Daniel woke, as he always did, with the sun.
In the emptiness of the loft, he was alone, more silent, less certain, than ever.
He washed and pulled on a pair of jeans he'd found in the recesses of Gilles' wardrobe, denim softer than velvet, and a loose shirt of Gilles', printed with spring-green vines and tangled bundles of blue and white primroses. He rolled the sleeves to his elbows, scrubbed a towel over his face, and went to his morning prayers.
Meditation ought to be peace. The blank gaze of the Buddha, murmur of his own breath, scrolling smoke off the stub of incense: Here he should have rested, found the quiet abyss within and without.
It was peace, narcotic and smooth, blank as the eyes. He could have dwelled here, galaxy-wide and atom-dense, and never had to feel again. In the truth of the void, where solitude devolved to nonsense because there was no Daniel, no world, nothing and no one to miss.
He craved meditation, the quick slide into black-ice mindfulness, into peace where he did not miss Gilles because Daniel himself was not.
Killing oneself need not be violent, he knew. It didn't even need to make noise; he could have slipped beneath the frost of peace, dissolved himself into primordial light, rejoined reality by abandoning illusion.
Shuddering, Daniel pushed himself to his feet, found his old flip-flops by the elevator, and ran breathlessly downstairs. Two steps, three, taken at a time, he ran.
He probably should not have gone out, not after Joan's rescue of him from Mick last night, but he headed for the coffee shop two blocks from the building. He needed people, activity, he needed to find something else.
Mick never went outside during the day and Daniel was hungry.
The loft could so easily become the world: Empty and lonely. He was too much there, too much alone and too much battered by doubt. Despite the gracefully-curved furniture, despite Gilles' beloved books, despite the square curtains of light falling from the glass above, the loft was squalid. Despicable, and Daniel too self-focused, too arrogant, to bear either the place or himself for very long.
Annica: He craved the fugitive light, the transitory world. Without Gilles, Daniel had felt himself swell. Like a boil, occupying Gilles' absence.
Outside, however, he was at once smaller and thing were more proportional, fleeter.
The sunlight beat like hammered brass over the neon signs that stayed lit all day, against the rough vivid stucco walls. Flower-colors, obscenely twining orchids and infinite poppies, and the traffic contended in volume with the sea, the sun for garish dominion in the faces all around him as he walked.
Alvaro's cafe was small and long, an old, soft-edged Airstream trailer on a cement foundation long ago grown over with kudzu. Daniel thought of the trailer travelling the country, looping and doubling back over highways and backroads, all the stars that had passed over it, the canyons that had opened before its blunt nose, the breaths of all its drivers and the winds that had blown through it.
The trailer was still now, having found its way to the edge of the land, all the way to the sea and Verona Beach. Stopped now, forever, but its travels were carved into its scuffed aluminum walls. Like canyons, like snowfields, the motion was etched into the surface, and, therefore, persisting, long after it had ceased.
Alvaro treated Daniel to a large cafe con leche, identical to his own, and half a sweet roll before waving him out the back door. His sons-in-law had built a patio back here, teetering on railroad ties and stilts, opening over the sea and walled with climbing vines and potted evergreens that whose tangy smell reminded Daniel insistently of New Drepung.
It was still early yet for the bulk of the breakfast crowd. Only other person occupied the patio.
His back was to Daniel, but the whiteness of his shirt, flat and sharp as snow, caught Daniel's eye as the hook barbs a fish's swollen lip.
Holding his cup and saucer in both hands, the milk unfurling through the oily black coffee, the steam swirling up over chin, Daniel simply stopped.
His senses continued working - sighing of the sea, salt and coffee and pine needles in his nose and mouth, the porcelain and sun burning his skin - but only in the most distant manner. Otherwise, he stopped, dropped away from his body and skin, mind and self.
"Gilles."
Question and statement both, a window opened and rope tossed overboard, the sound left his mouth and names were tiny, fluttering labels, the last leaf curled dry and dark at the tip of a branch.
"Gilles."
White shirt, shadows darkening the folds as the figure turned, ink sliding off paper, and then.
Then there was Gilles' face, lined and beautiful behind dark glasses, bruised red, his mouth a dark gash of pain, question, apology.
"Take this -" Daniel set down the coffee and bread before Gilles, then touched Gilles' wrist, guiding his hand to the food.
Beyond vows - to do no harm, to take suffering and return compassion a hundredfold - there was simple decency. Daniel understood that now, in a motionless rush, either so rapid or so gradual that it seemed stationary. Longing and loss, all the empty yearning he'd felt for Gilles, still prickled at the edges of him, and would return soon enough.
Now, however, there was only the amberdark coffee, the awkward curve of Gilles' bruised and scabbed-over hand, and the soft, plump roll.
Daniel slipped his arm around Gilles' shoulders and drew himself nearer until he sat on one of Gilles' thighs, hand covering Gilles', fingers stroking the angry red scabs, his mouth on Gilles' ear, forehead to temple.
"Eat," he said. "I've missed you."
Cold inside, the static Arctic terror like death, but so warm outside, sunheavy air and the pressure of Gilles' body against his own again. Gilles' cheek was bruised and scraped as well, tender against Daniel's own, swollen with blood and pain.
"Daniel." His voice was hoarse, full of burrs and brambles.
"All right now."
"All may be well - but, if God sort it so, it's more than I deserve, or should expect -" Gilles hung his head, speaking dully, lips hardly moving.
"Not now," Daniel said and pulled Gilles' arm around his waist. He broke off a piece of bread, the softest core, and brought it to Gilles' lips. Scabbed and flaking, burnt from the sun or some other fire, they scratched at Daniel's fingertips. "Just eat now."
Gilles kissed Daniel's fingers and accepted the bread, then sipped the coffee.
Daniel held him close, rubbing the root of Gilles' neck, murmuring in singsong nonsense. He didn't dare close his eyes, look away, lose sight or touch of Gilles. Silence slipped around them, even as the patio grew crowded and noisy, as horns and chatter rose like fiery streamers around them.
Gilles had closed his eyes; he touched Daniel's face with both hands, lightly, tracing the rise of bone and dip of nose. Daniel caught Gilles' wrists and held his hands there. When Gilles opened his eyes, Daniel said, "Don't go again."
"Protecting you. Believed I was saving you."
"Don't," Daniel said. "I can take care of myself."
"So whatever do you need me for?"
"For you," Daniel said. "I -" He took a breath. Whatever protection Gilles thought he was providing, believed that Daniel needed, it had also been Daniel's admission, tantamount to love, that drove Gilles into the night. He couldn't take it back; he needed to impress it harder, more deeply. Make it clear. "I want to love you. Difficult without you."
Quietly, Gilles regarded him. When he spoke, it sounded to Daniel like a radio broadcast, alive with static and interference, impersonal and cruel. "Let sin, alone committed, light alone upon his head that has transgressed so. Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe."
Daniel shook his head, felt glaciers pressing his head in their vise. "Please."
"I do love you," Gilles said. "Feverishly, guiltily. With such infection as to kill hundreds. Monstrous, and horrible, I've charmed you into calling this sickness love."
Cold that ground and shattered without falling, throughout Daniel's body, brightice fear shining through his mind. "Not charmed -"
Gilles nodded, speaking carefully, softly, more to himself than Daniel, though he touched Daniel constantly and gently. "Charmed you, through the pride of elation, or through false philosophy; or else entangled you through sacrilegious rites, in which, while casting down headlong by deceit and illusion your mind, I hold you captive also to magical trickery."
Surprised that he did not shiver, Daniel leaned in, kissing Gilles' face, drawing the heat up through his lips, roiling inside, certain and full of need. "What made me love you?" he asked. "Not trickery. You. Can that persuade you there's something extraordinary in you? Come, I can't cog and say you're this and that, like you can. I don't know the words, I don't know much of anything -"
The wind off the sea smelled like trash and sex, thick oily carnal things, and Daniel broke off, coughing against the cold within.
"Wiser than you know," Gilles said. His own voice now, roughened and sad, but his own. "Kinder than any deserving."
"I can't say, but I love you. None but you," Daniel said, quickly, steam billowing in his mouth, hunger and love, "And you deserve it."
Words ran out then, far later than he might ever have imagined, and Gilles embraced him. Silently, and that was both comforting and fearful. Gilles had never lacked for words before they went to the island, but now the words were as tender and unexpected as the bruises covering his face.
Daniel tried to breathe through his mouth, not smell the sea, just hold on to Gilles and let hope give birth to itself. But he shuddered and coughed and realized, as slowly as honey, that Gilles was speaking. Replying, saying love and I'm sorry and tell you anything.
"Are you equivocating now?" Daniel asked, words in a dream, the colors bright and air soaked with stench.
Gilles smiled, thin and unamused. "Whatever could you mean? I don't lie, not to you."
"Not lying," Daniel said and tried to reconstruct what Inez had told him on the pier. "Not lying. But speaking only part of what you think. Keeping the rest silent."
Gilles smoothed down Daniel's shirt, straightening the placket, fingering its buttons one by one. His glasses had slid down his nose, and his eyes were closed, the lids tender and creased. "How do you know that word? Where -?"
"Are you?" Daniel asked again.
The roots of knowledge, its origins and teachers, were one matter, and he would tell Gilles everything about Inez. But the other matter, factual and apparently plain, whether Gilles equivocated, was more difficult. He knew this was the reverse; usually, answering yes or no was far easier than explaining why and how you know.
He touched the creases over Gilles' brows, finespun lines nearly smooth, hard to feel.
Looking up, Gilles kissed the side of Daniel's palm. "Of course I am. All the time."
Daniel wanted to know why. But Gilles' voice was rough, his eyes blank. "You don't need to. I -"
"You're a saint," Gilles said and laughed a little. "Blessed and pure and far, far too good for this world. Let alone me."
There were no saints for Daniel; he enjoyed reading about them, their acts and bravery and martyrdom, in Gilles' books, but he also enjoyed the stories about Queequeg and Ishmael, Jonah decked with kelp and praying from the fish's belly, Nickleby and Gradgrind, and the adventures of the Fantastic Four as well as the Pro-Solar Mechanics. He did know, however, about tulkus and other incarnations walking the earth from other, better realms.
He wasn't one of those, either.
He kissed the center of Gilles' forehead and drew back. "Not a saint," he said. "Not here, not with you. Not ever."
Gilles tightened his arm around Daniel's waist. "You swam through filth and bracken?"
"I did."
"You fled and, fleeing, sought the better shore?"
"I did."
"Dear boy," Gilles said and buried his face in Daniel's neck. "Your all-reviving beauty yields such joys to my sad soul, plunged in waves of woe, that worldly pleasures seem to me like toys."
Daniel stroked Gilles' hair and the nape of his neck, rubbing the knobby spurs of bone and taut skin there, the depression where spine hinged to skull. Clouds covered the sky now, slate-dark and strangely flat, dimming the borders between light and shadow, darkening the sea and foliage.
"I owe you much," Gilles said, speaking over Daniel's shoulder. "Such kindness and indulgence already. But for that swim -"
"Not exchange," Daniel told him, moving his hand over Gilles' neck, tipping up his chin. "No tit for tat, quid pro quo."
"All exchange," Gilles said. "What I owe, I must repay."
"Nothing. No debt, no accounts. Just -" And now Daniel closed his own eyes and felt the freeze of fear. The clouds glowed reversed against his lids. "Don't leave again. Stay."
Under his hand, Gilles shivered. "I'll infect you more. Use and break you. Like Abel and Joan, Theo and -"
"I'm not them," Daniel said, opening his eyes. He didn't even know who Theo was; he suspected his was one of the multiple faces in Abel's water show, passing through Gilles' arms, eyes full of desire, mouth twisted in love. "You're not him, not now."
There was so much else to talk about, apologies and rebates, where Gilles went and why Daniel waited. But they were kissing now, shallowly, gently as infants draw breath in sleep, and Gilles' hand skimmed up under Daniel's shirt and pressed against the small of his back, warm and large and still.
Gilles had not answered him, and Daniel lacked the words to press him further. He was more than nothing and Gilles was far from everything, but their lips were soft and open, and in the space of the kiss, Daniel tried to rest.
So much to say, no words to use.
Gilles had come back. That was the best he knew.
*
No exchange. Neither was whole; they did not pass gifts and emotion back and forth like circuits channel energy or gears engage their wheels. Daniel didn't know what they were, what they did, but it flowed and described the space around them and between them. Not exchange, but a sort of fluid, constant construction.
That fluidity was what they once had, what could be again, at any rate.
At home again, later, near dark, after sleep that descended more rapidly than a car crashes into the guardrail, Daniel sat on the couch, legs folded behind him, touching Gilles' arm, side, thigh, testing his solidity. Cold metal, clanking together; they kept moving, awkwardly, trying to find that old fluid grace. He was telling Gilles about the greenhouse and the night garden.
"You were meeting this man?" Gilles drank down his wine and did not look at Daniel. "So soon and -" Around his bruises, his face went pale, drained and nearly sallow beneath the tan. Bloodless lips and hooded eyes. The glass shattered in his grip as he threw it against the wall. "Without me, free, looking for -"
"Gilles. No, nothing -"
Shards of glass, brighter than blood. "He'll be dead."
Daniel drew himself up, holding Gilles' bleeding hand in his own. "No."
Reaching for the bottle of wine, Gilles looked at Daniel. He wore both a sneer and a question on his face. "I could kill him."
Arctic inside, yearning-melting outside, squeezing Gilles' hand until the blood welled, Daniel tried to smile and soften his voice. Gilles was no longer beaten and apologetic; such curses and promises were far more characteristic and reassuring. "You don't even know who he is."
"Show me the strumpet that began this stir, that with my nails his beauty I may tear. I will -"
Daniel traced the length of the largest cut with his thumb, drawing blood up to his knuckle. "No, you won't. You'll stay."
Gilles folded his bloody fingers around Daniel's hand. Fear still hovered, massive and cold, within Daniel's chest, but Gilles' grip was hot and slick with blood, thrumming hard, shreds of open skin and pain.
"Monstrous," Gilles muttered. Two syllables of exhaustion and defeat. He covered his face with one hand; he tried to bring the other up, but Daniel held on, kissing the sticky blood. "You were thus surprised, sweet boy, ravished and wrong, and you will again be, forced into ruthless, vast and gloomy woods. Again, and again."
Daniel wound around Gilles, arms and bloody hand and mouth on his neck.
*
The loft glowed like crystal against the night walling them in.
Warmth persisted, duly and dependably as the sun, but Daniel needed more. If he was alone, he feared Gilles would not reappear; if he was hungry, he knew he would starve. He had no words, nothing to explain, but he could not simply cleave to Gilles and let hope plaster him there permanently.
He had made the most fundamental mistake imaginable, becoming attached to emptiness, addicted to detachment, drunk on the void.
There was no void. Everything passed in multiple veils of illusion, but truth was in the passage, in love for the world, not in retreat from it, in rejection and abandonment. Transmutation was far simpler, much plainer, than Abel's garish entertainments and, as such, much more terrifying.
Gilles did not believe him, could not accept any of this.
"I'll show you," Daniel said, pulling him away from his desk toward the bed. He lay down, wrapping one leg around Gilles' knees, and breathed out obscenities that were natural for anyone else, anyone normal. "Fuck me. Take everything, and you'll see."
Smiling crookedly, already breathing raggedly, Gilles asked, "And if I'm right?"
"Then," Daniel said, pulling Gilles to him, thrusting against his palm, "We'll have enjoyed ourselves regardless."
Gilles kissed him, filled Daniel's mouth with his tongue, seeking and hot, kissed him until dark stars spun before Daniel's eyes. "Those are terms I can accept."
"Can you?" Daniel asked, kissing his way down Gilles' neck, wiggling closer. "I'd like to see you try."
Laughing, Gilles caught Daniel by the wrists, shoving him back on the bed, nipping at his arms and face, laughing harder. "Reckless boy," he said, squeezing Daniel's wrists, raking his teeth over Daniel's chest, panting. "Defying me?"
"Perhaps -" Daniel pushed his hips up, gasping. The rules of the game, Gilles' laughter and their mutual need, strung out like sugar on a string, twisting, glinting, and sweet. "Maybe just doubting."
"So I'll reassure you, shall I?"
"Yes."
With black cord, silk that rasped on skin, Gilles tied his hands to the headboard but left Daniel's clothes on. "So lovely," he said, touching Daniel's cheek with just one finger, lightly enough to make Daniel ache, ghosting his other palm over Daniel's shirt and the waist of his jeans. "So flushed. Dirty little boy, already so hard."
This was heat, approaching and enveloping, scouring Daniel's throat. Gilles needed defiance to feed his need, and Daniel needed Gilles fierce and exacting, and so he knew what to say. "Not so dirty. You're worse, you're the one who should know better."
"Oh, I do know better. But you, you're so lovely, pink and straining." Gilles kissed Daniel's instep, his ankle, pushed his tongue up under the ragged hem of his jeans. He glanced up when Daniel tried to move. "Stay still. Always making me need you, more and more."
Hands on fabric, distant heat, and Daniel pushed toward it, made Gilles laugh. The cords bit his wrists and his fingers flapped numbly, broken useless wings. "Am I?"
"Oh, yes. So dirty, the way you look at me." Gilles raked his nails down Daniel's stomach, then leaned back. "Talk to me."
"Just want you -" Daniel stopped, breathing hard, feeling his hips roll even as Gilles pushed them down into the mattress. The game pushed the world inside-out. Inversion and reversal, switching places, and he spun, free in his constraints. This was play, asking for what Gilles needed to give him. "To feel good."
"Is that so?" Gilles asked, breathing harder, tugging at the locket of the virgin mother around Daniel's neck. "You do, you know. Filthy. Fucking pagan."
"Your god," Daniel said, truth shining out of the corners of play, "Is a masochist. He wants you to scream."
Gilles slapped him, first one cheek, then the other, red sounds and sharp colors. Through the bright haze of pain, Daniel smiled. "Like that. He doesn't care, he's not even real."
"Real enough," Gilles said, kneeling over Daniel, hands on his arms, mouth on the ropes, like a hyena over its kill. "Be not so holy-cruel: love is holy -"
The crucifix, emblem of torture and desperate passion, swung from Gilles' neck; Daniel caught it in his mouth, then spit it up at Gilles. "Want -" He choked on the sound, weak and afire. "Please, Gilles, please -"
"What do you want?"
"You." Play stopped and Daniel stared. Gasped. "I'm not dirty, I just -"
"Sssh," Gilles crooned, dropping his hips and rocking against Daniel. "Safe here."
"Gilles -" Heat that throbbed in his skull and against his restraints. Gilles could do anything to Daniel, and they both knew it, and Daniel's legs wrapped around Gilles' waist. "Fuck, please -"
"I can clean you. Take it all out. Shall I, sweetheart?" Flicks of his tongue over Daniel's neck and chest, hot and too fast, and Daniel writhed under the touch. Gilles was the one who wanted to be clean; he called Daniel filthy and pure, and just now, Daniel wanted heat, wanted the force of Gilles above and inside him. "Stand no more off, but give yourself unto my sick desires - say you are mine, and ever so -"
"Yours. Foul me -" he said and thrashed. The nets of the world, tangled and unknowable, and he was caught, sunk into the depths, Gilles pushing him further down. "Please. Do what you will. No God here, just -"
Groaning, Gilles pushed himself to his knees, opening his pants and spitting on his hand, yanking down Daniel's jeans until the buttons popped and his cock sprang out. One hand on Daniel's cock, the other on Daniel's neck, Gilles lowered himself again. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him. Aren't they, boy?"
Daniel could barely breathe; dark speckled over his vision and he went still. Gilles needed this, permission and admission, and Daniel chewed his lip, trying to nod. Gilles jerked his cock roughly and squeezed his throat. "Yes -"
"Yes," Gilles said, relaxing his hold on Daniel's neck, pulling more roughly on his cock, "the mere taint of the ancient filthiness is sure to corrupt your soul with its foul stink, and to shut out the spiritual fragrance of good -"
Heat trembled under Daniel's skin, wrenched with pain and sucking the last of his air, and he came as trees explode in the advent of the forest fire, the sap splitting them open, baring the wood to the flames. He came screaming and Gilles laughed, never slowing his jerking, sliding sticky lube between Daniel's thighs as he thrashed. Teeth flashing, Gilles pushed inside, deep and rough, while Daniel still gasped and strained at the ropes.
Consumed, flashing from white to ash, steam thundering from his throat, Daniel sank under Gilles' weight, pulling his knees to his chest and pulling Gilles further inside himself. More heat, the pressure unbearable - so much, compared to this the ropes were fairy's threads, spider's webs, sticky and weak - and he rocked up to meet Gilles. His bones hollow as bamboo, hungry and empty, and Gilles was still laughing, growling.
"Harder -" Daniel said, remembering how to play, beating his heels on the small of Gilles' back. He'd promised to show Gilles, show him the love for the world, the love for him, and they were nearing the proof. "More, harder, all of it -"
"I'm always, forever, gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself -" Gilles pushed himself up on one arm, head dropping, knocking Daniel's face as he thrust his cock, nudging aside Daniel's lungs, so much fire and tension that Daniel kept exploding. "It is foul, and I love it. Love you. Love to perish."
Flash of dark smoke, unrolling over Daniel from within, and he was getting hard again, soaked with Gilles' sweat, thirst raving for more, the ropes squeaking in time with Gilles' ragged thrusts.
"I love my own error - not that for which I err, but the error itself. You, filthy boy, fucking faithless pagan soul. Base self, falling from the firmament to utter destruction - not seeking aught through the shame but the shame itself -" Gilles threw his head back and Daniel pushed up with him, his cock trapped and ground between his belly and Gilles' hips, the pain writhing like snakes and kudzu, relighting him, emptying his hunger.
"Love you," Daniel said, and his lungs were foul sacks, heavy with slush and ash, but he knew what to say, knew that this was truth and game all at once. Knew what Gilles needed to hear. "Love -"
Shrieking, mouth red and a cut over his eye opening, blood streaming, Gilles fucked harder in shallow thrusts, grasping Daniel's hair, grinding himself out, flint and ember all at once. "Yes -" he screamed and Daniel wrenched open his legs even farther.
"More, all, Gilles - now -"
Gilles clenched at him and froze, slickened with sweat, tears, blood, and Daniel's come, actually filthy, and then he shuddered like the ground and came, neck nearly snapping as he collapsed. Mewling low in his throat, Gilles squeezed shut his eyes and heaved for breath. Daniel kissed his neck, sucked hard, sang in his ear.
Later, ages later, when the sweat had cooled and they were both dimpled with goosebumps and a faint hazy glow had begun to creep over the sky, Gilles lifted his head. Daniel would have traced the faint smile on Gilles' face, but he was still tied, still immobilized, so he smiled and whispered, "You see now?"
"Almost," Gilles said hoarsely, reaching to untie the ropes. "I will try."
"Good."
*
Gilles took him shopping.
A series of small stores, narrow and glinting as jewelry boxes, hung with so few garments they could have been a tourist's wardrobe hung in the hotel closet. Gilles swore this was not exchange, not repayment, but merely simple enjoyment. Happy, he moved so quickly, smiled so often, that Daniel chose to believe him.
"Poor and frail these attempts may be -" Gilles said, pushing a square bracelet up Daniel's arm, sliding another onyx ring on his thumb, holding him while a scowling mustachio'd woman threaded a needle twice through one earlobe and once through a nipple, then laced heavy silver rings through the aching holes, "but you're too beautiful, I too base, to do better."
"Do I look all right?" Daniel asked. The mirror meant nothing; Gilles' eyes were all. Without quite meaning to, he added, "Do you like them?"
"Beauty itself does of itself persuade the eyes of men without an orator," Gilles said, stroking the metal and Daniel's skin with his fingers. "I've no tongue, all eyes. Yes."
*
In his booth, Daniel made the music throb out in rolling, restless waves, nearly visible, great silvery beats of sound catching up the crowd, tossing the dancers until they screamed in laughter.
Gilles watched from his usual perch, greeting friends and whispering in the noise's grottoes, conducting business, but Daniel knew his eyes were on him. Saw their motion, sweeping up his body, fastening on his face, and he moved with them, rocking on his heels, dancing in the tiny space. The club grew hot and he loosened, then removed, his mossgreen shirt, dancing alone, dancing with himself and with Gilles' gaze in just his undershirt and gray pants, sweat spangling his vision.
Descending his ladder, entering the crowd: It felt like the opposite of drowning. He wove toward Gilles, let him grasp him by the hips and lift him up onto the corner of the bar. With hot palms, Gilles sponged off the sweat, burying his face in Daniel's chest, licking his collarbone.
"Fine apparition," he crooned, "My brave spirit. Delicate Daniel."
Daniel slid a little way downward, holding Gilles between his legs and kissing his forehead, hair, cheek, and eyelid.
Other music swirled now, aqueous and smooth, as Gilles' fingers plucked at the hem of Daniel's undershirt, at his ribs, at his nipple. Heat roses budded and bloomed, doubletime, over Daniel, thickening and warming. Gilles' voice in his ear was light and air, dust-dazzled and wise.
"Shall I have you?" he whispered, and bit at Daniel's jaw, the tender flesh behind his ear, the tiny rings in sore holes, tugging them with his lips.
Daniel squirmed, clutching at Gilles' shoulders, looking wildly around at the crowd. So many faces, eyes like wells and stars, depthless and bright. "Here?"
"Here." Gilles flicked at the ring in Daniel's nipple until silver pain, cold and hot all at once, delicious, shot through his chest and arms and he collapsed against Gilles, mouth dry and seeking. "Here, and mine."
"They'll see -"
"Let them see. Let you sin before them." Tangling his fingers in Daniel's hair, Gilles pulled him up into the kiss he sought. "Are the birds ashamed to fly in the park? The bee to find his flower?"
"No," Daniel moaned, sucking with teeth at Gilles' throat. "They -"
One hand on Daniel's back, supporting his boneless, melting form, Gilles scraped his mouth over the lump the rings made under Daniel's shirt and traced out the heat of Daniel's cock through his evermore overtight trousers. "Where the bee sucks, there suck I."
Simmering now, floating through nectars and syrup, sweet and dazed, Daniel rippled under Gilles' hands, hips rising, mouth opening. There must have been eyes on him, he knew, even in this dark corner, but the crowd pulsed and frothed indistinctly. His lips strove for Gilles, for attention and sustenance, and he willed himself enough strength to twist away.
"Let me -" he said as Gilles gaped at him, sudden fear tightening his face. Daniel slid off the counter, wrapping his arms around Gilles. "Let them see. Watch you, watch -"
Gilles lurched forward, biting Daniel's mouth in a rough kiss, eyes rolling like a terrorized horse's as he tore at Daniel's undershirt and raked his nails down Daniel's back. "Yes," he muttered, teeth in Daniel's cheek. "Yes, fuck, yes. Do it -"
He pushed Daniel to his knees with one hand, yanking open his fly with the other. Breathing like a beached fish, Daniel stared upward, the dancers pressing against him in a hot tide.
"Make them watch." Everyone said he was a toy. Daniel thought now that he knew better. Toys got played with, then tossed aside. They never invented the game, never dragged the owner out to play. He smiled up at Gilles, dragging his lips around Gilles' cock.
Gilles nodded, fingers digging into Daniel's hair and scalp, and Daniel wrapped his arms around Gilles' thighs, palms on his buttocks, swirling his tongue over Gilles' slick cockhead, tasting the straining velvet there, daubed with salt, so much pressure pounding for release. Gilles yelped, clawing Daniel's hair, when Daniel nipped down on the tightening foreskin, sliding it back, then rolled his tongue around the underside, making a channel of his mouth, suckling lightly as a hummingbird.
"Are they watching?" he asked, unable to turn and see. Gilles nodded again, roughly, face twisting as Daniel tongued his balls, rocking them over his lips, tugging their short curling hairs with his lips. If this was filth, utter enslavement to the flesh as Gilles claimed - and who would know better than Gilles, rapt and enthralled as he was in that which he loathed? - then Daniel was determined to celebrate it. Revel in it, suck it down, scroll spit and heat around Gilles' cock until Gilles was thrusting raggedly, grunting low in his throat, pulling Daniel's hair.
"Wicked boy, take it -"
Hunger burst all over again in the pit of Daniel's stomach, abysses yawning open around him. This was what Gilles showed him, shared with him, hunger and need. Not a gift and not an exchange, because it was mutual, they fell and felt and flew together.
Groaning in reply, Daniel worked one hand sideways between Gilles' legs, licking it wet, teasing and touching the damp tender skin behind Gilles' balls until Gilles nearly yowled and doubled over, then straightened, gasping, rocking. Within the music, Gilles' noise descanted into words, a torrent of urges and demands, pleas and whines. "His eyes are upon me and I am not worthy, I am entangled in the stains of this world and swamped in foul sins, you are witness to the fall, to appetite's destruction of all the virtue in the world, fucking glorious -"
Desperately, two fingers locked in the crease of Gilles' ass, nearly clawing at the whorled hairs and secret skin of his hole, his palate scraped raw and bright, tongue thickened with sour brine, Daniel dragged teeth down Gilles' shaft and swallowed thick spit and the heat of Gilles' cockhead, thumb twisting and pulling at his balls.
Never enough, always needing more, and Gilles' hand tore at the roots of Daniel's hair as he screamed and came, spattering Daniel's face, flooding his mouth. He loved to paint Daniel's skin with his release, to kiss it up, cleanse him back to purity, and now, with an unseen audience, he did so as tenderly as ever, taking Daniel in his shuddering arms, murmuring as he licked Daniel's cheeks, kissing away the tears of exertion and warm come with equal care.
"So reckless," Gilles whispered, lifting Daniel up, kissing his throat, turning them and pushing out into the alley. "Such a wicked, beautiful boy. My boy."
"Did they see?" Daniel asked, butting his hips against Gilles' palm, tension contorting and heating him throughout. Gilles did not give him this need; it pre-existed, air and water and fire, swallowing them together, furious tempest and raging hunger. "Did you watch them?"
Chuckling, the sound rich and liquid in the stale quiet of the alley, Gilles flicked his tongue at Daniel's earrings and tugged open his fly. "I watched, and they watched you. You'll do anything, won't you?"
"Yes, anything, yes -" Air whirled and the ground kept tilting sharply, this way and that, and Daniel could barely breathe as Gilles touched his cock.
"You liked the audience?"
"Yes. With you, secrets, out there displayed -"
"Want to fuck you in there," Gilles said and wrapped his hand loosely around Daniel's cock. Trembles and chills shot through Daniel and he swayed into Gilles. "Bend you over a stool, let everyone see us -"
"Yes, want you, want that -" Words pulled like skin, fragments of need, spilling from his heart, and Daniel pushed into Gilles' grip, switching his hips back and forth. The crowd's eyes, fastened on him and Gilles, imaginary as it was now, made him shake and gasp. "Pulling my hair, fucking me open -"
"I'll pull open your mouth -" Gilles twisted at Daniel's balls, pushing him back against the wall until the stucco scraped at Daniel from waist to scalp, and kissed Daniel until he mewled. "Pull your head up, open your mouth, watch you suck them off, one by one while I fuck you -"
Pinned and shaking, talons of hungry need wrenching him apart, Daniel tasted come, could already half-feel Gilles' cock buried inside him, pushing deeper, felt the sequence of anonymous dicks inside his mouth, pouring more come over his face as Gilles shrieked and fucked harder.
"Sweet little mouth, sweeter ass," Gilles muttered, pulling on Daniel's cock, and Daniel's hips jerked even faster, helium rushing through his veins.
"Yes, please, with you -"
"Come inside you, keep fucking while you suck, wanton little whore, getting me hard again -"
Daniel felt it, whirling in place between the wall and Gilles' body, knew that Gilles could do it, stay inside him and keep thrusting for hours, and his mouth yawned open, sour, gulping at the air as his spine went up like a Roman candle, sputtering sparks and twisting fast. "Don't stop, don't -"
"Never stopping -" Gilles scraped his thumbnail down Daniel's shaft and twisted it, squeezing as Daniel wildly fucked his fist. "You'll choke on their come, you'll pass out, and I'll still be fucking you, can't stop -"
"Never stop -" Daniel yowled and tensed, flames sheeting down his chest and the channel of his spine, and Gilles knew him, loved him, kissed him, fucking Daniel's mouth with his tongue as Daniel came, screaming silently, limbs jerking like a broken puppet's.
Gilles held him and Daniel clung, like something drowning, like a sick baby monkey, slack and overcome, to Gilles.
"Love you. No lies," he whispered, heat and light still writhing irregularly through him. "No secrets, please -"
"No, no." Gilles' mouth moved over Daniel's face. "Not anymore. No secret -"
They clutched at each other, Daniel swaying, Gilles murmuring, tangled together and loath to part.
"Nothing's secret, not for long," a voice - Inez's, of course - said behind them. "The prince of this world will have his dominion, too arrogant and stupid to hide himself."
Gilles stiffened, body going taut, and Daniel stumbled in front of him, pulling up his pants, breathing hard. "Go away," he said, remembering Mick and the strength Gilles said he had.
"There is both one's own secret sin, by which the devil fell, and another's sin, by which man is seduced," Inez said, smiling widely without showing any teeth, shaking out her hair and touching Daniel's shoulder, "so as by consenting to make it his very own."
He flinched, although her hand was light, and said, "Leave us be."
"I can't do that, child." She almost sounded sad.
"Not your child," Daniel said. Gilles crossed his arm over Daniel's chest, and for a moment, Daniel wasn't sure whom he was shielding, himself or Daniel.
"You're a man, the dust of the earth, clay, kinsman of the clod." Inez cupped Daniel's cheek in her palm, removing the sweat on his upper lip with her thumb. "You're the son of the race of beasts. Just a stupid child."
Swallowing, taking Gilles' hand in his own, Daniel looked her in the eye. "You don't know anything -"
Inez laughed, skin bright against the gloom. "Be quiet, Danny, won't you?"
Clearing his throat, Gilles crossed his other arm over Daniel and drew him close. "Can I help you, sister?"
"We'd like back what is ours," Inez said, her eyes flickering fish-quick over Daniel, then moving away. "You know that."
"I've given you everything," Gilles said and closed his fingers around Daniel's bicep bruise-tight. He might have been reassuring Daniel or anchoring himself. Perhaps both.
"You say that, yet you're still here. Still enacting foul plays and abhorrent masques. Still toying with children and crafting the dreams of those who don't know any better."
"Do an inventory," Gilles told her, turning for the street, pulling Daniel with him. Thick-limbed and dizzy, Daniel struggled to keep up. "You'll find everything you seek."
"Catalogued your girl," Inez called after them. "Right down to her last freckle and warped misconception -"
Daniel wove his fingers through Gilles' and tugged him farther away. Any mention of Joan was certain to infect Gilles with rage, and they were too soon reunited for Daniel to risk losing him to anger.
He checked over his shoulder, but Inez stood at the threshold of the alley, fingering her string of beads and staring through him as if he'd never existed.
"She hates you," Daniel said, pulling his shirt back on against the chill off the sea as they walked home. "She'll say anything to hurt you."
"No," Gilles said and stopped at the curb. Usual tumult of nighttime revelry, strange masks and unearthly hollers, the hooting of car horns and cries of the sea-birds. Hand on Daniel's back, Gilles turned and guided them into the pink fluorescence of an ice cream parlor. "Pistachio cone, sugar, not that hideous cake, and a dish of double-scoop red-bean," he told the tall, sleepy-eyed girl behind the counter.
Daniel buttoned his shirt up against the cold of the shop and the ice of Inez's gaze, still boring through him.
"She does hate me," Gilles continued, handing Daniel his dish and licking his green cone. "But it's not personal. Not simply personal, that is." He paused to savor the taste of his ice cream, smiling as widely as a child. Daniel smiled back. "She adores her vocation. That it affords her every chance for cruelty, all the better."
On Daniel's tongue, the sweet cream melted with the remnants of saltsour come, and heat stole over his face at the thought. He looked down and took a bigger bite. Words and desires that came so easily in Gilles' arms seemed impossible now, so powerful as to sweep him away.
Gilles broke off and, licking his thumb, wiped away a smear of ice cream from the corner of Daniel's mouth. His hand smelled like sex, sea and lust, and Daniel shivered at the heat.
"Thanks," Daniel said, the flush brightening down his neck. Gilles was no longer trembling near rage; rather, he was still smiling, suckling at his cone, sliding his arm around Daniel's shoulders. His eyes narrowed in the breadth of his smile and glinted kindly. Even in the bright neon chill of the shop, which blanched everything else down to crisp, stark outlines, Gilles was vibrant. Darkly tanned, his face both severe and joyful, and Daniel pushed away his nearly empty dish to kiss Gilles' cheek.
"Sweetest love," Gilles said lowly, bent over his cone, looking up and over at Daniel through his lashes. "And I shall here abide the hourly shot of angry eyes, not comforted to live, but that there is you, jewel, in the world that I may see look upon."
"Some day," Daniel said, "I'll get older and you'll stop looking."
Gilles' eyes closed; Daniel counted the time for two heartbeats before they opened again. "No. No, that won't happen."
Daniel smiled and traced the edge of Gilles' eye. "I won't get old?"
"I won't stop looking."
"Finish your cone," Daniel said, not moving. "Melting."
Gilles smiled again and Daniel moved forward.
When he kissed Gilles, their lips were frigid and sugary, warming fast.