[fic] In the darkest of shadows (Luciano/Martín)
Title: In the darkest of shadows
Pairing: Luciano/Martín (Brazil/Argentina)
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, AU, ghostly creepiness
Word Count: 3,500~
Summary: Martín's fear of the things that go bump in the night is highly justified.
Inspired by these drawings from zulenha: x x
Characters are not mine.
Basically we were talking about 2P characters, and I thought Lu looked like some kind of zombie-demon-creeper and then THIS HAPPENED.
Martín Hernández was the bravest boy in his neighborhood, or so he liked to boast when he needed to distract others from his awkward journey into puberty, so of course he could not back down from a dare to spend an hour in the decrepit mansion of the Morales estate lying on the edge of town. One hour at midnight. With only a flashlight. He gulped helplessly, stared the challenging boy in the eye, and shook his hand.
Which was why he was here, in the huge, empty house that looked about ready to crash down over his head at any minute, his fingers gripped so tightly around the flashlight that they were turning numb, trying not to let the weak beam shake against the back wall of what had once been the parlor. Sebastián rested a hand on his arm, slightly sweaty with nerves, but he remained silent even as Martín jumped and nearly dropped the flashlight when the warped floorboards creaked beneath their feet. His brother had insisted on coming to make sure that Martín did not get himself killed, as he had stated, but Martín was not sure if he came to give him a boost of confidence or to laugh at him when he made a fool of himself in the suffocating, dusty darkness. Sebastián had only explained that the house was not really haunted five times before they arrived, but thankfully he had shut up about it once they were inside because Martín would have had to slap him otherwise.
“Let’s just find someplace to sit while we wait for your time to be up,” Sebastián muttered, glancing at the eerie phosphorescent glow of his watch face. They had already been there for fifteen minutes, and Martín’s breath was still coming out in shaky gusts. He glanced at the uneven stairs. “Do you want to see the bedrooms?”
“No!” Martín’s shout echoed through the house. “No. Let’s just wait here.” He crouched down and hunched his shoulders over to make his body as small as possible.
Sighing, his brother sank down beside him. “We can always pretend we had to leave early because one of us got sick.”
Martín’s voice cracked inconveniently as he asked, “What, are you too scared to stay?” Then he jumped and swung the flashlight around to train on the banister by the stairs. “Didyouhearthat?”
It was a light, repeated squeaking coming from the landing above them, too consistent to be written off as the simple sounds of the house settling. Martín’s heart was racing so quickly that he thought it might explode any second, and he was just about ready to say to hell with his pride and renege on the dare, when he heard something over the sound of the steps that made him freeze.
“Hello?” the voice called from the stairs. It was lightly accented and so rich that Martín swore he could almost taste it. “You came at a bad time, you know.”
Martín made a rather unmanly noise that luckily only his brother and the mysterious man were around to hear. He fell forward on the ground, catching himself with one hand. Sebastián said something that he did not quite catch over the sound of rushing blood in his ears and the chattering of his own teeth.
And then he could not hear even that over the inhuman shriek that ripped through the stale air, five seconds of straight, violent sound, and then silence but for the whimpers that Martín could not stop. Sebastián’s voice was tight when he asked, “Now can we leave?” and they stumbled out of the house, half dragging each other until they were outside on the street, and Martín collapsed on the gravel, skinning the palms of his hands, avoiding the eyes of the boys who were waiting for them.
“I think he’s allergic to something in there,” Sebastián told them, and no one contradicted him.
-
After the incident, the boys only gave Martín shit for a few excruciating weeks before they forgot about his lapse in bravado. Without a word, Sebastián bought a little bulb to plug into the wall socket by Martín’s bed in their shared room. Passersby stopped noticing the windows of the mansion opening on their own, and soon it was no longer the Morales place that is haunted but the Morales place that used to be haunted. Even so, Martín never walked past the house on his own if he could help it.
Years passed, and Martín grew into his once ungainly body, the baby fat melting away and his shoulders broadening to fit his frame. He left the town with its gravel roads and its familiar faces to study in the city where he made new friends, failed, succeeded, fell in love, had his heart broken, and became the man that he had always considered himself to be.
His brother wrote him emails periodically to make sure that he was actually getting an education at college, and once a week his mother called to see if her baby was taking care of himself and if he had found a nice, pretty girl he might want to take home to meet the family. He had not, and although he had been with a few women along the way, none of them lasted long enough to settle down for something more serious than a fling. The most recent was a classmate with whom he was sleeping off and on for the past two months. Well, “sleeping” was probably not the most accurate phrase to use as he had yet to spend the night with her until now, when she brought over a toothbrush, a pair of clothes to wear the next day, and no pajamas.
When they were finished and molded close together despite the hot stickiness of their skin against each other, she leaned over him to turn the lamp off, only to blink at the still dimly lit room.
“You have a night light?” she asked, grinning down at him.
Martín flushed. “Is it going to bother you?”
“Are you afraid of bumping into things when you get up in the middle of the night?” she asked, “or do you think the bogeyman’s going to get you?”
Martín ignored her and rolled over so that his back was to her, pulling the sheets over his legs and waist. Behind him she snorted softly and settled back down as well, and the light must not have bothered her because she was asleep within minutes, while he stayed awake and watched the shadows in the corner of the room.
-
When Martín was young, he used to walk in his sleep. He never remembered the actual action, but he did remember the terror of waking up someplace strange and dark and completely alone. Even after his parents switched the configuration of his bedroom so that he would have to walk past his brother’s bed in order to leave the room, he still somehow managed to find himself lying under a tree or sitting on someone’s porch in the middle of the night.
Perhaps it was a blessing and a curse wrapped in one package, for once he remembered a moment of twilight awakening, when he was not sure if he was dreaming or actually conscious, and he could feel a hand on his shoulder, guiding him through his journey outside. He remembered the warmth of the other body, the persistence with which it pushed him, and the coldness when it left his side and he awoke and found himself in a strange house. For a few moments he flailed about, looking for a light switch to ward off the fear of the night, and when he found one, he immediately realized that he was in his elderly neighbor’s house with its threadbare puce sofa and the sickly sweet scent that always seemed to permeate the air. A soft groan caught his attention, and he followed it down the hall to one of the bedrooms, where the woman was lying on the ground and clutching her hip.
When the paramedics came a while later, everyone shook his hand and told him what a great kid he was, how lucky it was that he had wandered into the house, and he ate up their praise and kept the guiding hand to himself because it might take away from his heroism. He also doubted that anyone would believe him if he told them about it, and with each passing night, the hand and the heat grew in his mind, morphing into a hideous monster that fed on his fears, until every night shadow held a grave promise laced with warmth.
-
The next morning she drank the coffee he brewed for her, gave him a peck on the mouth, and left. By the end of the week, she was dating someone else, which was just as well because Martín was not sure how much longer he could take the pains of intimacy. His friends, the bastards they were, pitied him for it and made it their goal to get him laid again before the weekend was through. Though he was a bit insulted that they thought he might need help in that department, over the heavy pounding of the bass he flirted with ease with the girls that they thrust upon him, until he found the opportunity to escape to the bar and try his luck there while he waited for a drink. He squeezed in next to a pair of long-legged women who were chatting with a man in a black shirt and a well tailored vest whose face he could not see. When the man asked them if he could buy them a drink, Martín froze.
The voice was too familiar for comfort, despite Martín only having heard it once before, years ago. Gripping the edge of the bar with one hand, he glanced sideways to catch a glimpse of the man behind the women. The stranger’s hair and eyes seemed to glow golden with a light of their own, while his skin looked too pale for itself, sickly and bruised around his eyes. He looked past the women straight at Martín, and his smile broadened, revealing more pearly white teeth.
“Excuse me, ladies,” he said, and then brushed past them to stand at Martín’s shoulder. It was impossible not to look at him, at his strange skin and unearthly eyes. He clasped a warm hand of almost dreamlike familiarity on Martín’s arm and said, “It’s been a while.”
“I don’t-we’ve never met,” Martín stammered. He knew he should go back to his friends, leave the club, and never look back, but his body seemed to be glued to the man’s hand, his eyes glued to the man’s eyes.
“You don’t remember?” The man’s lips pulled into a pout. “Well, I guess you’ve never gotten a good look at me. I’m Luciano.” He reached for Martín’s sweaty hand and shook it.
“Martín.” He looked over his shoulder. “My friends-”
“Your friends are hoping you’ll get lucky tonight.” Luciano’s voice dropped to a rough murmur. “I think I can help you there.”
It took a second for Martín to shift his expression of shock into a smooth smile. “Thank you for the offer, but I’m sure I’ll be able to manage on my own without the help of such a devoted fan.”
He tried to pull away, but Luciano only tightened his grip and said, “You’re a pompous bastard, you know that?” before standing on his toes to whisper into his ear, “Don’t worry, you don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“Who’s afraid of you, runt?” But even as he blurted it out, his body shivered involuntarily at Luciano’s hot breath on his ear.
“Asshole,” Luciano spat, but then he was smiling again, charming and disarming but for his ghastly skin and glowing eyes. “But at least you grew up to be a hot asshole. Come on.” He pulled away and Martín followed, through the crowds away from his friends and the girls they thought were his type, past the bouncers outside, and around the corner into an alley that smelled like piss and garbage with grubby boxes and shadows just out of reach of the flickering street lamp. Something in Martín was screaming at him to remember all the lessons on safety in the big city that Sebastián and his mother had ever given him, but then Luciano ran a hand up his arm and into his hair and he forgot all about the dangers of the night that were not currently caressing him.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Martín reiterated, as if it might become true if he repeated it enough.
“Well, that’s good because I’m not going to hurt you.” Luciano dragged Martín’s head down to sink his teeth into his lower lip, drawing a low groan from him. This was practically a stranger, someone who claimed to have known him since he was younger, someone whose voice and hands he recognized, but whose haunting face was as unfamiliar as any. Someone who tripped every alarm in his mind in unison. Someone who was already slipping a hand under his shirt to stroke his stomach. He hissed into Luciano’s mouth and clenched his eyes shut to plunge himself in total darkness, just listening to the soft sounds Luciano made against him and feeling the burn of his touch.
Luciano pulled away suddenly and sighed, “This is a bad time,” and Martín backed away so quickly he would have fallen had Luciano not caught him and pushed him into the rough wall before stalking off to the far, dark end of the alley without another word. For two seconds Martín stayed where his was, his back aching with bruises and scratches. Then he shook his head clear of any foggy, unwanted emotions and remembered the feeling of dusty floorboards under his palms, the dizzying waver of a flashlight beam on a staircase, that melodic voice, and the suffocating darkness that haunted him each night-
He stumbled from the alley when he heard the scream-short, sharp, and cut off before fruition. It pierced him, sending energy to his legs as he dashed into the street, colliding with a parked car that began honking angrily at him. He kept running, all the way down the street until he was able to hail a taxi to take him back to his apartment. On the way, he texted his friends that he was not feeling well, which was not far from the truth. His stomach continued turning over on itself, and even when he was safely behind the locked door of his own flat, his heart was still pounding in his chest.
After turning all the lights on, electricity bill be damned, he slipped under his covers still fully clothed and clutched the pillow to his face. The silence of the apartment overwhelmed him, and he thought he would never get to sleep, still seeing those glowing eyes staring at him, but he must have drifted off eventually because the next thing he knew it was three hours later and someone was knocking on his door. For a moment he was not sure if the rapping was in his dreams, but there it was again, more urgent this time, so he dragged himself to the front hall and stared at the door.
“Martín?” Luciano called.
Martín bit his lip and debated calling the cops, but what was he going to tell them? Some guy in a haunted house years ago wanted to feel him up?
“Listen, I didn’t mean to run off in the middle of things like that, but business is business, you know?” Luciano continued. “You’re cute, but you’re not worth losing my job over.”
“Leave me the fuck alone,” was what Martín had planned on saying, but instead he blurted, “What job?” before he could stop himself.
“See, I knew you were there. Just let me in, okay?”
“I’m not stupid,” Martín replied, “or suicidal.” He paused and bit his lip. “What were you doing at the estate back then? And-and in Señora Alonso’s house when she broke her hip?” he added because now he was sure that it had been Luciano’s hand on his shoulder all those year’s ago.
“Wow, I didn’t know if you’d remember that time,” Luciano replied. “Let me in and we can talk? I asked your friends where you lived, but their directions weren’t that great, so I’ve just been wandering around for the past few hours. Martín?”
Martín let his forehead fall to the door, cursing his ‘friends,’ and then after a moment, he unbolted it and let Luciano it. Luciano stepped past him and stood in his hallway with his head cocked and his shirt and the beds of his fingernails stained rust red. He grinned and reached out to grab Martín by the front of his shirt and pull him closer, but Martín pushed him away, feeling the slightest twinge of regret when Luciano frowned. “Stop it. I barely know you”
That made Luciano’s frown deepen. “And you’ve never had sex with someone you barely know?”
Martín flushed. “Not with some stalker-ghost,” he muttered, staring at Luciano’s fingernails. “Is that…?”
Luciano followed his line of sight and shrugged. “It can be a messy job sometimes. But it’s mostly for show. It’s not actually blood. And do I look like a ghost?” He poked Martín in the chest before smoothing his hand over the curve of his shoulder.
“B-but you admit you’re a stalker?”
“Don’t flatter yourself too much. We always meet up by coincidence. Well, except for in the beginning. Are you going to make me stand here all night?”
“Sorry, I only play host to welcome guests.”
“But you let me in, didn’t you?” Luciano smiled again, open and warm like his hand against Martín. “Come on, I know you’re at least curious about me.”
“Am not,” Martín retorted, but here under the lights he could see that Luciano’s eyes seemed to glimmer like fireflies. “What…” He swallowed heavily. “What are you?”
“What do you think?” Luciano’s smile flashed, and Martín stumbled when he pulled him close enough to feel his breath on his neck.
“I wouldn’t be asking if I knew, idiot,” Martín hissed.
“True, true,” Luciano laughed, his grin growing sharper, and then whispered, “I’m the thing that goes bump in the night.”
Martín clenched his eyes shut as Luciano leaned forward and kissed his neck. “Are you kidding me?”
“No.” Luciano’s lips brushed his skin as he spoke. “But like I said: I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Did you say that to whomever it was you met in the alley? Or back then?” Martín brought his hands up to grip Luciano’s arms, but his intention of prying him away soon became lost in other sensations.
“Of course not. They wouldn’t have understood anyway.” He kissed his chin. “But you can trust me.”
“How?”
After a moment, Luciano pulled away and looked up at Martín, his fingers rubbing circles into his upper back. “You don’t even realize how many times I could have killed you back then, do you?”
“How many…”
“Just think about it. Every time you woke up in your kitchen. Every time you woke up outside. Do you know how many times I could have let you fall down a flight of stairs or walk out in front of a car? I didn’t even have to do it, I didn’t have to care, but I did because you were such a cute kid.” He furrowed his thick eyebrows. “And now you probably think I’m a freak, but I wasn’t perving on you when you were a kid or anything. I just thought you were cute; I didn’t want you until I saw you all grown up. Damn it, but of course you think I’m a freak, some guy you don’t even know following you to your apartment to flirt with you.”
“Well,” Martín heard himself say as if through a tunnel, “it’s understandable. I am pretty irresistible.” His mind raced to process the information. He had only considered the two times, but all those nights of sleepwalking… And Luciano was standing there with his beautiful eyes and all that blood on his clothes and caked under his nails and Martín could not seem to care. If this was what lurked in the shadows of the night, he could not tell if he felt more justified in his fear of the dark or more ashamed. “And you call this flirting?”
“Sorry, I guess I kind of skipped that part.” Luciano sifted one of his hands into Martín’s hair. “Don’t you have a bed or a couch in this apartment? Or can you only afford this hallway?”
“That depends on if you think you deserve to stay.”
“Do you need me to convince you?” And there was the smile again, which Luciano pressed to Martín’s lips. He tasted warm and sweet, and as they journeyed further into the apartment, Martín turned off all the lights until he could only see by the glow of those golden eyes.
Pairing: Luciano/Martín (Brazil/Argentina)
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, AU, ghostly creepiness
Word Count: 3,500~
Summary: Martín's fear of the things that go bump in the night is highly justified.
Inspired by these drawings from zulenha: x x
Characters are not mine.
Basically we were talking about 2P characters, and I thought Lu looked like some kind of zombie-demon-creeper and then THIS HAPPENED.
Martín Hernández was the bravest boy in his neighborhood, or so he liked to boast when he needed to distract others from his awkward journey into puberty, so of course he could not back down from a dare to spend an hour in the decrepit mansion of the Morales estate lying on the edge of town. One hour at midnight. With only a flashlight. He gulped helplessly, stared the challenging boy in the eye, and shook his hand.
Which was why he was here, in the huge, empty house that looked about ready to crash down over his head at any minute, his fingers gripped so tightly around the flashlight that they were turning numb, trying not to let the weak beam shake against the back wall of what had once been the parlor. Sebastián rested a hand on his arm, slightly sweaty with nerves, but he remained silent even as Martín jumped and nearly dropped the flashlight when the warped floorboards creaked beneath their feet. His brother had insisted on coming to make sure that Martín did not get himself killed, as he had stated, but Martín was not sure if he came to give him a boost of confidence or to laugh at him when he made a fool of himself in the suffocating, dusty darkness. Sebastián had only explained that the house was not really haunted five times before they arrived, but thankfully he had shut up about it once they were inside because Martín would have had to slap him otherwise.
“Let’s just find someplace to sit while we wait for your time to be up,” Sebastián muttered, glancing at the eerie phosphorescent glow of his watch face. They had already been there for fifteen minutes, and Martín’s breath was still coming out in shaky gusts. He glanced at the uneven stairs. “Do you want to see the bedrooms?”
“No!” Martín’s shout echoed through the house. “No. Let’s just wait here.” He crouched down and hunched his shoulders over to make his body as small as possible.
Sighing, his brother sank down beside him. “We can always pretend we had to leave early because one of us got sick.”
Martín’s voice cracked inconveniently as he asked, “What, are you too scared to stay?” Then he jumped and swung the flashlight around to train on the banister by the stairs. “Didyouhearthat?”
It was a light, repeated squeaking coming from the landing above them, too consistent to be written off as the simple sounds of the house settling. Martín’s heart was racing so quickly that he thought it might explode any second, and he was just about ready to say to hell with his pride and renege on the dare, when he heard something over the sound of the steps that made him freeze.
“Hello?” the voice called from the stairs. It was lightly accented and so rich that Martín swore he could almost taste it. “You came at a bad time, you know.”
Martín made a rather unmanly noise that luckily only his brother and the mysterious man were around to hear. He fell forward on the ground, catching himself with one hand. Sebastián said something that he did not quite catch over the sound of rushing blood in his ears and the chattering of his own teeth.
And then he could not hear even that over the inhuman shriek that ripped through the stale air, five seconds of straight, violent sound, and then silence but for the whimpers that Martín could not stop. Sebastián’s voice was tight when he asked, “Now can we leave?” and they stumbled out of the house, half dragging each other until they were outside on the street, and Martín collapsed on the gravel, skinning the palms of his hands, avoiding the eyes of the boys who were waiting for them.
“I think he’s allergic to something in there,” Sebastián told them, and no one contradicted him.
-
After the incident, the boys only gave Martín shit for a few excruciating weeks before they forgot about his lapse in bravado. Without a word, Sebastián bought a little bulb to plug into the wall socket by Martín’s bed in their shared room. Passersby stopped noticing the windows of the mansion opening on their own, and soon it was no longer the Morales place that is haunted but the Morales place that used to be haunted. Even so, Martín never walked past the house on his own if he could help it.
Years passed, and Martín grew into his once ungainly body, the baby fat melting away and his shoulders broadening to fit his frame. He left the town with its gravel roads and its familiar faces to study in the city where he made new friends, failed, succeeded, fell in love, had his heart broken, and became the man that he had always considered himself to be.
His brother wrote him emails periodically to make sure that he was actually getting an education at college, and once a week his mother called to see if her baby was taking care of himself and if he had found a nice, pretty girl he might want to take home to meet the family. He had not, and although he had been with a few women along the way, none of them lasted long enough to settle down for something more serious than a fling. The most recent was a classmate with whom he was sleeping off and on for the past two months. Well, “sleeping” was probably not the most accurate phrase to use as he had yet to spend the night with her until now, when she brought over a toothbrush, a pair of clothes to wear the next day, and no pajamas.
When they were finished and molded close together despite the hot stickiness of their skin against each other, she leaned over him to turn the lamp off, only to blink at the still dimly lit room.
“You have a night light?” she asked, grinning down at him.
Martín flushed. “Is it going to bother you?”
“Are you afraid of bumping into things when you get up in the middle of the night?” she asked, “or do you think the bogeyman’s going to get you?”
Martín ignored her and rolled over so that his back was to her, pulling the sheets over his legs and waist. Behind him she snorted softly and settled back down as well, and the light must not have bothered her because she was asleep within minutes, while he stayed awake and watched the shadows in the corner of the room.
-
When Martín was young, he used to walk in his sleep. He never remembered the actual action, but he did remember the terror of waking up someplace strange and dark and completely alone. Even after his parents switched the configuration of his bedroom so that he would have to walk past his brother’s bed in order to leave the room, he still somehow managed to find himself lying under a tree or sitting on someone’s porch in the middle of the night.
Perhaps it was a blessing and a curse wrapped in one package, for once he remembered a moment of twilight awakening, when he was not sure if he was dreaming or actually conscious, and he could feel a hand on his shoulder, guiding him through his journey outside. He remembered the warmth of the other body, the persistence with which it pushed him, and the coldness when it left his side and he awoke and found himself in a strange house. For a few moments he flailed about, looking for a light switch to ward off the fear of the night, and when he found one, he immediately realized that he was in his elderly neighbor’s house with its threadbare puce sofa and the sickly sweet scent that always seemed to permeate the air. A soft groan caught his attention, and he followed it down the hall to one of the bedrooms, where the woman was lying on the ground and clutching her hip.
When the paramedics came a while later, everyone shook his hand and told him what a great kid he was, how lucky it was that he had wandered into the house, and he ate up their praise and kept the guiding hand to himself because it might take away from his heroism. He also doubted that anyone would believe him if he told them about it, and with each passing night, the hand and the heat grew in his mind, morphing into a hideous monster that fed on his fears, until every night shadow held a grave promise laced with warmth.
-
The next morning she drank the coffee he brewed for her, gave him a peck on the mouth, and left. By the end of the week, she was dating someone else, which was just as well because Martín was not sure how much longer he could take the pains of intimacy. His friends, the bastards they were, pitied him for it and made it their goal to get him laid again before the weekend was through. Though he was a bit insulted that they thought he might need help in that department, over the heavy pounding of the bass he flirted with ease with the girls that they thrust upon him, until he found the opportunity to escape to the bar and try his luck there while he waited for a drink. He squeezed in next to a pair of long-legged women who were chatting with a man in a black shirt and a well tailored vest whose face he could not see. When the man asked them if he could buy them a drink, Martín froze.
The voice was too familiar for comfort, despite Martín only having heard it once before, years ago. Gripping the edge of the bar with one hand, he glanced sideways to catch a glimpse of the man behind the women. The stranger’s hair and eyes seemed to glow golden with a light of their own, while his skin looked too pale for itself, sickly and bruised around his eyes. He looked past the women straight at Martín, and his smile broadened, revealing more pearly white teeth.
“Excuse me, ladies,” he said, and then brushed past them to stand at Martín’s shoulder. It was impossible not to look at him, at his strange skin and unearthly eyes. He clasped a warm hand of almost dreamlike familiarity on Martín’s arm and said, “It’s been a while.”
“I don’t-we’ve never met,” Martín stammered. He knew he should go back to his friends, leave the club, and never look back, but his body seemed to be glued to the man’s hand, his eyes glued to the man’s eyes.
“You don’t remember?” The man’s lips pulled into a pout. “Well, I guess you’ve never gotten a good look at me. I’m Luciano.” He reached for Martín’s sweaty hand and shook it.
“Martín.” He looked over his shoulder. “My friends-”
“Your friends are hoping you’ll get lucky tonight.” Luciano’s voice dropped to a rough murmur. “I think I can help you there.”
It took a second for Martín to shift his expression of shock into a smooth smile. “Thank you for the offer, but I’m sure I’ll be able to manage on my own without the help of such a devoted fan.”
He tried to pull away, but Luciano only tightened his grip and said, “You’re a pompous bastard, you know that?” before standing on his toes to whisper into his ear, “Don’t worry, you don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“Who’s afraid of you, runt?” But even as he blurted it out, his body shivered involuntarily at Luciano’s hot breath on his ear.
“Asshole,” Luciano spat, but then he was smiling again, charming and disarming but for his ghastly skin and glowing eyes. “But at least you grew up to be a hot asshole. Come on.” He pulled away and Martín followed, through the crowds away from his friends and the girls they thought were his type, past the bouncers outside, and around the corner into an alley that smelled like piss and garbage with grubby boxes and shadows just out of reach of the flickering street lamp. Something in Martín was screaming at him to remember all the lessons on safety in the big city that Sebastián and his mother had ever given him, but then Luciano ran a hand up his arm and into his hair and he forgot all about the dangers of the night that were not currently caressing him.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Martín reiterated, as if it might become true if he repeated it enough.
“Well, that’s good because I’m not going to hurt you.” Luciano dragged Martín’s head down to sink his teeth into his lower lip, drawing a low groan from him. This was practically a stranger, someone who claimed to have known him since he was younger, someone whose voice and hands he recognized, but whose haunting face was as unfamiliar as any. Someone who tripped every alarm in his mind in unison. Someone who was already slipping a hand under his shirt to stroke his stomach. He hissed into Luciano’s mouth and clenched his eyes shut to plunge himself in total darkness, just listening to the soft sounds Luciano made against him and feeling the burn of his touch.
Luciano pulled away suddenly and sighed, “This is a bad time,” and Martín backed away so quickly he would have fallen had Luciano not caught him and pushed him into the rough wall before stalking off to the far, dark end of the alley without another word. For two seconds Martín stayed where his was, his back aching with bruises and scratches. Then he shook his head clear of any foggy, unwanted emotions and remembered the feeling of dusty floorboards under his palms, the dizzying waver of a flashlight beam on a staircase, that melodic voice, and the suffocating darkness that haunted him each night-
He stumbled from the alley when he heard the scream-short, sharp, and cut off before fruition. It pierced him, sending energy to his legs as he dashed into the street, colliding with a parked car that began honking angrily at him. He kept running, all the way down the street until he was able to hail a taxi to take him back to his apartment. On the way, he texted his friends that he was not feeling well, which was not far from the truth. His stomach continued turning over on itself, and even when he was safely behind the locked door of his own flat, his heart was still pounding in his chest.
After turning all the lights on, electricity bill be damned, he slipped under his covers still fully clothed and clutched the pillow to his face. The silence of the apartment overwhelmed him, and he thought he would never get to sleep, still seeing those glowing eyes staring at him, but he must have drifted off eventually because the next thing he knew it was three hours later and someone was knocking on his door. For a moment he was not sure if the rapping was in his dreams, but there it was again, more urgent this time, so he dragged himself to the front hall and stared at the door.
“Martín?” Luciano called.
Martín bit his lip and debated calling the cops, but what was he going to tell them? Some guy in a haunted house years ago wanted to feel him up?
“Listen, I didn’t mean to run off in the middle of things like that, but business is business, you know?” Luciano continued. “You’re cute, but you’re not worth losing my job over.”
“Leave me the fuck alone,” was what Martín had planned on saying, but instead he blurted, “What job?” before he could stop himself.
“See, I knew you were there. Just let me in, okay?”
“I’m not stupid,” Martín replied, “or suicidal.” He paused and bit his lip. “What were you doing at the estate back then? And-and in Señora Alonso’s house when she broke her hip?” he added because now he was sure that it had been Luciano’s hand on his shoulder all those year’s ago.
“Wow, I didn’t know if you’d remember that time,” Luciano replied. “Let me in and we can talk? I asked your friends where you lived, but their directions weren’t that great, so I’ve just been wandering around for the past few hours. Martín?”
Martín let his forehead fall to the door, cursing his ‘friends,’ and then after a moment, he unbolted it and let Luciano it. Luciano stepped past him and stood in his hallway with his head cocked and his shirt and the beds of his fingernails stained rust red. He grinned and reached out to grab Martín by the front of his shirt and pull him closer, but Martín pushed him away, feeling the slightest twinge of regret when Luciano frowned. “Stop it. I barely know you”
That made Luciano’s frown deepen. “And you’ve never had sex with someone you barely know?”
Martín flushed. “Not with some stalker-ghost,” he muttered, staring at Luciano’s fingernails. “Is that…?”
Luciano followed his line of sight and shrugged. “It can be a messy job sometimes. But it’s mostly for show. It’s not actually blood. And do I look like a ghost?” He poked Martín in the chest before smoothing his hand over the curve of his shoulder.
“B-but you admit you’re a stalker?”
“Don’t flatter yourself too much. We always meet up by coincidence. Well, except for in the beginning. Are you going to make me stand here all night?”
“Sorry, I only play host to welcome guests.”
“But you let me in, didn’t you?” Luciano smiled again, open and warm like his hand against Martín. “Come on, I know you’re at least curious about me.”
“Am not,” Martín retorted, but here under the lights he could see that Luciano’s eyes seemed to glimmer like fireflies. “What…” He swallowed heavily. “What are you?”
“What do you think?” Luciano’s smile flashed, and Martín stumbled when he pulled him close enough to feel his breath on his neck.
“I wouldn’t be asking if I knew, idiot,” Martín hissed.
“True, true,” Luciano laughed, his grin growing sharper, and then whispered, “I’m the thing that goes bump in the night.”
Martín clenched his eyes shut as Luciano leaned forward and kissed his neck. “Are you kidding me?”
“No.” Luciano’s lips brushed his skin as he spoke. “But like I said: I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Did you say that to whomever it was you met in the alley? Or back then?” Martín brought his hands up to grip Luciano’s arms, but his intention of prying him away soon became lost in other sensations.
“Of course not. They wouldn’t have understood anyway.” He kissed his chin. “But you can trust me.”
“How?”
After a moment, Luciano pulled away and looked up at Martín, his fingers rubbing circles into his upper back. “You don’t even realize how many times I could have killed you back then, do you?”
“How many…”
“Just think about it. Every time you woke up in your kitchen. Every time you woke up outside. Do you know how many times I could have let you fall down a flight of stairs or walk out in front of a car? I didn’t even have to do it, I didn’t have to care, but I did because you were such a cute kid.” He furrowed his thick eyebrows. “And now you probably think I’m a freak, but I wasn’t perving on you when you were a kid or anything. I just thought you were cute; I didn’t want you until I saw you all grown up. Damn it, but of course you think I’m a freak, some guy you don’t even know following you to your apartment to flirt with you.”
“Well,” Martín heard himself say as if through a tunnel, “it’s understandable. I am pretty irresistible.” His mind raced to process the information. He had only considered the two times, but all those nights of sleepwalking… And Luciano was standing there with his beautiful eyes and all that blood on his clothes and caked under his nails and Martín could not seem to care. If this was what lurked in the shadows of the night, he could not tell if he felt more justified in his fear of the dark or more ashamed. “And you call this flirting?”
“Sorry, I guess I kind of skipped that part.” Luciano sifted one of his hands into Martín’s hair. “Don’t you have a bed or a couch in this apartment? Or can you only afford this hallway?”
“That depends on if you think you deserve to stay.”
“Do you need me to convince you?” And there was the smile again, which Luciano pressed to Martín’s lips. He tasted warm and sweet, and as they journeyed further into the apartment, Martín turned off all the lights until he could only see by the glow of those golden eyes.