Enter Marius.
On the walk back to his car Daniel quickly realizes that he’s forgotten his keys in his classroom. The very classroom he left Armand in only minutes ago. He’s checking every pocket frantically, throwing his briefcase open over the trunk in a panic before he can confirm the fear he knows is true.
He’s going to have to go back in there. He can’t even get into his apartment without those keys.
Shit. Fuck!
If he went back too soon, Armand would still be there. But if he waited, the janitor’s might go home and he’d have to sleep on top of his car like a bum. He’s not that comfortable with the idea that he’ll be sleeping inside his car soon, much less on top of it.
In returning to his class, Daniel finds the tell – tale signs of an abandoned room. The organic silence and the dead air signal to him to look around further, peering in the accompanying window’s for a custodian. He’s on his fifth door when the door’s to his own classroom swing open loudly, a mop pail pushed into the hallway accompanying a hand and then, loudly, Ronald; His head is bobbing to and fro with music and Daniel practically leaps at him, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him.
The man turns and grins widely, pulling his headphones off. “Hey, Professor Molloy. It’s good to see you, did you forget something?”
“Ronald, my man. You have no idea how much ass you just saved by doing absolutely nothing. I forgot my keys in there. How are you?”
“I figured you were coming back so I just emptied the trash and took the empties. I’m pretty good though, if I keep going at this rate I’ll probably have an hour of downtime.”
“Thanks, man. If you see Cody, can you tell him I have that DVD for him? I haven’t seen him in a minute.”
“For sure. I’ll see you, have a good night, Professor.”
Armand is nowhere to be found. Daniel even goes so far as to check in the kitchen adjacent to his personal office, but that's empty, too. He breathes easier knowing that he's alone so he goes back to his desk and immediately sees that they're sitting directly in the middle of his desk. Innocently, gleaming in the meager lamplight. Daniel breathes a sigh of relief, grabbing them.
They’re sticky. A cold, wet feel to them. He quickly drops them back onto the desk, looking at his palm with a grimace on his face. “What the fuck.” He whispers, holding his hand to the light and laughing when he realizes what it is. It could be nothing else.
He grins despite his disgust, peering down at the desk now, lowering his eye until he finds exactly what he’s looking for: The rest of it sits in small, transluscent puddles around the keys, spattered all long his desktop. It’s still wet, but it’s cold.
That brat.
Was this payback?
It felt like payback. He knew he'd come back for them, there was no way his keys were just under him the whole time, right? Daniel reaches for the lamp, turning it on and pointing it towards the ejaculate.
A thought pops into his head just then. A depraved, hideous thing that even he knows is repugnant of him. The codeine in his veins urges him to look around slowly, peering around the dark room with half-lidded eyes before taking a seat and lowering his head.
He can feel his face grow hot.
Armand's ejaculate is still shiny and wet, a small splash of his lust displayed so prominently that he thinks that he might even be marking his territory in some odd, animalistic way. And isn't that just something so Armand about it all? That he would leave this here for him to find? Wasn’t this the performative streak that he’d been attracted to in the first place?
Deploringly in a needful state to be closer to the boy, Daniel first takes his keys into his mouth and runs his tongue along every ridge and hole. The steel is cold, and it tastes bad, but the semen is colder and saltier, and there is naught much but the smallest morsels for him to suck off. He continues, long after his keys are clean, sucking at the steel ring. His mouth feels a sensitive cavern afterwards, when he pulls the keys out of his mouth to inspect them.
Whatever other debris that clung to those disgusting keys is gone. They shine with spit now. Five years of living in his pocket & this is the first time he’s ever cleaned his keyring. He tries not to stress over whatever germs are in his mouth, but it still sits in the back of his mind as his eyes drop back to the desk.
He isn't that desperate.
Daniel reasons with himself that he'll just wipe it off with his fingers; if he didn’t, the maintenance team would need to scrape it off tomorrow. He didn’t want to do that to Ronny or Cody and he reaches for a tissue from inside his desk, but as he leans over to wipe it off, he can't help but linger over the mess. Hungry and hesitant. Hungry for anything Armand wants to give to him, hesitant in his ethics that he should be licking it up like a fucking dog in his absence.
In the end, when the desk is shiny with his spit, and his tongue lingers with a salty residue, Daniel sits in his car outside his apartment buzzing with energy. He feels jittery and closer to him, filled with him. It's not unlike the first time he learned about god, about the sacrificial flagellation the priest endures for a mere morsel of the body of Christ. A sip of His blood. He wanted that now. Wanted Armand to know that he laid over the alter, not bare, but near, and took what he was given in hopes of becoming closer; Of becoming the Patron Saint of Beautiful Boys with Ugly Desires.
He was drunk on the fading smell of Armand under him, and the waning taste of Armand on his tongue, but as he goes inside and he makes himself something to eat, he thinks of the body of Christ being lowered into a willing mouth. His willing mouth.
The morning after things feel - .. overwhelmingly loud. All of the anxieties from his life culminate into one loud, angry voice in his head that won't shut up. He's cycling, he can tell, but the thoughts still come to him and threaten to drown out whatever minute distraction he was entertaining and he was frightened to his core that he had ruined something. That he had done something horrible, both to Armand and to his own life. He thinks about Alice and his car and everything that had transpired between then and now.
He still hasn't called her. Not even once. But he checks his messages from her, anyway, hoping that she'll feel his rancor and come to him without having to expose to her what he's been doing behind her back. Part of him wonder’s if he’d give up this hell for the ignorant bliss that it had been being with Alice. Of being a boyfriend, albeit a shitty one.
Daniel stuffs his pain medication into his bag, despite his best judgement. He didn't take them right away, he didn't want to, but they whispered to him like the voice in his head and before he even gets out of his car with his morning coffee, he's popping one into his mouth, swallowing it down with scalding hot caffeine. Afterwards, he checks his appearance in the rearview mirror, parting his hair to the side. Smoothing it down with spit. Ignoring the purple-green bruises under his eyes that come when he uses.
When he gets out of his car, Daniel notices the same red Tesla from the day of the accident. It’s parked directly behind his own car, blocking it in, and he can feel himself seethe. He slams his door shut, loud enough to catch the attention of the guy sitting in the front seat.
"Hey man!” Daniel shouts, lifting his briefcase to point at his car. "This isn't student parking, you can’t park here -"
The driver gets out of his car and he can physically feel his scrotum trying to crawl its way back into his body. Daniel swallows anxiously, lost now that he sees who it is; he doesn’t need to see his face to know.
Marius.
With his hair all tucked into a neat bun at his nape, all suited up and watching him with a gaze that tears right through him. If it was at all possible, Daniel thinks that his shoulders are larger in person than they are on camera. He easily towers over his vehicle, gently closing the door and coming around the front to meet him face to face.
"Daniel Molloy." Marius greets, sticking a hand inside his pocket as he comes close, the other held out in a formal display of his mannerly discretion. “Good morning.”
Daniel’s hesitant to give this guy any more leeway that he probably already gets just by looking like that, but there was something otherworldly about Armand and Marius. It was unreal how little they looked like actual human beings and he blanches at first, taking a weary step back; only for Marius to come closer.
He looks like that guy from the Lord of the Rings.
"Um. Hey." He greets back, finally putting his hand out to shake Marius’s. His palm is wide and warm, calloused in a way that immediately leads him back to the video where he fist fucked Armand until he cried. He shouldn't be thinking about that. He really shouldn't be thinking about that.
"Marius,” A slight tilt of his head. "Marius De Romanus."
"I know who you are." He replies, looking at their hands for a second before they both part away. Daniel’s face warmer than before.
"Good. This will be simple, then."
Oh, Jesus. Here it comes. He’s being sued.
"Last night Armand returned home full of bruises. He won't tell me what happened, so here I am." He says quietly, without an ounce of accusation or anger. He even puts his hand on the opposite car, blocking him in as if they were having a genial conversation and not this one. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
A smile. Not so much a smile as it is a showing of teeth, Daniel reckons, staring into Marius's mouth. Tentative to make the wrong choice, he quickly pulls his eyes back up to the other’s and shakes his head.
"We didn't do anything." He responds quietly, looking between his eyes. "I mean, nothing - I stopped myself."
"What happened?"
"Nothing, I swear."
"Daniel, he's old enough to make his own choices. I'm merely inquiring as to how, and why, he came home with bruises last night." Marius’s retort is softly chiding, a fatherly tone with a tinge of disappointment. Enough to make him break if he wasn’t careful. He’d rather have a screaming match than a fight. He doesn’t think he could take another trip to the emergency room, he barely covered his costs last week.
He's either about to have his lights punched out before 9 am or he's about to lose Armand.
"He ambushed me in my office, okay?" Daniel recounts, leaning forward, as if he were buying drugs and not explaining himself. His head swivels about the parking lot. "He kept saying he was going to and I tried to get out of there before he did, but he did it anyway-"
"Were you angry about that?"
"No! Listen. It's not like that. He just started undressing and I tried to stop him! When I stopped him from taking his clothes off, he started yelling for help. And it scared me, so I shook him a little." As if to demonstrate it, although his hands are way too close to be miming anything but strangling someone, Daniel puts his hands together and mimes shaking Armand. "And he wouldn't stop. So I put my hand over his mouth. And he still wouldn't stop."
Marius just stares at him, his bushy, white eyebrows slightly furrowing in thought.
"I didn't do anything to him. But I did leave him there after. And he's probably really mad that I did. I shouldn’t have, but I did. And I feel like shit about it, I do."
A silence falls between them. Daniel's face is flush, he can feel the heat like an inferno behind his skin.
"So you didn't undress him."
"No."
He's lying. His throat feels tighter now.
"And you didn't tell him to bend over while you masturbated over his body?"
Oh, fuck. It isn't the best time to get hard, but he's getting hard and if it were at all possible, his blush becomes deeper; it grows bone deep, lighting his muscle and bone on fire from within. He doesn't answer. He can't. Shame lights him up from within, shining through like sun through stained glass. Lying's never felt so shameful.
"Here's what I think, Daniel." Marius comes close again, closing the meager distance between them until they're nearly toe to toe.
Daniel can smell him. His cologne smells expensive.
"I'm not so jaded as to think that Armand can't make his own decision's." Marius speaks to his forehead, not even bothering to look him in the eye. "He can. But when he comes home bruised up, I think that calls for some concern. Don't you think so?"
He nods. Because what else can he do when he's being threatened in the middle of a parking lot?
"You're not a bad guy. Your technological foot print is almost as clean as mine is. But Armand is still a boy and if he's being roughed up where I can't help him, that makes me quite anxious. It makes me angry, too."
"L-listen, I'm so-"
"I'm sure you are, Daniel. You couldn't have known that it would bruise him, or that you would hurt him, but you did. What's to be done about that?"
"He -- … he liked it."
"I'm sure he did enjoy himself." Marius retorts without waiting. "He often does. Armand enjoys a rougher touch, but those kinds of privileges are often reserved for partners that can stop themselves from going too far. You clearly cannot. Which is why you're dealing with me today, Daniel."
A cold, guilty feeling overcomes him completely. He feels like he’s just been caught with his pants around his ankles.
Marius seemed a grim disciplinarian, an intimidating type that he was severely intimidated by. He's too close for comfort, but Daniel becomes colder once he realizes that it isn't the pulse of shame that has him so cold but the pill he just took; the feeling starts in his belly and begins to run it's ugly, reaching tendrils out towards the rest of his body. This isn't good.
"I'd like to preface this by saying that you aren't in any trouble, Armand is going to do as he pleases, but I do need for you to sign an NDA."
"An NDA?" Daniel parrots back, trying to find a hold on his sober thoughts. "Why would I need to sign an NDA?"
A slight crease between Marius's eyebrows arises. "For your protection. For Armand's protection. What more reason do you need?"
"Sorry, are you asking me to sign a waiver to date your boyfriend?" Daniel asks, bolder than he should. He clutches his briefcase tighter, swinging it as he motions towards him. "What are you even talking about, man?
"Husband." He corrects, turning his head to the side slightly.
"Whatever. I don't care."
"Be reasonable, Daniel. I have his best interest at heart."
It sounds like bullshit. The last thing he needed was to hire a lawyer to go over a non-disclosure agreement. But he was reasonable, for the most part; and he knows he's only getting worked up because the drugs are making it easier to be brave. He huffs loudly, looking away, only to gaze back with a terse frown. "Give me the agreement and I'll think about it. I'm not agreeing to all of it, just so you're aware."
"You only need to read it over. That's all I ask."
"What's wrong with you, by the way?"
Daniel eyes Marius as he reaches inside his blazer, plucking out a tall, rolled bundle of paper's.
"Why are you okay with your husband seeing other people? Do you make everyone sign this?"
The half-concerned look on Marius's face fades into some semblance of amusement, a glowingly warm kind of look. "Everyone that stays signs an NDA. As for what's wrong with me, Mr. Molloy, the jury is still out on that."
The moment he reaches out for the paper, the world seems to slow down into a singular frame of vision: the pale, almost transluscent, skin of the man's hands has him swallowing, grabbing the paper from him like a baton. Their fingers do not touch and yet his palm feels warm.
" Why are you guys doing this to me?"
"To you?"
"Yeah! To me! Is this what you guys do, you just - you just fuck people around? This isn't a game to me; this is my life. If someone heard him screaming for help, Marius, I could've lost my job. I could've been black balled from academia forever!" Now that the paper is in his hand, and Marius is no longer standing so close, he points it at him accusingly. "Now I gotta deal with legal bullshit because you two can't figure out how to use grindr!"
Marius doesn't say anything. It pisses him off that he isn't riling him up the way he's intended. No, he looks calm - too calm for his liking.
"Can you say something? I'm losing my mind here. My life's going to shit." Not that he has any reason to confide in Marius, it all just sort of . . . slips out. Daniel sighs, throwing his suit case at his feet in favor of grabbing his smokes in his pocket. A moment later, Daniel rubs the heel of his palm at his eyebrow, smoothing his light hair back. “And it all started with him.”
"Have you considered telling him that you're not interested anymore?" Marius offers gently.
"It's easy for you to say. If I said no now, I'd be the biggest asshole in the fucking world. Nothing is going how it should."
"I know my partner very well, Daniel. I know he has a phone that he calls you on when I'm at work, he connected it to the house's VPN account."
"I didn't make him buy that-"
"The point is that he's solitary by nature and you make him happy. What am I supposed to do with that? Squander his happiness? Control him, lock him away?" A small smile graces his sharp, kind features and Marius puts his hand back into his pocket once more.
He looks sad. Despite the soft smile, there's a melancholic grief in his eyes. Daniel feels bad about yelling at him.
"I could never. He means too much to me."
Both men stand there, quietly regarding one another. Daniel thinks that he might haver overestimated the evil by which he regarded Marius in general.
"Listen, man-" He starts, putting the smoke in his mouth. "I'm sorry about yelling at you. I'm not an angry guy, I just-"
Marius has a lighter held up between them, flame ready. Daniel swallows, leaning forward. As if he were an untrusting animal, he glances up at the man timidly before leaning in the rest of the way so he could light his smoke.
"My girlfriend broke up with me last week. And then I got into this car accident and I had to go to the hospital to get stitches and it's all mounting, you know? This thing with Armand is a lot for me. I promise that I didn't hurt him on purpose. I would never."
If he believes him, it doesn't show. Marius was a stoic man, he's noticed, and there was very little variation of expression on him to begin with so when Daniel looks over, and he's being stared at, his face burns hot again, the pills making him feel like laughing.
"You've got a lot on your plate right now, don't you?"
"Do you wanna know the funniest thing?" Daniel chuckles, inhaling his cigarette deeply. As he exhales, he sighs and says, "Your stupid Tesla's the reason I got into the accident in the first place. You were parked in my spot the day I got into it. Had to park on the street because of it. Boom, that’s when I got hit."
"My Tesla?" Marius repeats, turning his head to glance at his car. "Armand has an identical model."
He has to think about that for a minute.
And then it hits him, mid drag, that it wasn't Marius's fault at all: and he feels stupid again, made a fool by the simple factor that he simply did not have all the necessary pieces to this puzzle. He feels dangerously close to solving it, but still; the gaps in between the information he's been given taunt him.
"You should pay my-"
"I can pay for dama-"
They stop at the same time. Daniel's the first to break. He begins to grin, pinching his cigarette. Marius doesn't smile, but the shining look of curiosity is close enough.
"I'll pay for your damages, no questions, if you sign the NDA."
"I gotta read it over first. No way I'd sign something just for a few thousand bucks."
"Not signing the NDA forfeits your access to Armand in it's entirety."
"You bastard," Daniel chuckles, shaking his head. "You knew I'd sign it."
"You're a lot more stubborn than I thought you'd be. I wanted to give you the illusion that you had free will."
It's there, in that very sentence, that Daniel finds himself burning.
"Fine. I'll sign it, but I'm looking it over first. Does Armand know you're here?"
"Yes. I wouldn't be here without his consent. I do not often mettle in his affairs, only when it's needed."
"Right, 'cause you thought I roughed him up. And you gave me shit for it, only to offer me the NDA anyway. That's pretty sick."
"And yet, upon giving you the choice to call Armand off, you took the NDA. What does that say about you?"
Marius is right. But he loathes that he is, and he shrugs it off like it means nothing at all. "Says I'm losing my mind."
"Truly, Daniel," He starts tenderly, looking into his eyes with a somber kind of gentleness. "Are you alright?"
"No. But it's my life, so I gotta deal. Can I go?"
"I'm not holding you here. If you'd like to leave, you're free to."
Unbelieving of that, he smacks his lips and reaches for his briefcase. Marius makes no move to stop him so he grabs his coffee, too, cigarette still lit between his fingers.
"I'm going to go." Daniel tries pathetically, putting his smoke between his lips in an anxious manner.
"Hold on," Marius says, turning back to his car. He lifts a hand at it and the passenger door opens immediately with the simple flick of his wrist. "He wanted to talk with you."
"You fucking ambushed me. I knew it. No." He turns away from Armand, striding back towards the school doors. He stomps away, huffing.
"Goodbye, Daniel Molloy." Is called out, Marius's voice lighter the louder it is.
Armand's voice follows, a smooth, low kind of cadence that puts his hot blood on ice. "Professor Molloy." He calls a bit louder.
Drugged up, and incredibly naive that he could just run from his problem, Daniel turns the corner and full tilt runs towards the staff entrance. When he hears those familiar foot steps coming up after him, gaining on him quickly, Daniel turns and faces him with wide, feral eyes.
"No!" He shouts, motioning at Armand with his briefcase. "Absolutely not, I have too much shit to do today and I can't have you pulling that BS from last night!"
"Daniel!" He shouts right back, stricken by his yelling.
Looking at Armand is a mistake. He’s so hot it fucking hurts.
He aches to go forward and touch him, prove to himself that this was still real. His brain doesn't believe him. And his heart does not allow him the mercy of comfort, no matter how meager. The school's courtyard was empty but there were window's everywhere, window's covered with ivy, and any number of unknowing eyes could be behind them. He couldn't take the risk of being gentle the way he so sorely wants to be.
"You sent your husband after me after pulling the shit you pulled last night!? What the fuck."
"It wasn't my fault, he undressed me-"
"He says I can't see you unless I sign this," Brief case is lowered in favor of holding up the hand that has the coffee cup, cigarette and the NDA. "Is that something you knew about? Were you even going to tell me about this before? No call, not even a text?"
"You left me." Armand answers back, slightly panting, his golden auburn hair pushed back in the wind. "How can you be angry after what you did to me last night? I should be the angry one. I have every right to be!" His cheeks are flushed and pinkened, but the wind is biting and he assumes that it has more to do with the dreary state of the sky than any real blush he aroused out of him.
"You came onto me!" Daniel angrily whispers, looking around the empty courtyard. "I didn't ask for you to go screaming your head off!"
"You subscribed to my twitch!" He shouts back, loud, his small hands curled into tight fists. "You pursued me-"
"Yeah, well, maybe I fucking shouldn't have, alright?"
His sharp retort leaves both of them speechless.
But he's angry and the fire from the affection has become an inferno feeding his budding need to be right, to come out on top; even if it hurt them. "Every since you came into my life, Armand, everything's just gone to shit. Okay? And it might be a fun game for you-" In the interest of making his point, Daniel quickly puts down his briefcase alongside his mug of coffee. He even goes so far as to flick the cigarette away. When all he has left in his hands is the NDA, he points it at the kid with his chin jutted out. "But this is my entire life that you're playing with. If I got fired today, Armand, I'd be on the fucking street because I have nothing else. I have one months rent, I barely make my car payments as it is. Is that what you want to hear? That you're making my life a living fucking hell!?"
Armand looks frightened. Or hurt. He can't distinguish the difference, but he recognizes both emotions in equal measure and he feels awful knowing that he put it there. That he made him look like that.
"I have been eaten alive with guilt all night because of you. And then you come here, with your husband, who, by the way, just fucking told me you were married! And yet you come here, and you sic him on me like a goddamn dog - Where do you get off!?"
"Daniel-"
"No, you should know what you're doing to me. I don't think you understand what you do to people."
"You're hurting me." Armand answers softly, the look of his anguish plain in the way his hands have loosened to curl around his body. He grabs both arms, curling them under his ribs. He looks small, weakened. A hurt dove between his palms that he contemplates putting out of it's misery. He was strong enough. He could do that.
"Good. My entire life is falling apart and it's your fucking fault." Licking his lips, the older stands there panting, feet poised as if he were ready for a fight. "Don't call me anymore. Don't text me. I don't want to see you and I don't want you coming around my classroom. I mean it."
What he was saying could not be further from the truth. He doesn't want Armand to go. He doesn't mean it. He wants him to come back, as a visitor in his auditorium, as a figment of his imagination: anything. Daniel would receive him.
But they were hurting each other by staying, hurting one another by clinging onto the tattered thing that was their earliest stumbling's and now all he wanted was the peaceful life he had before. He wanted Alice back and he wanted to be sober.
And yet he had, and was, neither of those things.
He was an addict.
Armand is staring at him, hurt still, but cold and withdrawn. His pain reflects deeply, but the well of his hurt is undisturbed on the surface. His plump, pale lips purse into a petulant frown and Armand looks every bit the boy he is.
"I hadn't realized that I was hurting you as much as I was." His voice carries the wavering anxiety. Armand sounds so small, so unsure of himself that Daniel realizes, quite late, that he was just a child; with all the short comings of one.
He regrets it all, but more over, he regrets yelling at Armand.
Armand opens his mouth like he's going to say something and then he closes it.
When his mouth opens, it's a soft, "Goodbye, Daniel." as he turns on his heel to leave.
He could stop him, and apologize, but he's getting faint now that the adrenaline has left his system and he feels about ten seconds from hurling his non-existent breakfast back up. So he grabs his briefcase, and his coffee, and he heads towards the entrance with a heart as heavy as the look on his face.
For once in his life, the staff room is empty when he comes in. It's no earlier than he usually stumbles in, but there's a pot of fresh coffee and the place smells good. By the time he arrives and sees why it smells so damn good, Louis has materialized from somewhere behind him. A box of pastries sits on the table, a big dark smiley face written in sharpie on top. Daniel says hey before opening the box and grabbing one of the fritters.
"You feelin' any better today, Professor Molloy? You look like you seen a ghost." Louis' voice has a playful cadence to it. It's light enough that Daniel doesn't bristle at it.
"Jus' hungry. You buy these?"
"Mmmhm, yeah."
"For all of us or just me?" The barest semblance of a joke. It's pathetic, he knows, it sounds bad to him, too. But he can't help his weak need to get back into Louis books, especially after this morning; he needed to talk to him.
"You think you're special or something?" He laughs, coming to grab a raspberry danish. "Please, I just needed an excuse to spend money at that new bakery downtown."
"You went downtown at 8 am? What's wrong with you?"
"Just a masochist, I guess." Louis answers, turning away with a simple smile and a raise of his eyebrows.
When he starts to leave, his bag tucked up under his arm, Daniel panics.
"Wait-" He calls, turning around to face him. "I was just, um -"
It's different when Louis turns around. He's got his thumb in his mouth, licking raspberry from his digits and Daniel is a chicken.
"Can we meet up for lunch?"
"Today?" He questions, looking up at the ceiling like he was trying to recall if he had time. After a second, Louis shrugs and bites into his danish. "Sure. Swing by my class, I'll order us some food."
"Okay. Yeah. I'll be there. Want me to get something? Drinks?"
Louis shakes his head slightly, turning back to leave. "No, I have provisions. See you in a while."
What could he even say to Louis? That he broke up with the kid he told him he wasn't fucking? Three days after he told him that he broke up with his actual girlfriend? It sounds incredibly juvenile, even to his own ears. And yet it was only Louis that he knows he can confide this in. Louis would understand. He'd understand and he'd probably give him some really honest, mean truths that he needs to hear. They were just that kind of people to one another.
If anything, Louis was a trusted source of untapped information - and most likely the only person in his life that wouldn't call the cops on him for dating a first year. He just needed to make it through to lunch and everything would fall back into it's rightful place. Louis would know how to fix it. And in the event that he couldn't, and he had nothing but support for him, than he would make that enough.
He only needed to survive his first three classes.
“That last time we talked, Daniel, you were having a panic attack in the bathroom.”
“That’s not true, we talked this morning.”
“That wasn’t a talk. That was a greeting.”
“You wanna know what I’m learning about you, Lou?” Daniel’s got his face over a hot bowl of ramen, noodles held up to his mouth. “You like pretentious food. And clothing.”
“Wanna know what I learned about you just now?” Louis answers quickly, pointing his chopsticks at him. “That you think we’re on a nickname basis. And we ain’t.”
“Whoa, hey –“ He pretends to be offended, piling a mouthful of noodles into his mouth. “Says the guy who called me Danny Boy last week.” Daniel chews through his sentence, pointing his chopsticks right back at Louis with a furrowed brow. “Don’t try that with me.”
“I called you that because I know it pisses you off. If I didn’t, you’d still be moping about Alice.”
“Oh, is that what you were doing? Healing this wounded heart?”
His cheeks are full of vegetable matter and noodle, soupy condensation giving his upper lip a slight glisten. Louis is the picture of dignity in comparison, scooping his noodles like spaghetti with his chopsticks held up to his spoon in a way that Daniel can tell is practiced; he couldn’t do that. If he tried, Louis would probably laugh at him. Best he doesn’t. Louis will have plenty time to laugh at his stupidity soon enough.
“That what you’re doing here, coming here for advice on how to heal your wounded heart?” Louis asks with genuine curiosity in his voice. He hesitates as he brings noodles to his mouth, bending over his bowl delicately.
“No. Yes. I mean. I don’t know what I’m doing here, I guess you just seem like you have your shit together. And if I talked to anyone else about this, they’d probably call me a piece of shit.”
“Me? Have my shit together?” He smiles around a mouthful, eyebrows raised.
It’s charming, to say the least. Everything Louis does is charming. His smile is boyish and handsome, the kind of face that gets away with things. Daniel looks away, stabbing at some pork in his bowl.
“Yeah. Also, the, um –“
“Car crash?”
“No. Well, kind of. It’s connected. I need to tell you something and you gotta promise me that you’ll be chill about it.”
Louis seemed to be fine with it until he says that. Now his eyebrows furrow into a skeptical shape, one punctuated by a swallow. “Quit stallin’, man. C’mon, we have thirty seven minutes left.”
“Okay fine! Jesus. I almost slept with a student yesterday.”
“Tell me you took her off school property.”
“No. It was in my classroom.”
“Christo, Daniel. You’re a glutton for punishment, aren’t you? How long has it been since you and Alice split, a week? Less than that?”
“You said you were gonna be chill!”
“I literally never said that. You forget yourself.”
“You forget yourself – Shut up, fine. I knew it was a mistake talking to anyone about this.” Daniel waves it off, ashamed and defensive.
If Louis cares, it doesn’t show. It’s just as well, he just figured he’d be the one to come to with this kind of thing. But all he does is take another bite of his ramen, thoughtfully chewing as he stares over at him with furrowed eyebrows.
When he does speak, it’s with a thoughtful, “Did you cheat on Alice? Is that why you broke up?”
God, he wishes he could be honest. What would Louis think of him?
“We weren’t talking romantically while Alice and I were together, no. It escalated after we broke up and it came to a head yesterday.”
“What happened to ‘Oh, I’m Daniel Molloy and I teach Ethics and I’d ‘Never Do That, Louis’ bullshit from a few days ago?” Louis laughs, taking some of his onion cake so he could point it at Daniel before carrying on. “Are you relapsing?”
“Of course not,” Daniel lies easily and it sounds convincing, even to his own ears. It’s full of conviction and just casual enough to suggest that the assumption doesn’t bother him. It’s practiced. “It just got out of hand. That’s all.”
“Out of hand? Daniel, you already disclosed to me that you’re taking prescription narcotics at work. You crashed your car, broke up with your long time girlfriend and now you’re fucking students at school.”
“I didn’t fuck him-“
“Him!?” Louis blanches, mouth hanging wide in a half grin-half startled smile. “You didn’t tell me you were bisexual, Daniel!”
A blush starts from behind his face and burns through to his ears, his neck, everywhere the skin is exposed Daniel turns red and he sticks a piece of pork in his mouth to stifle his shame; giving him a second to drum up an answer that wouldn’t catch him a case for hate speech.
“It’s not like that.” He says after a second, swallowing pointedly. “It just –“
“It just happened.” Is what Louis says softly, finishing his sentence for him.
Daniel just nods, lowering his eyes to the table.
“He wants me to sign an NDA.”
“You know, it’s been twenty five minutes since you sat your ass down in that chair and this is the first time you’re telling me about this NDA? Doesn’t that factor right into what you want, though? If you sign an NDA, you can’t be held liable in court. It’s a consent form.”
“Yeah, it’s all easy for you to say, okay? You don’t get it. There’s more at play here. I want Alice back. And I want my life to go back to normal, I want everything to go back the way it was.” Daniel whines, setting his chopsticks down and banging on the table like a child. “I’m fucking everything up, Louis. Big time.”
“So tell me. Because from what I gather, you’re relapsing and self-sabotaging. From an outsider perspective, just from what you’ve told me.” Louis has no such problem looking Daniel in the eye, he even looks at him while he picks his bowl up and slurps the broth.
“You’re not wrong. I just thought I’d have a handle on it by now, y’know? I want Alice. I want what we had. But this kid, Louis, he’s - …. “ A long, drawn out sigh. Daniel’s melancholy is punctuated by him pulling at the bandaid at his chin, itching at the drying skin of his stitches. “I don’t know, man. I didn’t know he even went here. I just assumed he was in college, I didn’t know he was at this college.”
“You really didn’t know?”
“No, man. We didn’t meet here, he’s not even in my classes.”
Louis hums, nodding. “It sounds like what you’re doing is perfectly legal, then. You have no authority over his grades or his standing at this school and he’s offering you a literal get-out-of-jail-free card. Take it.”
“I don’t want to sign it. If I sign it, it’ll mean I’m committing to him. He doesn’t know Alice exists.”
“I understand that you’re trying to play it fair on every single side, Daniel, but not every girl you meet is going to be the one. Just like this guy you’re seeing, he’s not forever. Don’t think long term, just stop doing drugs and be present. Do you like him?”
It feels like poison under his tongue. Daniel feels his bottom lip curling in between his front teeth, a secretive shame hidden in the depths of his throat he’d rather not expose.
“I guess.” Is his flat answer.
“Doesn’t sound like it.” He remarks and lifts his bowl again, drinking his broth.
“I do. I do like him, that’s the problem. I can’t just like people, Louis. I always put too much of myself into people and then they get to know me and they hate me. I leave, I self sabotage. He’s going to see that sooner or later.” His own food sits in front of him getting colder. There’s a film over his ramen now, a grease layer that makes his stomach squirm. The drugs are already giving him gut rot.
“You’ll ruin a lot if you worry about everything ending badly. Would it kill you to just let it all work out for once? If he likes you enough to give you the security that he isn’t going to pursue litigation if things go wrong in the future, don’t you think he also wants this to stay sweet for as long as possible?”
Louis was right, of course. He couldn’t know how right he was, how quickly his world was turned on it’s axis onto a perspective he had yet to consider. Armand had told him as much, hadn’t he? How he worried that there was something wrong with him, too? He blamed himself for too much.
And the look on his face when Daniel had told him that he was making his life a living hell….God, what was wrong with him? He was being vulnerable and it was his fault that he left Armand there last night, Marius had every right to come break his face in and he didn’t. Instead, he offered an olive branch.
Fuck.
“Daniel?” Louis prompts.
He doesn’t hear him. The drugs make it extraordinarily easy to zone out and he’s zoning out now, eyes drawn towards his bowl, thoughts of Armand dancing behind his eyes. He needed to apologize. There was so much to be sorry about, so much to say. Didn’t he want to be the one person that treated Armand with the kindness he was lacking? He felt like an asshole now. The feelings continue to writhe in his chest as he pulls his phone out, swiping through the lock screen.
“I need to text him. You’re right, Louis. Shit. Um. Hold on.”
If it upsets his lunch partner, it doesn’t show on Louis’ face. He just continues eating, quietly adding the rest of his green onion to his soup before slurping it up like a child, tipping his bowl back up against his mouth.
[ SMS; To Armand ] We need to talk. Come to the auditorium at 4.
When the text is sent and dealt with, Daniel quickly pockets his phone and elects to ignore it until lunch is over. His onion cake and the rest of his veggies still sit in a small dish at his elbow but he knows he’ll never finish it. Not with how bloated he already feels.
“You need to eat.” Louis remarks as if he were reading his mind. “You wanna throw up again?”
“You sound like my dad when you talk like that.” Daniel smiles.
“Daniel Molloy, don’t you dare leave that bowl half finished. You aren’t excused until that plate is spic and span, do you hear me?” He laughs softly, pointing at him like an authority figure. “Least you ate something. Take that to your office, you can warm it up for dinner or something. Now that you’re a bachelor.”
“Don’t remind me. The state of disrepair my life is in could put some hair on your chest. It’s seriously frightening.”
“What’d that NDA say?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t read it yet.”
“You should probably read it before you meet up with him.”
“Why? I’m just going to apologize. I’m not about to fuck him.”
Louis nods, mouth pursing into a slight acquiescence. “If you’re smart, you’ll have your lawyer look it over.”
“My lawyer?” Daniel taunts, putting the lids back on his food. “Right, like I just have a fucking lawyer on retainer.”
“Daniel, there are legal counsels for publishing houses. NDA’s are something they deal with, you wouldn’t even need-“
“It probably has a weird sex clause I haven’t gone over, what if it says some kinky shit and they tell my publisher? And they laugh at me, huh? What then?”
“Are you into kinky shit, Daniel? Is it a fetish contract?” He laughs pointedly, reaching over and taking Daniel’s onion cake for himself. “I think I learned more about you in the past forty five minutes than I have in the last year and a half working together.”
“Don’t get too cocky, if you call me Danny again I’ll personally break into your office and rearrange your book cases.”
“Do it. I never leave this place, I’m always here by the time the janitor’s go home. You won’t catch me lacking, Molloy.”
“Doubt it. I was an investigative journalist for a decade, man. I can get into anywhere if you give me long enough.”
“Okay, you just seem to be under the impression you’re James Bond and you’re barely Frederick Jones.”
Daniel chooses not to take his afternoon medicinal top up. He wants to meet Armand with a clear head and little distraction so he doesn’t take the codeine and he doesn’t text him again, even though he feels his phone vibrate in his pocket a couple of times since then.
If Armand didn’t want to show up, he wouldn’t. No one could make him and Daniel didn’t want to waste his day with worried about if he would or not so he doesn’t check his phone. He even leaves it in his desk drawer until all the students have gone and the school’s gone radio silent for the rest of the day.
All that he has to rely on is the clock on the wall and the direction of the shadow under the window’s. When the auditorium glows a familiar shade of late afternoon into evening, he begins to wait anxiously. He reads a paper while he waits, flipping through a student’s report on Contextual Obligation and it would be some time before he hears the doors to his auditorium open.
The sound is unmistakable. The door’s are loud and old, they creak as they close and then there is a silence. Daniel doesn’t lift his head until he sees a familiar shadow peeking out from the darkness.
“Hey,” He greets, lifting his chin slightly, bandage crinkling. “I’m glad you’re here.” It’s the truth. He’s got so much to say, so much to apologize for and he wanted it all out on the table between them before any more bullshit could pop up.
He tries to sell it with conviction and it works: the shadow comes out of hiding, silently stepping out into the auditorium’s golden hour lighting.
“You are?” She asks, timidly.
Alice stands there, hugging herself around the middle like an anxious child. She looks every bit the beautiful thing she once was, aching and vulnerable. Meek.
Shit.