Archive of Our Own

Bitter.

Sharp.

Perhaps a little too cold tonight. A wince.

Another sip. 

Daniel wonders if he could ever be a spy. 

Secrecy is a learned art, isn’t it? But what does that mean, when holding back one’s tongue is merely an act of withholding the truth while the rest of your limbs commands you to betray what you believe you should or shouldn’t do? He reckons he’s quite good at it, lying. His friend Louis had given this novel to him for his birthday—have a good one, you miserable bastard—and he has been putting it off for way too long, he believes. This came out two years ago, he discerns from the description. 1963. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. 

The cover is slightly torn at the side, no doubt the result of Louis’s sharp nails.  He has spent nearly two hours here, alone in this cafe, reading the first few hundred pages with his glasses perching lower and lower on his nose. 

The first time he truly sat here—drank its booze, eyed its assortment, and swayed to its music—was with Alice, long before she left for good, taking the air of floral French perfume and her leather purse with her. Cream and covered with scratches, signs of years of wear and tear ever since Daniel gave it to her for her thirtieth birthday. The seat across from him is glaringly absent now, no glass mirroring his own on the table as he would take glances towards the stage when the conversation, predictably, led towards nothing. Downcasted eyes, not out of flirtation but fury. The corner of Alice’s lips turned lopsided, her red lipstick fading over her mouth the more she would take another sip of her drink, scrambling for distraction when Daniel seemed to find one after the other, effortless. Decades of matrimony with one estranged child and they could not stand the sight of each other. The ring around his finger was nothing but chains that Alice herself could not wait to sever with bolt cutters. 

You can at least pretend, Danny. 

A laugh, concealed behind the lip of a glass of bull shot. (We’re still playing that game, now? Where’s the fun in that, Alice? In pretending?)

It’s all I’ve ever done.

(Yeah. How’s Lizzy? Doing good in Rennes? Sometimes I wonder if the French postal system is just fucking god-awful cos she never replied to any of my letters, why do you think that is, Alice?)

Damn your letters.

(I’d expect that kind of cruelty to come out of my mouth, not yours.)

Your shitty disposition, it’s been rubbing off on me. What a surprise. Don’t ever think about Lizzy, you don’t deserve to say her name. You are a fucking waste of time, Daniel, I despise you, good for nothing bastard—

Another sip. 

That’s enough now. 

No more reminiscing. Remembering the gash, opening the wound again. Virtues only exist in objects, not people. 

This cafe is loyal, just to name an example. Yes, it might be desecrated and destroyed in a few years’ time, leaving nothing but a memory of its past life, but for now, it doesn’t matter. It won’t look at him with disdain once it realises that Daniel isn’t worth a penny the moment he opens his mouth. A mind that is more narcissistic than his heart, to which his mouth rests much closer. Bullets that break, over and over again in the forms of words, constituted and constructed to flay. Extraction, an open-heart surgery that begets confession.  In return, he promises an open-mind on his part. 

This book is kind, say. It rests itself, willingly, on the palm of Daniel’s hand. Never once shying away from him when his eyes ‘have that strange look in them’. Never flinching when he sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose—not now, please. Never once retracting its hand from him when he accidentally says something wrong. Or perhaps it wasn’t an accident, perhaps he wanted it to hurt. 

Flatline.

He likes this place. He found it years ago, its amber lights catching his attention as he traversed down the street with an umbrella in his hand. He would often stand and smoke outside, perched as he looked on. And then he brought Alice and took her dancing. Her star-spangled giggle when he would dip her, or when she would accidentally step on his foot. Like clockwork—love and hatred. 

And then he is alone again. 

It can be crowded at times, but as the night tucks itself further away, the only people left blink slowly, sipping even slower. The music grows drowsy, jazzy, and he finds that that is what he likes the most about this place, other than the booze. He closes his eyes for a brief moment, taking another breath before he decides to light a cigarette before he continues to read. 

And then, there appears to be an intervention. 

“All alone, monsieur?” Comes a voice next to him, silk-like with crimson honey. Grating, melodic—almost akin to a pinprick caused by the seductive strings of a harp. Something strange saunters, sliding past him. Devoid of an invitation, forceful with an embrace. The voice strikes a chord within him first, its timbre caressing the lobe of his left ear like a breeze. “I hear solitude is a prison of one’s own making.” 

Daniel cannot help but to turn his head to his left, eyes blinking into clarity behind his reading glasses. He doesn’t recognise this man, doesn’t recall seeing him sitting there when he takes his seat as per the hostess’ suggestion. He swears, by God he does, that the seat next to him was empty. Has been empty all this time—or has he been so ignorant, apathetic, that he hasn’t bothered to even notice? One track minded, leading him directly towards the path of self inflicted destruction. 

The moment he looks, and truly looks, he cannot peel his eyes away. His neck feels frozen in both time and space, and his lips part involuntarily. It seems as if he has lost control of his own body, eyelids refusing rest when the man sitting next to him sends a slow, soft smile his way. Akin to a letter, his mind supplies, delivered long and patient. Daniel swallows the lump in his throat. He can’t find a single word in the dictionary of his memories, all the jade bullets within his armoury. He blinks. And does it again. 

The man is still there. Sitting, silent.

Staring at him. As if Daniel is worth the attention. As if he is worth the time. 

He looks like a doll, resembling a mannequin with the time-frozen expression gracing his face. A moment stuck within the disturbed corners of Daniel’s mind. It seems as if the man doesn’t even breathe. 

Daniel’s finger is hovering over the corner of the page. Nothing, nobody moves. 

He cannot fathom how a person could exist like that. If this being is even a person at all—he cannot be! His hair is jet black, brushed and slicked back over his forehead, tidy curls peeking from beneath his ears. All angles, sharp corners. Carved in a curve like a gargoyle perched on top of a cathedral pillar, overlooking any wanderer with a gaping mouth. 

His features are beyond striking, Daniel notes, resembling the subjects of Classical paintings that have been revered and rebelled against over and over again. It’s almost similar to a push and pull, a love-hate relationship with something so prominent you cannot decide if you want to surrender to or challenge. Something within him whispers: if he were to tap the tip of his finger against the man’s smooth cheek, it would feel like stone. He would feel that the softness is nothing but an illusion of marble polished so much that you need a second look to truly discern the oddity of his being. 

He is all… extended. A tall nose, a long neck, slim fingers, and a pair of legs that seem endless in tailored trousers. 

Daniel’s breath feels as if it’s perpetually stuck. He averts his eyes. (Would it be improper to do what he had just done? But why should I care?)

And then their gazes lock.

And he has to blink himself awake.

He must be hallucinating, he muses. (I must be, for those eyes cannot possibly belong to a real human being. They exist only in nightmares, yet the most beautiful, memorable kind that makes you think and ponder and reflect on for days and weeks and months and years because you cannot seem to conjure it again yet hints of it keep appearing, interrupting all of your other dreams. As if it beckons recollection, as if it’s desperate for attention.)

He has never seen a pair of irises so vivid in colour. They aren’t sitting extremely close to one another, yet the distance still petrifies him. Orpheus looking back, again and again and again, only to meet death over and over and over. 

Golden. 

Those eyes are golden. Red around the edges, akin to a gilded armour tarnished with marks of misery and mercy. Rimmed and shadowed-over with jet black kohl, which only seems to make the colour much more terrifying—yet simultaneously alluring—to gaze upon. 

Maybe he has been drinking too much. A new vice every month. 

Daniel clears his throat.  “Wouldn’t be a prison if you willingly admitted yourself now, would it?”

(Or how would you verbalise it, when solitude is a form, an attempt, of repentance? Of punishment?)

The man tilts his head, almost like a confused puppy. 

“But no,” he responds, waving the book. “Not all alone, no. On a date with le Carré.”

The man smiles, demure. “The most romantic tête-à-tête, I presume?”

“The most thrilling, maybe.” He shrugs, gaze caught by the flickering end of his half-finished cigarette. He reaches for it, though not forgetting to fold the corner of the page before he closes his book and places it on the table. The filter feels damp when he entraps it between his lips again, inhaling, making love with heat, the smoke curling around his face in a vision, undoubtedly unruly in the way that his grey hair seems to elongate, strands moving in jagged pirouettes. His throat feels like sandpaper. How much has it been today–he asks himself. Seven? Eight? 

(Rookie number, his consciousness spits.) 

He puckers his lips and lets it escape. Tendrils, ivies, encircling his vacant ring finger. 

The man next to him stands, and Daniel cannot help but to fix his stray gaze towards the line of his body. Tall, slim, lean—encased in all black, though its hue fails to rival the jet strands of his neat curls. The man trails the tips of his fingers on the backrest of the wooden chair, with each space overtaken by his skin a slow descent into submission as the shape disappears and disperses to allow his presence. 

(Long, slender. Deft. A musician’s hands? Piano? No, his mind scratches off. Violin? A writer? Beat poet? No, he must—)

His eyes drift up to meet Daniel’s gaze, stopping his mental musings in their tracks. 

Perhaps Daniel has had one old-fashioned too many, as those eyes must not be real. They are, good lord, amber—the colour of whiskey and bull shot and sunset and sangria. He tries to blink himself into sobriety but those eyes remain just as otherworldly, albeit a little more dim the longer Daniel looks at them. 

And then he sits. (The action felt like it lasted a lifetime, and made Daniel its eternal voyeur. Alice made a groundbreaking point: good for nothing bastard.)

He sits, right there, on the vacant chair across from him without even asking for his permission. As if he has already guessed that Daniel will accept, will favour his company more than his loyal le Carré, than his brusque cigarette. One leg crossed over the other while his arm reached for the vodka gimlet from his own table, only to place it on Daniel’s now. 

Claiming his territory without uttering a single word. A dainty cross of his limbs, perched alongside a dwindling melody of the blond pianist preaching melancholy up on stage.  This strange man-creature tiptoes the paths of Daniel’s curiosity, he believes—luring each imposing question out, out, out, damn you—! like a siren beckoning a lonesome sailor with her alluring, tearful pleads. This man is neither tearful nor pleading, and somehow, Daniel cannot take his eyes off of him. He finds himself stuck, time and time again, in a loop of seduction with faceless people that merges into one being: a headache.

This time it seems clear enough, he feels. The features are harmonious, and those amber eyes follow each point that Daniel’s questioning gaze tracks.  Challenging. Coaxing. What do you want to know, Daniel? (Oh well, what can I do? You don’t need to lure me into this, I know what to do and I do it well.) These words he pictures in his head like a scripted play. One that he has co-written with so many victims of his persistence. It begins by their sparring. A test, followed by another. 

Daniel feels himself exhaling. 

The man sitting across from him tilts his head, a ghost of a smile passing by his visage like a stranger’s wave. Interest? Scratch that. Rivalry. 

You and me, we’re on an equal footing—Daniel rebukes this. I’ll make you leave that seat within two minutes, I’ll make you furious, leave me alone for the night. 

“You enjoy bothering solitary old men, monsieur?” Daniel quips, biting back a scoff as he takes another drag of his cigarette. “Bat your lashes and then laugh at them?”

The man blinks. Slowly, almost feline-like. His hand moves to take his cigarette case from his breast pocket, golden and polished, engraved in ivies with an unmistakable A as the centrepiece. He takes one out, lets his lips capture it. Lights it. Daniel watches as those nimble fingers pinch the stick between the protruding bones of his index and middle fingers, perched straight and poised, conducted in machine-like elegance. A performance, picturesque as the tendrils begin to escape his lips in near opaque, blue-grey waves. 

“Not quite,” the man replies. Easy. The accent tinging his words is impossibly charming, and Daniel finds himself struggling to bury this thought far, far back, away from any chance of emergence. “Only when they are particular. Eye-catching.” He pauses, before he continues with a smile, “Garishly handsome.”

Daniel snorts at the statement, looking away. “Careful now, boy. You’ll send me to an early death. And none of that, would ya? Not all Americans are into sweet-talkin’, despite what you might’ve heard in these streets.”

He wouldn’t say that he is hideous. Nor would he say he is undesirable, despite or because of his age. The silver curls ruffled on top of his head, the wire-rimmed glasses perched on the tall bridge of his nose, the crow’s feet framing his eyes and beckoning one’s utmost attention towards the bright irises of his blue-grey eyes. An icicle stare, Alice remarked once with her lips parted—Danny, your eyes just keep getting lighter and lighter, it baffles me! Or perhaps he should mention the suits he wears, second-hand or worn beyond its limitations. Scuffed shoes and scratched briefcase by his side. Trembling, shaking fingers, shaking even more in boyish rebellion as he curls them around a damp glass before he takes another, one more, and one more, sip of whiskey. He wouldn’t say that he was undesirable. 

But you can’t blame a man for asking, why? 

(Why, why me; is it the way I sneer when you say something I don’t like, is it the way I cross my legs, and the way I wince when I move the wrong way is it the way I raise my eyebrow at you, waiting to reprimand you the way I would towards the children that I don’t know the fates and lives of? Is it the way I look at you over my glasses, an action I copied to terrifying resemblance with my old English teacher who conjured both a miracle and a curse with how she had led me down this path of judge-jury-executioner with a typewriter as a scythe? Or is it the way I refuse to look at you, because I fear I might have imagined you all along and I’ve surrendered to the crawling anxieties that have resided in my brain for too long? Is it the way I try to ignore you, even though I don’t want to, because I fear I might fall for you too soon, too quick, too much and then drive you away when I know—and I know for certain—that this can never be?

(You solely exist tonight, reside within this moment like a painting. I’ve painted you now, drawing the lines and sinews of your visage with the words that unravel only within the confines of my mind, I promise these letters will not stain my shirt and lips like wine. And isn’t it funny–I don’t even know your name!)  

“Nothing false in anything I say,” the man replies. A smile appears on his lips now. “I value honesty as much as you do your cherished poison.” He nods, gesturing towards Daniel’s unfinished glass of old-fashioned. 

He hears himself exhale.

He thinks he can’t be a spy, after all. 

“Daniel Molloy.”

“Armand.” 

They share a curt nod. A brief pause that lets the odd familiarity settle between them like a perched feline waiting to pounce. 

Daniel raises a brow. “Now humour me. What causes your solitude, hm? Existentialism? Or are you waiting for any poor soul begging to become the muse for your poetry?”

Armand rests his chin on his palm, lowers his head so he can look up at Daniel through his sparse lashes. Those irises appear even more striking now, and Daniel feels himself actively trying to regulate himself. Armand smiles, a little wider now.

And then he looks away.

And then he looks at Daniel again.

Push and pull, like clockwork. 

“You are outwardly spiteful, Mr Molloy.” Armand furrows his eyebrows. “Why is that?”

Daniel sighs, tapping the tip of his index finger against a point of condensation on the side of his glass. The ice is slowly melting, diluting the amber into pale yellow. “Answering my questions with more questions. The good ol’ cheap parlour trick.”

Armand’s lashes flutter. “Simply curious,” he says with a shrug. “I want to know the reason why you haven’t smiled at me once.” 

(I definitely have, he wants to interject.)

“Do I have to…?”

“No.” Armand reaches for his drink, traces the lip of the glass as if he’s caressing a lover. Daniel watches, hypnotised and enthralled. “I would appreciate it if you consider my presence… not a nuisance. That is normal, no?”

“If I think you’re a nuisance I would’ve told you to fuck off a while ago.”

“I see.”

“And no, I wasn’t being spiteful.” He rolls his eyes. “This is who I am most days. I’m old, Armand. I’m tired. This is what you’ve got to know. Consider it a guide to prepare, given by a direct source, yeah?” Armand tilts his head. “See, right after I finish this drink, I’ll go back home and fall right into my bed. And then I’ll wake up and do it all over again. A broken record. It’s not spite, or hate that I feel. It’s fatigue, and even now as I’m talking I can feel a fuckin’ headache coming.”

Armand grins up at him, and Daniel cannot, for the life of him, understand what he finds so amusing. He doesn’t even know if it’s possible but Armand’s beaded eyes become even more vivid, twinkling beneath the dim lights. 

“Interesting.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m not a poet, Mr Molloy.” 

Daniel smiles. “Sure.”

“Honest!”

“Mhm.” He finally tucks his book back inside his briefcase; there is nothing in him that desires any other forms of sentences that aren’t verbalised by this… creature sitting across from him. “What are you then?” he asks, crossing his arms in front of his chest. The wristwatch ticks, reminding him of curfew, one that he has not bothered to check once. “Come on, Armand who is so secretive that I haven’t known his last name… What are you, who are you? What do you do and what sorta people are you surrounded by for you to earn the damn nerve to sit there without asking for my permission?”

A moment left silent. He begins to wonder if he asked the wrong questions. 

“I manage a theatre.”

Daniel clicks his tongue. Ease. “Of course. Now everything falls into place.”

“With your theatrics you’ll fit right in with us, Mr Molloy.” Armand challenges with a glint in his eyes. “Conflating mundanity, is that your charm?”

“And here I thought it was my being ‘garishly handsome’.”

“That is part of your overall allure, yes…” 

Armand says this with a dismissive wave of his hand, eyes rolled and lips sneered in a manner so casual that Daniel coughs out a laugh. 

“Oh, I’m ‘alluring’ now…?” he jokes.

“I thought that was clear?”

“Quiet now.”

“How did you end up here, Mr Molloy?”

“That’s a quick change.”

“I’d rather distract you than be silent and leave another second wasted.”

Daniel bites back a grin. (Unbelievable.)

“I was here to teach. English, if you must know. I still do it from time to time, but it’s not my career anymore. I was inadequate, and always will be. I know literature, I studied the damn thing.” He sneaks a quick glance towards Armand, only to see the man staring at him with those wide eyes fixed, unblinking and unmoving as if he’s the most fascinating being on this planet. He feels himself being rendered speechless before he continues: “I… I’ve always been much more into real people. Real stories. I could care less about the goddamn whale, or the ninth circle of Hell, no, I want to know what that girl,” he points at the girl sitting a few feet away from them, closing her eyes as her lover laughs next to her, “does for a living. Midi skirt, pumps, double-breasted blouse—my money is on secretary. But where? And who is he?” He sees Armand tilt his head, following the nod of his head. “The man kissing her. Who is he? A bank teller or a poet? A man or a woman with her hair cut short? Are they lovers or are they betraying their separate partners? Why this bar? Why the evening? Now that is what I want to know.”

Armand is silent for a moment. 

“I’ve talked to many, Armand. Some dull, some with a bit more gumption. But that’s the reality of it all, though, isn’t it? You just need to have the guts to take the risk and just… gamble.”

His nocturnal partner looks down for a moment, before he slowly nods, as if he understands. Or is trying to understand. 

“So you turn lives into muses.”

“No, not muses.” He shakes his head. “Wake-up calls.”

“What slumber have you gotten yourself trapped into?” Armand tilts his head, and Daniel is struck. 

“Which decade do you want to know about?”

Armand shrugs, taking another drag of his cigarette and craning his head backwards, blowing the smoke towards the ceiling. His lips part ever so slightly, and those impossible whiskey eyes are set upon Daniel’s, unwavering as an executioner’s blade. They shock him to his core, and Daniel cannot discern the strange feeling within the pit of stomach that screams at him to both flee and remain. 

“This decade, then.” Armand leans forward over the curved lip of the table, and Daniel fights back the urge to retreat and move back. “What happened to you?”

He is silent for a moment.

Takes a sip of his drink. 

Places another cigarette between his lips. Armand offers his lighter, coaxing him to move closer as he lets the flame that emerges from the force of Armand’s deft thumb sparks the tip. 

He moves back then. Distance. (Finally.) 

Armand smiles, gentle.

Daniel feels like a dam, bursting at the seams. 

“I parted ways with my wife, just a few years ago,” he replies, memories of Alice lingering like an open wound. “We were supposed to settle here for life, me and her, even got a kid together who’s now living in Rennes. She was my second marriage, you know, another shot that eventually dives headfirst to a damn fire pit. Second time’s the charm and what have you, and we lasted longer than the previous one and it was all settled, but I suppose life leads you to different paths.” He chuckles, looking away to blink back the prickling heat at the corners of his eyes. “That was another way of my saying that I fucked things up.” A flicker of shame, all the way down in the pit of his stomach. Churning, clawing. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” He shrugs. “Well. You’ll experience something like that too, if you haven’t. I’ll spare your ears the wisdom and let you figure it out on your own.”

“And what happens then,” Armand asks, his eyelids exceptionally heavy, curious, furious. Daniel is drawn back to him, instantly transfixed. “What happens when the spectre of a memory lingers on the back of your hand? Do you douse it with remedy? Or would you close your eyes and let it fester, Mr Molloy?”

“You know, it’s rude to ask questions you know the answers to,” he replies, the threat of a smile pricking the corner of his lips like loose shards, pressed up as a result of his toppling over, tumbling in love. No, not love. 

(Lust?—not that either.)

He sees Armand fixing his gaze upon him, those lips pursed as he asks, “Do you find pleasure in reprimanding me?” 

Daniel swallows the lump in his throat.

“Not really,” he says. “But the years have taught me to be cautious.”

A beat. 

Nobody moves.

“Walk with me, Mr Molloy.” 

A siren’s call, his consciousness warns. 

(But his preposition whispers a cacophony of follow follow follow, accept and take.)

⚭ 

He used to love the Seine.

And then it becomes a bore. Night-sight-seeing, lovers lying on top of one another as if it is another day, another burden, another kiss, another caress. One touch away from separation—don’t blame him for being pessimistic. (Spare me the pity, if you please, I am constantly one ‘fuck you’ away from another heartbreak, or the new personification of a stroke. A woman is a man is a woman is a man is a bastard. Decrepit heart, rotten psyche—I’m old and tired and the back of my head aches when I catch a pair of lips utter a lie, after another lie, with conviction, no need for an apparatus; I fire bullets with inquiries, they shed their vests with every blink, rubbing the sides of their body as if human decency, on my part, will provide warmth in the gruelling seconds to come. Honesty is a weapon; deduction a glass case of arms.) 

“Try not to stare too intently, Mr Molloy,” Armand whispers next to him, slightly mirthful and closer than he could ever imagine with the way each consonant blows gentle air against the shell of his ear at the edge of his jaw, tap tap tap, vowels vibrating through the spaces left by the night wisp. “The French adore their privacy. A shameless soul might interpret your distaste for jealousy, make no mistake.”

There is an accusatory edge to his tone, as if he wanted to say, I’ve caught you, haven’t I? You’re easy, Daniel Molloy. Beyond an open book, you are a burnt library. Being predictable is a worse sin than one’s being gullible. 

“Yeah, fuck the French. Fuck you all.” Daniel rolls his eyes, his hand wandering to open another button of his shirt despite the chilly air. He would be lying if the smile bitten by his teeth isn’t threatening emergence when he feels Armand’s dark gaze scanning his movements with a careful pair of gilded curiosity. “See if I care, I’ll take a picture if it pisses them off even more.”

“Is that bitterness I taste, Mr Molloy?” Armand asks, a smile to his voice. He has averted his eyes now, fixed upon the floating, black-hole Seine. The gentle wind whispers kisses against the gelled ends of his curls, making them shake just the slightest, nearly toppling the man from his poised, fixed, perfect state. Daniel notes the way his cheekbone raises ever so coyly, denoting a withheld smile. Is there ever a purpose to resistance, or is it simply a lesson, a proof of one’s perseverance? 

He pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, the pace of his strides growing slower and slower and slower as if time lays itself bare to his wishes. 

“Call me Daniel. And no. Or yes, perhaps. I have no idea.”

(You haven’t tasted me yet, you devil.)

Armand blinks up to look at him. The kohl around his eyes appear even darker under the lamplight.

Throughout certain moments in the evening, a jesting corner of Daniel’s mind whispers, over and over with a laugh: god, it’s as if he can read my mind—! 

Armand nods. “A walking, talking, and breathing American nightmare, I see. It’s not often I meet someone who detests the world as much as I do, Daniel, but you are simply too handsome to act like hatred makes you charming.”

He clears his throat, looking away. 

Daniel looks at the scuff on the tip of his shoes as he walks. Tries to blink himself back to normalcy when he feels as if he has been thrown off the world’s axis.

It seems so… easy. Almost lighthearted.

It seems so effortless for Armand to throw that shit around, all the whispered efforts to win his heart. As if he needed to try. Daniel is relentless, sure, but he’s still a man. (Albeit one with a vacant right side of the bed, haunted by forgettable phantoms of old faceless kisses with stale tastes and fading scents.)

Brave new world, no, vexing new world. Frustrating new world, with their incessant need for mockery. 

“Have you ever been told that it’s impolite to speak like that to your elders? Or are manners not part of the curriculum in Europe?” He clicks his tongue, biting back a grin. “Fucking barbarians.”

He hears Armand let out a giggle. A boyish, airy little sound that he might have missed had he not been so transfixed. Conveying interest with a turned glance, attraction turned the other way, confession greeted with the other cheek; he knows this dance well enough for himself. It is not a waltz, he presumes, as his partner is slowly parting from him. There is no doubt in his mind that whatever melody they are moving their feet along to lasts less than a minute. Is he foolish, he asks himself—is he foolish for entertaining this play, for reciprocating the slow bats of Armand’s eyelashes with a broken, lopsided, amused smile only a man of his disposition knows how to convey. 

“Forgive me for being tactless,” Armand replies, stopping to sit down on a secluded bench, far from embracing lovers yet still pressing the tip of a finger against the river’s murky edge. Daniel moves to sit next to him, leaving inches between them. 

He chuckles. “Don’t say sorry when you don’t mean it, take a page out of my book.”

“Oh?” He feels Armand tilt his head to try and get a clearer look of him. “And what does that imply?”

“I’ve learned my lesson, is all I’m saying.”

“And what sort of lesson was it? If you consider me that dim I’d expect you to explain it to me, monsieur. And believe me when I say I know much more then you think I do.”

“Daniel. And no, I don’t think that you’re dim.” He sighs. (Condescending again, Daniel?) “You’re just young.”

Armand clicks his tongue. “And youth equates to ignorance?”

“No, not ignorance. Naivete.”

“Oh, so now I am ‘naive’, yes?”

“Sure.”

“And what does that make you? Learned? Mature? Wise? Brilliant in comparison? Am I merely a foil in which you can compare your own virtues with and prove to whatever deity that overlooks us that you reign superior?”

“I’d do that if I have any virtues left.”

“Self deprecation.”

“What do you want me to say, that you’ve caught me?”

“No. No, Mr Molloy, not that.” He shakes his head, a gentle smile perched on his lips. “Not when I’ve only begun to reel you in. Tell me I’m mistaken.”

“The nerve you’ve got…”

“Hm?”

Daniel barely resists the urge to roll his eyes as he faces Armand. They’ve moved closer, by the force of some deity that detests Daniel, it seems. Wants him to suffer, to wail. Armand has his legs crossed, and the angular point of his shoe is mere inches away from Daniel’s calf. The seduction of space, or the lack thereof, makes him shiver. He can smell Armand’s cologne, he can almost taste it—mahogany and roses. He wonders if he’s calculated with its application; does he dab it onto certain places that gather the most heat, the way women do? Daniel wonders, if he were to nose his inhibitions behind Armand’s ear, just close to where his collar meets his neck, would the scent be the most prominent? If he presses a kiss there, would it taste bitter from the oil? And if his first instinct is to wither in disgust, would he bear it and sink his teeth there, lay his tongue flat despite or disregarding the taste, just so he can have his mouth on Armand? Is he morbid or perverted?

And then he feels Armand trailing a line up his calf with the tip of his shoe. Beginning with a nudge and ending with a stroke. 

He looks away. Yet he makes no effort to move, create some space. 

He knows this. He knows what Armand is doing—he’s not fucking stupid or dim or ignorant. He has noticed how heavy the air around them has grown, how the tension solidifies. He knows the way Armand is looking at him, has been looking at him, calculating his disposition as if he’s prey. Planning the next move, oh, how Daniel wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. He’s met people like this all the time. Boys and girls thinking they are toying with him successfully, reel him in and laugh at the ‘hope’ on his face before they realise that it’s indifference. 

But something about Armand strikes a different chord within him, and it makes him unbelievably angry. 

“I’m divorced and old, kid. Cut me some slack.”

He hears Armand sigh. “Please do not call me that. I don’t enjoy being talked down to.”

Daniel puts up a hand. “I’m sorry.”

“And I don’t see the significance in that.” 

“In what?”

“Your being what makes you… you, as I perceive you now.”

“Past my prime and a fuck up?” He laughs, the sound broken and crooked even to his own ears.  

Armand smiles. “You are describing me too, and perhaps half of Paris, whether you know it or not, Mr Molloy.”

“Oh, cut that shit off.”

“Refusing my honesty?” He tilts his head.

“Refusing pity.”

Armand exhales. “I still don’t see the significance in it.”

“Again, naive.” 

“And again!” Armand leans in, those eyes impossibly mesmerising. “Self deprecating.”

He shakes his head. “Self aware.” 

“In the form of self flagellation?”

“Too weak for corporal punishment, unfortunately.” 

“But cruel enough to punish others.” 

He looks at Armand now. Bears the fear and faces it head on. 

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” he asks. The man stares at him, unwavering, relentless, fearless. “Humour me, Armand. You like taking jabs at me? Thinking you can read me cos I’m such an open book? What do you want now? Avoid my questions again.” He shrugs, biting back a sneer. “I’ve met dozens like you, you know. Deflection left, right, and centre.”

The moment he lets those words leave his lips, the heavy thickness of the atmosphere that surrounds them immediately lowers in temperature, toppling like anvil. Daniel feels himself sucking a sharp inhale of air, a light pounding at the back of his head that he cannot quite shake off. As if something is clawing at his sides, grazing the tips of its fingers against the crumbling surface of his ribs and eating away at his heart. His mouth feels dry. 

Something shifts in Armand’s gaze. He cannot quite pinpoint the change. 

“Then I am insignificant?” His voice has lost its gravitas, and now Daniel feels like he has just shot this boy in the chest. The pounding subsides. 

Daniel sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose with the hopes of making the feeling fade faster. “No, not—I didn’t mean that. Jesus fucking Christ. I just. I simply think. What I mean to say is…” He takes one more look at Armand, sees the fragile look on his face and wonders how on earth this managed to happen. “It’s, it’s better if you leave, Armand. If we both leave. I’ll take you home. You’ll realise that we’re wasting both of our time. Why are you here? Who the hell are you?”

Armand’s face is impassive. “I am Armand. A man who talked to you for the first time mere hours ago because I found myself wondering. I’m here because I enjoy your company and the weather is beautiful. I’m here, with you, because I find you fascinating. I’m sitting here, next to you, because I want to know you. I walked with you, got us here, because I wonder if there is something more to those impossible blue eyes.” He looks away, and Daniel is struck. “I want to know if you have stories to tell me. If the words you say aren’t shallow. If the looks you’ve sent me denote that you’ve left some room for me to fill in one way or another. If your hatred for the world isn’t the reason behind your solitude, but that your solitude was the thing that caused it.” And then he looks at Daniel again, and Daniel cannot blink. He is physically unable to. “And I’m here, explaining myself, because I like you.”

I like you. 

Like. 

That is a word he hasn’t heard in a long while. (Danny, I like you. No, I like like you—you get me? Like… I like you. I like you like I like your curly hair, like I like how you write letters to me, like I like your voice like you sound tired and bored all the time like I like how you’re funny like I like the thought of you as my boyfriend like I hate you now, I hate how you look at me that way like I’m the goddamn ball and chain like I’m taking your life away well guess fucking what you took mine long before I stole yours!) 

“Daniel?”

He blinks. “Hm? Oh, yeah, sorry, I…”

And then he watches as Armand’s face falls. In the truest sense of the word, by God, it fell, and Daniel’s heart drops to the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t know what to make of it–pity, concern, pleasure? They appear unblinking. 

“Armand…”

Armand smiles, crooked. The corners twitch like shards of fine china on the floor, dancing away just at the slightest gust of wind or movement. “It’s alright.”

“You cannot like me, you barely know me.”

“Disregard.” He sighs, looking away and baring the angular side of his jaw to Daniel’s deluded eyes. “I can like you whenever I want. I think I can despise you just as quickly. Just as arbitrarily. But… if it truly is an inconvenience then I can—“ 

And Armand moves to stand up, and Daniel doesn’t quite know what has gotten into him and infected his rationality, but his hand has moved on its own accord and flashes to grip onto Armand’s frail wrist, encircling the coldness there to stop him from leaving.

“Now when the fuck did I say that.”

Armand looks surprised when he turns to look back at him. 

“What?” Daniel asks, raising an eyebrow, challenging even though his stomach rumbles with embarrassment. “I’ve never said anything about inconvenience, Armand. Sit your ass down.”

“I… I don’t,” he starts. “No, I’m simply…”

“Spit it out.”

Now he’s aware that he still has a grip on Armand’s deft wrist, but he makes no move to let it go. 

“You wouldn’t like me too, perhaps, if you know me,” Armand says, sitting back down and crossing his legs. “If you truly know me. But I’m hopeful enough to see further than what I can grasp at the moment.” Daniel feels him looking, before averting his gaze back towards the void Seine. “I suppose that personifies the optimistic youth, hm? Or a fool. Well, I have heard both.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’ll be a surprise but I do like you. But who wouldn’t. I was just trying to save you the disappointment. Come on.” He snickers, but Armand doesn’t budge. “Hey, come on.” He nudges at the man’s shoulder, and slowly, a smile appears on his sombre face. “There it is. Come on now, don’t be all humble with me now. I must be one of many, yeah?”

A nocturnal paramour, perhaps?

A nightly pastime for those with lips perpetually poisoned.

Armand laughs. “One of many…” he repeats. “You are ridiculous.”

“Are you a eunuch?”

“No?” he baulks.

“Then don’t be coy with me.”

“Mr Molloy, I don’t leave my house every night to prey on people.”

“Liar.” He grins. “Who’s on the menu tomorrow, Armand? A saleswoman? Or a judge?”

“A journalist,” Armand replies, fixing that petrifying gaze back towards him. Daniel catches him glancing down to his lips, and it takes everything in Daniel not to surge close and kiss him. 

“You’ll be the death of me,” Daniel says. “You know that, don’t you?”

Armand simply looks at him. “Haven’t you been praying for it?”

“For too long. Now I’ve given up.”

“You’ve given up on death?”

“I always leave things on an unsatisfactory note.” He shrugs. “Another aspect that makes up my charm, you see. Unfinished projects and failed attempts.”

“Let me finish this one for you, then.”

He smiles. “You can try.”

They sit in silence. 

⚭

“What led you here, Armand?”

“The arts, Mr Molloy,” he says, a smile perched pretty on his face. “My cov–theatre company is the product of my love.  It is everything to me now. I’m surrounded by people who love what I love… yet, I still think they can do with some more work.”

“Ooh, scathing. Aren’t you critical?”

“It’s all said with love, rest assured.”

“Are you a playwright? What sort of sadistic works have you forced people to perform? Any sinful acts that challenge these Parisian youths?”

He laughs, like a bell, like moonlight, like rippling waters.

“No, no, I don’t write,” Armand corrects. “I only direct, you see.”

“Have you been directing me the whole evening?” Daniel laughs. “What do they call you over here? Sire of all the world’s mysteries?”

Armand nods. “Maȋtre. That is what they call me.”

“You didn’t answer my other question.”

“No,  I haven’t been directing you. Anything you confess to me was said on your own volition, no? If you want me to direct, then tell me, with honesty, what led you here?”

Daniel takes one look at him, at his gilded presence and his striking eyes, and smiles.

 “Whiskey.”

Armand pushes at his shoulder, looking away as he visibly bites down a grin. 

⚭

The walk to his house took longer than necessary. They passed alleyways that would shorten the trip, feigned ignorance at the gentle ticks of Daniel’s wristwatch—testaments to their company—by drowning the noise with their endless chatter. 

(Oh, I used to adore that shop.

Really? I’ve always wondered how good the tailoring was.

Impeccable, never an inch mistaken, Mr Molloy. 

I’m starting to think you keep calling me that ‘cause you got some perverted proclivities towards it. See, I’m ripping a page right from your book now.

Touché. But I refuse to disclose what I like and dislike. You can find out for yourself if you’re so curious. 

Hey, I’m a journalist before I’m an English teacher, I’ll have you know.

And what are the techniques of an  acclaimed interrogator? Seduction? Or nihilism? 

Very funny.)

A jazz bar had its doors open as they traversed through the dim streets of Paris, and Daniel grinned, taking hold of Armand’s hands in his—such slim fingers he has, Daniel was petrified that he’d break them carelessly—and pulled him close, twirling him upon uneven cobblestone. Armand laughed like a windchime, gilded lullabies falling into a singular constellation in which Daniel found himself lost in. Stars sparked behind his eyelids the moment Armand pressed his chest close to him, guiding him in a posture more balanced than whatever state Daniel had put them in. 

Simply put, he was entranced. 

It was beyond witchcraft; the way Armand threw his head back and giggled and shrieked when Daniel pushed at him and dipped him and made them dance to the faint music, grabbed his shoulders and steadied him and lowered him, mere inches away from the ground, his briefcase thrown carelessly against the tyre of a maroon Volkswagen. Having Armand like that, with one hand holding the back of his long neck and those lips parted just beneath his own, Daniel found himself utterly speechless. Gone was the instinctive reaction to make  some quipped joke, some dim ridicule, some deprecating one-liner that would either make Armand laugh or frown. He counted every single second that had passed, every moment that scattered and dispersed into fractions of mediocre poetry at the back of Daniel’s mind. He has never been a Romantic, upper and lower-case distinctions of the word, but  at that point, he dug his own hands within his chest and ripped his own heart out. 

Daniel only wanted to look at him. His eyes stuck onto the beauty mark perched on the side of Armand’s cheek, a mere brush away from wispy ends of his eyelashes. He wanted to kiss it. 

But then Armand smiled at him, the gesture so gentle that it made the rhythm of Daniel’s heart beat skip. And then unravel, uncoordinated. He steadied them both, and tucked a strand of Armand’s loose curls behind his delicate ear. 

The sight of his apartment building has never been so unwelcomed in his life. He doesn’t know what to say now. Or what to do. 

Armand stands there, unnaturally still like a statue coming to life. The way his eyes scan the scene around him is almost fascinating to watch, a slow wandering movement that trails an invisible ling from the bottom-up. He looks perpetually bored and unbothered, yet at the same time, those eyes widen as if the simplest of things intrigue his mind.  

“Armand?”

“Yes, Mr Molloy?”

He feels oddly junior. Adolescent, this warmth within the pit of his stomach. His mind conjures images of his first love, the bookish ginger with round glasses, the coy caress of the side of his pinky finger, a line drawn by the gentle push of the tip of her nail. 

Would you kiss me, Danny? I won’t bite, promise. She still smiled at him at the time, a gesture akin to a stranger’s shoulder bumped against his own, now. (You really think I’m afraid of that?) The courage mustered is weak and tactless, he considers, especially for a man of his age. 

Seventy-one and jittery; perhaps the brave new world is bolder than a gesture of scattered scarlet petals. 

He might lose his mind if he doesn’t kiss Armand tonight. (For a sinful, singular moment, his mind is plagued by the picture of Armand standing in the middle of his living room, dark-poison-angelic as he puts his hands inside his pockets, scanning the room with contempt to the point that Daniel would rather have him spit on the rotting ground. The half broken-heart fantasy of Armand’s gaze landing onto him, finally–he sighs, and accepts his offer of day-old wine. In glasses and between the cracks of Daniel’s lips.)

He takes one step forward.

“Would you like to—“

“Not tonight, mon amour.”

Daniel blinks. His throat feels parched.

His stomach churns with the first jade pulse, an inkling of humiliation that is bound to follow. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that. He shouldn’t have. Perhaps he has interpreted things the wrong way, regardless of the bashful heat that pools and gathers beneath his skin and through the stream of his veins the moment Armand calls him that. (Presumptuous again, Daniel? Ruining a good thing again, Daniel? Being a good for nothing bastard again, Daniel?) 

He wants to take it back.

Armand steps closer, and Daniel nearly moves one step back, if not for the petrifying effect the man in front of him poses over his entire being. 

“May I see you here tomorrow, at seven?” Armand inquires, his eyes wide as he looks up at Daniel, curious, questioning, and—no, Daniel cannot seem to read him at all. The city grows still around them, anticipating his answer on bated breath, patient. He doesn’t even know what to say, or what to think. 

“Wait, I, you’ll… you’ll be here?”

Armand nods, a small smile on his face waiting to bloom. He looks so impossibly boyish that Daniel is aghast, but there is an odd, tantalising edge of century-old mystery to his disposition that makes Daniel wonder and wonder and wonder. Questions plague his mind in bursts of constellations, one after the other, granting satisfaction from one solved look that borns another. 

“You’ll be waiting for me? Here?”

The thought of Armand waiting for him, picking him up for a date as if it was high school all over again, made him breathless. He feels embarrassed, almost, as if he has to make up for it somehow. He gapes, looking away, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

Armand looks at him as if he is incredulous. As if he’s merely foolish and sheepish, none the wiser. “Yes. As much as I’d like to stay, the night has not been as kind to us, I’m afraid. Both of us are tired, no? We can go back to the café tomorrow and I can vex you further with nonsensical talk. Does that sound nice to you?”

“Oh, I–um. Yeah. Absolutely.” He clears his throat. “I… of course.”

The man tilts his head, a poorly hidden smile placed coyly at the corner of his lips. “Mr Molloy, have I caught your tongue in the middle of a prolific thought? It seems as if you are out of responses. Never devoid of wit, I hope?”

He baulks. “Oh, don’t you worry about that.” 

Something about Armand’s state of stillness denotes a kind of certainty. Daniel feels a strange clawing within his ribcage, as if he is imagining things, conjuring fantasies of Armand’s stolen glances at his lips, the way those eyelashes flutter with doubt before they settle. 

Daniel doesn’t know what to believe. 

And then Armand slowly smiles at him, and he feels his cold hand cradling his cheek, tender as a petal’s peck. 

“I shall kiss you tonight.”

Before Daniel is kindly given the chance to grasp the weight and reality of this statement, he feels a pair of lips pressed against his own, and Armand’s closed eyelids are a mere inch away from his widened eyes. They were not just closed, mind—he noted the flutter before the shutters hide those bull shot eyes, amber black holes that have had his curiosity spent and perseverance half-undressed the whole evening. Eyelashes, long and sparse like a lady’s own, casting faint shadows over the tawny glow of his skin beneath this cold moonlight. One and two and three and four to five dozens he counts, those strands; mathematics have never been his strongest suit (other than the fool proof formula of shame plus pressure equals candour). This proximity is electrifying, he senses, and Armand’s lips feel just as soft as his voice. 

A second. Armand is unable to see him for a second. He is not flayed from the crown of his head and down to his toes, as those eyes are closed, and Daniel feels foolish for resisting the urge to close his, too. He fears, with everything signifying human propriety that lingers within him, that Armand would sense his shameless staring and open his eyes as well, uneasy with how this old man is receiving the gesture. A French kiss, he musters, more like a French peck, demure and demonic at the same time with the way the press of his verbal heat ignites white pulses of endless question marks behind the backs of Daniel’s eyelids, now finally closed. 

It takes a moment for him to register the situation beneath this marigold lamplight, but the familiar itch at the tips of his fingers is quick to respond with a tilt of his head. This is beyond formulaic, it’s instinctive, it’s natural, it is the catalyst to all of his future persistent migraines. Paramours and amours that will decide in the future that a moment’s rapid-beating heart is not worth the fury. 

(Daniel, you tire me. Wear the life out of me. Isn’t it all enough? What else do you want to know, what else do you want to extract?)

He kisses the way he has been longing to the entire evening. He kisses with intent, need, want, desire–every word that the human eye has rested upon that is synonymous to the deathly sin of greed. His mind spirals, and he swallows the noise. His, Armand’s—he has no willpower left within him to discern who trembles first. Every breath that he takes, steals, from the gap left between their slightly parted lips, he feels as if he has no time left. 

As if he needs to prove himself. Prove his worth, oh, see—! I can love after all, spin minds like records that sing confessions of both love and hatred. (And then I’ll take the needle off of it without notice, abruptly cutting it off for both of our sakes. No, don’t yell at me now, I’ve already repeated those words to myself before you ever had the chance to do it for me.) There is a painfully thin line that separates the two, or perhaps it is a mirror. Twin flames, passion in varying hues of scarlet when they finally gather the courage to look at one another. He dares himself to give in to his inhibitions, surrender, and places his hand on the curve of Armand’s trim waist, accentuated even more so with the tailoring of his bespoke suit jacket. His fingers curl against the shape, each touch a peck away from a fruitful fantasy. 

A madman, his conscience utters. He can feel Armand’s lips quirk against the kiss, as if he found the gesture entertaining. Junior. 

Childish. 

Ridiculous. 

There is little shame in wanting, Daniel, an odd voice says in the back of his mind—a siren’s call. Or rather, he corrects, there is no shame at all. 

In anything. There is no shame in anything because he has lost shame in everything. The seduction becomes a whisper becomes a serenade, lulling him into unconsciousness the more he tries to block it out of his head. Being alive for this long must bring you baggage, he muses, a whole barrack of dilemmas of should I  would I will I won’t I.  

The timbre of this voice, the content melody that whispers (here, come to me, I’m here, hold me) is oddly familiar, as if it has sung to him in dreams, turned his head in crowds and made him late. It makes him shiver. The distraction to every interaction he had with his wife, the singular piece of paper that begs for his attention, letters holding more value than the words she’d say. Sentences that made his heart ache more than the sombre, glassy, indifferent, empty, dead look in her eyes that he should have had realised long ago was saying that it was done, it was over. 

The voice lathers itself on his skin like warm honey, blood-warm, and he can feel his body, veins, thrumming with excitation, fear, terror, he has no clue, his mind is in such dissaray. Chaos unfurls and distrups the pattern, and his hand trembles upon Armand’s cheek when he parts them briefly, just to see. 

And then he feels as if somebody has punched him in the pit of his stomach.

Armand is looking at him as if he is worth something.

Those beaded eyes are glassy and specked with darkened stars, exploding one by one. His lips are parted, impossibly beautiful under the barest of illuminations the night has offered them. They share shaky exhales, eyes flitting from eyes to nose to lips to cheeks, seemingly struggling to choose. Daniel can’t choose. 

He feels his breath quickening. Heartbeat set on a half-time rhythm that sets a dancer to a disastrous end. His hand trembles. 

And then he walks. Saunters, strides, whatever the fuck you would call it, Daniel does. He takes Armand by his shoulders and presses him against the wall with the palm of his hand bearing the pressure, protecting Armand’s head as he swallows the gasp that Armand lets out the moment his back hits with a soft thud against stone. It’s terrifying, the ease in which they seem to find familiarity in one another. The way he claws into Armand, buries himself inside his mouth despite his conscience yelling otherwise. He cannot decide now, if the white noise filling his head is  a product of his own insanity (prison of one’s own making, again?) or if it’s the sound of their lips, a grotesque feast born out of hours of playing nice, skittish—feigning buoyancy over the surface that draws a line between propriety and desperation. 

Both children of bereavement, he reckons.

He can feel those nails—talons—within his chest now, carving out a hole that would, in a moment’s notice, cause disappointment. He presses himself closer to Armand, coaxing him, challenging him to try and see for himself, decide what he needs from Daniel in that moment. He might as well be writhing on the ground, half-dead with his heart dug out and eaten raw. He can see it now, akin to a prophetic vision; Armand on his knees, scruffing those trousers of cobblestone as he lowers his head to ransack Daniel’s chest like a conquered land. His hands, dirty with blood and his mouth, stained with sin. He presses himself until there is nothing left between them, until he can feel Armand’s fingers scrambling for purchase on the lapels of his blazer. Why do those fingers tremble, he asks himself; what in the world could possibly make Armand shake just so? Daniel can taste his breath, and he swallows it whole to make it a part of him too. 

(Can you find it now? What you’ve been looking for?) Nothing denotes heartbreak more than a frown. No need to say anything else, he’s ready to retort back. No need to say the words I’ve already known so well, it’s like a number written on the back of my hand by a lady who wears her skirt too short. 

But then Armand keeps receiving. He keeps taking and taking and taking and, and Daniel keeps giving and he keeps sighing, a wonder floating within the vacant corners of his mind; an exchange that seems endless the longer he captures Armand’s lips in a dance. How does it feel, he wonders? To have one’s lips captured by a divorcé? Perhaps it tastes of death, of heartbreak, of ignorance, of self-pity.  Or would it taste forbidden—a rotten apple, a decaying memento, the cracked stone of a statue of what once was? These lips have kissed others, Daniel wants to say. These lips have been wedded before they were given to many others, before and after. These lips have driven people away. These lips have hurt, they have been hurt. Bruised and beaten. 

He keeps waiting. Waiting for Armand to come to his senses, to snap himself awake and push Daniel away with a laugh, those lips curled into a mirthful sneer as he says, spits, oh, you ridiculous old man! And then he would walk away, and Daniel would be alright. Daniel would be perfectly content. 

He would drink himself to sleep, yes, but at least he’ll be content. He doesn’t cry anymore; he hasn’t cried in years. Nothing is worth the turmoil when your mind has colour-coded the whole world as grey. 

An icicle stare.

He feels fingers in his hair, tugging at his curls, his shirt, his ear, his jaw—he can barely discern when he starts and Armand ends. His left hip hurts. His throat feels like sandpaper. He’s out of breath, but he doesn’t want to miss a single moment, he doesn’t want to leave a single gasp from Armand’s mouth to escape the confines of lips, not when each hitch sings praises, not when every cry preaches hymns. He can feel Armand’s hands on his waist, pulling him closer with a kind of urgency he would never expect.

Armand’s lips twist into the kiss in a grin, and Daniel feels light headed. The heavens implore him to catch his breath, but he would gladly meet his maker if this is the path to damnation. Armand and his kiss and those bewitching eyes. 

“Damn you,” he whispers against the plush of Armand’s lips, eyelashes caught in a firefly flutter. He weakly presses a hand against Armand’s breast, right over his heart in a feeble attempt to push him away, push him aside, leave me be. It’s pathetic, the way his fingers tremble over the cashmere, two sides of his mind stuck in a dilemma of resistance and surrender. Both seem to evoke the same result, both lead to his suffering regardless.  “Little devil.” 

Armand smiles, those amber irises watching his every movement. Neither of them parts or puts a distance. 

(How pathetic am I, a divorcé with one trainwreck trailing after the other like a trace of petrol trickling down a damaged car, to have deserted the lives of others and is now standing right here, falling for the allure of a man who is possibly twice below his age?)

He lowers his eyes again, gaze centred upon Armand’s lips, beyond tantalising now that he knows how they taste. Bitter from the alcohol, smokey from the cigarette, and slightly sweet from his words. Daniel realises just how much he has ruined his own life—a beauty of this magnitude… 

Armand brings his face close and presses another kiss at the corner of his lips. He can feel the flat of his thumb against the shell of his ear, drawing lurid circles as if Armand is trying to hypnotise him. Maybe it’s working. 

It feels as if time has stopped around them, the city sent to a serene state of vacancy, though not that unnatural considering the night. He wonders if Armand has made it stop, a flick of his elegant wrist that begs reverence. The signet ring that he wears, dark and stark beneath the moonlight as he tucks a loose strand of his curls behind one ear. What a picturesque facade he paints, brush strokes of his touches connecting the dots of interest in the blank canvas of Daniel’s bereaved heart.

Beneath the awning of his building they stand still, Daniel’s hand remaining its placement on the side of Armand’s neck while his own rests on Daniel’s cheek. The ring has grown warm. He wonders if his cheek is heating up embarrassingly fast. 

“Take care, Armand.” Daniel waves a hand,  feigns dismissal when his heart rocks against the confines of his rotting rib cage like an animal set loose. The name still feels foreign on his tongue; perhaps he would need more chances to taste it on his lips again. Take note of each melodic caress of the vowels when Armand parts his lips to utter his own name—Daniel is envious of the letter A, how much Armand encircles its shape with such sweetness that makes Daniel’s fingers tremble. Each press of the consonant against his skin when he kisses him so, the way he trills his R’s in that glottal way as the French do. Charm served on a silver platter with seemingly no effort at all.

(Or am I simply too lonely?)

No, he whispers, no it can’t be.

He can feel his skin warming up from this thought alone, how shameless. 

“And you as well, Mr Molloy,” the man replies with a grin, boyish as ever even with his sophisticated state of dress. “I shall see you tomorrow evening!”

With his hands in his pockets, Armand marches away, further and further swallowed by the night and the lamp light. 

The door behind him closes with a thud. He has left his balcony door open, again. The wind blows gentle whispers against the translucent curtains, resembling a lady’s dress, welcoming him to meet an earlier death lest he rebukes the temptation to walk past that door and rest his hands on the railing. As he does every other night when the moon greets him and douses him in silver. 

He gasps. 

The back of his head sings in a familiar melody of pulsating pain.

Another migraine, he guesses. 

(Daniel?)

Another ringing. One, two, three, four–a steady count that resembles the smooth rhythm set by the blond pianist at the café. He can almost hear the music again. The rumble of his voice. The twinkle of glasses clinking against one another in a toast. The low hum of chatter, non madame pardon excusez-moi monsieur je vais prendre un café s’il vous plaît oh! et pour moi aussi merci I think Sartre is a phoney, no? Dig it! What do you mean you’re ending it with me, Catherine, what should I tell my mother? I don’t give a damn, Charles! No, just think about this, good lord why should I? I want nothing to do with you! And then flashes to, Danny? Daniel, are you, oh for heaven’s sake, are you fucking leaving? What on earth is wrong with you? I just TOLD you that I’m—no, stop, stop, Christ—he blinks himself awake, or attempts to, as he stumbles into the kitchen and scrambling for a cup of water that he downs within a second. Drank too much, smoked too much, he cannot seem to figure it out. 

A shower and a change of clothes. These things are mindless routines. He lies on his bed, alone again; solitude slowly becomes the sole, ever-occurring presence in his life. Perhaps, he muses, perhaps one of these days he can make it his lover. Seduction through self-sabotage. 

He picks up a pen, seemingly possessed as his mind fogs, and writes on his notebook as a reminder: 

Armand. 19:00. 

The scrawl looks more like chicken scratch, no doubt, his hand trembled with each curve that caress every letter that are forced into matrimony, conjoined to make up the man's name. The elegant curl of the tongue, the romantic press of one's lips to accommodate the second syllable. It's set in stone now, he reckons.

He will meet him again, tomorrow. Armand will wait for him like the melancholy reaper, with his suit his cloak, and his gentle kiss the scythe that finally grants Daniel peace.

The man with the gilded irises doused in scarlet, who seemed to stroke him with an ancient kind of affection. 

And as he moves to turn off the amber light, a voice in the back of his mind whispers with an impossibly familiar cadence: Rest.

His head falls onto the pillow, pull-chain-dragged in one swift, simultaneous motion. 

Three, two, one—

Blackout.