Chapter Text
Sir, begins the letter.
Damen knows, without going any further, that he isn’t going to enjoy what follows. For one, the letter is handwritten. Only a particular kind of constituent still sends in letters by hand. The likes of them are an older, more irritable sort, the kind that deliver their ire in thin, slanted script for the likes of him to read.
He steals a look at his phone – half past nine on Tuesday morning. It’s going to be a long day.
Damen hasn’t slept enough for the last three nights. There are too many hours left to see through before he can go to bed, and his exhausted body runs on an ill-advised cocktail of coffee and bacon sandwiches. Till now, he’s managed—just—but he suspects that all five pages of this letter in his hand might kill him.
He continues reading.
I wish to express my extreme disappointment with the findings of the most recent report of the Justice and Reform Committee, which you chair. It would seem that the Committee, under your chairmanship, has cast aside the aims that —
Damen puts the letter down.
He should be used to it by now. His father had taught him and Kastor to read using constituent letters. It was the only time the brothers were ever allowed into their father’s study, which also served as the family library. It was a weekly pilgrimage into a holy sanctum—into a room full of things that were to be admired, and feared, and longed for one day, but never touched.
Damen, very young, would sit on his father’s knee. On the desk before them would be a pile of correspondence handpicked by their father’s chief of staff, an ancient pencil of a man named Stellan with all the charm of a kidney stone, who made Nikandros seem lax and mellow by comparison.
Theomedes would hold a letter up for Damen. Damen would follow the handwriting with his fingers, stumbling over combinations of letters he had never encountered, reading paragraphs aloud without understanding a single word. On the other side of the desk would be Kastor, his young features furrowed in intense concentration over paper. With one of their father’s ink pens in his hand, too large for his fingers, Kastor would take down notes for their father’s response in his precociously elegant script.
By the age of 13, when Damen’s school friends were being fitted for braces or taking their driving tests, he and Kastor were drafting responses to their father’s mail of their own accord. It was an early education in people’s cares, their concerns, and the myriad ways in which they expressed them, in all their restraint and excess. Because of those lessons—and they were lessons—Damen can gauge a letter by its opening two or three sentences.
And this letter is going to be a stinker. He doesn’t have to read the rest of it to know that it’ll be more anger than sense, and that it’ll blame him for matters over which he has no control, and over which the Justice and Reform Committee has no jurisdiction. That in itself isn’t a problem. He even makes a point of responding to two or three such letters a week, because angry constituents are still constituents.
But he has to be in a particular mood, and this isn’t it.
He casts the letter down on top of the pile that Nikandros has curated for him. There are twelve letters in all, just like every week—some positive, some negative, some serious, some trivial—collected with the admirable aim of measuring the pulse of his district. Damen picks up another one at random and skims over the contents, spies the word abortion, and throws it right back down.
For a change, he picks up the newspaper and flicks through the first five or six pages. A number of articles catch his eye. Wildfires – five people found dead in their cars, by Aristidis Petras. High Court declaration on prisoner voting rights upheld, by Laurent DeVere. Doctor to face prosecution for breach of Euthanasia law, by Crispin Sabbagh.
His mood doesn’t subside.
Damen makes a brief note to look at the Sabbagh and DeVere articles later, when his head has stopped throbbing. Then he gets up, leaves his office, and walks into the office next door.
If Nikandros notices Damen come in, he doesn’t respond. He’s reclined comfortably in his chair, his feet propped up on the corner of his desk and the curtains behind him firmly drawn to the sunshine outside. He’s also in his bollocking uniform. His white shirt-sleeves are rolled up scruffily around his elbows, and the look on his face is as thunderous as a gathering storm. His tie is loosened, but not off, and a jacket lies discarded on the couch.
Damen closes the door, restores the jacket to a hanger, and collapses on the couch. Nikandros finishes barking orders down the phone about vol-au-vents and vegetarian options—he must be on the phone to caterers—and then hangs up. He throws his cellphone to his desk and turns on Damen.
“What?” Nikandros asks, as though daring a challenge.
“Do you normally cross-examine the caterers when you’re mad?”
“Is that too off-brand for you?”
“I might have approached it differently.”
“I’m sure you would have.” Nikandros says, with a dirty look. “But we can’t seduce everyone.”
Damen knows that it’s intended as a chastisement. He also knows that if Nikandros is reaching for slights about his promiscuity, he must be more exhausted than Damen. It seems that neither of them have the energy for anything more than half-hearted rebukes. This, at least, he can do with his eyes closed.
Which he does. He toes off his shoes and lies down, puling a cushion underneath his head and another underneath his feet. He closes his eyes and decants his exhaustion into the giving leather beneath his back. The couch in this office is more comfortable than most people’s beds. Nikandros often works late enough to sleep on it.
“There’s a halfway point between bullying and seduction.” Damen retorts. “And for the record, if I ever needed an answer fucked out of someone, I wouldn’t send you.”
Nikandros rolls his eyes. It’s a laboured gesture. “Of course,” He says drily. “I’m sure you’d happily martyr yourself for the cause. What are you doing in here, anyway? I thought I gave you letters to answer.”
“I don’t feel like concentrating.”
“And I didn’t get a Masters in Political Science to organize the catering for your next fundraiser, but here we both are.”
There is no bite to his words. Nikandros has two secretaries to whom he could have easily delegated the task, but if he’s dealing with it, it means he wants to. Damen nestles down further into the couch and pulls a third cushion from the floor. He’s already comfortable, but he knows it’ll piss off Nikandros.
“I’m sure you’re trying to make a point, but I don’t think I care.” Damen says. “I read your notes on the Beazley Report, by the way. Can you still come to the working group this afternoon?”
“If you checked your calendar like a functioning adult, you’d have seen that the meeting’s been pushed to Friday. The Commerce Committee’s holding an emergency session. Michel and Dalia were called in.” Says Nikandros. “You’d also have seen that I’ve replaced the meeting with lunch at Antipodes.”
Damen shoves the third cushion over his face so he can groan into it. The sound is overly dramatic, and it will annoy Nikandros, but it’s no less than he deserves. If Damen’s lunching at the Antipodes, then he’s going to have to get off this couch. He’ll need to change into something fit to be seen in, and fix his hair, and—gods—wear a tie.
“I hate you.” He says. “Who am I schmoozing, and why?”
“You’re lunching with Berenger. I don’t know what about. He was intentionally coy with me.”
“Berenger? I saw him on Sunday at Kastor’s.”
“Not the father, Damen. The son.”
That’s enough to hook and line Damen’s attention. He shrugs the surplus cushion back onto the floor and props himself up on his elbows. Damen and Senator Berenger floated in the same circles, but Damen hadn’t seen his son in years. At least two.
In the face of Damen’s confusion, Nikandros shrugs. “I don’t know. I was as surprised as you are.”
“Hm.” Damen says. He sits up properly and scrubs a hand through his hair. It gets caught in a nest of tangles and he grimaces, extracting it again. “I’ve never had much to do with him. Did he say why he called?”
Berenger Junior is several years younger than Damen—he can’t be more than twenty-two or twenty-three at most. Damen doesn’t know for sure because the son had always been a quieter sort, far gentler than his awful father and his insufferable grandfather, and every other caustic member of their esteemed political line.
He was as an anomaly amongst the sons and daughters of the Senate—someone who occupied the periphery of conversations by fierce choice. Whereas his peers looked up the same ladders that their parents had climbed, Senator Berenger’s son sought pastures elsewhere.
In the end, he had foregone politics for architecture. That Senator Berenger rarely discussed his son showed how poorly the decision had been received.
Nikandros abandons Damen to his thoughts. His feet are off the desk and he’s working on his laptop, face woven with concentration as he taps out something furious. Damen considers him for a moment. Nikandros typically rules his calendar with the flexibility of a steel rod. There isn’t usually room for impromptu lunches with distant faces.
“Since when,” Damen asks, “did you schedule a lunch in my diary without knowing its purpose?”
Nikandros briefly stops typing. He looks up from his work, expression lost in something thoughtful.
“He seemed fine,” Nikandros says. “But something about his tone unsettled me.”
*~*~*
Antipodes is outside of Ios, half an hour down the coast and at the very edge of a peninsular cliff. The glass building stands alone on the precipice of the land, the very last thing before a steep vertical drop of white rock. Below it, the sea extends out to the horizon and blends into the sky, and from a distance, it glimmers like a mirror reflecting the sun.
Damen walks into the restaurant at one pm sharp. The concierge is a wizened man named Pierre, with an energy and a handlebar moustache that suit someone far younger than his seventy years. He knows Damen by sight—has done since Damen was eight, when his father started bringing him here—and asks about the health of his mother and brother before beckoning an usher with an unthinking flick of his wrist. Master Berenger, says Pierre, is already waiting for him in one of the private dining rooms.
A young man materializes into the foyer. Damen hasn’t seen him before, but he takes notice. The waiter has hair the colour of a sandy beach and eyes that keenly register Damen’s interest. His smile stops just short of inviting, and Damen allows himself the indulgence of one in return. He follows his lead.
The lunch crowd hasn’t arrived in earnest. The idle chatter of the few diners already present is too low to compete with the ambient melody from the grand piano in the corner. The day outside is dazzling, and sunlight streams in so generously that looking out to the horizon hurts Damen’s eyes.
He nods at a table with the Secretary of Education and his under-secretary, and stops at another with a handful of his mother’s friends, just long enough to have his cheeks kissed and pinched dry of blood. His waiter stands peripherally while Damen attends to these pleasantries, perfectly poised and still nursing a quiet smile, as though waiting on Damen’s pleasure is his own.
Damen likes him. Maybe he won’t wait so long between visits, next time.
The waiter leads him through the centre of the restaurant and out to a concealed corridor. Five private dining rooms emanate from its length, concealed behind dark wood. Damen hasn’t spent a lot of time in these rooms. To be at Antipodes is to be seen, and one cannot be seen from behind walls and a closed door.
But it’s where Berenger’s waiting for him, taking in the view and apparently mid-reverie. The waiter opens the door quietly enough not to disrupt him. Damen has a moment to register his absent gaze and the gentle drumming of his fingers against the tablecloth, before a discreet cough from the waiter restores mind to body.
Then, Berenger’s looking in their direction, rising, extending a hand to greet Damen. The door closes shut behind them, leaving them alone. They’re not close enough to hug, but even so, Damen finds his hands being grasped in a handshake that’s far firmer than the circumstances might call for. He takes a moment to note his pristine grey suit and the surprisingly golden skin beneath it.
“It’s good to see you. You look good. ” Damen says, smiling and meaning it. “Since when did you spend time in the sun?”
His observation draws faint colour across Berenger’s cheeks. “I’ve been keeping busy. Please, have a seat.”
So they do. Damen has questions, but Berenger reaches for the menu and begins to inspect it, which is enough to tell Damen that he’s nervous. There would have been time to read it at least twice over before he arrived, but Berenger nonetheless applies his full attention to studying it. Damen doesn’t need to bother; he’s been here enough times to have sampled everything.
He’s more interested in Berenger, anyway. If Berenger objects to being watched, he keeps his reservations to himself. He flips aimlessly between the pages of the dining menu and then the drinks menu, with all the restless energy of a man whose eyes are looking at words without reading them.
“Is everything alright, Berenger?” Damen asks, gently.
The question has an immediate effect. Berenger’s mouth draws in a thin, pursed line. From somewhere in the distance, the sound of pealing laughter pushes through the silence.
“No.” He answers. When he finally meets Damen’s eye, there’s a lost look about him. He exhales, as though the admission has released the pressure behind a valve. “I’m sorry to drag you away from your work. I know you must be busy.”
“Never too busy for an old friend,” Damen says, in a weak bid to reassure him.
It’s not quite true. They’re connected by history rather than friendship—the work their parents did, the incestuous nature of the political community in Ios, the annual litany of balls and fundraisers and functions.
But even though Damen’s words are intended as kindness, to soothe whatever is unsettling Berenger, they have the opposite effect. Berenger’s gaze drops down to his plate, to his menu again.
“You might not say that,” he answers, “after you hear what I need to tell you.”
Damen’s attention sharpens as keenly as his interest.
But then: a knock, and the door opens. The same sandy-blonde waiter from before enters with a brief bow and asks whether the gentlemen have any questions about the menu, or whether they’re ready to order.
On another day, Damen might have come up with a half dozen questions just to keep him at the table and flirt. Not today. Even though Berenger picks up his menu again with the slapdash attention of a student cramming for an exam, Damen turns to the waiter and rattles off selections for both of them: the porc en trois facons, the ignames, the poitron, and whatever wine matches the sommelier will recommend.
A nod, a bow, and a retreat. The door closes shut again, and Damen turns his attention back across the table.
“I, uh— “ Berenger hesitates. “I don’t normally drink at lunchtime.”
“Seems like you need it.” Says Damen. “Are you alright? Is your family alright?”
“I’m fine. Everyone’s fine,” says Berenger. “—Technically.”
“So—not alright.”
Berenger looks back up at the door again, as though to confirm that it’s properly closed before he speaks. For just a moment, the discomfort burgeoning up Damen’s spine is broken over by a wave of irritation. The only thing he likes less than dancing around a point is being made to wait while someone else does. He forces himself to resist the sour tide, exhales, and waits
“What I mean is that—well, everyone is alright, I guess. I don’t even—“ Berenger says, and stops. He reaches for his glass and takes a hearty gulp of water. Damen watches him reassemble himself and look back up, apologies in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Damen. This isn’t easy for me. I don’t know how to begin telling you what I need to say.”
“Begin anywhere.” Damen responds. He hopes that the effort it takes him to be gentle is well-concealed.
“Alright.” says Berenger. “Well, I’m in a relationship.”
The very beginning of the beginning, then.
Damen nods and manages a smile. This, at least, he means. Berenger had always remained seated at the table while everyone else around him danced. After a while, people stopped trying to coax him out of his seat. Their crowd spared no attention for those who didn’t seek it.
“That’s good. I’m happy for you.”
“His name is Ancel. I met him two years ago.” Berenger says, and the very act of naming his lover fortifies him. His tone suddenly finds its grip. “I think you’d like him. There was never anyone like Ancel when we were younger.”
Before Damen can open his mouth to offer a light defence of how they grew up, there is another knock, and the door opens again. The waiter enters with two glasses of Riesling.
As he deposits them on the table, Damen very intentionally catches his eye. The young man is sharp enough to realize that the room won’t care to hear about the originating vineyard or the tasting notes. Another curt bow and he leaves again, the click of the door shut loud enough to ricochet off the walls.
“Please.” Damen says. “Continue.”
Berenger takes a brief sip of his wine before resuming the story. “I shared a flat with a theatre major. I met Ancel at the wrap party of one of his plays. He caught my eye immediately but we didn’t hit it off. He insulted my dress sense before we were even introduced, but there was just something about him. He’s … an absolutely scathing man.”
There’s a note of deep adoration in his tone. Damen can’t reconcile it what he’s just said. “If he’s arrogant and presumptuous, he sounds like everyone we grew up with.”
“No. He was scathing to my face, not behind my back.” He says, firmer still. “He doesn’t lie about anything. He’s clever and he’s beautiful, and the most honest person I’ve ever met.”
“Then you should hold onto him.”
“I want to. I’ve tried to keep him from everything here – from Ios, from our friends.” He says. He reaches for his glass again and turns the stem between his finger and his thumb. “But mostly, I’ve tried to keep him from my father.”
Damen frowns. Senator Berenger isn’t a mild man, but there are easily more difficult fathers amongst his cohort. Damen would know: he had grown up with one.
“Why would your father be a problem?” He asks.
“Because Ancel paid his way through law school with sex work.”
He finishes there and looks pointedly at Damen, the nerves in his expression clearing for a streak of defiance. He waits, as though he expects Damen to say something unpleasant. Damen wonders whether he’s being dared to do so.
But he doesn’t react. There’s nothing to react to, as far as Damen is concerned. That Berenger thinks he might is the surest sign of how poorly they know each other.
“If you’re waiting for me to be unsettled or displeased,” he says simply, “this lunch will drag on till dinner. But I understand why you’d want to protect him from your father.”
Senator Berenger, after all, is an old sort, and the political community in Ios is even older and more entrenched in its ways.
Theomedes had lectured his sons at great length about the privilege of participating in their community. He observed its rules and etiquette like they were ciphered in his blood, and taught Damen and Kastor to do the same. They were so unwritten and all-encompassing—what to wear and when to wear it; who to be seen with; what to do; how to speak—that his father had drawn more than one comparison to organised religion.
Or a cult, Damen had thought more than once, despite the knowledge that he was one of the game’s more skilled players.
But if their codes of behaviour were rigid, then their attitudes to outsiders were even more hard-set. Any difference was received like flung meat met by wolves, with a destructive enthusiasm. If Berenger wanted to spare this Ancel their community, Damen cannot fault him.
In any case, his unflinching response earns him a slight deflation of Berenger’s shoulders—no more than a fraction—but the defiance doesn’t subside from Berenger’s eyes.
“He’s not ashamed of his choices and I’m not ashamed of him. I love him and I’m proud of him—all of him. But we spoke, him and I, very early on, and he decided that he’s not comfortable with my parents knowing. For two years, we’ve been carrying on just fine. But then—“
He falters. He sits back in his seat and goes quiet. Damen notices then, that the napkin in Berenger’s lap has been twisted out of its shape, and that he’s absently curling it around his fingers
Berenger is still dancing around the point, and far away from why he would bring it to Damen in the first place. The inability to draw a line around why they’re here gathers something unpleasant in Damen’s throat. He reaches for his own glass of wine and tries to swallow down the uncertainty.
“A man came to my father three months ago.” Berenger eventually says. “He knew everything about Ancel. Not just the fact of what he used to do, but every detail about it. He had Ancel’s tax returns, his social security details, even his list of clients. He took everything to my father’s office and told him that I had been in a relationship with this person for two years.”
Damen remains perfectly still, and quietly files away every single presumption about the direction of this conversation.
“And then?”
Berenger opens his mouth, and stops at the sound of another fucking knock.
At least the waiter knows the drill by now. He comes in followed by three others, each one of them bearing a single plate hooded with a cloche. Their food is placed before them and un-cloched with a flourish that seems farcical against the backdrop of the conversation. Damen and Berenger humor them with the thinnest veneer of civility as their glasses of water are refilled and cracked pepper is rained on their meals. Damen remembers to thank them, but he cannot muster the reflex to smile.
No one speaks a word.
Once they’re gone, Berenger’s next breath comes in a tremor. “The man threatened my father. He said that unless my father cooperated fully, he would plaster Ancel’s biography across the front page of every newspaper and magazine from here to Vask.”
“Did you get his name? Have you called the Police?”
“My father won’t let me. He’s afraid that the more people know, the more likely the story will leak. He wants me to end things with Ancel.” Berenger says. He leans back in his chair, his misery so thick it could be cut with a steak knife and served on a plate. “I’ve told him I won’t.”
“Berenger, if you won’t speak to the Police, I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“I want you to try.”
“If you need strings pulled, your father has far more power than me. ” Damen says. He doesn’t add that he refuses to pull strings on principle.
Berenger takes a long drag of his drink. His next look at Damen is a blank one, and resolute. He leans forward again, crossing his elbows on the table. The line of his shoulders is thin and laden.
“Damen, the man who came to blackmail my father was sent by your brother.”
Damen stops still, and stares.
“My brother.” He repeats, redundantly. “You think that my brother’s threatening your father.”
“No, we know he is.”
There is a long pause.
Damen looks away from Berenger and out to the ocean, only for a moment, only to collect his thoughts. The day remains as bright as it had been when he arrived, and there isn’t a single ship or cloud on the horizon to break the vivid blue. Damen dwells on all these things because his thoughts are a tangle, and he cannot unpick them.
He exhales, folds his arms, returns to the conversation. He feels sick. He says, “Keep going.”
“We were at my father’s home a few months ago.” Says Berenger. A flickering part of Damen’s mind registers that Berenger doesn’t call it home. “It was the worst dinner we’ve had in a long time, as a family. I don’t think I tasted a single mouthful. And my father—he just sat there and he yelled. He was speaking about tradition, and honour, and how he wanted me to take after him, and how my life was a constant series of disappointments to him.”
“You don’t deserve that.” Damen remembers to say, even though his mind is still pushing away reeds, trying to see where Kastor fits into the frame. “You know you’re a credit to your family.”
Berenger is looking at him but also not. He doesn’t acknowledge Damen’s olive branch, and his eyes are glazed over as though he’s back at the dinner he’s describing.
“And then my father brought Ancel into it,” he continues. His tone changes, edging closer to anger for the first time in their conversation, “He said that I had made us vulnerable, made us exposed. He said that if it wasn’t for me, how I am, Kastor wouldn’t have anything to hang over his head. He seemed certain it was your brother.”
Damen waits for something in his gut to lash out fiercely in response, to tell him no.
He waits, and it doesn’t come.
In its place is a sudden and urgent need to find out more, accompanied by a sinking feeling to which he cannot place a name.
“Damen?” Says Berenger. “Please say something.”
“I’m trying to work out what motive Kastor could possibly have to blackmail your father.”
What he means was, there is no motive.
The Akielos and Berenger households were both old money and old power in Ios, cut from the same ancient cloth. Their families had history. They worked together, served on committees together, their progeny friends and colleagues in every breath. Senator Berenger had been a pall-bearer at Theomedes’ funeral, had borne the same burden that Damen and Kastor had held atop their shoulders. Their mothers still visited each other.
No member of the Akielos family had ever needed anything that only a Berenger could provide. Every line Damen tried to draw missed the dots. And gods—he had been at a charity fundraiser on Sunday afternoon with Kastor and the Senator. The three of them had spoken that day, at length.
Damen hadn’t picked up on a thing.
“You’re certain that your father mentioned Kastor?”
“Yes. He said the man had made it very clear who had sent him, and that he’d be back with instructions.”
“What instructions?”
“He wouldn’t tell me that.” Berenger says. “I’m sorry.”
The apology does little to appease Damen. His stomach begins to turn at the scent of the untouched food between them. The prospect of eating seems so grotesque that Damen pushes his plate to one side. He prods at the matted nest of his thoughts, and settles on the next most immediate query.
“Why come to me, then? We barely know each other. We haven’t spoken in years. If you think my brother’s blackmailing your family, how can you possibly trust me?”
“You’ve never been like your brother, Damen.”
“You can’t possibly know that.” Damen says flatly.
Berenger considers him for a long moment before answering. “You’re right. I don’t. But my father won’t go to the Police and he won’t give me any further information. My lover is beside himself. I have to do something.”
Damen raises his hands, confused. “What are you asking of me?”
“Dig. You’re his brother. See what you can find. Please.”
Damen exhales. He turns his mind to the task and maps out its edges. He draws a blank and then a second, and for a moment, the whole room spins. He touches a hand to the edge of the table to steady himself. He wonders if Berenger can tell.
“Your father doesn’t know you’re meeting with me, does he?”
“No. And I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
*~*~*
Damen passes the rest of the day on the kind of autopilot that only kicks in after 24 hours awake, or after a sizeable shock.
He goes from lunch with Berenger; to a meeting with his chief research staff about a draft bill he’s sponsoring; to the opening of a new wing at a local primary school. Someone hands him an embarrassingly large pair of novelty scissors, and tells him cut a pink ribbon. There are three-dozen six years olds at his feet, each vying loudly for his attention and showing him their missing teeth. Even they aren’t enough to distract him.
After that engagement, he’s free to clear his mind. He leaves Ios and heads out to the coast for a long drive.
He drives far enough outside the city for the traffic to thin. Eventually, he finds himself alone with the high road ahead of him and the endless sea to his left. The brilliance of the afternoon sunshine has weakened to a mellower light by now, and whispers of pink brush across the sky. It’s been unseasonably warm for a mid-winter day, but the chill is returning.
Had Damen been younger, he might have pulled down the top of his car and pushed the gas. He’s always enjoyed driving fast enough to flay his skin on the cold wind. But he knows the headspace he’s in, and knows too that flirting with speed won’t clear his mind. At worst, it would spend enough adrenaline to draw police attention, and if there’s any truth in what Berenger had told him, then one misbehaving brother is enough.
Berenger’s revelation sits like a strange and heavy weight in his hand: he doesn’t yet understand it, but he feels obliged to carry it. It doesn’t lend itself to being received, filed and dealt with at a later stage. It demands his full attention, immediately. Damen has nursed enough worries in one lifetime to recognize one that will settle at his feet and gnaw.
With each winding turn of the road, and with each kilometre he puts between himself and Ios, Damen looks for some shred of moral certitude that Berenger has misunderstood the situation, or that he has made it all up to slander his brother. For the second time that afternoon, Damen turns his focus inwards and looks desperately for a generous reflex towards his brother
Again, he does not find it.
The sky outside begins to dim. He turns the car around and begins the drive back to Ios. On the way, he contemplates his options.
He thinks about confronting his brother. He imagines putting the question to Kastor and watching him deny it, but the script in Damen’s head comes jilted and meaningless. Kastor has always been the more fluent liar of the two of them—has been since childhood—and Damen cannot replicate his skill, even in his head.
Then, he imagines putting the question to Kastor and hearing him admit it. That scene comes easily, but it so tightly knots Damen’s stomach that he dismisses the option out of hand.
Damen then thinks about hiring a private investigator, and bats that thought away as well. This isn’t a problem to delegate away with money, and an investigator’s loyalty extends only so far as the highest bid. Damen is unsure of how many people know about what Berenger has told him, but entrusting the knowledge to someone else, who might reveal it to unfriendly parties for the right price, sits uncomfortably in his gut. It would be a reckless step in situation that demands finesse.
Then, he thinks about a different approach—a different type of investigation—by someone respectable, ethical, who would seek the truth as its own objective. A name crosses his mind, and a face—brilliant eyes, light hair—but no. It’s too soon for that kind of thinking.
By the time Damen reaches the city, it’s completely dark and he finds himself wedged in the early evening gridlock. He’s tired and ravenous, and nursing a murderous headache. Neither he nor Berenger had touched any of their food that afternoon, and his stomach—clearly still concerned with mortal needs, despite the developments—growls angrily against his ribs.
Without thinking, he drives past his apartment. Then, he drives past a takeout restaurant, and a second, and a third. Finally, his mind catches up to what his reflexes are doing, and he crosses the lengthy distance across the city to Nikandros’s house. When he parks outside the modest, gablefront home, the lights are on and muffled music blares into the street.
When Damen steps outside of his car, the scent of cooking hits him so powerfully that his stomach almost turns in on itself. He lets himself into the house and hangs his suit jacket in the hallway closet. After a moment’s thought, he steals one of Nikandros’s jumpers and throws it on over his shirt. The scent of cumin and ginger hangs tantalisingly in the air and he follows it to its source.
The music—some godforsaken opera—is so loud that Nikandros shouldn’t notice him approach, but he does. Damen lingers in the doorway and leans against it, and Nikandros looks up with all the surprise of a man who had diarized the visit.
He wipes his hands off on his apron and turns the volume down. “I should start charging you rent.”
“How about you get me a glass of wine instead?”
“Fine. But make yourself useful and grate the cheese,” Nikandros says. He reaches for the bottle and a second glass, and fills it with an amount that Damen will need to sleep off later on the couch. “While you do that, you can explain to me where you disappeared to after the school opening.”
Damen treks around the kitchen. He collects the cheese, the grater, and a chopping board and joins Nikandros on the opposite side of the kitchen island. He accepts the glass of wine offered to him.
Silently, he offers a grateful prayer to whatever’s listening for not having to spend the night alone.
“That lunch that you scheduled with Berenger.” He begins. A large part of the drive had been spent contemplating how to approach this very subject. “It threw my afternoon off.”
“Really,” comes the answer. Nikandros slits open a chilli and begins scraping out the seeds. “I always found Berenger exceedingly dull.”
“Well, you’re a prick. That’s not his fault.”
Something in Damen’s tone prompts Nikandros to look up. He studies Damen for a long moment and registers that something’s wrong. His expression softens.
“Sorry.” Nikandros says. “Continue.”
Damen takes a sip of wine and begins grating. He tries to think of how to say what he’s learned, and whether he should begin with the lunch or the punch-line it had delivered. The throbbing in his head intensifies.
In the end, more out of frustration with himself than anything else, he puts the cheese down, wipes off his hands, and pushes the palms of his hands into his eyes.
“Damen? What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine.” Says Damen, closing his eyes against the pain. “Do you have any painkillers?”
“Not while you’re drinking.” Says Nikandros. Damen hears water running into a glass and then, the sound of it being placed in front of him.
“Right. Of course.” Says Damen. He accepts the water and drains the whole glass in one go. By the time he replaces it, Nikandros is watching with outright concern.
“What happened at lunch?”
“Berenger said his father’s being blackmailed by Kastor.”
And in response to this bombshell, this news that has turned Damen’s afternoon on its head, Nikandros—
—does not react. At all.
Damen waits for something: a word, a quirk, a quiver of his brow, anything against which he can measure his own reaction, but Nikandros schools his expression into perfect stillness.
“You’re not surprised,” observes Damen, after a long moment. His heart reaches for a conclusion and finds one that it doesn’t like. “Do you know about this?”
There, finally: a flash of irritation. “Christ. Of course I don’t.” Nikandros bites out. “But it’s Kastor.”
“INik. This is blackmail.”
“Yes, Damen. This is also your brother.”
A heavy pause descends on the room. The conversation reaches a stalemate.
For a while, the only sound in the kitchen is a simmering pot.
“I know you don’t like Kastor.” Damen says slowly. “I know a lot of people don’t. I won’t sit here and protest that my brother’s a saint. I’m the first person to know that he isn’t. But this—Nik, this goes way beyond any of that.”
“Did you come here to tell me that you’re certain Berenger’s making it up?” Nikandros asks. His tone is sceptical, just short of patronising.
For the third time that day, the answer presents itself to Damen with ease—and this time, it comes more quickly than the others. It’s one thing to reach the conclusion himself. It’s quite another to have it echoed, without a shred of hesitation, by the most level-headed person he knows.
Quietly, Damen says, “What do I do, then?”
“You don’t do anything.”
“He’s my brother. I have to do something.”
Nikandros puts his knife down.
“Damen? Listen to me. Listen to me closely. I know that head of yours. Whatever’s telling you to get involved, shut it down, now. If the game doesn’t involve you, you stay off the field.”
Optics, his father had called it.
Theomedes had believed that in their line of work, how something looks is far more important than the truth of it. To him, optics was an answer and an explanation and a morality. Theomedes had given his blessing to Nikandros’s appointment as Damen’s chief of staff, precisely because Nikandros understands optics, my boy.
But Damen isn’t a novice.
“What if it’s true and it comes out?” He asks. “What if someone finds out that Berenger told me, and that I did nothing with the information? How do you think that’s going to look for me? For the family name? I don’t have a choice, Nik. I have to do something.”
Nikandros swears an oath. He takes a long drag of his drink. His glass is full when he picks it up, and by the time he puts it back down—a little more forcefully than necessary—there’s less than half of it left.
“You, of all people, always have a choice.” Nikandros says. “And what are you planning to do, anyway? Go up to Kastor and ask him to stop blackmailing people?”
Something bursts, then. Something sour and sharp, and it spills into Damen’s blood.
Nikandros is his oldest friend, and his dearest, and the only person whose thoughts could always challenge his opinion. But, for all their years together, Nikandros still has an awful tendency to serve advice with a generous helping of condescension.
Damen waits before responding, as long as it takes to tame his irritation.
“Even if I wanted to,” he answers eventually, “I don’t have much to work with. Berenger told me everything he knows but it isn’t enough.”
There’s a pause as Nikandros measures out the chilli and throws it on the pan. It hisses and rises with furious steam, and he regards it with a satisfied grimace.
When he looks back to Damen, he asks, “Do we trust Berenger?”
“Now you want to give Kastor the benefit of the doubt?”
“No.” Nikandros says. He begins stirring the pan, without any kind of intention. “Maybe it’s neither this nor that. Maybe Kastor hasn’t done anything, but Berenger’s hand is being swayed. His father, maybe?”
Damen considers it. Senator Berenger had been a contemporary of their father’s, the last sentry of a very old guard. He should have retired a decade ago. Something about the possibility of him constructing such deception doesn’t sit right with Damen. If there’s a scheme beneath a scheme, then it’s a game for younger men.
“I just don’t think he has anything to gain.” Damen admits. “And Berenger didn’t strike me as anything but honest. I don’t know whether he has it in him to be so deceitful.”
“Then let’s assume that in the middle of all this smoke, there’s a kernel of truth. What’s your next step?”
“We need more than a kernel. We need more information.” Damen says. After a thoughtful pause, he adds, “I considered hiring a private investigator, you know? But I can’t trust just anyone with this.”
Nikandros rolls his eyes. “We might yet make a politician of you, one day.”
“What I need—” Damen continues, reasoning aloud as he speaks. An idea returns to him and he chases the ends of it, vying for grip. “What I need is someone discreet, who investigates things for a living, with unimpeachable ethics.”
“In this town?” Nikandros asks. “Tell me if you find them. Give them my card.”
Damen pauses a moment longer, allowing the idea to take shape. “What I need is a journalist.”
Nikandros puts down the spatula and leans against the counter-top, hanging his head in frustration. If the shadow of danger in his expression is anything to go by, Damen is lucky that Nikandros doesn't throw the spatula at his head.
“You’re going to go to the press against your own brother.” Nikandros says sharply. “On a whim?”
“No, I’m going to ask for help.” Says Damen, his surety solidifying. “Think about it for a moment. I need someone with investigative skills who can’t do anything with the information unless it’s absolutely true.”
“I never knew you were such a fan of the fifth estate.”
“I don’t need all of it. I only need one person.” Says Damen. “Where’s your copy of this morning’s paper?”
Nikandros nods towards the dining room table. It’s heavily laden with paperwork and files and god knows what else. Damen, who eats at least three meals a week in this house, isn’t sure that he’s ever seen its surface.
Damen rifles around and rescues today’s edition of the Ios Tribune from underneath a mountain of draft legislation. He flicks through it on the way back to the kitchen and finds what he’s looking for on the sixth page. A half-page article: quiet, lengthy, detailed. He clears his side of the island and puts down the newspaper for Nikandros to peruse.
Nikandros skims over it, and then looks back up at him blankly.
“What am I looking at?”
“Bottom left article.”
“High Court declaration on prisoner voting rights upheld.” Nikandros recites. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“Not the article. The journalist. Laurent De Vere.”
“You say that like I’m supposed to know the name.”
“You would, if you bothered to read the paper closely. He’s very good.”
Even as he says it, he knows it’s an embarrassingly low threshold for a task that will require the utmost delicacy. He knows that he sounds foolish. Still, there’s no resisting the conviction that has settled in his gut.
Nikandros gives him a sceptical look. “He’s at the bottom of page six. How good can he possibly be?”
Laurent spends the morning covering the plenary session of the Economic and Social Committee, and heads back to the office at midday. When he arrives, most of the newsroom is out for the lunch hour. He counts five heads amongst the sea of computers.
It’s still enough for him to immediately sense that something unusual is afoot. When he walks into the room, all five heads snap towards him and look back down just as quickly, as though they’ve been caught doing something. All five heads make a terrible performance of pretending to work.
It makes for an unconvincing show. He surveys the room for a moment longer, cool and unflinching, but no one dares look back up at him. No one offers an explanation.
He goes to find Nicaise. Nicaise is alone in the junior copy editors’ office, eating lunch at his desk, halfway through a turkey on rye. The document on his screen is bleeding so heavily with red edits that the original text is almost gone. He feels a momentary pang of pity for whoever authored it.
Before Laurent says a word, and without so much as looking at him, Nicaise asks: “Since when did you fraternize with senators?”
“I don’t fraternize with anyone.” He says. “I hate people. You know that.”
“And believe me, they hate you. But there’s a senator in your office.”
Laurent freezes.
When his thoughts kick back into gear, he takes a step back out into the newsroom to look in the direction of his office. It’s on the other side of the large, open space, and the distance to it is littered with computers and printers and other office sundry.
But Nicaise is right: even from here, Laurent can make out the large silhouette of a man in his office.
He returns inside and looks back at Nicaise, who still only has eyes for his screen.
“Which senator?” Laurent asks sharply.
“Akielos. The younger one.”
“And who let him in?” Laurent asks, by which he means: who is going to die today.
Nicaise turns slowly away from his computer, and delivers him a withering look.
“Do I look like your secretary?“
“Keep that tone up, and you will be.”
Nicaise puts down his sandwich for the sole purpose of raising two middle fingers in Laurent’s direction. Without so much as blinking, he turns back to his screen, and just in case Laurent doesn’t get the message, he pops in his headphones.
Nicaise is an irrepressible little shit. It’s exactly why they hired him.
But there are more pressing matters at hand.
Laurent begins making his way back to his office. The closer he gets, the more clearly the senator comes into view. He’s deep inside Laurent’s office, standing at the window, admiring the city view from behind my desk, Laurent thinks. The sheer nerve of him.
Laurent is not feeling charitable when he arrives: he has three deadlines to meet by the day’s end. The morning’s plenary session had run overtime by an hour and a half, and he needs every spare moment he can squeeze from the afternoon to write.
He knocks on this own door, and is pleased when the sound shakes the senator out of his reverie. He turns and smiles contritely at Laurent, embarrassed at how easily he’s been startled.
It’s a strangely unfiltered response. Un-senatorial. Especially from a man large enough to cause a solar eclipse.
Senator Akielos walks over to the guest’s side of the desk, and extends his hand to Laurent. Laurent takes it, and watches as his hand disappears in the senator’s warm, gigantic grip.
Laurent says, dryly: “I’ve never been received in my own office before.”
Akielos has enough grace to retain his embarrassed look. It’s still a strange contrast to the sheer power of the rest of him—everything from his height, to the perfect tailoring of his charcoal grey suit, to the obvious muscle that it barely conceals. Laurent imagines that he hulks above most people in most rooms.
“My apologies,” says Akielos, and he sounds he like he means it. “I was led here.”
“So I’ve been told,” says Laurent. “You must tell me the name of the gracious culprit.”
Laurent closes the office door behind him. He takes a quick look out the glass and notes that there are more people in the newsroom. Now there are a dozen heads, and again, they all make a very poor show of pretending not to look.
Laurent winds a hand around the drawstring and curtly shutters the blinds. It’s not much privacy, but it’ll do for now. He waves a hand towards one of the chairs in front of his desk, inviting Senator Akielos to sit, which he does.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Senator?” He asks, taking his own chair.
“Please, call me Damen. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m sure you’re busy.” says Akielos. Damen, Laurent corrects himself. “I’m here because I would like to take you to lunch.”
Whatever Laurent had been expecting, it certainly isn’t that.
“Lunch,” he repeats, neutrally, just to be sure.
“Yes, lunch.” Says Damen. “If you’re free. Which I know you are, because I asked the nice lady at the front desk as soon as I arrived.”
Lauren thinks, two people are going to die today.
He leans back in his chair and studies his unexpected guest. The younger of the Akielos brothers is the more natural politician—far less experienced than Kastor, but much better liked. He smiles easily and speaks simply, and does well enough on the late night talk-show circuit to be familiar. The handsomeness doesn’t hurt, either. Nor the dimple. People use a lot of words to describe his face, like charming, or presidential.
But Laurent is wary of pedestals. Likability is a dangerous platform to cultivate, especially for a politician. It screams to be sullied, and Laurent is wary of ever being tarnished with the same brush.
“We don’t know each other well enough to be lunching, Senator.”
“Perhaps we should. Let me take you out.”
Had Laurent been three or four years younger, and equally less-experienced, he might have mistaken the invitation for personal interest. He might even have been inclined to agree. A handsome face is a handsome face, and it never hurts to build an extra bridge in his line of work.
But he’s shrewder now. He registers the dissonance between the Senator’s easy invitation, and the grave expression with which he offers it. There’s something searching in his eyes, and Laurent realizes with a flash that lunch is a subtext for something else, even though he can’t begin to discern what it might be.
“Lunch.” He says deliberately, eyes keen, just to make sure they’re both on the same page.
Damen’s features relax a little, when he sees that Laurent’s understood him. “Yes, exactly.”
So—lunch means a story. Laurent’s pulse begins racing, the way it always does when he finds a new lead.
It races even though he doesn’t know what the scoop might be, or whether it’ll lead anywhere. The thrill of a new tip-off is always sheer and heady. He quietly drums his fingers against the armrests of his chair, and tries to keep the elation off his face.
“Political or personal?” He asks quietly.
“Political.”
“Involving you?”
“Involving Kastor.”
Laurent stills. A less professional man in his place would have emitted a low, long whistle.
Damen looks away from him, to a point beside his head and outside the window. The struggle to rein in whatever he’s feeling is clear. It’s also clear that he doesn’t want to be here, doing this.
The fact that he’s so uncomfortable tells Laurent something promising about the reliability of what’s to come. But they can discuss that later. He steers the conversation down a slightly different avenue.
“Why me?”
Damen looks back to him, the corner of his mouth betraying an ironic quirk. “You didn’t strike me as the self-doubting type.”
“I’m not. I’m only pointing out that if your story’s as big you think it is, you might be expected to take it higher than a mid-level editor.”
“I don’t need someone with profile. I need someone thorough with a low radar, who hasn’t been around long enough to curry loyalties.”
“I’m obviously flattered, but I’d prefer if you told me the whole truth.”
Damen leans back in his chair and fixes Laurent with a pointed look. Now, he’s smiling.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he begins lightly.
It’s hardly a promising start. Laurent says, “I’m not sure there’s going to be a right way to take this.”
Damen opens his mouth as though to speak, but pauses and refrains. He looks at a point above Laurent’s head, visibly struggling with how to phrase what he needs to say. It only serves to pique Laurent’s interest. He can’t imagine that he’s going to like what he hears
“Put it this way.” Damen says, after a considerable number of moments. “No one’s going to ask questions if I start spending time with someone like you.”
“A journalist?”
“A blonde and attractive one.” He says. “I’m advised that I have something of a type.”
Laurent feels the colour rising in his cheeks, and he can’t do a damned thing to stop it.
Of course Damen has a type. Of course Laurent knows what it is. He picks up as many gossip rags as the next person. He’s seen the conveyer belt of attractive men and women Damen keeps on his arm.
But he isn’t sure how he feels, about Damen counting him amongst their ilk.
“Your type is—me.” He says, just to confirm.
“Yes. Which means people won’t ask too many questions if I spend time with you. We’d be able to work in peace.”
Laurent clicks, and draws the next few lines by himself. “And you’d like to encourage those misunderstandings, to throw them off your scent … which is why you want to take me to lunch.’
"So you’ll join me?”
Laurent pauses again.
“Yes. Not today, because I’m busy. But I will later this week. ” He says. “And Senator? We’re going to need to set some ground rules for this performance.”
*~*~*
Here are the ground rules.
If they’re to work together, they have to foster the illusion that they are together. In order to do that effectively, they’ll need to be seen in public, and more often than strictly necessary. However: public displays of affection will be limited to handholding, or maybe a hand folded into an elbow, but nothing more.
Damen raises an eyebrow and asks, with all the indifference of scientific inquiry, And kissing? Laurent can’t be sure whether or not he’s joking. He can’t imagine that this scoop will necessitate that kind of contact. In the present instant, he resolves the question by avoiding it: he says that they’ll decide whether it’s appropriate if and when the issue arises, and on a case-by-case basis.
It seems like a safe answer. Laurent has no template from which to devise these rules and only scant prior experience on which to draw. He's a novice, tasked with designing a cathedral. It might have amused him had it been happening to someone else.
They agree to meet on Thursday, with the details to be worked out later. Then, Damen leaves.
Laurent thinks about accompanying him out, but decides that the two of them have already courted enough attention for one afternoon. He’s not typically in the habit of seeing anyone off, and making an exception for someone like the Senator—Damen, he reminds himself—grates him the wrong way.
It won’t do to cultivate a reputation for exceptionalism.
He also needs to think, and hard. As soon as he’s alone, he pulls his chair to the window. It’s unseasonably bright and warm for a winter’s day. The street below him teems with bodies eager to catch the sunlight before it flees again. He watches them against the backdrop of his still-racing pulse, and counts what he knows.
From one view, Damen has given him nothing. Perhaps even less than that. He knows less about Kastor, and less still of the scoop. It could make his career. It could be a dead end. Schrödinger’s scoop, Halvik would call it; the liminal space between what a story could be and what it eventually becomes.
And yet—of all the grit and the trudge in his work, of all the cyclical mundanity, it’s this exact uncertainty that he likes best, and that he finds himself craving. He’d sooner spill blood than admit it, but it’s the only romantic point, the only time he can entertain silly thoughts of a Pulitzer before the meagre reality of a story disabuses him of the fantasy.
And he’s intrigued, too, that of all the newsdesks in this media-bloated city, Damen has set the challenge down on a plate in front of him.
As to the reasons for that.
Well.
He replays how Damen looked at him, the appreciative sweep of his gaze. Laurent registers the warmth that rises to his skin at the recent memory. Absently, he picks at a cut in the leather arm of his chair and is honest enough to call the warmth by its name: pleasure.
It won’t do. He’d have dismiss it and soon, but just for a moment, he holds the feeling in his hands. He turns it over in his fingers and holds it up to the light.
Laurent knows what he looks like and how other people look at him; and knows, too, that Damen isn’t frugal with his attentions. He’s probably bedded half the city, and made eyes towards the other half. But the warmth persists. Laurent files it away as an occupational hazard of working with someone as handsome as Damen, and hopes that the novelty will wear off.
In the meantime, he’s going to need to speak to Halvik. He gets up and leaves to find his editor, detouring to the kitchen just long enough to brew her a coffee. She generally receives things more favourably with a double-shot.
Halvik’s door is closed, but the timber and glass of it aren’t enough to contain the rising tenor of her voice. Every word comes out clear, perfectly enunciated, enough to elicit winces from the three junior staff at the cubicles nearest to her office. He goes in without knocking and leans back against the door, listening to her flay an advertiser. He knows she won’t mind his presence. She always appreciates an audience for her kills.
Halvik is seated on a corner of her desk. Her mass of dark black curls is tied in a plait that falls heavy and thick down her back. The blazer of her grey work-suit has been discarded on a couch near the door and her white shirt-sleeves are rolled up tightly to the elbows.
He enjoys watching her in action like this. Halvik is youngest editor in the history of this or any newspaper in Ios by two decades, and not without cause. By the end of the call, she’s brought the caller round to her point of view and terminates the line with a satisfied grimace.
To him, she says, “Sit,” and Laurent obeys. There are two large couches in front of her desk. He takes the left, and places her mug in front of the other. She watches him and asks, “Are you here to tell me why there was a Senator in my office?”
“You heard, then. “ He says.
She sits next to him and accepts the hot drink. This is another thing that he likes about Halvik. She’s a boss until she trusts you, and then she very much isn’t.
“No, I saw. He’s very difficult to miss. His grace blocked half the sun when he came in.” She points out. “I wasn’t aware you two were friends, by the way. What else have you been keeping from me?”
“I don’t recall describing him as a friend.”
“He walked out of your office like a man who had made a social call.”
“His job is to seem like he’s friends with everyone.” Laurent points out, and then, “Actually, he was here on business. He thinks he has a scoop.”
He stops, partially to gauge her response, and partially for dramatic effect.
She raises an eyebrow. “Well then. Don’t let me stop you there.”
Laurent shrugs. “I don’t know more than that. He says he has something about his brother, but I don’t know what it is yet. If we’re being exacting, I don’t actually think he fully knows either. But he seems to want to talk to someone about it, so I’ve agreed to hear him out. We’re going to lunch on Thursday.”
Spoken aloud, it sounds even less substantial than before. He feels as though he’s turned up to Halvik’s office and presented her with a beautiful but empty basket. She mulls over what he’s told her and takes a lengthy sip of her coffee.
“Let me get this straight.” She asks, with a tinge of scepticism. “He suspects that his brother’s up to no good, so he goes straight to the press? He can’t hire a therapist like everyone else?”
“I asked him about that.” He says. After a thoughtful pause, he adds, “Would you believe, Halvik—I think he’s trying to be morally responsible.”
She gives him a long and probing look. “Come on, Laurent. Really?”
He grimaces, having counted the various implausibilities himself: an earth-shaking scoop; a politician with a moral compass; a politician who trusts a journalist; a journalist willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
If one of the junior staff had come to Laurent with the same skeletal plan, he would have drafted their resignation letter himself.
“I know.” He says. “I know that this might lead to nothing. But if it is a dead end, I think I want to confirm it for myself.”
“That’s a lot of your time for very little information.” She points out.
“Gut feeling?” He says, and then, more to himself than anything, “But perhaps appearing trustworthy is in his job description.”
“I presume there’s a reason you’re telling me all of this.”
He meets her eye very pointedly. There’s no point playing it off or being bashful about it, especially not to someone like her. “Actually, yes. Given the—shall we say, sensitivity of our subject matter, he and I discussed how we might go about it. We need to spend time together without arousing suspicion. We’ve decided that while I’m investigating his lead, we’re going to—let people think we’re dating."
“Laurent.” She says, with less humour.
He doesn’t react. In Halvik’s company, jumping to defensiveness is only a step above admitting defeat. She preys on it.
“It makes sense,” he reasons. “He wants to keep this secret, but I’m going to need his time. We need an excuse to spend time together without people asking too many questions.”
Halvik gives a single, disbelieving scoff. “You’ll be in the society pages of every disreputable rag in the city.”
“Exactly.” He says. “We’ll be hiding in plain sight.”
She drains the rest of her coffee and places the cup on her desk. Her expression clouds over as she thinks it through.
“I don’t like it,” she eventually answers, “but I’m not going to stop you. That said, you can expect me to intervene if I feel it’s getting out of hand. Do you need me to delegate anyone to help?”
Laurent allows himself to sink into the comfortable leather, and savour the thrill that he’s going to be allowed to pursue this. He begins sketching out the work he needs to do before he next meets Damen: the research into him, into Kastor, into every piece of information he can source about the political dynasty of their family.
“None for now,” he says. “The fewer people involved, the better. But hold off sending Nicaise away for a while.”
Halvik nods, and falls quiet. He waits for her. It’s clear that her mind is occupied somewhere completely different to his.
“You sound excited, for once.” She says.
“I think I am.”
“There’s a lot to be said for gut feeling in this line of work. Chase it, but make sure you interrogate it often.”
He rolls his eyes. “Thank you, dear leader. Any other glaringly obvious gobbets of wisdom?”
“Only one.” She smiles. “Your Senator is handsome. Be careful, there.”
*~*~*
On the Thursday morning before their lunch, Laurent questions his reflection in the mirror for a lot longer than usual
He wears his best suit—a deep navy slim-fit, with a white shirt and a tie the same azure blue as his eyes. He knows he looks good, and certainly good enough to be on the arms of a Senator. Laurent has walked into enough rooms in one lifetime to know that when heads turn, they typically turn for him.
But looks are only part of it. There’s something more to the paramours that he’ll be trying to emulate. There’s a lightness to them, an expectation of attention and an ease with it, like flames reaching for oxygen. Laurent knows that this, too, shouldn’t be much of a problem. It’ll be a performance, but he’s given plenty of those before.
Laurent is well-dressed for lunch, but overdressed for work, and he draws eyes from the entire newsroom for it. He marks it as a successful dry run and throws himself into editing junior pieces until he has to leave at midday for lunch. Damen has chosen a restaurant quite a way out of Ios. Laurent tells Halvik not to expect him back till late afternoon.
He drives and uses the long distance to calm the nervous static in his blood.
He hasn’t seen Damen or spoken to him since his visit, but Damen had made his presence felt in other ways. A conspicuous bouquet had arrived at the office for Laurent the day before. It was too big to be ignored, a mix of blooms in bohemian colours that stopped just short of being tasteless. His door had been closed and he had headphones in his ears, listening to a replay of that morning’s plenary session, but the flash of colour from reception caught his eye through the glass windows.
Laurent had watched as Martha carried the bouquet into the newsroom. She had clear passage with it; as though she was parting a sea, and everyone watched to see which direction she would take it. Laurent had suspected it would end up at his door and he was right.
She knocked twice before allowing herself in and presenting it to him. She had looked rather thrilled, and said to him with enchanted tones: “Present for you, Laurent. From Senator Akielos.”
He invited her to leave it on the stack of archive boxes to the left of his door. Then, knowing fully that everyone was still looking through his window—and also, that it would be too obvious to draw the blinds—he returned to his work and flatly ignored the bouquet
He only picked it up before he went home at night. There had been a note tucked carefully between the blooms on Damen’s stationery. His handwriting was large and cursive, his letters rounded, and slanted almost comically to the right.
Antipodes. Tomorrow, at 1pm. Spare me two hours.
D. x
The flowers were the first note of colour in Laurent’s office. Laurent’s burning cheeks were the second. If he had devised the ground rules for this arrangement with speed, Damen had inhaled and applied them like a natural pupil.
Now, Laurent drives to the restaurant with the note in his pocket. He’s never been there before, and doesn’t presume that they’d let him in. Antipodes is the kind of institution that made its name precisely because of its ease with turning people away.
Driving along the water calms him till he arrives, and enters the front lobby. It’s dizzying space with white marble floors and glass walls that rise to a high ceiling. It gives him a vertiginous feeling that he’s forced to push back immediately, because the maître d’ is watching him.
If Laurent had paused long enough to consider his expectations, he might have guessed that anyone working here would be young and beautiful, just as likely to be seen dining here as serving. Instead, the man before him is a relic from a different time, with hair the colour of first snow and a handlebar moustache that curls loosely near his cheek.
The sign at the lectern says Pierre Morel. Pierre smiles at Laurent like an old friend and says, “Mr DeVere. Welcome to Antipodes. The Senator is waiting for you at his usual table. If you’ll please follow me.”
Well, then.
Laurent nods and smiles politely, but not too broadly, lest it broadcast his relief. He allows himself to be led into a large open dining area, enclosed in glass and with astonishing views over the water from three sides. The vertiginous feeling returns—the space feels suspended over the water—but he distracts himself by cataloguing the patrons.
Every table is occupied. On the way to wherever Pierre is leading him, Laurent counts four other Senators, two property magnates, a table with three different telecommunications CEOs, and enough socialites for him to stop counting altogether. Conversations ripple around him but not loud enough to untangle.
He wonders how many mortgages worth of dinners one has to spend here, before having a usual table.
Damen is seated at a window table. He looks dressed up enough for a date—which Laurent remembers, quite suddenly, that this is. For a moment, his mind spins in tension between what they are here to discuss and how they will behave to protect it. He and Damen are strangers, but they will have to act like anything but.
Damen is lost in the view. Pierre quietly announces Laurent’s arrival. When Damen pushes his seat back as though to stand, Laurent places a firm hand on his shoulder to say sit. And to steel himself a little, perhaps. Their eyes meet briefly. Laurent gives him a cloaked smile, which Damen returns without thinking.
He takes the seat next to Damen rather than opposite him, and watches him order a bottle of wine for the table. Pierre bows and leaves. When Damen’s satisfied that they’re alone, he turns his attention to Laurent.
“Hello, Laurent.”
“Senator.”
“Please. Damen.” He says. Something behind his eye glimmers and threatens to spill. “Did you like the bouquet?”
“The office did.” Laurent says. He picks up the menu and begins examining it, keenly aware of Damen’s attention still on him. “For future reference, I enjoy dahlias. And a little more subtlety. Have you already chosen what you’ll eat?”
“I’ve had the whole menu.”
“Of course you have. How silly of me.”
It earns him an appreciative sound, quieter than a laugh. Damianos leans forward and when he does, his knee accidentally brushes against Laurent’s under the table. The space between them has now closed to something meaningless. At this distance, the notes of oud and bergamot in Damen’s cologne become pronounced.
Laurent looks up, and notices a scar down the side of Damen’s nose. He’s never seen it before. At last, an imperfection.
He wills the rigid lines across his shoulder, and down his back, to slacken. He wills himself to relax. He notices Damen log each of these shifts as they happen. He’s intuitive, Laurent realizes. That eases him a little further. He leans a little closer, drops his tone, allows his gaze to dance.
“Do you think people will believe we’re on a date?” He asks.
“This close, people might think we’re about to do more than that.” Damen points out.
A thoughtful pause. “Better to lie too well,” Laurent says eventually, “then not well enough.”
Damen’s smile, when offered at this range, is startling. He surveys Laurent the same way he had in his office, like a mystery he’s looking forward to resolving.
You’re at work, Laurent reminds himself.
“You know, I figured you might be good at this game.” Damen says. “I didn’t realize you planned to enjoy it as well.”
Laurent gives him a single look through sweeping lashes. It’s the closest he’s ever come to preening. “Have we generated an audience, do you think?”
Damen tilts his face just enough for a lateral glance of the room. “Yes. They’re not being subtle about it, either.” He says. And then, turning back to Laurent with a fraction of grimness, “Nikandros is going to have my head for this.”
Laurent knows very little of Nikandros, Damen’s chief of staff. He knows that they grew up together, went to school together, and that they had both worked for Theomedes after university. Nikandros only left Theomedes’ service when Damen decided to enter the political fray himself. He was the spectred figure of Damen’s staff, perpetually in the stands, the counterbalance to Damen’s weight.
He’s rarely in the public eye, but Laurent suspects that his fingerprints are on every speech and policy to Damen’s name.
“Nikandros has an opinion about this?” He asks casually.
“Nikandros,” begins Damen, balancing his words on a scale “has multiple opinions about most things.”
“How much does he know?”
“Everything.”
“Did he counsel you to come see me?”
“No. He counselled violently against it. He thinks I shouldn’t get involved in Kastor’s business at all.” He says. His tone is resigned to the conflict, checking off its elements like laundry. “In fact, he said—“
But he doesn’t finish the sentence. The garcon arrives with a bottle of red wine that Damen must have ordered earlier, and he begins to declaim it politely and at length: vineyard, grape, source, and vintage. Then he serves it and asks if he can assist with selecting their dishes.
Damen looks down at the menu, an obtuse text incomprehensible to anyone without a working knowledge of gastronomic French. But—before he’s finished reading through the entrees, Laurent rattles off the orders that he had decided for both of them the night before: for him, the scampi and lovage emulsion, and with the spruce and the daikon; for Damen, the kingfish and pistachio, with the pickled ginger and kohlrabi.
His feigned ease is worth the confounded expression it pulls from Damen, and the smirk that the garcon barely conceals as he bows and returns to the kitchen. Laurent feels a savage rush to have bested Damen in his own territory.
“How did you know I liked kingfish?” Is all he can manage.
“I don’t.” Says Laurent.
A tug at the corner of Damen’s mouth. “I see. And do you normally bankrupt your sources at lunch?”
“Please. You’re rich enough to buy the entire menu, and then the whole restaurant for dessert,” says Laurent. Damen concedes the point with a shrug, and Laurent restores them to their earlier conversation. “As for Nikandros --- perhaps I can understand his point. But I’d still rather Kastor knew we were meeting, with the wrong impression of our purpose. It’s better than him finding out and jumping to the right conclusion.”
“I know. I agree.”
“What does Nikandros make of your brother?”
Immediately, Damen’s expression neutralises into something unreadable. He falls silent and looks at a point in the tablecloth as he considers his answer. It takes an uncomfortably long time.
Laurent resists the urge to reword his question. Sometimes, there were good things on the other end of a long silence.
When Damen eventually answers, his response is slow and careful. “I think Nikandros only tolerates Kastor for my sake. I’ve never been sure why. Kastor’s never crossed his way.”
“What about you? Would you say you’re close to your brother?”
An even longer pause, this time. “I always thought so.” Damen answers. “We grew up in an unusual household. Our father had unusual expectations of us. We have an unusual relationship because of it, but I would say we’re close.”
“Not close enough for you to know about Berenger.”
“No. Apparently not.”
It visibly pains him. Laurent wonders why he doesn’t try to conceal it, like anyone else might instinctively do in his position. He decides that—for better or worse—Damen plays every single card face-up on the table.
“I imagine you’ve thought about why he might keep it from you.”
“I don’t know. A part of me hopes that it’s intentional. That maybe he’s doing it to shield me.”
The first word that comes to Laurent’s mind is naïve. It slips down his tongue and waits at the edge, poised for deployment. He keeps it to himself.
Twice now and in as many sentences, Damen has been artless with him about something deeply personal. Laurent wonders whether he’s like this with everyone, and if so, how he’s survived in politics for as long as he has, and thrived.
He settles for, “Your brother is a politician.”
“He’s my brother.” Damen responds, reflexively and with a trace of iron. It’s barely there, but enough to buttress his words.
“Yes.” Says Laurent. “A politician and your brother. And perhaps in that specific order.”
Damen says, “You don’t understand the household in which we grew up,” and Laurent resigns himself to a sermon on the tragedies of growing up rich and powerful. He reaches for his wine. “My father served two terms as vice-president. It was never enough. It ate at him, and it ate at our family. Eventually, he passed the point where he could run on his own. When that happened, the only thing that stopped it from destroying him was drilling the ambition into both of us.”
“I see.” Says Laurent. He eddies the glass idly in his hands. “And how many people have you blackmailed in the last month?”
Damen ignores the question, but Laurent doesn’t miss the sweep of irritation in his eyes. “Kastor is the eldest. He had to bear the brunt of it. If my father needed to rage, he did it in Kastor’s direction.”
“I’m confused. Are you suggesting that he might be innocent of whatever it is?”
“No, I just—I’m trying to understand why, and I can’t.”
Laurent sees an opportunity to draw the conversation towards more productive waters.
“Alright then. Talk me through everything you do know.”
And so Damen does. It doesn’t take him long to recount the entirety of his conversation with Berenger, and he tells it with no small anguish across his features. It only serves to underline all that he doesn’t know.
Carefully, he asks, “Other than Berenger’s word, what proof do you have?”
“How do you mean?”
“Photos, emails, receipts. Anything?”
“I don’t have anything more substantial than Berenger’s word.” He admits. “That’s partly why I came to you. I need your honest assessment about the way forward.”
Laurent contemplates his answer. Damen has presented him with a single fragment of information, a puzzle piece from a missing box. It isn’t enough for him to extrapolate the shape of the task ahead of them, nor its size, nor to gauge where their piece fits, or what else might fall around it.
“I’m not saying that I don’t believe you.” He begins. “Your word is an excellent start. You’re liked and well-respected, and you have those two qualities in far greater abundance than your brother. If we ever publish, that will help. But right now, what you’ve given me is barely a circumstantial case. We can’t print without corroborated evidence and people willing to go on record. Anything less than that would ruin my name, and yours. You need to give me more. The first step is to see whether Berenger will agree to be interviewed on the record.”
Damen sits back in his chair and nods grimly. He looks resolved.
Laurent spares a thought for the dissonance of their surrounds. The beauty of the view around them is irresistible: the wind carves white ripples into the ocean, which is empty but for the occasional pleasure yacht dotted on its surface.
On a more ordinary afternoon, in a fairer universe, Laurent would have sat here alone and just watched.
“I imagine this isn’t what you hoped to hear,” he continues. He means it. “I’m sorry that I can’t be more enthusiastic. Stakes this big demand a certain degree of precision.”
“No, I needed to hear all of it. It’s why I read your work.”
Laurent raises a sceptical brow and sees another opportunity: this time, to lighten the conversation. “Oh?” He says, seizing it. “I thought you fell victim to the blondness of my hair. Or did it only push me above the other contenders?”
“There were no other contenders. No one writes like you.” Damen says, with disarming honesty. It’s spoken like a solid truth in his palm, physical and certain. He adds, “I would know. I make a point of reading the papers cover to cover over breakfast. It was a habit of my father’s.”
“I’m surprised you have the time.”
“I make the time.” Damen says.
Laurent decides to attribute his warm skin to the sunlight.
*~*~*
Upon reflection, Laurent should not have been surprised when, a week later, a bouquet of dahlias in every pastel shade of orange and pink arrives at the office. It’s swaddled in coloured paper and fernery, and large enough to obstruct the courier’s vision as he delivers it.
Laurent is at reception when it arrives. As soon as the elevator door opens to reveal it—with Martha gasping loud enough to draw the attention of the entire floor, blast her—Laurent knows. The rest of the office reaches the same conclusion that he does. This time, their titters are audible.
It’s hopelessly redundant when the courier deposits the bouquet on Martha’s desk and asks, “Is there a Laurent de Vere around?”
It’s beautiful, and outrageous. It’s a foil to the distance and asceticism that Laurent has so carefully cultivated around himself, slicing through it in a single, pastel-coloured motion. His instinct in that moment is to raze the entire office to the ground, and the bouquet with it, and then to go find Damen and do the same.
Laurent takes the flowers in hand and walks with them back to his office, with too many eyes on him. He makes his way as though this is exactly what he had planned to do, and where he planned to be. He doesn’t blush at all. But closing the office door behind him is a relief. He scowls out his embarrassment, an exhalation.
The march from reception is the closest thing to a walk of shame that he’s ever endured. The tragedy being, of course, that it isn't a walk of shame, and he hasn’t even been well-ploughed to justify the scandal. He sets the bouquet down on his desk—next to the vase containing the other one—and realizes that there’s an envelope attached to the ferns.
Laurent pulls it out and examines it. It’s plain, and under his fingers is the distinctive feel of a small, plastic rectangle. He takes it out and stares till his wits conclude that it’s a key-card to a hotel room.
Then the blush rises.
Laurent places the key-card on his desk and rifles through the envelope. For his efforts, he’s rewarded with another handwritten note:
The Hotel DeBrett. Wednesday. 1pm. Room 1505. Clear the afternoon.
Can’t wait to see you.
D x
Laurent stares at the note like it’s written in a foreign language, and then, like it might explode in his hand.
Before he can stop the thought, his mind baits him with what it would be like to receive that kind of invitation; to pass the middle of the day doing something more exciting than eating a panini over his keyboard; to have the triplicate luxuries of time and money and a lover.
To go to a hotel room with said lover. To be undressed with care. To be pushed backwards onto a bed as soft as cloud. To feel a body over his.
He hasn’t felt a body over his in so long.
The thought lasts only a moment, but it’s a moment too long. Longing ebbs and flows through him like a warm water tide. He’s normally master of himself enough to suppress it, but in the wake of that moment, Laurent is unable to do anything but feel its demand.
It won’t do. You’re working, he reminds himself. You’re going to conduct an interview. He breathes and pulls back the unleashed units of what he’s feeling, string by string. Then he boxes them and seals the edges, and settles back down to work.
Damen reserves the hotel room for the day. He arrives an hour earlier than scheduled, and it’s a mistake. It gives him an hour to pace restlessly around the suite, wondering whether he’s overstepped the mark with the flowers, with booking a hotel room, with everything.
The room is plush. The bed is plush. Damen has passed wonderful, delicious hours in hotel rooms just like this one, doing in fact what he and Laurent would be pretending to do. He has a weakness for mid-afternoon trysts. They break the tedium of days that would otherwise be swallowed by meetings. A fuck in the middle of the afternoon does wonders to disrupt the passage of time.
Of course, this is going to be work.
But other thoughts cross his mind. Hotly. Inevitably.
Damen had been meeting people since he was old enough to shake hands, but the universe hadn’t given him any kind of precedent for dealing with Laurent DeVere. Laurent holds the capacity to be reserved and then forward, polite and then formal, and Damen is no closer to figuring out what precipitates each switch.
It doesn’t help that Laurent seems aware of his own beauty, but indifferent to it. In other hands, beauty like Laurent’s would be wielded as a weapon, and it would be precisely the type to which Damen would fall prey. All the better, he reasons, that Laurent doesn’t use it.
Damen walks around the suite, uses the bathroom, and lingers in the bedroom just long enough to entertain an image of Laurent ravished on the bedspread. It’s enough to send him fleeing to the living area, restricting his imagination to safer surfaces. He flicks the television on to the news channel, figuring that the sight of his colleagues is more practical than a cold shower. He compromises by muting the volume, and occupies himself by responding to emails.
His work is disrupted by a beep, and a click, and the suite door being opened.
Laurent steps into the room. He’s in dark blue chinos, and a white shirt under a navy blue sweater. A brown leather satchel hangs over his shoulders, so weather-beaten that Damen would guess it’s seen five generations of Laurent’s family. He looks pristine, like finely-spun sugar.
Damen’s pulse gives an inconvenient jump.
Laurent acknowledges him with a look and a shadow of a smile, but gives his full attention to the room first. His expression is unreadable as his eyes sweep their surroundings.
“A little excessive, don’t you think?” He finally says.
“Hardly.” Damen says. He makes a nominal effort at resisting a smile and fails. “This is only a junior suite.”
“How quaint. I think it’s bigger than the newsroom.”
“That’s not true, Laurent.”
Damen isn’t rewarded with a concession, but Laurent sits down on the other end of the same couch, which is even better. He casts an idle eye at the television before returning his attention to Damen, his gaze level.
“And how will Berenger come up here?” He asks.
“I sent him my own keycard. I told reception I had lost mine and they issued me a new one,” he responds. But talk of Berenger plays with his stomach, so he changes the subject. “Did you like the dahlias?”
“The point of that bouquet wasn’t to please me, and we both know it.” Laurent says tartly. “I hope you’re happy, by the way. I’ve become gossip.”
Before Damen can counsel him about the joys of notoriety, another beep rings out around the room, and then a click.
Berenger has arrived. They both rise up like a shot to meet him.
Berenger’s apprehension at being here is writ large across his face. Persuading him to come and speak on the record had been one of Damen’s more difficult recent accomplishments. It had taken a lengthy hike and three hours of gentle negotiation in the woods, but he was here.
Damen goes to him and warmly clasps his hand. “Berenger, this is the journalist I was telling you about - Laurent DeVere from the Ios Tribune. Laurent, this is William Berenger the third, the son of Senator Berenger.”
In the fractional moments since Berenger’s appearance, Laurent has shed every trace element of conviviality. In its place is the man Damen had first met: Laurent DeVere, the consummate professional, a study in polite firmness and keen attention. Laurent is the smallest man in the room, but his presence quite suddenly looms the largest. He, too, offers his hand to Berenger.
Berenger takes it and considers him. Damen hasn’t told him too much about Laurent, nor has he asked what Berenger was expecting, but it’s abundantly clear that Laurent isn’t it.
The two of them don’t waste any time with fripperies. Berenger takes the single armchair closest to Laurent and sits down. From his satchel, Laurent takes out a small recording device. After confirming his permission to record, he presses a button and sets the device down on the coffee table between them.
No one says a word for a little while. Berenger can’t take his eyes off the recording device. He looks physically uncomfortable, every muscle in his expression broadcasting his mounting hesitation. Laurent waits for him and holds fire: he doesn’t begin barraging him with questions, but neither does he tease out his concerns in order to soothe them.
Damen is breathless with nerves. He knows what it’s like to sit before an impersonal third party and their recording device. Berenger’s look is that of a man standing behind a line, who hasn’t contemplated the act of stepping over it long or hard enough.
Feeling spare, Damen says, “I’ll make coffee”. At least it will give him something to do. He withdraws to the kitchenette with one ear on the proceeding.
Laurent doesn’t jump into the deep end. He charts a slow course from shallow waters, beginning with the mundanities of Berenger’s life: his study, his work, his family. They spend a long time on these questions—so long that Damen wonders whether they’ll finish within an hour.
But at some point, he realizes that the tension in Berenger’s shoulders has slackened. He holds himself a little less stiffly, easing back into the copious comforts of his armchair. By the time Damen returns with a sweet, milky brew for each of them, they barely glance at him as he sets the mugs down. He retrieves his own and then settles in to watch Laurent at work.
Laurent, for his part, does not interview formally. He has no pens or paper, or any notes, and only the recorder differentiates this conversation from a normal one. His gaze is tunnelled on Berenger, the unwavering line of it a fixed point to which Berenger’s attention is hooked. Damen had expected Laurent to procure information by grilling, but his mind draws a comparison—perhaps a little stupidly—to hypnosis.
Gently, wave by wave, Laurent steers the conversation to more pointed harbours.
He begins by asking nudging questions about Ancel: how they had met and how long they had been together. He asks about what had drawn them together and how they passed their time, all with the familiarity of an old and sincerely interested friend. Periodically, Damen has to remind himself that he’s watching an interview, but he can tell that Laurent’s amiability serves a purpose: Berenger begins volunteering information more freely.
So much so that he takes them to what happened unprompted.
Damen has already watched Berenger recite the story twice: once to him, and a second time to Nikandros, after curiosity had trumped his warnings. The emotional toll of it doesn’t lessen with repeated narrations. Berenger’s tone still crests with anxiety at the point of his father’s confrontation, and still stutters at the point where he breaks the news to Ancel.
And through the whole story, a sharp thread of despair to understand why him—why, after a lifetime of seeking the quiet corners of high society, Damen’s brother had decided to stalk him there.
But then, at least, he’s done. He looks dazed with the effort of it. Damen watches him reach for the mug and knock back a few gulps of his coffee, which is probably cold by now. His body tremors with a movement that is neither a shudder nor an exhalation. Then he looks back up at Laurent.
“Are we done?” He asks. He sounds tense, hopeful.
Laurent’s eyes are sharp, but he answers with a gentle tone. It’s a mesmeric combination, and disorients Damen even though it’s targeted at someone else.
“Thank you for speaking to me. I know this isn’t easy to discuss.” He says, and then stops. “But if there’s something further that you’re not telling me, now would be the time to do it. I can’t help if you don’t give me all the pieces. ”
Berenger’s guard, which Laurent had so expertly dismantled earlier in the meeting, reconstructs itself in a flash.
“Why do think I’m hiding something?” He asks.
Which makes Damen worry, quite violently, that he is. His knuckles whiten around the mug in his hands, his grip tight enough to burst its ceramic into ash.
“Are you?” Says Laurent. It’s very intentionally a non-answer.
A pause, then. A long one. One that extends well past the point of discomfort for Damen and Berenger, but it doesn’t have a drop of effect on Laurent.
“No.” Says Berenger, too quietly. The word falls unconvincingly into the silence, a poor show of conviction. Laurent doesn’t move, just keeps watching him. And then, under the weight of that crystalline stare, Berenger says—in an even quieter voice—“Yes.”
The room tilts around Damen. Never has he been more grateful for the presence of someone else to carry the conversation in his stead.
“In your own time.” Laurent says.
It takes Berenger a moment to collect himself. This time, he has to do so visibly. He leans forward, elbows on his legs, and scrubs his face in his hands. Damen watches the way his back rises and falls around the laboured pattern of his breathing.
For his own part, Damen cannot react. As much as he needs to, this moment is not about him.
When Berenger eventually looks up, his face is haunted by a look that Damen’s never seen him wear before. It takes him a moment to recognize it for what it is: fear. He realizes, then, that Berenger’s grace has been a far more convincing performance than presumed.
Kastor, what have you done?
From somewhere in the room, a clock ticks away unseen. The journey between second and second seems to last an age.
“Photos,” He says, the word coming out faint even in the quiet. “The man who threatened my father had photos of Ancel and me.”
“Just so we’re clear,” Laurent says evenly, “what kind of photos do you mean?”
Berenger’s answer is a despairing thing. “What else would I mean? Intimate photos.”
The gathering pool of dread in Damen’s belly suddenly and forcefully acidifies. Around him, the room spins again, this time in the opposite direction. He turns to Laurent, who does not pay him fractional attention.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve seen them.” Says Berenger, hollowed. “He showed them to my father, and then sent copies in the post to him and to me. They came with a note.”
“A threat?” Laurent guesses. Berenger’s silence is confirmation enough.
“It said that if my father didn’t cooperate fully with Kastor, he’d leak the photos.”
“Was your phone hacked, then?”
Berenger closes his eyes, shakes his head. “No. We didn’t take the photos ourselves. Ancel and I went on holiday to Arles two months ago. They were taken then. Someone must have planted a camera in our hotel room.
Damen puts his mug down and hangs his face in his hands, willing the room to stand still.
When he looks up, he finds Laurent’s unreadable gaze waiting for him. It’s a searching glance, as though Laurent is looking for something. Damen has no idea what it could possibly be. Kastor had done this. His own brother, his blood. He cannot think past the liquid shame in his veins.
Whether or not Laurent finds what he’s looking for, he turns back to Berenger. His expression is softer in turn. “Is there anything else?”
Damen thinks, Please, no. But Berenger nods.
“It’s happened again. My father was approached by someone else.” He says, looking to Damen. “Senator Guion. They’ve done the same thing to Aimeric.”
Damen closes his eyes against it. “No.”
“Thank you.” Says Laurent, sidestepping the revelation like it’s nothing more than a crack in the street. “I only need few more things from you. You say the man came to your father’s address?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to need the security footage. I need his picture and any vehicle he came in if I’m going to figure out his identity.” Says Laurent. “And forgive me—but I’m going to need to sight the photos and the envelope they came in.”
“Is that it? Are we done now?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Then, with slender fingers, he picks up the tape recorder and presses stop. Damen exhales—there would be no more revelations, at least for today—but it does little to uncoil the ropes that have tightened around his lungs.
“I’m sorry.” He blurts out, surprising himself as much as Berenger or Laurent. But the words have been spoken, and others follow suit. “I don’t know if that means anything coming from me. But I am.”
Berenger regards him wearily, and doesn’t respond.
The goodbyes are a terse, formal thing. Berenger wastes no time in leaving. Now that the interview is finished, he doesn’t need to be here, and it’s abundantly clear that he doesn’t want to be, either. Damen accompanies him the few metres to the door and sees him off.
Closing the door behind him is a small relief.
But the air heavier in his wake. When Damen turns around, Laurent is already standing up with his satchel looped over his shoulder. Damen doesn’t know what to say to him.
Laurent speaks first. “Are you alright?” He asks. It’s posed stiffly. Their jesting an hour earlier seems a world away.
“No.” He responds. “I can’t make sense of it.”
“Berenger and Guion both served with your father. Do you think it has something to do with him?
Damen shakes his head. “My father’s been dead for a decade. If it had anything to do with him, it would have surfaced earlier.” And then, something else that’s been preying on his mind: “How did you know that Berenger was keeping something else?”
“I didn’t.” Laurent says. “I guessed.”
*~*~*
Laurent returns to the office and immediately begins transcribing the interview. He doesn’t let himself think about where this story could go, how cataclysmic it might become, or the fact that he’s now got someone on record about it. He would have liked talked to Halvik, to sit her down and play through the entire interview for her, but she’s in Bazal for a week.
Once he finishes transcribing, Laurent returns to his actual work.
He continues with a profile of the Senate Majority Caucus Chair, a man named Petrides with the charm of stagnant water. Laurent’s disdain for the man has seeped into every single paragraph despite his valiant efforts. He tasks himself with notching it back to a mild dislike. A container of salad lies forgotten and wilting by his side. The cleaners come and go, and so do most of his colleagues.
At around 8, Martha knocks on his door. Her face is creased with discomfort.
“Laurent.” She says. “There’s a man for you at reception.”
Laurent raises an eyebrow. “At this hour?”
“Never seen him before. Flaming redhead.” She shrugs. “I asked if I could take a message, but he said he had something for you. Insisted on delivering it in person.”
Laurent rises from his desk, with a fair idea of who’s waiting for him.
In the reception area is a young man, no older than 23 or 24, with an imperious poise in his spine. He leans casually against the front desk, his deep red hair worn chest-length and falling around him in lush cascades. Laurent’s attention is drawn immediately to his startling green eyes, as well as the manila envelope in his hands.
“Ancel, I presume. ” Laurent says lightly.
Dry, sensible, artless Berenger clearly contained multitudes.
Something in Ancel’s expression sours at the sound of his name—or perhaps, at the sound of Laurent speaking it.
He says, like a man before a putrid heap, “We need to talk. Privately.”
Laurent gestures to one of the interview rooms branching off from the reception area, and follows Ancel inside. With a final quirk of his brow at Martha, he closes the door behind them. No sooner does the latch click shut than Ancel spins around to face him. His expression is militant and the set of his shoulders presages confrontation.
Before Ancel can speak, Laurent interjects. “I presume, since you’re here, that Berenger has told you who I am.”
“I don’t give a flaming fuck who you are,” says Ancel. He practically spits it out.
Laurent is unperturbed. “Perfectly understandable, given the circumstances. ”
The concession does little to endear him. “I don’t know you. I don’t like you. I don’t trust you.,” says Ancel. “And I don’t know why Berenger thinks I should, given the likes of who drudged you up.”
Laurent’s jaw twitches but his mind cuts the wire before he can respond. Some people weren’t there to be won over. Ancel is one of them. Defending Damen—which he realizes, with a startle, is what he had been about to do—wouldn’t make this any easier either.
“Then why are you here?” He asks, flattening his tone.
“Because I trust Berenger more than I dislike you,” he says, and holds the manila envelope out between them like flaming sword. “And he thinks you should have these.”
“And ‘these’ are?” He asks, even though he already knows the answer.
“The CCTV footage, the photos, the information they sourced—everything.”
Laurent reaches for the folder, and feels a moment’s resistance before Ancel finally lets it go. It’s heavy in his hands. He can feel paper and plastic, documents and disks under his fingers.
Yesterday, Damen’s hunch had been nothing more than words, but now, it’s a story. It has a long way to go, for sure, but at least his hands have found grip and his feet a foothold. Now, finally, he can focus on the next step.
“I realize that you might not care to hear it from me,” Laurent says, “but thank you for bringing these documents to me. I appreciate their sensitivity.”
Ancel watches him with a cool, infuriated eye. He looks fit to lash out. A primitive remnant of Laurent’s mind measures the chances of him walking out of this room alive, if Ancel were to snap at him.
His odds are uninspiring.
When Ancel speaks again, his tone is deliberately low. “Let me be very clear,” he says, in a warning tone. “If we were dealing with this my way, Kastor would already be facedown in a ditch, drowning in a shallow pool of his own blood. Unfortunately, Berenger believes in diplomacy, but make no mistake—if you, or that scum Damianos, do anything to jeopardise me or Berenger, I will take matters into my own hands.”
“I don’t make a habit of betraying my sources.” Laurent answers. “It tends to be bad for business.”
“This isn’t business. This is our life.”
“I know. And I’m nailing my journalistic integrity to your welfare.” He says flatly. “I don’t need you to like me, but you’ll need to trust me to do my job.”
“Then do it and destroy Kastor.” Says Ancel, with acid. “And if you have to take his brother down with him, do it. The sooner this city is rid of that family, the better.”
And then, without waiting for a response, he shoulders past Laurent and knocks into him with a force that cannot be accidental. Then he’s gone.
Laurent takes a few moments to recompose himself in the quiet. He looks down at the manila envelope in his hands. He’s never held a loaded gun in his hands before, but he imagines the weight of it might feel something like this: potential and power and destruction, all of it dependent on the direction he chooses and the fidelity of his aim.
When he eventually emerges, Martha’s waiting for him behind the reception desk with a phone in her hands.
“Do I need to call the Police?” She asks.
He considers his words for a moment. “No. I’m just—having a very eventful month.”
He walks back to his office and it’s all he can do not to run there. His hands itch around the envelope, itch to open it, to sprawl out its contents on the nearest available surface and begin sorting. He locks the door and shutters the blinds because it feels appropriate, given what he’s about to look through. Then he piles all the papers for the Petrides piece into a single stack and consigns them to the floor.
Finally, he sits down. His fingertips teem with electricity.
The envelope is made of thick-set paper. The half-ream stack is arranged neatly, not even stapled. He takes it out gingerly and places it on his desk.
The item at the top is a CD. He listens with headphones and hears a recorded call between Senator Berenger—audibly upset—and a gruff sounding man with a voice like aged sandpaper. The Senator speaks very little. The other man is curt in his instructions, advising him that he’ll be back, and that Kastor Akielos looks forward to hearing the good news of the Senator’s cooperation. If the Senator finds himself wavering, says the man, he’s welcome to study the package of information left for him.
Lauren turns his attention to said package.
At the very top are pages with Ancel’s personal details: social security papers, medical records, and bank documents carrying a balance that makes Laurent briefly contemplate a change of career.
Then, his roster of former clients, seized from an address book—a perfectly organized list of names and numbers, with detailed client notes of the kind to destroy reputations and lives. Laurent counts four high-ranking former civil servants amongst the names, and three members of the military, and an editor known personally to him. The list is a dozen different types of dynamite, and in different hands, might have been a story of its own. Not in Laurent’s.
Below those documents are extracts of intercepted text message conversations between him and Berenger—a thick wad of papers spanning the gamut of a relationship’s moments, from its mundane to its most claustrophobically intimate.
And then, at the very bottom—across thirty still shots—are the intimate images.
His expectation of their presence does little to ease the actual shock of seeing them. Having satisfied himself of their veracity, he quickly sheaths them back in the envelope: there won’t be any need to look at them any more. A pang of sympathy volleys in his chest for Ancel as he puts them away. Handing them over was no less than an act of bravery, given that Ancel likely wants to set them on fire and murder everyone who had ever seen them.
Beneath those are still images of the ugliest man Laurent has ever seen, entering and then exiting the offices of Senator Berenger. Security footage never provides a forgiving portrait, but the images are just sharp enough to broadcast the full menace of him. He’s thickly set at every limb and joint, a tree-trunk made flesh, and his face bears the irregularity of multiple broken bones. An unpleasant feeling slithers down Laurent’s back just at the sight of him.
He remains seated for a long while, the immediate course forward falling into place before him. First: find the identity of the ugly stranger. Second: find Senator Guion’s son. Third, investigate anything that might link Kastor to Guion and Berenger.
He locks away most of the papers in his safe, keeping with him half a dozen still images of the stranger. Then he leaves his office, crosses the floor, and goes to find Nicaise.
It’s close to 10pm. The resident enfant terrible is alone in his shared office, and doesn’t hear Laurent knock or come in for the headphones jammed in his ear. Whatever he’s listening to, it’s loud enough for a tinny, watered-down version of the melody to reach the door.
Laurent goes for the nuclear option, yanking them out. Nicaise stops typing and swivels around in his chair with a thundering expression. Laurent withstands it easily and pulls up a chair: Nicaise looks too boyishly puckish to pull off anger well.
“I have a midnight deadline.” Nicaise says.
“I’m sure you do.” Laurent says. “I’m also sure that whatever it is, it doesn’t need a sixteenth round of edits.”
Nicaise narrows his eyes. “Don’t you have a Senator to go plough?”
“Are you accusing me of not working hard enough, Nicaise?”
“I’m sure you’re working very hard,” comes the response, dramatically, “on your back.”
Laurent snorts. He had expected nothing less.
Nicaise is the youngest member of the writing staff. His predecessors had been quiet and keenly observant, deferential even when they had no need to be. Not so Nicaise, who had begun dispensing opinions less than an hour into his first day. It had the dual effect of searing Nicaise into the collective psyche, and creating an expectation that he would continue to cause trouble.
Laurent almost envied him.
“Suit yourself.” He says casually, standing up. “I’ll have to take my scoop to Erasmus.”
“You don’t have a scoop.” Nicaise accuses.
“Then you won’t mind if I give it to him.” Laurent says, over his back. He walks out, wondering how long it will take for Nicaise to call him back.
The answer is three steps out of the office. Then, a resounding “Wait!” comes from behind him.
Laurent turns around, eyeing Nicaise through the open doorway but not making a move to step back inside. It’s a stare-down, and Nicaise breaks first, rolling his eyes and slouching back in his chair.
“Christ on a stick, fine. I’m sorry. Come back inside and tell me about it.”
So he does, and offers the pages in his hands.
While Nicaise studies them, Laurent studies his workspace. The bin is piled high with cartons of takeout. An overnight bag lies under his desk. A small pile of casual clothes languishes on the back of another chair. His in-tray, under the weight of multiple files, sags in a permanent curve.
A part of Laurent feels guilty about giving him more work. Another part won’t dare trust something this sensitive in the hands of anyone else.
“I’ve been given a sliver of interesting information from a not-disreputable source.” He says. “I’m working early leads. I still don’t know how much will stick.”
“Then why waste two staff on it?”
“Because the allegations are serious ones, against powerful people, and I need your eye for detail.” Laurent says.
Nicaise doesn’t immediately respond, which Laurent takes with unbidden hope as a sign of interest in the work. “Give me a précis.”
“A very powerful senator is blackmailing other very powerful senators using highly personal information for reasons we don’t yet know.” He says. “Allegedly.”
There is a long pause. Nicaise frowns, the sapphire of his eyes clouding over. “This has something to do with your boyfriend, doesn’t it?”
“Damen is my source.” Says Laurent. “He was approached by the son of Senator Berenger, The Senator was blackmailed by a goon we believe was sent by Kastor. Junior went to see Damen, and Damen came to me.”
“And you’re fucking him? Laurent, this is—”
“I’m not. We needed to find a way to spend time together without having people ask why. I’m not fucking him, I promise you,” Laurent says drily. “I just need people to think I am.”
Nicaise folds his arms and leans back. As he thinks it over, he swivels a little to either side. Laurent is almost certain that he’s going to say yes, but if it takes a performance of doubt to get there, he’ll have to sit through it.
Finally, after too long, Nicaise says, “What do you need?”
Laurent nods towards the papers in his hands. “What I need,” he says, “is the name of that beauty queen. He’s the one that approached Berenger’s father. I don’t have his name or date of birth, but I need you to find him for me.”
“You want me to find a needle in a haystack the size of the whole country?”
“Are you saying you can’t?”
“Go fuck yourself,” says Nicaise, without venom. He looks back down at the photos. “I’m keeping these for reference.”