The Dragon's Lair

[void31]

He'd been dreaming of Woodstock.


Over the span of several weeks succeeding his interaction with Nicolas Cardou, Victor had gone to bed early, and his head ballooned with caricatures of the past. Fields upon fields of thrashing, screaming bodies surging to bizarre melodies, woven within each other as a single mass of every imaginable color. He could recall the beat of the music, but no words--simply a dull thrum beneath his feet, another cloud in his head to twist his vision and burn on the back of his tongue. He'd been full of sweat and bad breath and hunger, all a kind of horrible bliss that he simply couldn't be without.


He dreamed of other things, too. A shiny 61 Lincoln Continental stretch limousine, dark blue, freshly polished and glowing in the Texas heat, its luxurious backseat drenched in crimson. The words "I'm so sorry for your loss," on his lips. The genuine guilt hanging in his stomach like a rock that wouldn't budge.


Funerals, almost consistently. Horse-drawn caskets rolling down grand streets swathed with people who stood among their children, screaming and sobbing for someone they'd never known.


He woke up angry every time.


Not at himself, of course. Victor was certainly accustomed to these retaliations of his subconscious. He knew that some part of him was hurt by his past, but the longer he chose to ignore it, he thought, the easier it became to bear.


All his fury was directed to Nicolas. He blamed the boy for bringing him back to those days. For making him think about what he did, why he did it, and all the people he'd hurt in the process. All the panic and wrath and angst he'd caused them. The trail of damage he'd left in his wake.


Perhaps, he now reflected, that was part of the reason he'd chosen to follow Nicolas again.


Now, given, he would have had to follow him either way; regardless of how very close they'd become in the span of those few hours they'd spent together, Victor was borderline required to keep tabs on the kid. Just because he'd spared someone a death sentence didn't mean he was careless.


He'd been watching Nicolas, as he had before, with incredible attention to detail. He traced the kid's every step and memorized his every routine right down to the names of the kids he sat with during study hours--an otherwise pointless piece of information, except in cases such as now.


Victor drove, of all things, a black Continental inspired by his nightmares: a sleek, vintage, boxy thing that required an entire storage unit to accommodate its unusual length. It was one of his few first loves.


It was that Continental that pulled up to the curb outside NYU's Performance Center at around noon on a certain Tuesday. Victor, recently relieved of duty and looking for all the world like a Man in Black in his dark suit and sunglasses, strode casually across the lawn with his hands buried in his pockets.


"Excuse me, son," he called as he approached the trio, his chin raised in Nicolas' direction. In the time they'd been apart, Victor had changed little: his hair was a bit longer, his wardrobe notably upgraded, but nothing too drastic. He noticed, with a barely visible quirk of his lips, that Nicolas was much the same. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

 

[kindaemissary]

He had been stuck in the rut of studying when he was interrupted, and while he normally would have appreciated the disturbance, the sight of Victor looming over him yet again wasn't something he really needed to see. Nicolas could feel his friends' eyes on him as he set his laptop on the grass next to him and used the the trunk of the tree to aid him as he rose from the ground, his eyes trained on Victor the entire time.


This was the last thing he expected to happen when he woke up that morning, but he would take what he could get.


Victor looked practically the same from when Nicolas saw him last, the main difference being the sober look in his eyes. His eyes were still burning embers, hair a calculated mes, and body a jumble of limbs that whispered strangled secrets and vulnerable serenity. On the outside, Victor looked almost innocent as he stood before Nicolas. There was no deliberate destruction in his eyes.


The sight alone of him being on the NYU campus was enough to trouble Nicolas. He knew that the older man knew much more about him than he realized and could use any of that information at any point in time that he wanted to, but Nicolas never expected it to while he was at school. Victor was encroaching on more personal territory at this point. Everything prior to this was public information, but showing up unannounced into his life was crude.


Nicolas shared a glance with his friends once he stood up and then looked back to Victor. "I'll be back in a sec," he said pointedly. He stalked away from his belongings and got far enough away so that his friends couldn't hear them at normal volume. Crossing his arms over his chest, he stopped and turned to Victor, eyes bitter and brows pinched.


"What do you think you're doing here?" he sneered. It made him anxious to see Victor again, and now he was already talking to him. If all went smoothly, the conversation wouldn't last too long and the other man would head back out to whatever hell hole he crawled out of. "What makes you think that any part of this is okay? I didn't say anything. There's no reason for you to be here." He gestured angrily towards the building nearest to them and then to the courtyard beyond that.


He shifted his body weight onto his other leg and glanced past Victor and towards his friends. They were watching him expectantly, and Nicolas refocused back on the matter at hand. He didn't want to explain this to Clayton or Will, but he knew they'd ask questions. Teenagers always did. His arms left their cross pattern across his chest and made their way in his back pockets, snug tight against two sides of denim.


After their first encounter, Nicolas deliberately changed the way he monitored the media. Was this part of that? Somehow, did this psychopath realize that the young man following his publicized carnage hadn't let it go like he was told? Nicolas had changed so much in his process that he didn't think it was possible. Deep down inside, he knew that Victor hadn't stopped watching him. The other man had to make sure he was obeying the set of rules he laid out, and to an extent, Nicolas was. He hadn't gone anywhere or made a move that would insinuate to his knowledge.


He needed to stop jumping to conclusions.


With wild eyes, he ran a hand back through his hair. "If you think you need to check up on me, you don't. I already told you: these lips are sealed. No need for surveillance."

 

[void31]

"Hey, hey, relax, alright?" His mouth warped into a Cheshire grin. "I just came to check on you. How've you been, kiddo?"


The tone he'd taken was that of a man with more intentions than what he let on, and one so obvious that he didn't try to hide them.


"Listen." The glasses came off the bridge of his nose and disappeared into his pocket. "I don't trust you. I assumed you woulda known that. I don't trust you at all. More importantly—" He raised two fingers to gesture over Nicolas' shoulder at the rest of his posse. "I don't trust your buddies. What exactly have you been doing while I was gone?"


There was a hint of paranoia in his tone which Victor did not concede to. He wasn't worried, he told himself; he was merely doing his job thoroughly. The simple fact of the matter was that he did not trust Nicolas, and he did not trust Nicolas' friends. It only took two to keep a secret.


He knew what Nic had been doing, too. He'd been watching his every move like a hungry vulture. He knew he hadn't been talking, and he knew that his friends knew nothing of the incident or the relationship between them.


But he needed to hear it. He needed to assure that subconscious part of his mind that needed eight kinds of pills or the truth to settle. Victor had struggled with anxiety all his life, but it was not a matter of genetics or mental illness. Occupations such as his own tended to result in such side effects, and they were ridiculously difficult to tend to unless he heard things from the horse's mouth.


Nicolas could lie, of course, but at least Victor knew how to deal with that.

 

[kindaemissary]

"You can't check up on me when I'm at home?" Nicolas argued. He pulled one hand out of his pocket and placed it against his hip and slowly tried to level his breathing. Being in the same space as Victor made him more skittish than he thought it would. The fact that Victor had come to his school of all places to grill him about staying in line was what really set him off. In retrospect, he should have expected something like this.


Nicolas sighed and looked away from Victor, eyes traveling back towards his friends again and then towards the performance center and the courtyard beyond. He knew that he didn't have an out if he needed one, and that was probably why the other man chose to see him on campus. He couldn't just run away from his problems here. They'd follow him wherever he went.


He reached over his chest and rubbed at his shoulders with his opposite arm, eyes back on Victor's. "You don't have to worry about my friends," he offered, and he turned his body so that it wasn't facing Clayton and Will head on. "I know you don't trust me, but that's your problem. You're the one who decided to let me go with a warning."


A lot of things had happened in the past few weeks but nothing that Nicolas thought Victor didn't already know about. Everything about him was calculated methodically, and Nicolas wasn't stupid. "You know I haven't been doing anything," Nicolas accused, eyes sharp. "I haven't gone back to Aria. I haven't tried to find out anything more about you by asking around. I still watch the news, but I can't exactly stop that. It's not like I can turn off the world around new to purposefully excuse you from my life." And it was mostly true. If he truly wanted to, he could have stopped digging online, but he figured that it wasn't enough to alert Victor. Maybe he was wrong.


"Do you really think I'd put my friends' lives in dangers just to play a little game with you?" Nicolas shook his head hotly before zeroing in on Victor again. "I didn't take your threat lightly. And if I did, you would have already know about it. It wouldn't have been hard to figure it out all over again. Couldn't be harder than carrying my body down sixteen flights of stairs."

 

[void31]

"You're right, you're right." The glasses had come out of his pocket again to be twirled around between Victor's fingers. He watched this spectacle through half-lidded eyes, nodding profoundly in tune to Nicolas' defense. "You're right about all of that. Well, most of it."


He gazed up at Nicolas through dark eyelashes. His hair looked as if he hadn't bothered to arrange it that morning, as it fell somewhat against his eyes, almost obscuring the left one completely. A soft, knowing smile was pinned to his shapely lips. He spoke without moving. "Listen, kid. Honestly, I'm not even gonna try to threaten you, 'cause it's gettin' real old. Hell, you sold me. I don't think you're doing anything I don't already know about. I don't see how you could be."


The glasses returned to the bridge of his nose, obscuring his sharp eyes behind black lenses as they drifted above Nicolas' head to settle again on his friends. "I just wanted to tell you to be careful. Because the more people who wonder about where you've been, what you've been doing--" His smile cracked to expose a sliver of straight ivory teeth. "--the more people I've got to watch. And that's pretty inconvenient for me, y'know?"


Victor leaned back, rolled his shoulders, heaved a great sigh, and said, loud enough to draw the attention of even the most committed students, "Just something to keep in mind."


It was a general enough statement. What he did next was not so commonplace.


His hand fell to Nicolas' shoulder, giving the appearance of a friendly gesture at first. The kind of thing a relative would do when telling one that their mother was in the hospital, or a kindhearted professor's attempt to counsel a sensitive student after their grade had dropped considerably. A simple squeeze of comfort or encouragement.


Then, in one fluid motion, Victor pulled him close, craned his neck, and pressed his lips against Nicolas'.


It wasn't remarkably violent or sloppy, but a tender peck on the lips wouldn't have left as deep an impression. He'd wanted something just deep enough to really rattle the kid. Something he could taste afterwards.


A solid five seconds later, he withdrew only because an unmanageable sneer had crippled his good form. His stomach fluttered and his eyes glinted. He'd leaned back no further than a few inches from Nicolas' face, and spoke in a low murmur. "But I like to see you squirm, so have fun explaining that to your buddies."


Victor gave him a final pat on the shoulder, straightened up, and waltzed off for a less conspicuous view.

 

[kindaemissary]

But I'm not doing anything! he wanted to scream. Throughout the time that Nicolas and Victor had been apart, the younger man hadn't done anything to draw the attention of his family or friends to Victor or anything that could be affiliated with him. Their lives were worlds apart and he wanted to keep it that way, but showing up out of the blue at NYU was making that a little more arduous than Nicolas wanted it to be. The only time he told anyone what he had done was when Jaxon asked where he was the morning after the rave, and the only thing he had said was that he went out, got a little too fucked up, and needed to sleep it off. No one had nudged him for anything else.


Maybe that was too much.


"Something to keep in mind," Nicolas muttered back under his breath. He didn't like Victor's arm on him, touching him, but he didn't push it away. Guess you don't hate it that much. The grip was just beyond comfort and inching towards the kind of control Nicolas could tell the older man liked to display.


He wasn't expecting the kiss, but it all happened so fast and before he realized what was happening Victor was already pulling away, looking at him like he was a spoil of war. Something to be pillaged. If Victor liked to watch him squirm, it was working. An involuntary shiver staggered up from his toes to the shoulder blades protruding from his back, arms pulled taut behind him as he stretched out, trying to make light of the situation.


"You're such a dick," he huffed as Victor walked away. He knew that it was true - he was going to have to explain all of this to his friends. It became apparent s he turned back around that this wouldn't be something he could blow off as nothing. They were expecting a story, some kind of tale from his part that led up to the fact that he was seeing an older guy.


Clayton and Will simply gaped at him as he sat back down against the tree trunk, ignoring all the while the light tingle still balancing on his lips.


"Dude," Will cried, and Nicolas had to look up towards them. Their faces contorted in confusion; their eyes tainted with disbelief. "What the fuck was that?"


"For a second I thought he was one of your TAs or something - maybe a cousin, I don't know - but then it got weird," Clayton interrupted. "Like, really weird, Nic. Seriously. What the fuck just happening? Some guy, a guy neither of us know actually, comes out of nowhere, pulls you away, and the kisses you goodbye? Are you seeing someone? Jaxon said you blew him off a couple weekends ago saying you partied to hard the night before. Is that what you really bailed on him for? You missed the party of the century for a hangover. Who does that?"


Nicolas rolled his head back and sighed loudly, cursing inwardly at Victor. "Jesus, calm yourselves, okay? We're not... We're not seeing each other, okay? I barely know the guy. It's just. It's complicated, right? And I really did bail on the party at Jax's because of a hangover. That guy has nothing to do with it."


Both of his friends snorted at the denial, but Nicolas knew that it was better at them pressing the issue. Defending himself on the account of Victor having anything to do with him was bothersome enough without the physical interaction. But Victor put it out there. For whatever reason, he decided that giving Nicolas something to think about was a good move on his part.


"You know you can tell us if anything is going on, right?"


Looking back at his friends, Nicolas wished it was that easy. Wished it was easy enough to tell them everything without having to worry about a threat on their lives and safety. The moment Victor knew of suspected that he had said anything to anyone, it was all over. He'd end up just like Victor had said - in a heap of broken bones on the side of the street. Nicolas didn't expect anything better to come out of it on his friends' behalf. He had to anticipate the worse.


He sighed again. "Yeah, I know, but there's really nothing to talk about. Seriously, guys. Nothing. If something happens-" he stopped and glanced behind him before looking back at them "-If it gets serious, you'll be the first to know. But for now, it's nothing. Just a random guy I met."


After studying his face, both Clayton and Will conceded from the badgering and went back to doing their work on separate computers. Nicolas sent another glare behind him. Hopefully Victor got what he had came for.

 

[void31]

Victor had dropped by the NYU Performance Center campus for two reasons that afternoon.


The first being, of course, his regular assessment of Nicolas Cardou and how he'd been handling their recent interactions. And since that was successful enough (if not a bit spontaneous), he could shift his focus to reason two with much less strain than he had anticipated.


Reason two did not involve Nicolas Cardou at all, in fact. Not for the most part.


Victor met with Mathias Kennedy every other week, if possible, and almost always during working hours. He'd known Mat for well over four decades. While the former had maintained the same job since he'd been offered it, the latter was required to switch things up every few years or so, mainly due to suspicious histories and whatnot. Six months ago, at Victor's request, Mathias had become a licensed psychology professor at New York University.


The two could've been brothers. Both possessed the vintage charm, the sharp eyes and sleek figures that made the men of their generation. Mat was just slightly darker and more heavily built than Victor, but with their mouths adorned with cigarettes and their eyes shielded by dark sunglasses, they could pass for twins.


"Good thing you got to 'im first," Mat rumbled, shaking his head. After Victor's speedy retelling of his recent experiences with Nicolas, he'd been left to offer his input to fill the unusual bout of silence between them. "I'd'a killed the damn thing, what with an attitude like that."


Victor sneered. "Yeah. You get used to it."


Both men had been lingering at the edge of the Performance Center courtyard, keeping Nicolas and his companions well within their sights.


"He hasn't worn you down at all?" Mathias grunted.


Victor shrugged. "All the fuckin' time. That's why I kissed the little smart ass."


A low chuckle emanated from his left. Victor smirked.


"Gotta keep 'em in line somehow." Mathias peered over the edge of his glasses as a ribbon of smoke curled to one side of his mouth. "Let me know if you're ever up to share. That's a good-lookin' kid."


Victor gave him a sharp elbow to the ribs, and hardly flinched when it was instinctively returned. Both of them were staring hard at Nicolas' congregation now. You're a dick. A wolfish grin curled his lips. He was a dick, wasn't he?

 

[kindaemissary]

"You know he's still over there, right? Watching you?"


Nicolas looked up at Will, followed his head nudge, and glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, Victor was still lurking around pretending to keep himself busy why he monitored Nicolas from afar. The young man had no reason to believe that Victor was doing anything else, especially as he chatted away at another man who looked almost as lecherous as Victor himself. It was unnerving.


"Don't worry about him," Nicolas groaned. "I get it. He's being creepy. Just let it go, okay? I have other things to focus on." He turned back towards his computer and started working on his paper again. It took him a good thirty seconds before he glanced back at his staring friends. "Oh my god, what?"


Clayton's lip quirked. "Are you, like, involved in something?"


Nicolas leaned his head back at crashed it into the trunk. "Jesus, you just can't let it go? I told you: nothing is going on. He's just some guy I met and now, apparently, he's following me around. I didn't, like, join the mob or anything like that."


"Dude, he's looking at you like he wants to eat you," Will pointed out, eyes focused behind Nicolas. "And he's talking to one of the new professors. That's a little too close for comfort, don't you think? Him coming to NYU?"


Glancing over his shoulder again, Nicolas glared towards the older men. They were far enough away from them that if they were loud enough, Nicolas could hear, but they kept their voices low. Talk about disadvantage.


"He's not a cannibal, Will," Nicolas griped. "If anything, he's just fucked in the head a little more than the rest of us are."


His friends continued to look between him and the men watching them, but Nicolas turned as much attention to his computer as he could. He thought when Victor left his apartment three weeks ago that that would be the end of it. He hadn't expected him to make friends on his college campus and weasel his way into Nicolas's life. Nicolas didn't have a lot of leverage here. Couldn't offer something in exchange for the surveillance even if he wanted to. If Victor was going to keep an eye on him, there was no stopping it. Even as he proceeded to hash out a shitty economic paper, he could feel Victor watching him.


Nicolas glanced to the corner of his laptop. 2:14 PM. He still had hours before he had an actual excuse to leave.


"It's kind of ominous, don't you think? The way they're just staring?"


"Fuck, can you just shut up about it already?" Nicolas pressed a hand to his face; rubbed his forehead hard. He didn't normally raise his voice towards his friends, but Jesus, let it be. "I mean, come on. They're going to keep doing it whether you stare back at them or not. That's what strange people do." He looked back again. Victor looked too smug with that cigarette in his hand. "You're driving me nuts more than he is," he muttered back and turned around to face Will and Clayton. "Just write your damn papers."

 

[void31]

"I think he likes you."


Victor caught Mathias' mischievous sideways look with a roll of his eyes. "I think he likes me about as much as I liked your grandfather."


Mathias shook his head, his expression pinched with the vaguest echo of bitterness before evening out into a gentle smirk. "I think he likes you, but he doesn't know it yet. I think he's scared of you."


"He should be scared of me." Victor turned to face Mathias full on, tapping the ash out of his cigarette. "I'll kill him if I have to, you know that."


Mathias raised his eyebrows. "I believe you." He looked at his friend with half-lidded eyes and pinched lips. "But I think you need to be careful when you make those threats. You get bold enough, Victor, you're gonna cause bigger problems for yourself." He nodded at the three boys. "Look at them. They're all concerned. Not everyone has shitty parents, Vic. If you leave three kids dead, people are gonna start asking questions."


Victor was silent. "I'm used to questions," he muttered at last. He replaced the cigar between his lips and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "And he hasn't given me a reason to hurt him yet, anyway."


Mathias responded in a brief exhale. He was just as youthful in appearance as Victor, but there was something tenser in his body language. His shoulders were stiff, jaw set, weight shifted more onto one leg than the other. He wasn't as limber or energetic as Victor. He took on the appearance of a man with great patience, but his posture spoke lengths of a physical pain that was just beyond comprehension.


"I would hope so," he murmured. "Because if you get your ass thrown in jail, I won't be the one to bail you out of it. What are we gonna do then?"


Victor hesitated before nudging the other with his shoulder. It wasn't anything like a playful punch or thrown elbow; the gesture was gentle, borderline affectionate.


He recovered quickly enough.


"Can you keep an eye on his buddies?" Victor asked. "At least while they're on campus. I don't think any of 'em are stupid enough to go chasin' criminals like this Nic kid, but I want to make sure."


Mathias nodded. "I'll look after everyone else. You keep an eye on your boyfriend."


Victor grimaced. "Shut the hell up."


He lifted his eyes to Nicolas, watching him bicker with his persistent friends and attempt to focus on his work while failing to be unnoticeable as he watched the two men converse. His grimace warped into a smirk. "He's watchin' me."


"What are you gonna do?"


Victor took a step forward, then paused. He watched Nicolas intently from the corners of his eyes. He's not that good at this, is he? The suspicion on Clayton and Will was almost palpable. The angrier Nicolas got about this entire situation, the deeper he dug his own hole. The best part was that he'd have to find a way out of it without compromising the truth. Victor came to this realization with a wolfish smile. "I'm gonna see what he does about it."

 

[kindaemissary]

Clayton and Will were maybe quiet for a minute before they began shuffling around with their bookbags and inching to the right of Nicolas. The latter peered out from beyond his laptop, watching them as they centered themselves into new seats on the ground with a better view of Victor. If the two of them knew the truth of the matter, what had actually transpired between him and Victor, they wouldn't be going out of their way to make it a big ordeal.


"Do you really want to know what's up?"


Nicolas wasn't going to tell them shit, but it got their attention away from Victor for more than five seconds as they bobbed their heads at him. He could feel the glare building up at the corner of his shoulder and manifesting itself deep down in his mind. If he kept letting this manipulation happen, he was going to go crazy. He was certain.


His eyes moved towards them but he kept his head facing his friends. "You can't freak out," he blurted, eyes back on Will and Clayton. "And you can't tell anyone. Literally no one. It needs to stay on the DL."


The promise of unknown information was enough to convince Nicolas that they wouldn't say anything. It would really suck if Victor killed them.


"We met at a party, okay? He went here a couple years ago."


Clayton snorted. "I knew it."


Nicolas glared. "Gonna let me tell you or what?"


He shut up.


Nicolas glanced back to where Victor was watching him. He wanted to stay close enough to truth that it sounded real, like it had actually happened, but he needed to steer them away from any speculation they might have had. If Victor hadn't kissed him, then this would have been fine. Clayton and Will would have let the issue go before it became precarious.


"So, yeah," he began, looking back towards his friends. "We met at a party. I think he was in Zeta Psi or something." None of them knew anyone in Zeta Psi, so it was a good enough lie. "Anyway, we hung out for a couple hours. Talked. Drank. It was kind of chill." It was anything but chill. "It didn't exactly end on a good note, and I didn't expect him to come here. But he has the same right as the rest of us, I guess. He was just a little creepy so I forgot about it. Apparently he didn't."


"Did you hook up?" Will asked.


"Oh god, no," Nicolas choked. "He's, like, almost thirty."


"That's not that old you know," Clayton pointed out.


Nicolas sighed. "I know, but it's not like that. When he kissed me over there, that was the first time. I didn't even think he was interested."


Clayton yawned. "More interested than you, at least."


Nicolas glanced over again at Victor who nevertheless sustained his irritating gawk. If anything, his friends were more upset with Victor now than before, but they weren't asking anymore questions. Will had muttered a quiet Sorry and went back to his work. Clayton stared out for another long moment before he shared an awkward shrug with Nicolas. The three of them went back to their computers, but Nicolas could still feel Victor's propinquity.


With his friends busy again, he stared back at Victor, eyebrows raised in a half-assed I tried. If Victor wanted to make his life more difficult than it was already, Nicolas wouldn't sit around and let it happen. He knew that this wasn't going to be the last time he saw the other man, but he hoped that it wouldn't be another public appearance. Explaining it to his friends - who never asked questions - was hard enough to first time. When he looked back, he still wasn't sure they believed him.

 

[void31]

Victor smiled. Atta boy. It wasn't the most irreproachable story, but he'd managed to shut his friends up, at the very least.


"Did you--?" Mathias was cut off by Victor's piercing glare.


"No, we didn't hook up." His lips were curled into a contemptible sneer, as if the words burned on his tongue. "We drank, and he got a little...worked up." He grimaced recalling the incident now. "But nothing happened."


"That's not like you." Mat's eyes sparkled.


"No," Victor growled. "But he's just a kid. If I ever go down, it won't be because I fucked a kid."


"Fair enough."


Victor focused on Nicolas again. From the average point of view, he had to admit, there was nothing particularly remarkable about the boy. He was exceptionally good-looking, but so were they. So were a lot of people in New York. That aside, he blended in effortlessly with the swarming sidewalks and diverse populace of this city, possessing nothing really special to deviate him from the rest. He wasn't plain, but he wasn't unique either. Victor had to wonder how many times he'd crossed paths with Nicolas Cardou before this entire incident.


It was a good quality to have, anyway.


"I want to talk to him," Victor muttered, the dull glaze in his eyes perfectly evident of his absentmindedness. "I want to talk to his friends."


"Really?" Mat raised an eyebrow. "Because I don't think that's a good idea, Vic."


"It's not a good idea," Victor mused aloud, "But it'll work."


Mathias sighed, his lips pursed and his eyes narrowed. He lifted his chin and called out across the courtyard. "Hey, boys, come over here for a minute."

 

[kindaemissary]

Hey, boys, come over here for a minute.


It was becoming apparent to Nicolas that no matter how much he wished that this state of affairs was over and done with, Victor was going to stay around and in his life as long as he goddamn pleased. If he kept on keeping on, soon enough it would become detrimental to his health. The death threat also didn't make him want to stick around.


He shared glances between his friends and they all looked back towards the two men. "Should we go over there?" Nicolas heard Will ask, and he looked back with a shrug.


"If we don't, he might just throw a hissy fit," Nicolas snorted.


"He might kiss you again if we do," Clayton pointed out.


Shrugging, Nicolas folded his laptop and pulled his backpack to his chest. If Victor wanted to make this a thing and give him more pieces to fix back together, he'd manage. Covering his tracks was a little tedious, but he shouldn't have expected anything less.


There was a part of him that wouldn't mind if Victor did kiss him again, but that was the part that he shut out to the far back corner of his brain. It was obvious that Victor wasn't an ugly man. He appeared a little rough around the edges, sure. Nicolas knew that. If he didn't know that Victor was a murderer, and Victor hadn't started exploiting him in front of his friends, Nicolas might have been able to admit the feint attraction he experienced to more than just himself.


For now, he shoved his computer away and pulled the zipper shut. "Just pull your stuff together and let's go over there," he muttered. "If we ignore him, he'll do something stupid."


His friends huffed to themselves, but they gathered their belongings and stood up with Nicolas. The walk to Victor was spent with hushed whispers and Will and Clayton pretending to be the least bit sinister.


When they came to a halt, there was still a good five-feet barrier between the older men and the teenagers.


"What do you want?" Nicolas barked, arms crossed over his chest and eyes rolling. After all of this bullshit, he might just go to his shift early. Then again, the Student Activity Center wasn't really off-limits to the public, least of all Victor. He looked at the other man, cigarette and all, before he focused back on Victor. "If it's unimportant, I'd really like to get on with my day. You're stressing me out."

 

[void31]

"I'm sure," Victor snickered, though his brow was furrowed in recognition of Nicolas' caustic tone. The first hint of a solemn threat weighted his next words as he lowered his head and fixed his burning eyes temporarily on his primary target. "Watch your tone."


The aggressive authority Victor displayed didn't exactly fit with the "creepily interested guy" narrative—he sounded more like an abusive parent than anything. In all fairness, however, Nicolas hadn't exactly been the most tender lover either. Funny how they'd gotten so friendly just a few weeks prior with only the assistance of Victor's audacity and half a bottle of decent liquor.


"Listen, I got a job for you little rats," he muttered. "And if you can do it quietly, I got two grand for each of you—" He gestured to Will and Clayton, then fixed his attention on Nicolas with a grin. "And uh, a month away from me for you, kiddo. Fair enough?" He jerked his chin and winked suggestively at Nicolas. That was about equal payment for all of them, right? Now he couldn't promise he'd follow through on that last part of the deal, but the important thing was that Nic bought it. If not, Victor could always buy his way out of any broken deal.


Mathias cleared his throat. "Don't make 'em do anything stupid, Victor." There was a hard note to his tone.


"I'm not," Victor retaliated. He grinned at the trio. "We used to do this all the time when we were kids. They'll be fine."


What appeared to be a simple car key materialized from his pocket. Victor dangled it just at eye level. "It's a quick delivery job." Though he was smiling at all three, his half-lidded eyes were locked on Nicolas. "We just need someone a little less familiar to get it done, that's all."

 

[kindaemissary]

Nicolas glared at Victor, but he listened anyway. His friends were probably jumping at the chance for a couple grand, and yeah, he was excited about the idea of being away from Victor for four weeks or so, but the threat lingered that this was one of Victor's not-so-conscious-friendly jobs.


"A delivery job?" he questioned, eyes fixated on Victor's. He glanced back and forth between the other man and Victor, could feel his friends' eyes alternating between him and the men.


He knew that Will and Clayton needed the money more than he ever would - two thousand dollars meant a lot when you were paying for your own schooling - but he couldn't shake the lingering feeling that it wasn't going to be as quick as Victor had described. And if it had anything to do what Nicolas knew Victor did in his free time, there was no way that his friends would make it out of the job without being ridden with nightmares for the rest of their lives.


But a month without Victor seemed almost worth chancing everything.


"Only if it won't end up with us dead," he carped, eyes hard as he contemplated it all. A lot could go wrong with whatever this was about. He didn't want to be found in some east side gutter. "Or someone else." He didn't know why he said that. It'd probably only make Victor more irritated than he innately was.

 

[void31]

"Yeah, yeah, of course." Victor tossed the keys to Nicolas. "You'll be fine." He slid a brief sideways glance to Mathias, who eyed him skeptically in return. "We'll go with you."


He smothered the cigarette beneath the toe of his shoe and waved the boys ahead of him. Across the yard, his Continental sat inconspicuous and untouched. Mathias flicked his own smoke into a nearby trash can before tagging along at Victor's heels.


"I need you to drive, Sherlock," Victor said, throwing a sharp elbow to Nicolas' ribs. "Better they see you up there than us."


As his fingers curled around the handle to the passenger's side door, Mathias seized his shoulder. The two men leaned in close and appeared to bicker quietly for a few sparse moments before Mathias shook his head and retreated to the back seat. Victor waved them on urgently, as if it were possible to move along any quicker than they were.


"We're going up towards Hudson River Park." He drummed his fingers impatiently on the dash. "There's a package in the back. All you gotta do is get out and take it up around back. Easy enough, yeah?"


"It's not for the faint of heart," Mathias pointed out begrudgingly. Victor shot him a skeptical look.


"They'll be fine," he assured with a dismissive wave. "They're teenage boys. It ain't like they're not lookin' at enough weird shit these days."


Mathias let the matter drop, though his pinched expression was a clear indication of his doubt. Victor ignored it. Truthfully, he loved Mat to pieces and more often than not valued his opinion above all else, but he'd always been a man prone to putting temporary pleasures ahead of the concerns of a friend. He tapped the dash board urgently. "Let's go, ladies."

 

[kindaemissary]

"Jesus," Nicolas cursed, forearms wrapping around his chest. "I'll drive. You don't have to hit me."


Nicolas managed to get into the driver's seat without getting his lungs punctured, so that was an accomplishment, and he started the car up before pulling away from the curb. He didn't like the ignorant side comment, but he didn't press the issue.


The interior was sleek and almost too nice to feel comfortable. His mind drifted to Victor; wondered if the other man had killed someone on these seats, cleaned up the blood before it could settle. Thoughts strayed to the smell of bleach copulating against the vehicle's fabric.


He turned the car right at the stop light and watched the other man through the rearview window. More than anything, his hesitance made Nicolas nervous. If a man who willingly, it had seemed, spent time with Victor was a tad on edge, then there was no reason he shouldn't be.


His eyes darted to Clayton and Will as they tried to sit still under their fastened seatbelts. If they died in this car, it wouldn't be from a crash. He wondered if they'd ever know that.


The few moments of silence that passed made Nicolas more uncomfortable than the practically unbearable elephant in the room. "So we're just dropping off a box?" he asked, voice prone to disbelief. He made another turn. Traffic was nice on Tuesdays. "A box that makes him nervous and you excited." He looked over at Victor before sharing a glance with the man in the mirror.


Knowing everything that Victor had done in this situation was hard to work around with his friends there. He didn't care if whoever this guy was - a new professor or something - knew that Victor was about as fucked up as child pornography. It wouldn't make it hard for him to sleep at night. But he had to watch what he said because his friends were around and, as much as they pissed him off from time to time, he didn't want them dead.


He wondered if Victor would kill him if he didn't drive to Hudson River Park. Wondered if he had a knife in his pocket ready to pierce flesh whenever necessary.


"Do we have to go inside?" he asked instead of the real lingering questions. "Or is this some kind of hit-and-run with a box instead of a car?"

 

[void31]

Victor gnawed on the inside of his cheek as he contemplated this question. "Yeah, you gotta go inside. We can't just leave it on the doorstep."


He twisted around in his seat and looked at Mathias. "And he's not nervous," he refuted. "Are you?" He nudged the other man's knee and got a warning look in return. Victor rolled his eyes. "They'll be fine. Marcus isn't crazy."


"Speak for yourself," Mathias muttered, though he made no further protest. Even Victor couldn't blame Nicolas for being a bit more nervous in this situation; his excitement and Mat's reluctance wasn't nearly as comforting as in the vice versa.


"You walk around back, you stay away from the dogs, you knock on the door, and then a nice old guy's gonna invite you in," he explained, eyes flickering along the road as they moved. He would have liked to say that he knew Nicolas valued his life enough to go where'd he'd told him to go, but the simple truth was that they just didn't know each other well enough. "All you gotta do is give 'im the box, and get outta there as soon as you can. Get it?"


He twisted around again and regarded his notably tense friend. "Hey, they'll be fine. He's not workin' on anyone right now. I don't think." His assurance was met with a raised eyebrow. Why the hell do you care so much? It seemed he'd been asking that question more often than he could have ever anticipated these days. Sure, Mathias was considerably less of a psychopath than him, but he'd never known him to be concerned for the innocence of teenagers. Perhaps the kids had made him soft.

 

[kindaemissary]

Nicolas watched Victor out of the corner of his eye and continued to drive in the ordered direction. "What's in the box?" he muttered in question. Will and Clayton had their eyes transfixed on the world outside the window, not paying too much attention to anything that was happening in the car.


What Victor had told him didn't seem difficult by any means, and it could possibly be an easy job, but the tension radiating between the two men made it obvious to him that this wasn't going to be a simple drop-off and leave kind of situation. For all that he knew, he was going to be walking into a slasher movie with terrible casting and way too much blood. More blood than we ever want to see in a single scene.


"If this is one of your games, you should know that I'm not going to let it go as easily as everything else." He straightened his shoulders awkwardly and kept his eyes on the road. Threatening Victor wasn't the grandest of ideas, but lately his decisions had been based off less intelligence and more pent up frustration.


Working on anyone made Nicolas's back arch in ways he didn't think it could, torso coiling away from the seat, fingers gripping the steering wheel tight.


He wasn't a stupid kid. He knew that Victor was a terrible human being, if one could even call him that, and this was probably just an easy way to get out of some dirty work. Still, he shot a glance towards the older man and proceeded to elbow him in the side. "Why don't you just do this yourself?" he hissed, voice low. The hum of the engine made it easier to keep Clayton and Will out of the loop. "You got this whole thing planned out, right? Wouldn't it be easier to just handle it on your own instead of getting them involved." His eyes flashed back towards his friends, still oblivious. "I'm not going to let it slide if this goes sideways, Victor."

 

[void31]

"I wouldn't expect you to, Sherlock," Victor replied curtly. "But the fact is that even if I didn't know what I was doing, you still can't do anything about it if this goes wrong."


It was part of the reason he'd wanted to involve the whole gang. Victor's thirst for dominance was nothing new to Nicolas now, and he'd take it every way he could possibly get it.


He wasn't stupid; he wouldn't consciously risk the lives of people he knew nothing about. These kids could have caring families, good friends, relatives in law enforcement, for all he knew, and so on and so forth. He wasn't going to hurt them. Not physically, anyway. Certainly not on Mat's watch.


But he loved wedging Cardou between a rock and a hard place. If the "delivery" went awry, there was nothing Nicolas could do to him that he wouldn't return tenfold. If it was a success, then he still would have participated in a crime that Victor knew he'd hate himself for. Then, of course, if his buddies didn't value the money more than the morality in the means to get it (though most college kids did), Nic would have to keep them under wraps too.


He loved being the evil bastard.


"Come on, kid." Victor leaned toward him with a sleek, sarcastic smile. "I know you wanna help your buddies out, huh?" He reached over to pat Nicolas' thigh, letting his hand rest there a moment longer than necessary. His voice was lower and fraught with a note of sour accusation. "Not everyone can afford life the way you can, pal."


All at once he lurched into motion, eyes wide as if he'd just witnessed a bombing. "Here." His eyes were fixed on a small, inconspicuous building to their left, one hand thumping rapidly against the dash. The building was small and white, with a minimalistic, modern exterior that Victor had always hated. The windows were tinted black. Above them, "MARCUS'" was proclaimed in bold black lettering.


Victor was eyeing a small alley to the left of the building that formed a narrow passageway between the bar and a generic bookstore. "Park up front. It's gonna take all three of you to move the box. And it's not a body." The last piece of information was snarled to silence the most predictable questions. "I'll show you where to go. The sooner you get this done, the sooner you get paid. We all clear?"

 

[kindaemissary]

Throughout all of this, it had slipped Nicolas's mind that he had a shift in two hours or so many minutes, because of course that had to happen today of all days. Victor had to insert himself back into his life with a quick slip of the wrist and nothing else. Making an appearance at NYU had shook Nicolas more than he would like to admit. His friends were now involved, and even before Victor said it, he knew that he couldn't do anything if this went unexpectedly.


He'd have to deal with the consequences alone as the festered in his brain.


That didn't sound too enjoyable.


Following Victor's directions, he pulled the car into a slim parking space. The streets of New York were tighter than he remembered. He didn't drive much. Casting his eyes in the mirror, he watched Clayton and Will inspect the building. They didn't look nearly as nervous as he felt, but they didn't know anything. Not a single goddamn thing.


The building sits to the east of him. It looks cleared than Nicolas had expected it to be. The clean crisp lines of paint made it seem almost vindicated, but then again nothing ended up the way he expected when it came down to Victor.


Nicolas reached forward and switched the car into park, tore his seatbelt off, and rolled down the window.. None of them had reacted on Victor's dead body comment in a way that made Nicolas anxious, so that was good. The sooner they finished this shitstorm of a task, the sooner he'd be away from Victor for a month. There was more hope behind the idea than there was trust. He wasn't sure if Victor would hold his end of the bargain, but it was better than not doing anything at all. At least this way there was a chance.


"Crystal clear," Will piped up from the back seat, and Nicolas turned around to see him. Neither him or Clayton showed any indication that they were worried. Two thousand dollars must do that to people.


Opening the driver's side door, Nicolas slithered out of the seat and managed a deep breath when his friends did the same. Being out of the car was almost as freeing as being away from Victor. If only that was as easy as opening a door and stepping out.


"So we bring the box through the back door?" Nicolas asked, eyes fixated on Victor's as he crouched down to the whole in the door. "Carry it down the alley and off it with some old guy that's probably almost as fucked up as you." His voice was low as he spoke through the open window as not to arouse Will or Clayton with anything he had to say. "What's in the box, Victor? If it's not a body, then what the fuck is it?"

 

[void31]

Victor leaned out the window, staring hard up at Nicolas with a flicker of spontaneous loathing in his eye. "Don't worry about it." The final reiteration was cold and dripping with a lingering threat.


Having known Victor long enough to realize when the man was on the verge of doing something regrettable, Mathias leaned forward and squeezed his shoulder hard. He peered at Nicolas with striking blue eyes that were far less hostile than his friend's copper-colored shards. "It's nothing you'll get in any trouble for," he reassured. "Nothin'...organic."


Victor pursed his lips, but said nothing contrary. Relying only on his expression, it would have been easy to think that he wanted the boys to think it was a body.


"Go." He waved in the same frenetic way that he'd been doing all afternoon; the kind of thing one might do to chase a flock of sheep into a pen. It was very obviously not getting this done any faster, but he did it anyway. He hadn't moved enough today.


"And make sure you avoid the dogs." Victor gestured to the alley. Indeed, if one squinted hard enough, a chain-link fence could be seen within the shadows, and beyond it a small fleet of heavy bodies pacing across the cement. A faint smirk had pinned itself to Victor's lips. "They don't like company."


Mathias shot him a doubtful expression. Victor's smile widened, though his brow had creased. "Stop it. Give 'em five minutes. They'll be fine."

 

[kindaemissary]

Nicolas shifted uncomfortably on the pavement, rocking unsteadily on the balls of his feet. He should have known that Victor wasn't going to say anything. Even though the other man tried to assure him that it wasn't involving a corpse, the entirety of this little "delivery" made him weary.


It took a bit of maneuvering, but they we able to get the box out of the trunk without too much hassle. It was heavier than Nicolas thought it would be, but there was no reason to be surprised. This wasn't going to be a walk in the park even if he wanted it to be.


He sent a glare over his shoulder as they hefted the trunk away from the stilled vehicle, Clayton taking the right center and Will walking backwards in front. It was easy enough to grip the massive package, but making it all the way to the front door was something else. They paused a few times to move their fingers along the edges, catch a better hold, before they continued on.


The other side of the building was a tad sketchier with scattered trash laying around like any other New York City side street would. The door lingered just in front of them and when they got there, Nicolas hesitated. It was hard not to look inside the box, but finding a dead body was something that he still figured could happen. Victor had lied before, and there was no reason to trust the other man. He was as much at fault for this as Victor was.


"You guys are acting like this is no big deal," Nicolas muttered to his brigade as the set down the box


Clayton gave him a look. "Two thousand dollars is a big deal."


Money. It was the solution to everything even when there wasn't a problem. He wished he had money to just throw around and give to his friends so they weren't in this mess, but his dad tried to keep a tighter seal on everything now that he was living on his own. Nicolas was convinced he just wanted to keep him in line.


Nicolas stepped forward and paused again. He wasn't sure what would happen once they went inside, but there was no telling what would happen if he didn't either. Victor would get back at him somehow, whether it was showing up unannounced or stabbing him. It was hard to gauge.


He knocked on the door twice. Couldn't really go back now.

 

[void31]

There was a considerable pause succeeding the final knock, permeated only by a dead silence behind the door and the low rumbles of a trio of Doberman to the right of it. With the unprepossessing atmosphere of the alleyway, as with most back passages in and around New York City, it wouldn't have taken too much imagination to assume that door led to nowhere and the place was reasonably desolate.


That, however, was not the case.


Almost a full minute passed before there came any sort of movement. The door rattled, pulsed a bit, and swung outward.


A bulky bare forearm gave way to a bulky body clad in pale, stained clothes, thick fingers, and dark skin decorated with scars and scratches of every size and shape. From behind the unruly mask of a haggard salt and pepper beard, Marcus Klide stared at the throng of boys through lined black eyes that had seen more than most ever should.


He looked them up and down, furrowed his thick brow, opened his mouth, and stopped. A broad hand rose off the knob and gestured to the box shared between them. A thick Germanic drawl grated its way through his huge throat. "Victor sent you, yes?"


Most of the threshold was obscured by Marcus' enormous figure, but from within the dim room emerged a peculiar scent. Beneath a complicated but overwhelming miasma of vanilla and cigarette smoke laid a coppery, meaty odor, very faint, but recognizable only as the stench of raw red meat left out to sit.


Suddenly, the man's eyes crinkled, as a grandfather's did when reuniting with his children's children after an eternity apart. He gave a grand wave with a huge arm thick with muscle--the kind of limb that could knock someone out cold with a strong enough swing. "Come in, come in. How nice of you to do Grange's chores for him. What have you brought me?"

 

[kindaemissary]

It took many long breathy moments of awkward shuffling and mildly concerned glances before the door opened, and Nicolas wasn't disheartened. When he first heard about the crimes happening on the other side of town, this was the type of man he assumed was behind them. He presumed there'd be this same canvas of disfigurements and altercations that would physically show instability.


Victor was none of these things. He still looked young and vibrant before he opened his mouth, nothing like the hulk of mass before them.


Will shifted nervously and took a step back.


"He didn't say," Nicolas said, and the three of them moved to carry the chest in the building. A few shared glances over the cover and they were inside, fully embracing the rancid smell and everything beyond.


He glanced back towards the door and laid the crate to the dark cement below them. There wasn't much inside the building aside from dirty tables and hanging lights. The room was dismal albeit clean. The air threw him off more than anything. Iron, possibly.


Maybe it was the way he displayed himself and not just the heart he didn't have that made Victor seem almost dependable compared to Marcus. Victor was vests and a collections upon of collections of old dusty books. The man he was now in company with gave him an itch of sensitivity that he had yet to feel around Victor. Even when they met and Nicolas had to come to terms with the fact that Victor was not a good person in any sense, the worry he felt now was more prominent. More paramount. It made him want to run.


It was probably just the building and the fact that he was put in this situation by Victor without the chance for an out. The addition of his friend's lives at stake was also something that he didn't want to think about. Victor might have said that this would go fine and without problem, but one could never know. Victor killed people for fun.


"He did mention that it wasn't a body, so there's that." Nicolas quirked his lips to the side and looked up from the box to his friends then Marcus. Clayton crossed his arms over his chest, and Will hovered uncomfortably. "Aside from that little tidbit, we know nada. Just runnin' an errand."

 

[void31]

"Oh, good. So nothing I wasn't prepared for, then." There was a twinge of humor to his words, and a lightness to his tone that resembled that of an intimidating but endlessly patient mentor; nevertheless, he'd yet to smile.


Marcus watched the box with all the intensity of a hawk tracing its prey until it reached its final destination. He crouched down and hefted it from the ground with a low grunt, then swung it up onto the center table, leaving the resulting echo to reverberate in the shadows.


"So, you are friends with Victor, yes?" Marcus had set to work on prying off the lid. While it appeared as if the removal required at least a hammer and a few more people, he managed it with meaty fingers and some minor strain. The lid clattered to the floor.


"Tell me, how is his boyfriend then?" Again there was a twinge of amusement, but no expression to accompany it. He began rooting through the container. As Mathias had promised, there was nothing "organic" to be found. Contrary, everything that emerged from the crate was purely metallic: dental instruments, drills, blades, graters, wires, and the like. Marcus organized these things with a casual precision that was more than evident of the fact that he'd done this plenty of times before.


"Mm. At least he didn't get me that knock-off shit." Marcus muttered to himself as he examined a scalpel closely, shaking his broad head. He glanced up at the trio again and raised his eyebrows. "Where are my manners? You boys like coffee?"