First Contact
"I think we should probably see other people."
"What?"
"Are you really zoning out right now?"
"I heard you, Alice, I'm just really fu- really surprised that you'd spring this on me right now."
Alice sits across from him like a stranger. The coffee shop they always meet at for lunch looks different now, less shiny than it did last month. It no longer smells like Alice, it smells like a memory he'd sooner forget than keep. It smells stale. Daniel thought she'd invited him here for a quickie in the alley, like they usually do, but today she's in an outfit that tells him she isn't staying long; the corporate attire has him sitting up straighter, blinking at her from behind his smudged glasses.
"The fact that you think this is a surprise tells me that you've checked out a long time ago." She replies with a stunning display of indignance, mouth slightly puckered. She's wearing the look that tells him she's trying to be cool about this. She picked a public space for a reason, right? Maybe she was scared he'd cause a scene. Does he seem like the kinda guy to cause a scene?
"Baby, you know I have a job - I told you -" Daniel tries to counter, reaching across the table for her hand.
"Don't - Daniel, I know you have a job. I'm not telling you that I should come first, I'm telling you that I don't think we've really been together for a while. And it's torture to sit at home and wait for you to show up or call and you never do. I'm not that kind of woman that's just going to sit in a box while you decide if you want to settle down or not." Her hand is pulled into her lap.
Daniel reels his hand back, curling it closed on top of the table. "I do want to settle down. I do."
"When?" She counters, leaning forward, the hush in her voice only second to the urgency in it. "We've been seriously dating for a year, Daniel. We've known each other for two and you haven't even asked me to move in. I'm not asking for marriage, I'm asking for a commitment."
"I can commit, I can do that-"
"I don't think you can. How old are you now, fourty-two?"
"Yeah, I am. And you're thirty-one, how would you like it if you dated a twenty-one year old that wanted to settle down and have kids? You'd want them to experience life a little before plunging into the box set death march to hell, wouldn't you?"
Alice is clearly hurt by that statement. She leans back in her chair and blinks at him, the expression in her face moving from disappointment to pity. "Box set death march to hell?" She repeats, tilting her head in a fashion that has Daniel sighing, rubbing his eyes.
"I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that-"
"That marriage scares you? That you think I can't make my own decision's because I'm a decade younger than you are? I'm a grown woman, Daniel."
"Can you quiet down a little? I don't need to barista knowing I'm a piece of shit, too."
"Can I quiet down? Are you fucking kidding me, Daniel? Fuck you!" Alice whisper-spits at him, but the whisper isn't much different when it's as scathing as it is. Daniel looks at her and then to the barista's and as he looks, every single one of those motherfucker's pretends to start cleaning.
"Okay, okay; I'm sorry. I know I've been distant, but this job is way harder than they made it seem. They said a little hard work happened in the first two years, no one told me that I'd be living in my office, okay? I didn't know I was being distant."
"You didn't know or you knew and you figured you could sacrifice a little bit of our relationship so that you could get ahead with work?"
When she says it like that, it makes sense to him. But it sounds like his dad and he neglects his expression just long enough for Alice to nod as she looks into his face.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. You wanted to put me on the back burner so you could play teacher. I'm not that kind of woman, Daniel. I can have a career and move in with you, it's possible."
He doesn't want to draw this out. He's angry now, pissed off that she'd seen him so easily. His mouth screws up into a sardonic shape, one that Alice knows well enough.
"Here comes the silent treatment. You just love checking out when things don't go your way, don't you?"
Daniel looks back into her eyes, just for a moment, before he lowers his gaze and pushes his chair out from under him, standing. "You're right, Allie. You always are. Have a nice life."
He knows he's too old to be acting like this. He thinks it as he walks out of the coffee shop, less caffeinated than he originally wanted to be and hungrier than before. If he's honest, the shaking in his hands has less to do with hunger and more to do with the cold feeling of being found out to be a liar. But the alternative was being a cheater, so what could he really say, anyway? What could he have done that would've satisfied her?
Nothing. He could've been around more, sure, but -
No, no buts.
He could've been better, full stop.
"Fuck!" He shouts and shoves his key into his car, swinging the door open with more force than he was right to use on a car that old.
The first thing Daniel does is open his phone. For a text, maybe. Hoping someone, anyone, would call and he could tell them, dejectedly, my girlfriend just dumped me.
He could lie and say that he was a good boyfriend, that he was attentive and loving and he was blindsided by it, but he wasn't. He had been a good boyfriend, maybe, in the beginning. He'd opened car doors for her, he'd taken her yachting and to Staten Island on surprise weekend's away. He even told his mom about her.
Daniel hasn't done anything of that nature in a long time.
Since before he met Armand, so it wasn't even like he could blame it on him. Not that he wanted to, anyway. He wouldn't. Armand might have distracted him, but he wasn't the catalyst for this.
Right?
Staring at his phone, Daniel pulls up their texts and stares at them, scrolling upwards before he decides he's too angry to read anything at all and he closes his phone again. A hand comes up to his mouth and he strokes the stubble under his nose, willing his body to catch up with his brain so that he could talk to Armand.
By the time he pulls out of his parking space, he's less cold than he was. Still, there was nothing else in his head but the idea that if she wanted to break up with him over his job, he would just pour himself back into his work with abandon. He could do that. If there was anything in this world that Daniel could do well, and with gusto, it was work. He spent the better part of his youth working towards extra curricular's that painted him a good light to the admission's office and another decade or so on his thesis. He was a work horse.
If she wanted to break up with him over his job, he'd give himself a reason to pour himself back into it.
So he heads over there, a little bit later than he might have if he hadn't stopped at the coffee house, and angrier, but he leaves with the distinct feeling in his chest that he was going to see that coffee house again; Alice or no Alice.
When he gets there, because it's turning out to be one of those days, Daniel finds someone parked in his reserved parking space.
And of course it's a shitty Tesla. As if he didn't have enough problems.
He's not one to wait on a New Yorker whose taking advantage of free parking. He'd do the same shit if he could. He just wishes it wasn't some yuppy Tesla in firetruck red, but it could be worse. It could be a shit box like his own car. He decides not to make a thing of it, not let it ruin his already ruined day, and pulls out of the parking lot in search of another spot, maybe on the street. Hopefully close to the faculty door, but he wasn't above walking.
It would probably do his head good if he walked.
As Daniel swings his head towards the opposite side of the road, a familiar face makes him do a violent double take.
It's Armand. It's fucking Armand.
His mouth falls slack, jaw hanging from his face like a goddamn cartoon character. The same cold, violent flash of emotion from before comes back two fold. Simultaneously, his cock twitches and his heart thumps and everything feels like it's going in slow motion until Daniel's woken from his reverie just as he hits the car pulling into an empty spot right in front of him.
If his heart was erratically jumping in his chest before, it was hammering in his head as he slams forward, busting his bottom lip on the steering wheel and bumping his jaw off the plastic. In very quick succession, a few things happen: a burning starts in his jaw, the head's of every student in a block radius's head turned his way and there was a buzzing sound in his ears. The sound of the colliding of their cars is unmistakably loud enough to leave an imprint on the backs of his eyes, too. A moment after he hits the break he looks forward, staring into the other driver's rear view mirror, panting. His mouth burns like fire.
Shit. Shit. Oh, fuck. Was he hurt? His head was humming and his mouth is on fire, but the worry far outweighs the pain and Daniel's scrambling out of the car before he knows what he's doing.
Their door open's and a young person, unmistakably a student comes out with wide, tearful eyes. Daniel tries to breathe. He swallows down the panic of being spotted by Armand, but the fear runs rampant in his veins anyway and before he realizes what he's doing he's grabbing the student by the shoulders and turning them, putting his back to the group on the other side of the street at the cafe.
"Are you alright, kiddo?"
Without warning, and without realizing why, the student slips into his arms and grabs him like he's drowning. "I'm so sorry, sir, I thought I could slip into the spot! I didn't see you coming -"
"Hey, it's alright - Are you hurt? Did you break anything?"
"No, I'm okay, I'm just sorry - I can't tell my mom about this, she's going to be so mad!" He bawls, clutching onto Daniel harder. He wasn't a student of his, but he has the distinct feeling that the kid knows who he is, he recognizes him as faculty, and the guilt was eating at him. Well, the guilt was eating at him, too. The damage isn't bad, per se- Not to him, but an insurance agent could claim something like that if the kid went to his parents.
So Daniel rubs his back and shushes him gently, like a parent might.
"Listen, that'll buff right out. Don't even worry about it, okay? Hey, look at me-" He says this fully knowing that what he was doing was illegal and could probably cost him his job if the kid told. Everything in him tells him to just exchange insurances, that something will come of this if he doesn't take care of it right now but Armand is standing thirty feet away and he feels like he's crawling out of his fucking skin trying to get away from meeting him like this. The student lets go of him, looking into his eyes like he was looking for salvation.
"It's alright. Really. I can forget about it if you can."
"You mean that?"
"Yeah. What's your name, kiddo?"
"Colby."
"And you know who I am, right Colby?"
"Yeah." He nods, a little pathetically.
"Good. Then you know where to find me if you want to come talk to me about this, right? There's no pressure, but-"
"Sir? You're bleeding."
"Huh? Oh shit." Daniel untangles himself from him, gently giving his lip a poke; a small sheen of pink, rosy blood stains his finger.
"No, um - Your chin. Oh god."
The split in his lip is nothing compared to the feeling he gets when he touches his chin and burns when he realizes that his finger enters a small cavity in his skin. Daniel gasps and pulls it back.
"Mr. Molloy, you should go to the ER. It's - It's hanging down."
"Fuck. Shit, okay. Um, listen, Colby. I need to go. I'm sorry this happened, but I need fucking stitches." He cups his own chin from below, closing the small, weeping wound with a gentle push. A flood of adrenaline has him reeling backwards, almost tripping on his own feet. Blood is already coming down through his fingers and the kid nods, turning back to his car, running to move it.
As Daniel turns back to his car, for worse, his head inevitably turns back to Armand.
Their eyes meet and Daniel pauses, staring across the street, transfixed by the way time seems to slow to a stop whenever he looked upon him. Armand is perfect in every sense of the word. His hair is like a winter sunrise amongst the kids he surrounds himself with and maybe he might have blended in anywhere else, in his U of NY hoodie, but he doesn't blend in to Daniel.
The moment passes when he slips back into his car.
Physically, his heart hammers away in his chest. It's so loud, and jarring, that Daniel sits behind the wheel for a few seconds just breathing and trying to convince himself that he needed to put the car into gear so he could drive away. Blood is still drooling out from between his fingers and his girlfriend just broke up with him, but he's so full of warmth that he feels like there's flame coming out from behind his skin like light through stained glass; filtered and transformed by way of humble hands.
Daniel puts the car into gear and spares one last glance to the group across the street before he pulls back out and proceeds to head to the medi-clinic down the block from his place.
This was turning out to be one shitty day for Daniel, but he can't escape the feeling that there was a giddiness in his bones that Armand planted there. He can't escape the thrill and horror that comes with realizing that Armand was real and he wasn't some kid who slept his day's away and crawled into his messages at night, but a boy with a life unknown to him until now.
And maybe that had been for the better. He feels like his life is about to hurl into an uncertain shape soon. The feeling is like an omen hanging onto every thread of his conscience, a parasite that he welcomes for better or for worse if it meant that he'd be in divine agony because of it. As he drives himself to the medi-clinic, he tries to keep his eyes on the road.
It was just that kind of day.
[ SMS; Armand ] am i mistaken in thinking that i just seen you hit someone with your car? DELIVERED AT 9:45 AM.
[ SMS; Armand ] people are saying that you were bleeding. DELIVERED AT 11:23 AM.
[ SMS; Armand ] answer me. DELIVERED AT 2:07 PM.
[ SMS; Armand ] there's really no need to punish me, i'm just as surprised as you are about this development. DELIVERED AT 4:39 PM.
[ INCOMING CALL: Armand ] UNANSWERED. 6:40 PM.
[ INCOMING CALL: Armand ] UNANSWERED. 7:30 PM.
[ SMS; Armand ] i won't tell people. pick up my call. DELIVERED AT 9:22 PM.
[ SMS; Armand ] i know where you work, you can't avoid me forever. DELIVERED AT 10:02 PM.
There's a stain on the ceiling.
He's not quite sure how long he's been staring at it, but the sudden realization that he's awake and staring at the brown splotch has him looking around the rest of the room with a similar kind of dissonance. How long has he been awake?
The codeine in his system is wearing off, but the groggy feeling in his eyes is heavier than ever; blinking burns. That's how long he's been staring into nothing.
Daniel inhales, reaching around his body for his glasses, patting the bed. He doesn't find them, nor are they on the bedside table, so he begins to pull the blanket about haphazardly, almost drunkenly. In the darkness, it's a harder feat but it's natural at this point; almost second nature to fall asleep with them. He begins by checking the space around his neck, where he hangs his glasses but when he doesn't find them he pats his head.
Bingo.
The room is sharper than before, but the darkness is still bleak enough that he squints into it.
He needed to take a piss. And maybe get a drink of water. His mouth tastes stale.
Slowly, with a measure of difficulty that the pain medication makes worse, he swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up, propped against the bed. He doesn't remember taking his socks off, but his feet are naked and he wiggles them. Everything feels warm, like he had a fever.
He supposes it could be worse. He could have broken something. Or broken something in the kid.
When Daniel makes it to the bathroom, he takes back what he just said. It is worse.
His jaw looks swollen and bruised. Yellowing hues run along his chin to his mouth and when he gazes at his split lip, he realizes that the bruise extends into his gums. Pulling his lip down, he gazes hazily at the peculiar shade of maroon that his lower gums have turned. It looks like a blood vessel burst or something, there are small flowering dots of blood that extend from his bottom lip to his tongue like little fireworks.
His jaw is swollen and the skin feels pulled tight when he touches his jaw. Gross. Slowly he opens his mouth, tenderly parting his lips; it hurts, but it wasn't too painful. The feeling was pressure, mostly, in the joint of his jaw on either side and he feels it when he closes it mouth again. The blood from before is still staining his shirt so he takes it off, throwing it somewhere on the ground.
The only person he wants to tell about this is Alice.
As he looks into his reflection in the mirror, Daniel realizes that he can't. As much as he wants to, he can't tell her about anything anymore. The tragedy in that hits him hard, a full, throbbing ache in his chest that he breathes through evenly; unsure if it's his lungs that make it hard to breathe or the knowledge that he was a piece of shit who ruined everything good in his life. This was who he was now. The accident had cemented it.
If he'd just gone to work, if he hadn't known Armand, maybe he might not be in this situation. He'd be here, at home, with Alice. Eating Chinese, maybe. Making out on the couch, laughing about some inconsequential bullshit that he never remembers.
Daniel turns around and focuses on getting his piss in the toilet.
He doesn't bother with the lights as he slowly walks back through his bedroom, one hand held out in front of him until he meanders into the kitchen. If he bumped into shit, maybe it would knock some sense into him. Maybe his brain would finally fucking work for once and he wouldn't be such an inescapable black hole for every woman he's ever loved.
None of it matters this late at night. The apartment is empty and silent and Daniel, in more or less the same condition, can only wander from room to room. He finds solace in it, but when he makes it back to his bedroom, clutching a bottle of water from the fridge, he's lonelier than he was before.
The bed is empty and tangled up. His covers look like innards, like intestines all coiled up in the same pattern as his comforter.
A voice, unknown to him, in his head tells him to take his medication. Maybe it's his mom's, or it's his Father's voice, but it's so foreign from his own headspace's voice that he obeys it without question.
The pills spill over the desk when he finally gets the bottle open and it's like his fingers aren't working right, they're stiff, too large for his singular frame of mind. Daniel just leaves them like that, uncaring as he scoops two from the pile and throws them into his mouth. As he's downing his bottle of water, the thought comes to him to email his student's and the Dean so he doesn't have to go in tomorrow. Guilt, and maybe some self-loathing, has him staring off into nothing far after he's decided that he'll call in sick.
Oh - Armand.
He forgot. For a moment there, he'd completely forgotten that Armand was a tangible, real thing in his world now. He's gone so long seeing him through a screen and listening to him through a phone speaker that for a second he'd felt so lonely without him. He swallows back, silently padding over to his bed. The cover's no longer look like intestines, it just looks like a nest for his discomforted mind; a mess of Egyptian cotton alongside the sinking sand blues.
Daniel runs a hand along the edge of the bed, padding the mattress and dipping under his pillow for his phone. He finds it on top of the blanket a second later when he starts pulling it this way and that, impatient now that the dark was no longer serving to add ambiance to his already dreary night.
The screen lights up, way too damn bright, and there's a dozen text messages; too goddamn many for someone with no girlfriend and no friends.
It isn't the first text message, it isn't even the second, but Armand's name is emboldened in his inbox and it draws an anxious kind of inhale out of him.
Daniel reads the messages, one by one, from last to first.
The first one makes his heart jump into his throat.
I know where you work.
Something in his mind tells him that this is where he cuts whatever this thing is, off. It wasn't just something on the internet anymore, it wasn't watching him from far away, it was real and if Armand was a student at his college, it'd be way too easy to just sue him for everything. He couldn't afford a lawyer, he could barely pay his car insurance. Where the fuck would he be living if Armand went to the cops and outed him?
Taking it a step further, he thinks about the kind of consequences men like him face when sexual misconduct becomes a point of litigation. Press releases, victim statements, he would get fucking canceled before his next book was out. He already got his advance, too.
As Daniel reads through the texts he slips into bed, squinting at the time. Just past midnight.
He needed to send an email to his students. He threatens himself with his own desires, promises that he can reply to Armand if, maybe, he finishes the email's. It's the only thing that makes him sit back up, curling up on his side towards the wall so that he could turn the lamp on. In the dim light, his eyes throb uncomfortably. The lights, and the medication, have him sleepily pulling the covers up around his shoulders.
Alright, email one: A quick explanation to his student's for his absence. One for today and another for tomorrow, complete with a gentle reminder that paper's are still due on Friday and that he'd mark them all as present if they didn't make a fuss.
The next email is one to his Dean's secretary, informing him on the matter complete with pictures of his jaw and chin from the hospital, pre and post stitching. It looks gnarly, but he needs it to - if he wants leniency. It was irresponsible of him to take his sick day's this early in the semester, but nobody expects a car accident, right? And if they bitched about it, he could bring it up at the next union meeting.
Halfway through the second email, he starts to feel the affects of his medication. Not much, but the cold, squirming feeling in his gut radiates warmth like a heart beat.
By the time he's opened Armand's messages again, he's halfway to drooling against his pillow and half propped up by will power alone. It feels good, make no mistake, and maybe that's why he was a fucking junkie for as long as he was, but it feels dangerous, too; dangerous because as he stares at his phone, rereading his message, running it through his mind like a xerox, Daniel has the unmistakable urge to call Armand.
He's frightened to his core that something will happen.
That Armand will take him to the authorities and tell someone, with a stronger moral compass than he, that he was a dirty old man.
A different part of him wants to call Alice. The drugs make him meek and soft around the edges, pooling in his own warmth and everything in him wishes that she were right here alongside him. She'd know what to do. She always did. Unlike his own hang ups, she didn't like to ruminate the way he does. She just had an answer, a direction for anything and everything.
He aches.
Daniel takes one last look at Alice's message before hitting the call button in the top corner.
Fuck it. She'd get it.
The phone is propped up against his ear gently, away from the bandage on his jaw. He's got his eyes closed, too, because it feels phenomenal to do so.
It would probably feel like heaven if he slipped into sleep right now.
The dial tone on the other end is cut short. Without waiting for a greeting, or a scolding, Daniel says, "Hi, baby." In a sleepy, drawling cadence.
"Daniel?"
"Armand?"
It should surprise him, but he doesn't think he's capable of that feeling just right then. Instead, he pulls the phone from his ear and looks at the phone screen, swiping back to the text messages. Shit. He wasn't even reading Alice's messages.
"You're not Alice," He whisper-laughs, tucking his cell back against his ear.
"Who is Alice? Are you alright, you sound differ-"
"Alice was my girlfriend. She broke up with me today."
Armand is quiet on the other end of the line and it makes his stomach flip slowly, like he was being turned on a spit.
"Is that why you hit that car?" He quietly answers and something in the background of his call sounds an awful lot like a door closing.
"No-" He answers immediately, laughing again, turning his head into the pillow. "I was distracted. Hitting that car isn't - it's not an accurate scope of my skill. I don't usually do that."
"Why did your girlfriend break up with you?"
It's Daniel's turn to be quiet. The question sits between them like a thin wisp of a reminder that everything was fucked and it was only getting more fucked up. This mutually assured descent into hell would surely be the end of him if he allowed it to poison his life. Already, there remained the evidence of Armand's affect on his life: destruction without even knowing he was doing it. And how could he blame him, really? He was just a boy, a clever one at that. And he liked him, for what it was worth. He wants Armand to like him, too.
"Because I - " It would be so simple to throw her to the wolves. To lie and say that she was clingy, that she was a taker; but it makes him feel melancholic to think about anybody in this world, even Armand, thinking of her like that and so he sighs, defeated, and tells the truth: "What always happens. She didn't know me and then she got to know me."
It sounds pathetic. He might have minded if he wasn't on 500 milligrams of codeine. Right now, it just sounds real and it's all he has.
"I'm sorry, Daniel. It sounds like you've had one hell of a day."
"No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have called you. I knew better and I did it anyway." Come the softened, quiet retort of a man with a confession on his lips.
"I enjoy it. When you call me."
Something in Daniel's swirling, hazy brain a different kind of flip is switched upon hearing that Armand liked it - he likes when he calls. Softly, a sigh is brought forth from Daniel like he's been holding it inside all day. With it, everything else is expelled, too; every worry that thing's were going to shit, every anxiety that tells him to leave Armand alone, everything.
"You don't even know me." He says, despite that warm, fuzzy feeling beginning to spread to his extremities. "What happens when you get to know me and you don't like what you see?"
"Can I be honest with you for a moment?"
"Yeah. Of course you can, Armand."
"You like me, right?"
He regrets saying yes. Except the giddy, bloated feeling continues to writhe in his heart and he finds that he doesn't regret it, not at all. "I do like you."
"Then you might surmise that this person you like is participating in online prostitution. And maybe that person worries, ardently, that there may come a day when you see them for what they are and walk away." Armand answers with something of a detached way about it, as if he were trying to remove himself from the situation. Like, maybe if he removed himself from the narrative that the impact wouldn't touch him.
Daniel thinks that he sounds so grown up when he talks like that. He talks differently than college kids do, he talks like someone with a history and an articulation of it that he's not afraid to release into the world.
Tired, he's so tired.
"Are you sayin' that you're also a piece of shit?" He laughs, opening his eyes slightly. They don't stay open long.
"I'm only saying that everyone has flaws."
"You have flaws?" Daniel's smiling, it's in his voice and honey'd warmth and sunlight through the trees.
"Many. Far too many for someone like me."
A quiet moment settles in between them. If he daydream's hard enough, he can imagine Armand laying in bed with him. Head on the other pillow, wrapped up in his comforter.
"I know you don't know me from a hole in the wall, but I think you're pretty great."
Armand laughs and it's a gentle cadence wrought from his own disbelief, Daniel knows it well; he's an expert at this point. "Daniel, why did your girlfriend break up with you?"
The inquiry doesn't come from nowhere, but there's a docility in the boy's voice that tells him he's treading lightly. "She said I was checked out emotionally. I guess I focus on work too much, I can't give her what she needed from me."
"And," He starts, quieter than before. "-is that true? Did teaching get in the way?"
"No, I just- I mean, maybe. Yeah. I had time, y'know? I guess I wasn't willing to give that up. I called the institution of marriage a Box Set Death March."
"You didn't-"
"Don't hassle me, I knew it was stupid when it came outta my mouth and all the eaves dropping barista's gasped."
"You can never return there, Daniel."
"That or I gotta start tipping those brats. Maybe I'll get some phlegm in my Americano next time and that'll be my retribution."
"You might like that, are you sure it's penance if you enjoy it?" Armand says with something of a smooth, sharp tone. He doesn't need to see his smirk to know it's there.
"I don't mind a little spit in my coffee, but warn a guy, yanno? Covid is everywhere. I can't be too careful."
"Something tells me you're never careful."
He's got to laugh at that - it's true. And it's pathetic, too, because he's forty-two and he's as much an adrenaline junkie as he was when he was 20 and there's something awful about it. Maybe it's too hard of a look in the mirror.
"Why'd you think I hit that car today? Because I'm extra careful, always?"
"I thought you crashed your car because your girlfriend dumped you?"
"I don't think that's an accurate representation, but I'm higher than a fucking kite right now and I could be wrong. Maybe I crashed my car because I got broken up with." A little laugh leaves him, but there's no humor in it. What would Armand think if he knew he was the reason for the car being crashed? If he knew Daniel had been so bewitched by the mere coincidence of his presence that nothing else, not even driving, could pull him out of it?
"You're high? Is that legal, Mr. Molloy?" Armand's teasing him.
It feels good.
"It's so legal, Armand, that the doctor gave me a refill because he said he liked me so much."
"Is that what he said, because he liked you so much? Did you get a good grade in hospital, Daniel?"
"Yeah, I did. I got an A in hospital because I didn't even cry when he stitched my chin back to my face."
"How many?"
"Stitches? Nine, but she used paper stitches on my lip. Those pills they gave me make it so that I feel nothing at all."
"Nothing?" He probes gently.
"Nothing but euphoria. And peace. I haven't felt this at peace in a very long time." Daniel's voice is low now, a graveled sort of tone that makes him sound exhausted. But he's been sleeping since three and the phone call is too nice to pass up.
"I can tell. You're normally very closed off. I believe that I've learned more about you tonight than I have in the last month and a half."
"It's been way longer than a month." He replies cooly, switching his cellphone to the other ear so he could turn over onto his back.
"The three and a half week break doesn't count, Daniel."
"Am I really that closed off?"
Armand hesitates before he answers him, "You can be. It's safer that way, I don't blame you."
"I guess I never- I mean, I never really talk to anyone. About anything. At all."
"I know what you mean."
"You do?" He whisper-asks, opening his eyes. The splotch on the ceiling is no more an amorphous shadow on the ceiling, but a wet shape he recognizes after a decade of sleeping under it.
"Don't sound so surprised. You were young once, I'm sure you know that no one listen's to children."
"But you're not a child." He muses, not defiantly, but a gesture of his own guilt.
"I am still the boy that I was. He lives inside me. The injustices I faced as a child are still carried with me."
A pause.
"Sometimes, Daniel, it feels as if I'm still a child. Do you still feel like a boy, too?"
Daniel doesn't answer right away. Not because he doesn't have an answer, but because listening to Armand arouses something in him that long laid dormant. He was fourty-two and he's never felt like it; not even now. He still feels seventeen and infallible. "Yes. I still feel like a kid most days, like I'm just pretendin' to be a grown up or something."
"You should take drugs more often. I'm enjoying this new found honesty immensely."
"Yeah right, I'm pretty sure my body's still burning off all the heroin I did in my early twenty's."
Armand seems to enjoy that image because he laughs, quietly, humming out his pleasure. "What did they give you?"
"Mh, codeine. I'll probably have gut rot by next week."
"Will you be at work tomorrow?" He asks without hesitating and Daniel feels his stomach flip a little bit.
"No. I called off. Why?"
"I was going to ask if you'd like to face time tomorrow at one."
"What's so special about one?" Daniel asks, somewhat suspicious now.
"Nothing at all. I'm just sick of waiting up until one am every night to talk to you. Or get a text."
"Hey-" Daniel starts, defensive. "You're the one who started the night-time talks, kid. I'm just following your lead, alright? Don't blame me."
"Kid?" Armand taunts, breathing into the receiver. "Isn't that a dangerous thing to call someone you want to fuck?"
Without shame, or guilt, he finds his bravery has nothing to hold itself back and before he can stop himself Daniel says, "You don't like that I wanna fuck you?"
"I enjoyed it when you called me baby."
Arousal pins Daniel down, speechless. The line between them is just their mutual breathing, slow; tangential with one another.
"Duly noted."
"Is that all, just duly noted?"
"Sorry, I just-" A laugh. Daniel snorts, rubbing his eyes. "I just took a double dose of my medication and I'm about to start fucking drooling all over myself here."
"You're a funny creature, Daniel Molloy. I should let you sleep."
"Wait-"
"Yes?"
"I crashed my car today because of you."
For a long moment, too long for Daniel's taste, there is a pause as wide as the distance between them. It's gargantuan and heavy and Daniel can't bring himself to regret saying it. He wants to, he knows if he were sober he'd never say it; but he wasn't sober and his reasoning for just why he called and why he continues to call is lost on him. He doesn't know why he flees to danger instead of from it, he's never been one to shy away from tragedy.
"If that's your excuse, I hardly think your insurance will find that acceptable."
"I-" Daniel waits, physically trying to refrain from saying what he's going to. "I seen you across the street. And I just had this moment where I realized that you were real. And it scared me."
"Do I frighten you, Daniel?" Armand asks with a purr to his velvety, cold voice.
"Yes." He answers without thought, running his hand up through is hair.
"Good."
"Good?" A laugh, genuine in it's surprise. He didn't know it was good - most people aren't too pleased when they hear someone is scared of them, but Armand seems genuinely amused knowing this.
"Mhm, good. I enjoy knowing that I'm your boogeyman. It keeps it interesting."
"You're so fucking strange, I want to do really fucking dirty things with you." Daniel's head turns, his body follows, and he's grabbing his groin between his thighs and squeezing.
"I know you do. When you pluck up the courage, you will."
"What's that mean?"
"It merely means that I know you're frightened of me. One day you won't let that dictate what we are to one another."
"And what is that, exactly?"
On the other end of the line, Daniel hears Armand snort again.
"We're meant to be, Daniel. Keep up."