Work Text:
He doesn't know why he wears it.
He's never been much of a necklace guy. Not when the cool cats of the disco crowd were rocking gold chains, not when puka shells took over amongst the surfer faction. Not even when the self-indulgent style of rebellious, fraudulent dog tags came into trend.
But he's worn this one for as long as he can remember. Which, to be fair, isn't a lot these days. The smack had really done a number on him. As did the cocaine. Hell, the LSD and 'ludes probably didn't help much either.
He doesn't do that shit anymore, for the record. Save for maybe a bump or two at those glitzy fundraisers he hates, when his editor's pressed him to schmooze with the high-profile sources he's planning to expose, or when he's burning the midnight oil, chasing a lead with the need to stay sharp, or just to keep his fucking eyes open.
This necklace, though - at this point, it's become as familiar a weight on his skin as his own regrets. A small, intricately adorned little vial that hangs from a thin leather cord. It's a strange piece of jewelry, mostly because of the odd sort of liquid-type stuff inside it. Daniel’s never known or much cared to figure out what it is, but it’s dark red in colour and thick, kind of like a lava lamp. Way smaller, though. He must've picked it up during one of his benders in Haight-Ashbury, back in the day.
That's what he figures anyway. That's what he told Alice the first night they tumbled into bed together. See, 'cause she'd asked him to take it off because it kept bumping into her chin and face when he fucked her, but Daniel - he'd been hit with an overwhelming urge to do the exact opposite. To keep it on, to hold it tight, to wrap it twice, thrice around his throat until he was nearly suffocated by it, and fuck, where the fuck did that come from?
He didn't do any of those things, in the end. Instead he’d grabbed the pendant and twisted it around so the weight of it settled against the top of his spine, the cord slightly taut around the front of his neck. Better, Alice had said, and then he was right back to swallowing her moans with his own eager mouth and making her come.
It's the 90s, now, though, and he and Alice barely fuck anymore. Hell, they barely even talk. They still live together, because they've got Kate, who's a little firecracker of a human being, but Daniel knows he's not around enough for her, either. And he wants to change that, he does, because he loves her. He loves them both, even if one of them can hardly stand being in the same room as him and the other is nine years old and sparingly addresses him as "Dad", even then only when she needs to butter him up for something. Otherwise, she isn't afraid to show her strong preference toward her mother and make Daniel feel completely out of his depth at every turn.
Still. He's gotta provide for his family, and this is the only way he knows how. He's a bright young reporter with a point of view. Decidedly less young than when he'd first heard the advice from an indistinct guy with an indistinct voice, sure, but they're words that still tether him back to the land of the living whenever he spirals a little too hard.
Tonight, he's in a shitty motel just outside Washington, D.C. He’s digging deep into the implications of the CALEA legislation—wiretapping under the guise of national security, the rapid erosion of privacy rights. What a mess. He's drowning in confidential government memos, industry reports, intercepted comms from whistleblowers, and the pile keeps growing, and it'll take him a few weeks to sort through it all, at the very least, and it’s all a fucking mess. And very possibly his next big break.
But it’s been a fucking day, the sun having come and gone ages ago, which is only something he notices when he looks up from the wobbling desk and into the desolate, shadow-drenched parking lot.
Still, some stars out there. It’s kind of nice.
He pulls the blinds and makes his way to the local pub for a few brews. He gets a little buzzed but nothing too crazy. Just enough to help him settle and uncross his eyes after a long day of poring over documents and deciphering his own chicken scratch of notes.
On the way back, he grabs a couple calling cards and a pack of Winstons from a convenience store. He chain-smokes three of them before going back into the room. The hinge creaks a little as he opens the door.
He tries phoning Alice - phoning home - to see if he can catch Kate before her bedtime. It rings, and rings, and no one picks up. He reminds himself not to start cursing when he hits the beep. Daniel opens his mouth, about to speak into the receiver: Hey, it's me. Just checking in. Must've missed you for bed. Give Kate a kiss for me. Hoping to wrap this shit up within the month. I'll try a call again tomorrow.
But... he doesn't. He can't get the words out. It's like something is sitting on his ribcage, all of a sudden, preventing his vocal cords from rearing up. It's so fucking… heavy. Fuck, how long ago did the tone go off? Has he just been sitting here, slack-jawed and mute for the last ten, fifteen seconds?
Fuck. It's too weird to say anything now. He hangs up with more force than is probably necessary. Shit. Shit. What the fuck was that? Can't even get a stupid message home right.
May as well get ready for bed himself. Daniel goes to the shitty bathroom and does a shitty, cursory job of brushing his teeth and washing his face.
He usually sleeps with clothes on these days, but it's fucking hot in this crappy fucking room, so Daniel gathers the material of the t-shirt at his waist and scrambles it up and off and throws it into a corner. He does the same with his pants, then moves some papers around and settles into the bed.
Twin-sized. Too soft. Not terrible, but not ideal, either. He prefers adequate lumbar support and plenty of space on a mattress. Oh well.
The necklace is always cool on his skin, its silver pendant usually a comfort, but tonight it feels oddly warm. A little too metallic. He feels it against him a lot, constantly, actually, because he normally hides it under the collar of whatever he's wearing, since it’s too weird and inconsistent with his style to show it off. Honestly, it's not even really a necklace. It's kind of like... an amulet. And there’s a tingling in him now when he tries to recall again where he got it, or why it was so important he keep it on.
Was it Haight-Ashbury? Could've just as easily been Mission District or Nob Hill.
But there was someone with him, too, wasn’t there? When he’d gotten it?
Daniel squints even though his eyes are already closed. He's getting a migraine and his chest still feels fucking heavy. But this feels significant. Like some sort of a breakthrough, or something.
Dark hair, he thinks. Dark skin. Thin. But not skinny. Beautiful.
A woman?
No. A man.
God. Daniel hasn’t thought about men in a while. He hasn't fucked a man or stuck a needle in his arm since 1985. The year Alice got pregnant.
And the height of the epidemic. He considers himself one of the lucky ones by a mile. Less so because of the men and more so because of the drugs. He thinks of all those who’ve died, all those who are still dying, and it pierces his heart like an ice pick. He remembers the fearmongering and the hate crimes and he recalls burying that part of himself away. Of course, that never meant abandoning his support for the community—hell, he dove even deeper into the research, covering the stories, exposing discriminatory practices—but on a personal level, he’d shut the lid on all that.
It was cowardice, on his part. He was a coward, and he's finally able to acknowledge that now. But at the time, it was the resolute belief that he would be DOA if folks in the field found out Daniel Molloy didn’t just like getting in bed with girls, but boys, too. It was easier this way. Stick to the one people didn't vilify and ostracize you for.
So yeah, he buried that part of himself deep. But not so deep that he didn’t still think about men at night from time to time, when Alice was fast asleep and his hand would wander beneath the waistband of his boxers.
Not so deep that he didn’t consider dipping his toe back in when he was away on work trips, noticing the eye-up from the guy at the hotel bar or the rapt attention from a fellow journalist at a press conference. He never followed through, though. Some strand of lingering fear still ruling his body, pulling the strings for him.
Dark hair. Bright eyes.
Okay, yeah, maybe a little jerking off could be good.
He rubs small circles over his abdomen - his belly a little more filled out than it used to be, his body having made those incremental changes as he’s aged - and realizes he hasn’t breathed much these last few minutes.
Deep breath now. He tilts his head back and trails that same hand down and gets it around his cock. Then he goes through the usual list of men, the A-listers he thinks of when he’s in the mood for thinking about men.
Paul Newman. Harry Belafonte. Marc Bolan. Keir Dullea in Space Odyssey. Bowie, Dean, Mercury.
Daniel tries for a good few minutes. He's half-hard, so it's half-working, but he's starting to chafe and the heaviness in his chest is only becoming more cumbersome.
Dullea. Bolan. Newman. Eastwood. Eastwood? No, nothing.
Nothing but that same mop of dark, curly hair from earlier. What's his face look like? He tries to remember. But it’s blurred around the edges. Maybe it’s not even about remembering. Could just be a figment of his imagination, or the memory of some blindingly hot guy he'd only perceived when he was high as a kite. Fuck. Figures.
His migraine is getting worse. Sharper. Shit, it’s getting harder to breathe. He’s out of aspirin and forgot to buy more. Why does he feel so hot? It’s not even the kind of hot he'd normally get when aroused, but the prickly, so-hot-you’re-cold kind of thing. Christ, he’s sweating. It’s uncomfortable.
And the spot just beneath his collarbone hurts. Why does it fucking hurt?
The correlation comes to him belatedly, but the second he pinpoints it, he realizes: the amulet feels like it's burning its way through him.
Daniel’s eyes snap open and he flicks on the light and there's terror in his heart, rattling its way through his bones as he expects to discover the worst, but he's—
Fine. He's fine. The skin on his chest where the necklace rests isn't red or raised or burnt.
Weird. Really fucking weird.
He turns off the light and settles back into bed. The amulet is still hanging around his neck. He’s been wanting to take it off for a while now; it’s starting to unsettle him. Daniel’s never really believed in that mystical woo-woo shit, but the pain he’s feeling is too precise, too intense, almost oppressive. He should remove it.
But he doesn't. He just holds it between his thumb and forefinger, because the little divots and carvings against the pads of his fingers have always been calming, and maybe that’ll do the trick this time, too. He's never looked close enough to see what the designs actually entail, but they feel pretty.
And then, without any warning at all, a strange and unusual impulse strikes him.
He wants to crack it open.
It doesn’t take much more than a bit of pressure and a squeeze, but suddenly Daniel hears the faint crackle of it and it’s done, it’s open. The tiny shards of glass don’t cut him, because he doesn’t feel any pain, but he’s met with a strong, iron-rich scent that overwhelms his senses.
Then he's hit with another compulsion. Against his better judgment, he wants to taste it. It smells almost sweet, now, as he brings it to his mouth. It's the smallest amount, barely dripping off his index, and he presses it right to his tongue, and it tastes like...
Fuck. It tastes like blood.
Daniel doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. A whimper escapes him as the tang of it, the sticky-sweet sensation, engulfs him with an inexplicable familiarity—a comfort that he can't even begin to understand.
A feverish shiver turned warm. A dry sob wracks through him, the subsequent tremor rippling through his extremities.
Who are you?
He's calling out for someone whose name he doesn't know, whose face he barely sees, whose shrouded presence feels celestial and infinite and poised at the tip of the tongue that’s just tasted this alien, recognizable substance.
And then, something. A flare, a flicker. A response?
Rest, he hears, but not through his ears, and not in his mind, but as if the sound has clawed its way from the past and stretched its tendrils forward into the present, wrapping around his soul and tugging insistently.
Daniel clutches his chest and cries out again. It feels something like love. Something like home. It's all-consuming and it hurts and he wants more.
Who are you? Come back to me.
No one’s in the room. No one else has come into the room but him. There’s no evidence of that whining hinge, no crack in the sealed window. But he thinks - he feels someone kissing him. Entwined in him. Someone sharing their essence with him. He’s sharing his essence back. The feeling, it doesn’t have a face anymore. It’s grown so far beyond that. Just out of his scope.
In the bed, Daniel’s hand reaches out, as if to touch. He knows he’ll find nothing but air, but nevertheless he finds himself begging. Please, come back. Don’t leave.
He’s a man in his forties and he’s crying like a goddamn baby over something that doesn't exist. He’s crying over an idea, a feeling. None of it makes sense. Daniel’s never been a romantic, he isn’t like this. So why’s this happening to him now? And why does it all feel so real?
Rest now.
And with that, every cell in his body turns sluggish and he’s hit with the overpowering urge to sink into sleep. Okay, yeah, he thinks, silently agreeing with the unearthly presence. Time to rest.
He thinks he sees a pair of glowing, orange headlights before he drifts off.
When he sleeps, he dreams.
He dreams that someone’s coming into the bed with him. It’s like he plucked the looming, nonexistent apparition he was aching for when he was awake and manifested it into his dreamscape.
And he knows it’s a dream, because the twin bed suddenly feels so much larger. The person who settles themselves into it, next to Daniel, is tall. They drape their thin, strong arms around him and bury their nose into his neck and hair. Daniel’s leg climbs until it’s hooked around the person’s waist and he pushes in closer, as if he’s been waiting for them. He doesn’t know who they are, but he’s been waiting. The person holds him, cradling him so tenderly that Daniel’s body practically liquefies into the embrace, surrendering to a deep, long-forgotten peace.
He breathes them in but they don’t smell much like anything. His migraine is gone. He’s surrounded by the presence, the faceless person whose appearance is gradually growing clearer, and Daniel dreams of honey and warm spice. He dreams of some faraway, vaguely European land. He sees faint ships in the distance on still, black waters and tilts his gaze up to see violet-inked skies.
Someone calling him sweet names brings him back into the bed. A lilting, otherworldly voice that simultaneously calms and excites him, his pulse beating its steady, defiant wings in his chest, and he listens for the spectre's heartbeat, too. But he can’t locate it. Which makes sense, he thinks hazily, afterwards. He wraps his limbs around them, feels what seems like a human body, feels them melding and fusing until two becomes one. Daniel’s anxieties seep away. Lips are moving against his cheek, kissing tears. Had he been crying, even still?
Yes. Don’t cry, Daniel.
In his dream, Daniel blinks through the wetness and pulls back to look. The face that gazes back is breathtaking; youthful, one that belies the wisdom it conceals. A nose with a regal curve, lips that show off a graceful, gentle arch, and bright, bright eyes.
It knows his name. Of course it knows his name. It’s home, they’re home. He’s–
Who are you? he tries to ask again.
The phantom doesn’t respond. They don’t speak again. They kiss Daniel on the lips, briefly, and fold themselves over Daniel again, encompassing him like a veil, like a protective shroud.
Daniel spends the remainder of the night in its arms. He sleeps deeply, the moving images in his mind calming, and he neither flinches nor moves, save to nestle himself closer.
When he finally wakes, there’s no one next to him. Why would there be?
With the blinds failing miserably to block out the high sun, he tries to remember the nightmare for what it was. But he can’t. He can’t hold onto it any longer than a wisp of smoke dissolving with every trawl of the morning light.
He turns around and stretches his body. The right side of his neck is a little sore. He massages it to little avail; he must’ve slept on it wrong.
Wait. Not a 'nightmare'. A dream.
He looks down at his chest. The necklace he’s been wearing for as long as he can remember is cracked open. There’s no liquid in it, save for the lingering tinge of crimson staining its insides. Maybe he'd accidentally crushed it in his sleep. Well, there goes that. He won’t be able to wear it anymore, and Alice might’ve had a chuckle over that if they were still having real conversations with each other.
He grabs the watch on the shitty bedside table. Fuck. He’s slept in. He hasn’t slept in in years.
Daniel leaps out of bed, gets some clothes on, and prepares for the long day ahead.
As for whatever the hell happened here last night—whether it was some sort of nervous breakdown or something else entirely—Daniel knows he may never solve that mystery.
And he’s okay with that. Oddly enough, he’s okay with it. But the fragments that he is still able to hold on to, he’s going to hold on fucking tight. He snaps the cord off his neck and pockets the remnants.
He’ll keep it safe there.
When he steps out of the motel for a smoke and a coffee, Daniel feels a flicker of something... strange, and bright, inside him. A quiet conviction that maybe he’s not quite ready to become the grizzled, lonely, jaded man he's long feared he was on the path to becoming. That maybe there were wonders and promises that the world still offered, and that maybe he wasn’t ready to let go of those just yet.
There are stories that need to be told.
But some of them—a small, precious few—are worth keeping close to the heart.