II. While I Pondered Weak and Weary[1]
Close to Midnight, London


“So soon?” A voice purred, her ruby red lips an unwritten sin that trailed lines of her lipstick stain over the long pale lines of his neck, and in this laughter of his own rose from his throat to spill out his thin lips like a commandment,

“’The time has come,’ The Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things,’” He appeased the woman in their bedding of silver, and returned the kiss before he continued, “Of shoes—of ships—of sealing wax’” Jean-Luc moved to pull away, but her hands came swift and appealing, capturing him where his body met hers”—of cabbages—and?“ Like a taunting lover he lingered there on her lips, this stranger he’d met in the early morning light, whose name he did not know, and reaction now was as if the very air had been stolen from her lungs. However, her answer came with a sudden peek of her thin brow.

“Kings.” She said, much to Jean-Luc’s surprise, but he still stood to be free form her. Her sudden interest in classic English literature a rather poor way to keep him or any man at the matter, but he wasn’t so cruel as to point out her nearly obvious flaws. Even as he the silence fell over the room, and he knew what was to come next.

“Will I see you again?” She asked mostly now his shadow that stretched along the brick wall, and gave him a nearly freighting height . She watched him get dressed, wondering if when he buttoned his shirt, did he feel like he wore a coat of arms? Stories had been told around fire in books and in nearly every confessional about men like this. Nomads, wonderers, the lost and lonely. Was this what J. M. Barrie, dreamed about when the he wrote about Lost Boys, and never growing old? Neverland, was the second star to the right, but where did this man call home? Questions pinned her lips quiet, while her mind reeled to have them answered, and just when she felt brave enough to answer—Jean-Luc turned his coat over his shoulders like an opera ghost and stole every doubt.

Of course, his lips spoke when his voice could not, and devils grin made her believe him. Another fault, of course, but he wouldn’t admit that one either.

The streets, empty and vacant of the righteous and forgiving, opened from somewhere beneath the stone; the god given ground parted back in a sea of smoke to let rise the devils beneath. Laughter fell, horrid and hallow, from those that begged to be released, pounding with every heart that sheltered there in the shadow, and waited for when the hands of the old clock did worship the moon. Until then, their King slept, the sun having never been as forgiving as the pale white light of the la luna, nor as false and familiar. She turned tricks, like any other hooker on the corner, but there was something in the way she was so unpredictable that made Jean-Luc come alive in the night. This was the only woman to truly ever keep him. The only thing he’d ever been able to call his own.

Over bodies, sleeping on the stone, wasting away in their own filth he stepped, and one by one looked on without so much of a knowing thought that wasn’t put together on the waste of the drugs that kept them from freezing. Vacant eyes towards the sky, counting on stars that could not be seen in the city, and dreaming of when they would find their way home. Fine boots of Italian leather, clicked along the walk, announcing to the night that he was up, that the fire rose from the belly of the beast, and that it there wasn’t time to waste.

“Up.” His voice commanded, the wind sweeping his raven wing hair around his shoulders like shadow colored silk, and casting a shadow across the already deep lines of his scowl, “Up you fools. All of you. The night is young, and there are children to be stolen.” The slums in the road stirred only a moment, the piles of old haggard men groaning beneath their rags, and Jean-Luc put his half gloved hands in the pockets of a once rather fine suit. He’d worn things like this once upon a time, without the leather and without the silver studded shoes, but that life was left long ago—and he accepted that some things simply got better with age.

A shadow fell, blocking the light of the lanterns only for a moment as the dark wings of a raven chase away that odd familiar feeling of not knowing, and suddenly being found. In the distance the sound of a baseline nearly rattled the little brick house that collected the lost like a church, and from over his shoulder Jean-Luc smirked as he watched his pet land upon the wickedly lit sign. It would take an hour before his kingdom truly came together, and there was forever enough time to find a little sanctuary, especially if one truly simply trying to find their way--or simply wanting to remain lost.

1.	Rated 'M' for mature content.

It was early in the evening, and Darian had many highs and lows before him. He picked up mates and dropped them off again as easily as he'd checked his blazer into the coat room. The ones he'd come with were downstairs dancing, perhaps. He didn't know or care. Now he sauntered through the upstairs lounge, a lean hungry figure who ran the pads of his fingers over the velvet couches as he passed like he was greeting old lovers, luxuriating in their prickly-smooth caress. No one watched him go too closely, despite that he was both handsome and alone. Most were too preoccupied with their own pursuits.

Unlike the heady crowd of the dance floor below, the lounge was punctuated by pockets of false privacy. Curtained nooks hugged the edges of the room and low masking walls ran around all the tables. It was to one of those nooks he headed, curtains half-drawn to hide him and half-open to show him off. There the soft couch with its many cushions welcomed him as the prodigal son, and he sank with a groan into the dim blue light.

The baseline pounded in the floor under his boots, muted noise filtering up to barely intrude on the lovers and leavers of the lounge. His chest expanded in breath under the fabric of his shirt; his long legs stretched before him. His eyes when he stirred again were like the eyes of a blind man, dark blue irises drowning in misty white. He had the benefit of several different things in his system tonight. It was a good balance - when he wanted to dance he was keyed up and glittering, and when he stopped to rest the other kicked in to let him drift and dream.

Now he tilted his head back against the seat and let the music thrum in the thin skin of his throat, lips parting and hair curling dark and damp to make him the pretty picture of debauched. Quite without meaning to, he hummed along.

The crowd had gathered one by one, only to come together in careful pairs, but still they parted to let him pass. Their hands brushed, touched and turned, pulling on the fabric of his coat and over the long smooth strands of his hair until he was as put together as any of the rest, and even his posture straightened to rise above their standards. Old enough to be their father, he felt more like an elder to a misbegotten tribe, as hardly any of the locals could resemble the family he’d long forgotten.

“Up again, Dear Master?” The bartender smiled, his wayward grin the closest thing to familiar that the room offered, and to answer the boy he placed his spider like hands over the edging of the bar to offer up his token.

“Always, Monsieur and please. Something strong, but smooth. I’ve little effort to choke down the drinks you serve to my children.” He mused to the man, yet heaved a sigh that expelled air from his lips like a phantom chasing free from his throat.

“Still looking I take it?” The boy answered opening the crystal bottle of one of finer scotches, and pouring the amber liquid over the three large cubes. “I’m tellin ya, I’ve never seen such a type in here before. I’d know. I know everyone.” Jean-Luc heard his words, but he didn’t listen. Something kept pulling him here night after night, and when he pulled out a large sum to pay the man the tender’s eyes turned wide. “What was it you said you did again?”

“I’m in the entertainment business.” Came his answer, but the Illusionist’s attention no longer belonged to the child who served him. He tapped the bar with perfectly manicured nails, signaling for another glass, and once the scotch was poured he turned to face the young man who seemed far too gone in his own little world that all Jean-Luc could do was admire the way the youth seemed so moved by the music.

In the pale blue light of the world Darian had created for himself, the smoke went hand in hand with the mirrors on the walls as if wading through water, and he the sea.

“My dear boy, and here I thought I’d never find you again.” His voice broke from the black place between the spotlights until the shroud of shadow pulled from him like a veil, and Jean-Luc stood there with a knowing half smile. One hand sipped the smooth amber liquid while the other held the second to his side, an offering when the time came.

One slow, languid blink later, there was a man standing in front of him. For a moment - just a moment - he was more-than-man, some imagined figure sliding neatly out of the nimbus of black light and shadow, his face all planes like a carved wooden mask. Here was a hard black-eyed devil come to bear him away, either to a place of eternal torment or eternal pleasure. He blazed... briefly. Then Darian blinked away the ephemeral dressings of dreaming and saw him too solid to be a man of his mind. The flesh settled over his bones like anyone else's, heavy, physical, and able to be touched.

It was kind of a let-down. At the same time, it thrilled. The flavor of the drug gave him more beautiful images than real life had to offer, but it was hard to embrace a phantom. It made him tip his head back to laugh, tinkly dizzy, that all he had to do was sit around and look good, let someone come to him.

And this was not the usual flavour of ego with nothing to recommend it. The smugness chasing the smirk on this stranger's lips spoke of a confidence turned rock-solid with experience, bolstered by steel and age. He was older than the normal club crowd, older than Darian. For a moment - now neither devil nor common clubcat - he wondered if the stranger was one of the management, come to kick him out. But that was a silly thought. From behind other curtains he'd glimpsed worse behavior, the slick-slow of movement not even he would dare interrupt. Being dangerously good-looking wasn't the highest sin here. He pinned Jean-Luc with a dispassionate look, dragging his eyes over the other man's hair and lapels. What the hell, he had too many acquaintances to remember them all right now.

He didn't bother to push himself up, nor rearrange his limbs from their artful sprawl. But his lips closed and reformed into a spreading smile, lazy and sweet as cinnamon syrup.

"Here I am," he said, and laughed.

A sacred solid stone, able to be touched, able to be cherished—but far too heavy to ever be lifted; Jean-Luc’s spirits could have mirrored the line in the sand, the unyielding force of the mountain, but there was something about this boy that made him want to laugh. He saw a lot of himself, but at the same time didn’t see a single part of his own features on this wayward soul. It was in the blood, the way those Cheshire lips curled back, and for the second time this night he found himself wanting of Wonderland.

Elegant long fingers curled idly around the ribbons of smoke that laughed around his palm, and in the pale blue light of the atmosphere he thought for certain he’d found a little crocodile with it’s shiny golden scales somewhere in the images that floated through his fingers. But came the feeling of an idle mind, and in such an environment could be rather deadly. Jean-Luc offered the boy the drink, and in doing so turned to face the room. 

“So tell me,” He said after a moment, “Do you like to have the stars in your eyes, while your back is on the cold wet stone?” A strange combination of questions, but ones that pulsed like the passionate fires in his veins—his heart no matter how many lectures he was forced upon as a child, a fire that simply couldn’t be put out. Jean-Luc had to wonder that even in his death, his corpse would forever sound like a drum, and inside the tomb echo over the oak.

 

No fool he, he accepted the drink with pleasure but passed a hand over it before he drank. Wet lip-lapped at his mouth but his left ring stayed dark. No more drugs in his system tonight.

“Do you like to have the stars in your eyes, while your back is on the cold wet stone?”

Darian considered this, idly rolling his wrist so that his scotch ran all over the ice and up the sides, became a slow-motion whirlpool in a glass.

"Yes," he said at last, decisively. "Though sometimes I like to be a poet instead." He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, a fluid, inevitable movement that rolled through his core to push joints and limbs ahead of it. The man was clearly operating on remembered grace - moving not to gravity but to what felt good now. His whole body was an invitation to feel good, from the rough rubbing of denim to the bare openness of his shoulders, collar, and throat. But it worked for him, this lazy unwinding sinuous as a snake. Red was his mouth and red was his hair. His posture was oh-so-open.

"Sit down, stranger. You're making my neck ache."

"A poet." He scoffed taking one more pull of the scotch before turning to face the young man. He held the amber liquid over his tongue long enough to savor it, and finally let it slide down the back of his throat as he smirked at the boy. Coming to stand by the chair Darian so called his throne, the Romani King found refuge on the arm. He let his back fall to the wall, using it to act as his own throne while he looked out over the room.

Yes

Darian's answer thrilled him, and he rested the glass on his knee while shamelessly raising his thin fingers to trace the man's scalp while brushing back his hair, "I figured as much," He spoke quietly, "As that is how I last saw you." And though his words were hardly a whisper they didn't seem to be bothered at all by what he was confessing, and spoke of it as if it were an every day action--a thought he simply said out right.

Darian's eyes fluttered shut then flared open again. Damn the man, he'd found one of his dozens of exploitable weaknesses! The feelings of nails on his scalp made him want to shiver right out of his skin.

"Oh." He scoffed right back, imitating Jean-Luc down to the precise curl of his mouth, the mean pull of the scotch. "I object. Leading the witness. Don't - ah - stop." Tipping his head back to look at Jean-Luc, he bared both his throat and his teeth, shuddering up to meet the fingers tangled in his hair. But he was laughing, not snarling, laughing again. It bubbled out of him much nicer than the drink went down. Though to be fair it was very smooth scotch.

"So it was you!" Again it came to Darian as if it were a dream (and it likely was) - that night and the cold ground, wet, yes, cobblestones - someone crouching above him and the silver streak of Gale's knives in the dark. As was usual with this drug the scene was very far and had no power to hurt him, though he licked away for a moment false blood from his mouth. His frown when it came was a sly and indulgent expression as if Jean-Luc was merely a child who'd taken the last biscuit from the jar, the look of an adult only pretending to be stern. "I did wonder," he said, before batting his lashes. His voice lowered to a well-oiled purr. "Tell me - was it as good for you as it was for me?"

Deep inside his heart started working like a machine, like a complicated little clock. He felt the tick-tock-turn of his internal gears. He was shifting, slowly, chasing the ghost fog away. Adrenaline shot little flashes down his spine and tingled in his fingers. There was a long way to go before he was jittery wired, but he certainly held the capacity to be so. It was probably for the better, he thought with a yawn. Tapendra would be so disappointed in him if he fell asleep now.

He watched the boy beneath his fingers with an amused sense of familiarity. How precious this child was, even when he played the cool alley cat so well. It was no wonder he’d enchanted those around him so easily, and though a more reserved look should have been the mask he wore--Jean-Luc smiled, and warmly so.

“I would not say it was all my doing now. You see, Mon Chat[1] i’ve little time to do anything truly on my own, and though you were a heavy heart to carry, you were not what we...they were after. A pawn truly,” He ran his hand back through the young man’s hair again, while idle black eyes scanned the room, like a lighthouse searched the shore.

“And to say that I enjoyed it? I wouldn’t go that far, but should you wish a second round. I suppose that can be arranged.” With a raise of his glass he saluted the figure at the bar, who raised his glass in return, and went about the room until a solid deck of spade like men stared right back. However, they all too seemed to have other interests, and far too much interest in Darian.

“Just say the right words, Dear Boy, and I will offer you my kingdom. But in the mean time,” His glass went to the table, void of anything more than just the ice, and Jean-Luc rose from his place perched at the young man’s side and extended his hand, “Why don’t we have a dance?” His pale palm extended as if he were asking a subject to kiss his hand, and though there was a rather impressive size ruby set in beautiful gold--he was certainly did not fit the title his ring so announced.

 

1.

My Cat

He followed the motion of Jean-Luc's salute with hazy eyes, drinking in silently the sight as nearly every man in the room turned to nod back. How very damning. It was almost enough to make him retract his hips and hands and sit more meekly, the way they were looking at him.

"Well," he murmured with a little shrug. "I've heard worse apologies." A moment later he demurred the offering of a kingdom with an even quieter, "What an awful lot of responsibility," that sounded like it'd been dredged up from somewhere thick and heavy in his chest. He completed the impression by touching lightly his shirtfront, as if surprised by the unfamiliar feeling he found there.

It beat in him again, the clunky interruption of adrenaline, tied to the spiking of his heart and more urgent than the small faint flops he'd felt when Jean-Luc first revealed his hand. Sharp sparks of electricity ate away at the blue-black film of his dreams, and he gave a shudder similar enough to the one he loosed with Jean-Luc's fingers in his hair to go unnoticed by his companion. It was almost a burn, and it was unpleasant. He swallowed, trying to dislodge the ball of heat in his throat.

Annoying. He passed a hand over his face, willing his body to stop its internal shrieking. It cleared his eyes whether he wanted them to clear or not and took him a long time to realize that Jean-Luc wanted to dance. Darian's eyebrows went up, but he rose unsteadily to his feet and accepted with gallant solemnity. The drink he left snuggled up to Jean-Luc's, lonely cubes clinking in their ocean of melt.

"Only if you'll be kind," he said sweetly, swaying in, swaying out. Some hidden devil after all, he thought glumly, Jean-Luc's face swimming before him. There was definitely the prospect of torment, though pleasure seemed too much to hope for. Still he let his cool hand linger in the other man's own, did not halt the offering of his body on display or his look of willing, easy trust. It was too late now to avoid the gang lord's interest. Better his endearing little cat than disposable. Good thing Darian had so much charm.

“Forgive me,” He smoothed, his words a velvet pull between his teeth as he cradled the younger man to him while brushing back a curl from the boy’s forehead, “I did not realize you were looking for an apology, the way I understood it. You had enjoyed it no?” He asked with mirth laced on his lips like venom, and turned them both to face the room.

What an awful lot of responsibility. Darian had chosen his next words well, the quiet voice almost missed as the baseline rattled beneath their feet. Laughter spilled from innocent bystanders, that never notice the dead almost vacant eyes that spied through the cracks in the crowd. Phantom hands, with cold dead fingers clawed out in want of the world the boy had, the escape that he seemed to perfect, but just as quickly as the illusion came it faded once they reached the bottom floor.  The burden of the men far too dependent on his cold and deadly hands often became just that, and there were many times Jean-Luc wished to be free of them. He thought of his life, the one he left to join the nomadic lifestyle, and of the woman who broke his heart. Blood ran like red wine, but only with a purpose—never for just the pleasure as it did now.


Only if you’ll be kind.

“Are you afraid of me Darian?” He mused as his hands came to touch the other son of his misfortune, or so Jean-Luc felt. The warm fires that ran this child’s veins could have very well been his own, more than Nightingale’s ever was, and the thought brought a grim yet warm smile to his lips while his free hand smoothed around Darian’s back to lead him to the dance floor.


A sea of people seemed to beat against the edge of the floor like a wave to the sand, and they rose and fell like a swell of salt water, and Jean-Luc’s face paled in comparison to the hot red faces of those already swimming in sin. He caught a glimpse of the younger man under his arm, and swore that he felt him shiver. Was it fear? The cold? Or simply the temptation of diving head first in the deepest part of the dark water? Either one, Jean-Luc admired the boy’s youth, and wanted more than anything to simply let him go so that he could admire the way he stood out amongst the rest. 

"But," he scolded, "It was still a surprise!" His expression drew into itself like a child's, darling in its sulkiness, even amusing. He bit his lip in a way that asked to be kissed. As Jean-Luc drew him in and brushed the hair from his face he huffed - not in protest of the action - but to show he wasn't won by soft hands and soft words. The darker edge beneath Jean-Luc's meaning, he didn't show either.

Indulgently the man led him down to the dance floor, smoothing a proprietary hand into the dip of his back. He went easily, obediently, eternal smile fixed in place. He let Jean-Luc support him when the stairs rippled in a way floors really shouldn't, he curled clutching fingers around the other man's arm. Jean-Luc was a statue of infinite patience, taller than him, most resembling a solid sheet of black. So intimate, Darian had to look up to see more than the hard line of his jaw or the faintly amused curl of his mouth.

The whole time his mind streamed and twisted over itself, shooting silver-bullet thoughts which quickened as they went. He felt the subtly oppressive heat of the stranger at his back and his neck. Jean-Luc's hair trailed over them both like hands.

It was better on the dance floor, adding life and noise. The crowd was a beast composed entirely of heads. While the impression might have startled him, instead it inexplicably soothed. He felt a pang of longing for that pulsing lightning group. He would not be able to join them, no matter how hard he tried. Not when this lord's stare fixed on him, hawklike.

“Are you afraid of me Darian?”

Well, that was the silliest question he'd ever heard. He glanced up at Jean-Luc from where he'd been ushered close to his side. The slow sweep of his gaze was deliberately coy, a cheeky thing not overburdened with anything flavored fear. "Do you want me to be?" he asked, half-laughter and half-croon. Everyone and their grandmother knew the answer to that. 

He leaned in to make his offer, low voice hunting through the music to make it to Jean-Luc's ear. His hands pressed subtly on the other man's covered arm. "I'll trade you the truth for your name, as you already know mine."

At the huff he had to laugh, amused like one would be with a child, and found a strange smile pulled on his lips as he surveyed the room. Reading the bodies like maps, some weathered some worn, nearly all having been too long out to sea. Darian truly was the one and few gems this place had to offer, and even now they gathered stared at him as if he were the North Star—their way home.


Jean-Luc would have traded his images of the sea and replaced them with the stars if the reality of the world beyond their own wasn’t so cold. His entire life all he had ever known was the night, and of the cold winter eve’s were he’d found his few years of happiness. Darian was far too warm in comparison, the fire that breathed life in his bed, and seeing him now—like this, he understood what it was that made Gale double back. The conflict he felt in his own desire enough to want to let down his guard, give him the name to which his people called him, and be on his way in hopes of crossing paths once again. However, Jean-Luc was a stubborn man, and one that didn’t deal in truths.

“I am never opposed to a good trade, but I fear that your truth won’t be enough. I’ve little use for it, not for such a powerful thing as my name. Though I am called many things, and any name that you see fit.” He grinned against the back of the boy’s hair, inhaling the cool evening scent of a musky soaps and stale cigarettes.   

“Adversary—Accuser, the son of Lucifer. A Comte—King—The night, Lord of the underdark, Ruler of the Underground. A fool, a gypsy, a tyrant, a pirate. My dear boy, do as you will and speak just the same. I’m in no mood to offer you anything. Other than this,” With Darian’s back to him he circled his arms around the youth, his lips to the neck of the tailor, and his voice a low hiss as it moved over Darian's pale throat like the wind over frozen water.

“Sanctuary.”

He only sighed when Jean-Luc refused to give up his name, rather unsurprised. It was a very nice advantage to have; he couldn't blame him for keeping it. No one wanted the truth anymore, and Darian wasn't stupid enough to ask what he'd take instead.

"Whatever will I call you, then," he mused, lingering over the laundry list of alternatives he'd been presented with. Terribly dramatic, and delivered with the gravitas only a fellow actor could supply. It made him smile. "Those're big boots, Monsieur Spawn of Satan." Fool, gypsy, tyrant, pirate: a pretty list for the curious designer. On a night like this, even with his heart banging wild its warning on the inner walls of his chest, he could be persuaded to have more imagination than sense. It wasn't hard to unleash. Let Muse slip in sideways and turn the world upside down, let the colors of the lights smear into pennants... He looked at him a little longer, dreamy-intent, staring at his black eyes and hair. Wouldn't it be funny if he'd bagged himself a real devil? They were more merciful than men and would make a fantastic story.

He left the moment regretfully, like he'd leave a warm bed in the morning with arms tangled 'round his waist. Once again he realized he'd dropped things far too long, just looking as time stretched by. "Well," his lips parted to let him say, "Perhaps you will consent to being mon petit chou."[1]

Sanctuary. The world was breathed out against his skin as Jean-Luc nuzzled his throat. Unseen, Darian's half-mast eyes flickered with satisfaction and sly intent. This sounded promising. The best outcome of the night.

He nearly turned his head to press lips to the other's hair, his first instinct to coax him into revealing more. But that was an instinct meant for smaller prey - and this a different game from his usual. Maybe it would have still worked, but his gut labeled it: bad move. "Tell me," he breathed, tilting his head back just that increment more. His body curved against the bent bow of Jean-Luc's, opening like a flower.

1.	My little cabbage.

His interest shifted from the little hell cat in his arms to the room stretching and shifting by shadowed figures along darker walls, dirty floors and dirtier dances. To have his attention leave often felt like the air being pulled from the room, the warmth of the sun on a cold winter day pass behind the clouds, but Jean-Luc still held onto the boy. This one had information he needed, and company he’d like to keep.

Whatever will I call you, then,

A smirk pulled over Jean-Luc’s lap lips, an amused one, despite how droll his face seemed. With one hand still in his pocket he curled the other to clasp Darian’s back, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

Mon petit chou


“Oh no, that will not do.” He spoke in a more formal manner, “It shows possession, and by now—of all people Mister Morgan you should know better.” With that he laughed, the crowd closing around them to sweep them to sea, and a sort of kind smile remained once he finished musing at the wayward child.

Jean-Luc was the sort of man who unlike so many others, looked older when he laughed. The action caused wrinkles to deepen around his eyes, the old feet of crows that were proof of a warm man beneath all that shadow. He had laughed often in his lifetime, and did so without restraint. Though, the occasions were now much more rare than in the past, some would think it nice to know he still had the ability to show some emotion. He turned the other man in his arms as their dance pushed them further through the crowd.

“You can not keep me, Darian. Not any more than I can keep you, but do know that it is not without my deepest restraint that I do not wish it so.” He touched the other man’s chin, grinning as he did, and ran his thumb over the smooth curve of Darian’s pink lips.

“But what I am offering you, my little hell cat,” His fingers brushed under the young man’s chin to wander around the back of his neck, “Is a safe passage through my world, long enough for us to have a little talk.” From behind him large outlines of the men who often accompanied him had built a fortress of no escape, and Jean-Luc touched only of the back entrance of the club. In a single sweeping motion he opened the door for Darian, and bowed graciously as if inviting him onto his chariot. There were men outside waiting, and faces now daring Darian to run—licking of their paws in need of a chase, wolves really.