convoluted endless clues that only led to more unfathomable mysteries.     

Sure, he could find out who owned The Apostle and use his knowledge of Louis Fontaine to find out that he and his many-named terror of a personal assistant/boyfriend/closet drag queen owned every business in America. What the fuck did it matter? It wouldn’t give him what he really wanted.      

At least, if he went fucking crazy, he would know what the fuck was happening before he lost it. Whatever he had that was left of it, anyway. 

If Rashid or Ama Deo or Armand or whoever he was could actually read minds, Daniel was going to make his mind so flagrantly arresting that the motherfucker would have no choice but to return to him.   

He spent the rest of the week planning to make some kind of incredible display come Friday night.      

He put in calls to some old contacts, who were delighted to help him for a fee. He had a fucking plan.  

Something that no vampire or even run-of-the-mill mortal freak could fucking resist.  

Daniel went through his week on auto pilot.  

Chapter 37

On Friday Daniel faked calling in sick. He couldn’t fucking take it. He had submitted the first draft of his bullshit interview with Louis Fontaine the day before and couldn’t be bothered to waste his whole day in the office when he knew what was gonna happen that night.    

He barely bothered a half hearted cough into the phone when calling his boss in the early morning. He left a message that anybody would know was a lie if they thought about it for 8 seconds.        

He spent the morning on his roof in his pajamas with a cup of coffee and a cigarette in hand. Then around 11 am he walked down to the bodega by his place to get a breakfast sandwich, and took his time petting the cat.       

Felipa was a sweet little black and white cat with big blue eyes.       

Daniel spent the afternoon showering and rubbing himself with oils while blasting The Darkness on the Edge of Town Springsteen cassette in his soundsystem over and over.    

The sun was setting over New York City when his door buzzed. 

Daniel was only wearing a bathrobe, cigarette in hand as he buzzed them in.      

He watched as two women entered his apartment. A tall statuesque woman with short blonde hair and blood red lipstick dressed in a black pin striped suit with a black lace lingerie top beneath.  The second was a short and curvy white woman with a shaved head, dressed in a skin-tight long black leather dress. Large black patent leather hoops stuck out of her ears and caressed her shoulders. 

She carried a large black bag.         

“Hello, Daniel.” Said the blonde. “You have permission to speak. We haven’t started yet.”     

“Great to see you again Evelyn.” Said Daniel. “It’s been a long time. How have you been?”   

“The usual,” Said Evelyn. “Business is good. Moved up here from Philly about 6 months ago for Yvette.”         

“Nice to meet you,” Yvette held out her hand, with long black nails, and Daniel shook it.      

“How did you meet?” Asked Daniel.       

“Lesbians organized their own event around the same time as Folsom last year.” Said Yvettei. “I was doing a demonstration. And Evie attended.”   

“She’s great with knifeplay. Today I’ll tie you up and she will carve the words into you that you requested.”     

Daniel swallowed, nervous excitement suffusing him. “Sounds good.”  

“Before we get started, write out exactly what you want. So, that way we can be sure. No mistakes, of course.” Evelyn smiled serenely and Daniel scrambled to find a pen and something to write on in the mild clutter of his apartment.   

He found a pen on the floor under his couch and quickly wrote Rashid , then crossed it out, then wrote Ama Deo, then crossed it out. Then went back to Rashid.       

The forgotten magazine was covered with scribbled out names. 

No, it’s Armand.  I fucking know it is. 

He settled on Armand and handed the magazine to Evelyn. “Armand?” She asked and Daniel nodded. 

“We will start in 15 minutes. Go to the bathroom, have a glass of water. Bring out your bedroom mirror when you are ready. When you come back out we will begin, and you will not speak unless spoken to.”             

Daniel nodded again.    

“What is your safeword?” Asked Evelyn.          

“Modesto.” Said Daniel.     

“Same treatment as last time? Has anything changed that we should know about? Any injuries I need to be mindful of?”  

Daniel shook his head. “The usual, please.” 

“Very good,” Said Evelyn. “That will be $500.”      

Daniel checked various jacket pockets for the money before passing Evelyn 5 crisp $100 bills.     

“Any last words before we begin?” Asked Evelyn.     

“No, Mistress.” Said Daniel before following her instructions and heading to the bathroom.   

Chapter 38

Notes:

Sorry I been MIA for a minute. Been having multiple family crises, including a family member with cancer, so I been STRUGGLING out here. Nearly crashed out honestly and had to go back to therapy. Hope to wrap this up by the end of Jan 2026.

Been polishing up these last chapters while listening to Midnightlustmusic on YouTube and I 10000/10 recommend their slutty trip-hop and down tempo jazz playlists for all your porn reading needs.

Daniel came back into the livingroom exactly 15 minutes later wheeling a large body-length mirror in a deep brown wooden frame. 

All of his shit had been pushed off of the coffee table and a black velvet roll full of ropes and knives and other assorted toys and kink items was stretched out across it. Yvette was arranging them and Evelyn was taking off her rings slowly, one by one and placing them next to the tools on the table.     

“On your knees three feet in front of the mirror!” Barked Mistress Evelyn and Daniel fell to the ground almost instantly, his bathrobe gaping and revealing naked clean skin underneath, littered with old bite marks. He caught his own gaze in the mirror briefly and thought that it didn’t even look like him.     

After that, Daniel kept his eyes on the ground, focused on her black leather boots with their slight heel, making her long, lean body even taller.       

It was then that she slapped him across the face. The shock of it sent him gasping and swaying. It had been so long since Daniel had done anything like this that it was a pure shock to his system.          

“Silence.” Hissed Evelyn and Daniel remained still, his eyes still cast down at the floor between her feet.    

“Good boy.” She said and a familiar warmth began to curl in the pit of his stomach. She walked toward the table, fetching her black ropes, and her thick heeled boots seemed to strike the floor in time with Daniel’s own heartbeat.         

“Strip.” Demanded Evelyn and Daniel did so instantly, throwing his robe across the room as if it had burned him. He knelt on the floor of his apartment completely naked, eyes cast down, and hands clasped in front of him.    

Daniel had asked to be tied up as if bent over in prayer on his knees, a network of knots suspending his ams infront of him and his hands clasped, with his thighs and shins also bound together and his arms outstretched. 

Armand, come here. Come here now. 

He thought again and again as he was bound into a prayer position knot by knot. Evelyn would make a remark to him occasionally, about how pretty he looked or how well behaved he was, but they hardly registered over Daniel’s internal prayers that Armand appear.     

Daniel’s cock started to harden between his legs, neglected entirely as Evelyn focused on tying him in place.      

Daniel was taken from his internal prayers as the cold leather of a crop traced his cock. Evelyn was standing tall above him, one boot on his bound thigh and the other on the floor.       

“I ought to beat it out of you.” Said Evelyn, lightly swatting at the engorged head of his cock. 

Daniel fought to remain silent, pleasure and pain coursing through him, his limbs starting to strain.     

“I bet you would love it.” She said and Daniel kept his eyes on the floor, only looking up at her when she maneuvered his head up, tracing the underside of his jaw with the crop.     

“Such pretty eyes, such long lashes. What a pretty boy.”       

Daniel moaned and she tapped his cheek with a light crack of the crop, just enough to sting.        

She slapped the other side just for good measure and a fat tear rolled down his cheek. Evelyn scraped it away with the crop and flicked it away.                

“He’s ready for you, darling.” She said and Daniel was confused for a second. He had forgotten that her partner was even there.     

Daniel watched as the other woman pursued her selection of knives and razor blades like an artist pursuing her collection of paints. He shivered against his bindings.      

Chapter 39

Notes:

Two updates in one week, your eyes do not decieve you. If I can, I would like to wrap this up this year.

Yvette walked over, coming to stand between him and the mirror, a surgical scalpel held tenderly in her left hand.    

Her leather dress creaked and stretched around her as she knelt down. She took his face in her other hand, sharp black nails digging into the skin under his chin.       

“Look into my eyes.” She said. And Daniel did so. They were wide and dark with long fake lashes and long, thick winged out liner.    

It felt like they spent an eternity staring into eachother’s eyes. Daniel had all but disappeared, he felt hollowed out except for his internal pleading that Armand appear.               

“Now, look into the mirror.” Her voice was soft but no less commanding than that of her partner. Daniel looked at himself, glassy eyed and tied into a prayer positionhis arms bound to his naked upper thighs and ankles, leaving most of the flesh of his thighs and legs free.     

“Turn it to the side so it can watch, please.” Yvette said to Evelyn, and something hot curled in Daniel’s stomach as the woman moved him as if he weighed nothing at all, and he was helpless to resist. 

Yvette sat infront of him on her knees. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her looming over the meat of his outer thigh, black claws stroking his skin, against the grain of the way his hairs grew. He shivered.     

He watched in the mirror, bound and breathing long and slow, as she pressed the blade against his outer thigh.   

It was so sharp that it felt like nothing at first, the stinging starting as blood began to drip from the first line of the letter “A.” Daniel watched in the mirror, enraptured, as line by line, Armand’s name appeared on his skin.       

Wherever the lines met to form letters blood dripped down his pale skin.     

As soon as one was done, Yvette began again alongside side it, a fingertip’s length away from where the name ended.      

Again and again she carved into him. Daniel cried out in his mind. 

Come on, Armand. You fucker. Now.     

He looked at where his own blood was dripping down his leg, onto his own carpet, his body cramping and uncramping and cramping again, bound in false prayer to the insane monster he was hoping to summon.        

He watched out of the corner of his eye, neck muscles straining, as his own reflection flickered in the mirror.       

The eyes peering back at him were a familiar burning molten orange, the face angular and striking, the fanged teeth openly bared. 

Daniel watched as those eyes traced the blood dripping down his leg before one long, thin hand with its claw-like nails tapped at the inside of the mirror, cracking it from within. 

The mirror started to crack, and then shatter, almost as if in slow motion.     

Daniel closed his eyes, only to open them when he realized that he was no longer being cut into. 

He blinked open his eyes to see that Yvette was frozen above him, scalpel held mere inches from the meat of his inner thigh.      

Evelyn was frozen too, sitting with her legs crossed on his sofa. The mirror itself had stopped shattering mid-air, and its shards glimmered in place.     

Daniel looked at the floor, where a drop of his own blood had frozen in the air, just as it started to touch the floor.        

Yvette floated away from him only to crumple to the ground a few feet away, frozen in place, her scalpel on the ground by her feet.    

Daniel realized that he could still breathe in and out and move against his bindings in the room, only to suddenly find himself hovering feet in the air, still fully bound.    

Armand entered in a pair of jeans with busted knees, a red flannel, and an old purple tee shirt. His lush hair was stuffed into a black beanie and his sneakers looked dirty and old, like a hand-me-down from an older sibling. 

Daniel gawked at him, naked and bound mid-air, blood dripping down his thighs onto the ground.     

Armand came between him and the shattered mirror, pressing a hand hard into his wounds. 

Daniel hissed and watched as the man stuck those bloody fingers into his mouth one by one, sucking them clean.       

Daniel’s cock twitched in his lap.      

“You are going to be quite upset with me,” Said Armand with a little grin, raking his spit-slick hand through Daniel’s curls. Daniel couldn’t help but lean into the touch.        

“I’m going to be something,” Said Daniel, his voice dry and cracked from disuse and desire. “If you get rid of them, will you stay?”     

“Get rid of them? In which way? Be more specific.”   

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Send them home. Don’t eat them. Eat me if you have to eat somebody.”      

Daniel was gently lowered to the floor, and having to bare the weight of his own bound limbs again felt like a titillating agony. He moaned from his position on the floor. 

He watched as Armand looked first at Evelyn, who was still sitting frozen on the couch. 

“You have had a successful night with your client Daniel Molloy. Pack your things and leave.”    

Daniel watched as she blinked several times before repeating exactly what Armand had said. Robotically, she and Yvette gathered their things and walked right out the door, closing it behind them. 

Daniel couldn’t believe it. It was just him and Armand, alone finally.     

“Can you untie me?” Asked Daniel and the vampire shook his head.        

“Perhaps I prefer you like this.” He said, eyes raking over Daniel’s body from head to toe. A blush stretched from Daniel’s cheeks down to his chest. “Lovely boy.” Said Armand and Daniel fought the urge to cover himself.      

It was then that the ropes started to unwind themselves, sliding roughly over his skin and coming to pile on the floor around him.       

The blood rushing back to his cramping limbs was pure agony. Daniel cursed, barely able to move. Armand was on him in an instant, trying to rub life back into his aching limbs. Daniel hissed as his fingers kneaded the wounds carved into his legs.     

He clung to Armand, body shaking as caresses against his skin turned to kisses where he was a little bit chafed from the ropes.      

“It’s Armand, right?” Asked Daniel and the look in Armand’s eyes was so full of boundless love that Daniel felt as if he could choke on it.    

Armand nodded, pressing a kiss against his lips that made Daniel forget that his entire body was killing him.    

He melted against Armand’s body, trying to wrap limbs that barely worked around him, pulling him even closer. Daniel slid a clumsy hand up his tee shirt, feeling the coolness of his skin and the firm curves of his stomach muscles and chest.             

He pressed a hand against Armand’s chest, where there was no heartbeat.        

“After we fuck you have to explain all this shit to me,” Demanded Daniel and Armand’s laugh was warm with delight and strangely human.   

“No one is fucking tonight. You can’t even move.”   

In response Daniel barely squeezed one of his pecs with a half numb hand.       

“Reflexes of a shark.” Insisted Daniel, squeezing again. His attempt to reverse their positions ended up with him flopping on his carpet like a naked, bloody starfish. Armand scooped him up into his arms as if he weighed nothing, carrying him bridal style toward the bedroom.     

Daniel gasped, unabashedly impressed by his strength, and Armand visibly glowed at the silent praise. .  

“Don’t look so smug. It’s just that no one has lifted me up like that since I was a kid.”  

“Well, let daddy see to that.” Armand said it so easily, as if it had been said a thousand times. Something about this ageless creature treating him, already halfway to old age, like a little boy made Daniel visibly flush down to his collarbones. He clung to Armand in stunned silence.               

Armand attempted to lay Daniel on the bed and Daniel would not allow it, clinging to him. While Armand had the strength to pull away he allowed himself to be dragged on top of a weak and shaking Daniel, clawed fingers gently tracing his scars with clear fascination.    

“My boy, so demanding.” Said the creature, and Daniel peered up into his eyes, trapped against the bedspread by the cage of his frigid limbs.           

“Kiss me.” Replied Daniel, a demand softened with pure vulnerable need.          

The mirror in his livingroom shattered, pieces of broken glass exploding and scattering all over the room, as their lips fit together perfectly, as if they had kissed a thousand times and that only made it better.  

Daniel gasped, feeling the sharp touch of a small fang against his bottom lip. He intentionally pressed into it, and his whole body twitched as his fragile skin was pierced and blood began to flow.         

Armand latched onto it. Drinking Daniel’s blood with worshipful moans.            

Daniel clung to him. 

Chapter 40

Notes:

smash that mf kudos if u also not that gay in the same way Daniel is lmaooooooooooooo

Daniel awoke at almost at noon the next day, his body killing him and thigh raw and itchy from his scabbed over wounds.   

 For the first time in a long time, he felt genuine hunger; his stomach was almost screaming.  

Then it hit him that he wasn’t alone in bed. 

Strips of sunlight snuck in through the closed blinds in his bedroom window, illuminating brown skin against his grey bed sheets.    

Daniel felt his heart pounding and reached across the bed where a perfectly still being laid, not breathing.   

Daniel wrapped a tentative hand around a lithe arm, finding it cold, but very solid and present. Then that head turned, and those large luminous eyes were on him.     

“You were having strange dreams.” Said Armand and Daniel’s brain came back online as a strip of light slid across Armand’s sharp cheek and jaw.    

“You…can be in the sun?” Asked Daniel, his voice gravelly from sleep.             

“Such a clever boy,” Armand said in lieu of any real answer and Daniel felt something warm bloom in his chest. Armand moved his hand down his own arm, slotting their fingers together. Daniel began to rub circles into the back of his hand with his thumb without even thinking about it, like it was the most natural thing in the world.     

“I will explain everything to you once you’ve washed, eaten, and rested.” Said Armand and Daniel would have complained, if he was not already on the verge of falling back asleep, his eyes half-closed.                     

He awoke again several hours later to the tantalizing smell of lamb shawarma and rice. He padded naked out into the livingroom, stomach in pain with hunger, to find Armand sitting on his sofa. A giant bag of food, and multiple plastic soup containers full of red and white sauce sat in front of him on the coffee table.    

“Is all that for me?” Asked Daniel and Armand nodded. “I don’t think you got enough sauce.” Said Daniel as he plopped next to the vampire, butt-naked on his own couch, ready to slurp down a mountain of Shawarma. 

Daniel ate ravenously, finishing an entire container of lamb shawarma over rice before even looking for a drink. Armand was quick to pass him a glass bottle of Diet Coke. 

“If you keep this up I’m gonna fall in love with you.” Said Daniel, instantly falling silent as the absurdity of the entire situation occurred to him. Should he really even be saying things like that? Why did it feel so easy? Why did it feel so true?

Armand echoed his silence, watching him drink and eat intently, as if to memorize every last detail.    

Daniel drained half a bottle of Diet Coke and made it half the way through a container of chicken shawarma over rice before stopping and leaning back against the sofa, a little bit of white and red sauce dripping down his naked chest and stomach.   

“Oh fuck,” groaned Daniel, stretching his limbs which creaked like the doors of an abandoned house.            

“You should bathe.” Said Armand and Daniel groaned like a kid being woken up for school. He gasped as he was thrown over a slender shoulder and carried naked to the bathroom.     

“Did you throw that piano out the window?” Asked Daniel and Armand sighed. 

“Throw? Not as such.”    

Daniel wanted to respond, but was distracted by being gently deposited in the shower as if he weighed as much as a doll. Armand turned on the water and it was freezing. Daniel yelped, immediately adjusting the dial. 

“So dramatic.” Mocked Armand.  

“Says the drag queen.” Daniel returned. “If you want me bathed so bad, you do it.” He crossed his arms petulantly and watched as Armand let out the most long-suffering sigh in the world, only for his clothes to suddenly melt off of him and appear folded on the back of the toilet. He stepped naked into the shower and reached with confidence toward Daniel’s shampoo, lathering it in his hands.     

Daniel stood still, shocked into silence and then into utter bliss as Armand massaged the shampoo into his scalp. 

Steam began to form around them and Daniel swayed beneath his gentle ministrations. Letting out pleased little hums as Armand fastidiously cleaned him from head to toe. When it came to his new wounds, Armand’s name carved over and over again into his leg, Armand pressed a hand against them and Daniel hissed in pain, but did not move away from his hand.      

Armand looked at him with pure adoration, eyes a fixed point, ethereally gleaming through the steam.       

Chapter 41

Daniel allowed himself to be dried off, dressed in mismatched pajamas (he noted that Armand already knew where everything was in his apartment, and did not need to ask), and carried him back to the sofa like a child. Armand poured him glass of water after glass of water, demanding that he hydrate and not solely live on Diet Coke. 

Armand amused himself popping cassette after cassette into his system, The Police album Zenyatta Mondatta playing softly in Daniel’s semi-trashed apartment and the sun starting to set when he had finally had enough.   

“If you don’t tell me what’s going on I am going to go absolutely insane.” He finally said, the pair curled up on the sofa together while Armand flipped through discarded magazine after magazine, reading each in about 30 seconds flat before throwing it across the room.   

Armand tossed a copy of Golf Monthly into the kitchen and turned to look at Daniel, jaw set tight with discomfort. “Tell me what you think happened first.” Said Armand. “That’s part of the deal.”    

Daniel’s brain spun inside his skull. “We…have a history.” He started. “That I can’t remember for some reason. I’ve been trying to find you and you’ve been following me the whole fucking time playing some shitty game with me.”      

Daniel extricated himself from Armand, turning to face him. “You and Louis Fontaine are vampires. You’re his assistant and his boyfriend and also…with me? You killed Jim Cairnes, Adam Lee, and John Delaney, but instead of killing me you’re nursing me back to health in my apartment and playing with my fucking hair…”  

Daniel stopped. “You took my fucking memories didn’t you!” For this first time Daniel felt real fear. “Like you fucked with the brains of that girl at the check in desk at the fucking hotel and Evelyn and Yvette!”        

Daniel’s anger abated as he noticed the pure relief spill across Armand’s face. 

“I think this is close enough.” Said Armand. 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Daniel had never felt so close to having an absolute nervous breakdown before. Anger turned to terror.   

“Armand, what the fuck did you do to me? What the fuck? What the f–” 

Calm suddenly flowed through him as Armand took his face in his hands, looking squarely into his eyes. 

“Daniel, my love,” Armand began, his voice sliding over his eyes likes a silk blindfold and oozing through his consciousness like a physical touch along his every nerve. “Remember, now.” 

Daniel saw Louis in a shitty bar in San Franciso. He was a younger man, skinny and looking for more coke and cock, following him home like a lost dog. Louis had spent a whole night playing with him and teasing him while whined and moaned. He didn’t even realize the vampire was taking blood from him at first.    

He only realized when the vampire was sucking blood straight from one of his balls. 

Bits and pieces of the real story of Louis du Pointe du Lac occurred to Daniel before the days he spent tortured in that hideous apartment by Armand’s hand slid into place behind them.        

Armand appeared to find Louis deep inside him and the screaming match began. 

Through a drunken and coked out haze he remembered Armand and Louis screaming and fighting, using him as the whipping boy in a fight decades older than him.    

Louis took it too far? Or was it Armand? It was all a blur.  

Memories of feeling like he was being stalked, in and out of rehabs and halfway houses, homeless a few times as he wrote a bunch of shitty articles, most of which were rejected, slotted in behind them. All the while, Daniel felt that he was always being watched. He made the mistake of telling a counselor in a drug rehab and they put him on a course of antipsichotics that made him more psychotic for the first time in his life.    

Him and Armand reconvening, their violence turning to sex turning to violence. Armand parading him around the world watching him fuck strangers and get fucked. Armand tying him up. Armand feeding him his divine blood which hit harder than any earthly substance Daniel had ever tasted. 

Them fucking, them fighting, them exchanging blood in Prague, in Montreal, in Cairo, in Miami. 

Daniel, hopelessly addicted, crawling, begging, crying, peeling lingerie off Armand in a bed the size of a small nation state. Armand slicing his skin with broken champagne bottles and drinking drinking drinking.     

All of it was intercut with the play of lovers in silent and joyful moments. Laughing and playing like children. Tackling eachother with joy, missing eachother, calling eachother, kissing and cuddling and laughing about the little things. The little jokes and noises that only true lovers share, a language all their own, Daniel became aware of it all all over again.   

Tender emotion caused him to openly weep. Armand wrapped around him as his body was wracked with sobs. 

The easy joy turned sour as the years passed. Bitterness pouring into Daniel all over again.  

Daniel watched as he aged and Armand stayed the same. Armand focused on breaking a washing machine into pieces and putting it back together while Daniel watched his eyes start to crinkle and grey start to comb its long fingers through his once black curls.     

Daniel felt utter panic, his body rotting in real time before his eyes.   

Daniel begged to be immortal. Begged for an eternity together. Armand refused him again and again. He watched as the fucking, the fighting, and the fucking continued in an endless loop.  Daniel watched in horror, disconnected from his younger self as he filled a pool with gasoline in the back yard of a mansion and lit it on fire with a cigarette. Armand threw him into the fire only to pull him out and heal all of his wounds, one by one. 

Them holding hands, kissing, laughing together in the twilight. Stealing soft glances in public, listening to records together on the couch, making love until Daniel collapsed in complete exhaustion.    

Armand feeding him, shaving his face, bathing him, dressing him, throwing him out of the window of a second story building and breaking all of his bones. Daniel surprising him with a stake through the heart one night, which did absolutely nothing, to his relief and despair.   

Armand leaving sometimes and Daniel leaving other times, only for both of them to come back together eventually anyway, every time. 

Then, finally, the last memory he had of Armand. They were together on yacht off the coast of Miami. Daniel was drunk, as he often used to be. 

“I could never forget you.” Younger Daniel proclaimed. “In any lifetime, in any circumstance, I would find you again.”    

“A threat, beloved?” Said Armand, flirtatious, the warm wind whipping his long dark curls behind him.          

“I would bet you anything that if you erased every last memory I have of you, I would find you again.”        

“Anything?” Asked Armand, tone wicked and flirtatious. Daniel felt sick. 

“Yeah.” Said younger Daniel. “If you do it and I find you, you have to give it to me.”   

Daniel knew exactly what his younger self was asking for.         

“And, what do I get if you never figure it out?”    

Daniel took another swig out of a bottle of rum. “If I don’t figure it out in 10 years you get to kill me!” He cackled like this was the funniest thing that anyone had ever said. Armand’s eyes darkened. It would be exquisite to kill Daniel. To be the last and only one to truly have every last drop of him.      

“Whenever I watch you kill other people I get so JEALOUS.” Daniel yelled, drunk and loose. “I don’t want anyone’s blood in you but mine.”        

Armand grabbed him, sheliding him against the wind. They kissed wildly for one last time.

Notes:

Thanks for reading. HMU on tumblr at rasolomonwrites if you want.

Title is from the Kaveh Akbar Poem 'Ways To Harm A Thing.' In this house Kaveh Akbar is the only acceptable bias. Stan Kaveh Akbar.