Chapter Four

That night, Daniel doesn’t sleep.

It’s only a little past seven when he gets home. Driving is an experience, no matter how well Daniel knows the route. Tony was right; his car is a piece of shit. The windshield wipers squeak, and it takes way too long to speed up past twenty miles per hour. How Tony gets around in it is a mystery. The seats are so low it makes Daniel feel like a senior citizen when he tries to clamber out.

Colette’s car is parked where it always is. There’s a light on in her apartment, which he can see from outside.

He texts her: How are you doing?

She doesn’t respond.

Daniel could order something to eat. Probably, he should, as he hasn’t eaten much today, and there’s not a whole lot in the fridge. He just can’t stomach the thought of human interaction with someone he doesn’t know. The idea of opening the door to a stranger or, even worse, stepping outside the door to meet someone, is more than a little terrifying. There’s a family-size bag of Hint of Lime Tostitos in the back of one of his cupboards. It’s way too easy to decide that will be his dinner instead. He doesn’t have dip, so he makes an unholy combination of tomato paste, sour cream, salt, and shredded cheddar, using up the last reserves from the fridge.

He tries watching TV, but the constant ad breaks make him unexpectedly, violently angry.

He tries to read those articles he downloaded yesterday, but reading them makes him think of Colette, which makes him think of Mario.

Maybe he should have told Tony about Mario. Who else will do it? The van could be sitting in Tony’s garage for weeks. Months, even. It depends on if Mario’s death makes the news.

But then, he’d have told Tony how he knew, and then Tony would have asked why Daniel’s reaction to his friend’s death was to have sex with a virtual stranger in said stranger’s place of work.

Daniel’s still working that one out himself.

He’s pretty sure it counts as an unhealthy coping mechanism.

Not the sex; sex is very healthy, and sex with Tony is definitely something Daniel would be interested in revisiting. He’s rarely felt so in the moment. There are a lot of think pieces out there about good sex being entirely about communication, and as a queer academic, Daniel has probably read a good 60 percent of them. After this afternoon, he’s starting to wonder if there might be some flaws in the theory or, at least, some pretty significant statistical anomalies. Being with Tony, a man he’s only met once before and barely communicated with about what they were doing, is…electric. It’s not fair to compare it with Daniel’s most recent experience prior to Tony; his relationship with Jeff was all about comfort and mutual respect, and it was nice. The sex was more of a regular perk than a main feature, and trying out anything even slightly out of the norm was an occasion. Jeff was always self-conscious of every word he said and noise he made during sex, and it made Daniel nervous in turn. They tried dirty talk, but it was too fraught for either of them to get really into it. No way would they have been spontaneous enough for frotting against a car door in a semipublic place.

Apparently, without Jeff, Daniel is a lot more spontaneous than he thought.

Unfortunately, all the spontaneity in the world doesn’t stop him from turning every aspect of the interaction over and over in his mind for half the night.

The worst of it is Mario’s car.

Around nine, Daniel starts thinking about the afterlife. He’s always been pretty sure it doesn’t exist, or if it does, it’s so irrelevant to his human existence that it might as well not. The perks of being raised in a mostly lapsed Jewish family include pretty staunch agnosticism. Life after death, when Daniel thinks about it, is a problem for the future. The only thing he can really do about it now is to live as good a life as he can manage, and if there is anything afterward, hope that whoever’s running it takes that into account.

At least, those are the guiding religious and philosophical principles by which Daniel usually lives his life. Now, for some reason, he can’t help but imagine Mario’s ghost watching Daniel have sex up against his car.

What a welcome to the afterlife that would have been. A part of Daniel thinks Mario might have actually applauded him for it—after all, the last thing he ever said to Daniel was that he should “live a little.” He even offered to go down to the city with Daniel after he and Jeff split, to help him find a rebound fuck.

Colette scoffed and called Mario crass, although, to be fair, Colette probably misses Jeff more than Daniel does. There’s an unfortunate dearth of professors of color, even (or maybe especially) at an institution as liberal as Lobell, and she and Jeff had a kinship over being Black non-Americans.

Whether or not she rejected Mario’s suggestion out of respect for Jeff, at the time, Daniel agreed with Colette. He didn’t feel any need to rebound like that. Maybe he should have; maybe then, he wouldn’t have routed what must be his own messed-up feelings about Mario’s death into a hookup that Freud would have a field day with.

One of Daniel’s missions in life is to stay off the radar of the world’s few remaining Freudians.

He wonders if Mario would have been angry if he was still alive and Daniel were to tell him. It’s possible, although Daniel never saw Mario get angry. It seems more likely he’d have thought it was funny, that he’d have clapped Daniel on the shoulder and asked for details in a way Daniel would have found slightly invasive but preferable to getting yelled at.

He wonders if his tryst with Tony would have even happened if not for Mario’s death. It’s not the kind of behavior within Daniel’s comfort zone. At least, it isn’t anymore; Daniel likes to think he outgrew quick and risky hookups when he started living in his own place, affording him and his partners some privacy. But people react to grief in all sorts of ways. Daniel knows this even if he hasn’t really experienced it before. Maybe his reaction is risky, juvenile behavior.

On the other hand, maybe Tony is just really hot, and Daniel likes him. Maybe it’s not all that complicated and psychological, and maybe Daniel is driving himself crazy. The most bizarre part is how having thoughts he can’t quite forget makes him think of Tony and the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles, like when he smiled down at Daniel after Daniel spouted irrelevant facts about condom wear and tear.

Colette still hasn’t texted him back.

There’s one window in the bedroom from which he can see the alley where Mario was shot. Daniel spends most of the evening trying to avoid looking right at it, but as ten ticks into eleven and he starts to get tired, he decides he ought to face it head-on.

He wonders if he heard the gunshot, last night, and mistook it for the wind whipping the tree branches into windows. As an experiment, he lifts the window up a little bit. All he hears is a car passing on the street.

Below him, the alley with the garbage cans is as narrow and dingy as always. The ground remains wet from the rain. All the garbage cans are in the wrong places from the police reorganizing everything to sort out the crime scene.

What if Daniel had woken up properly last night? What if he heard it and went to look out the window? What if he saw it happen, and he was in time to save—

Daniel takes a deep breath and closes the window.

“No,” he tells himself.

He brushes his teeth and gets ready for bed.

It’s very quiet when he lies down.

The sheets rustle when he turns.

Worf jumps onto the bed heavily and curls up behind Daniel’s legs, weighing down the covers.

Daniel is slowly drifting off when another car passes by, the lights pushing through the gap he left in the curtains.

With a sigh, he pushes himself upright and closes the curtains properly.

Next, it’s that the bedroom door is fully shut. If whoever shot Mario comes back, what if they come into the building this time? What if Daniel doesn’t hear them, and they go after Colette? What if they creep up the stairs and into his apartment, and it’s too late because he’s sound asleep?

He cracks the door to his bedroom.

Then, he triple-locks the door to his apartment.

Then, he gives up, makes a cup of tea, and turns on the TV.

Weirdly, Criminal Minds is comforting now, with all the lights on. Watching JJ and Morgan tag-team a suspect in the interrogation room makes Daniel feel like there’s a chance Mario’s murderer will be caught. It only works as long as he actively and harshly pushes aside literally everything he knows about the real US police force.

After about half an episode, Worf follows him out to the couch. He plonks down on Daniel’s legs and starts purring like a very small, fluffy guard dog.

By about five in the morning, the sky has gone from pitch-black to dark gray and Daniel has listened to Rossi read six or seven inspirational quotes over stock footage of the Criminal Minds team’s ridiculously expensive and wasteful private jet.

He drifts off to the sound of the DVD menu looping and wakes up at eleven. The TV has put itself to sleep, and the DVD player logo is bouncing off the sides of the screen.

Worf, still sprawled across Daniel’s legs, is watching it idly. Daniel’s feet have fallen asleep from being in the same position with a reasonably heavy cat on top of them for so long.

He groans and pushes himself upright.

Instantly, Worf snaps into action. He gets up, stretches, and starts to meow but interrupts himself halfway through with a yawn.

“Sorry, buddy. You must be hungry.” There’s a crick in Daniel’s neck the size of an oxbow lake. He hobbles to the kitchen as his feet wake up. “You’re in luck; it’s tuna time.”

If Daniel let him, Worf would eat nothing but tuna all day, every day. Thankfully, he would also eat everything else, so Daniel tries to keep the tuna for special occasions out of a halfhearted hope he’s somehow helping with climate change and chronic overfishing at least a little bit.

For about an hour, Daniel manages to pretend he’s about to start working.

Then, he gets an email from the university president announcing classes have been canceled for the entirety of Thanksgiving week and counseling hours have been extended due to the tragic death of Professor Mario Lombardi.

On his way downstairs, Daniel knocks on Colette’s door.

“Colette?” he calls. “Are you home?”

He knows she is. He would have heard her leave, and her car is still in the lot. He can see it from the kitchen window.

“I get that you need time,” he adds. “I just…kind of need a friend.”

He gives it five minutes.

She doesn’t answer.

Somehow, Daniel has managed to forget he’s now driving Tony’s car despite spending the hours of the night he wasn’t obsessing over Mario’s death, obsessing over Tony. It’s still awful. He has to hunch to get into the driver’s seat, and then he has to fiddle with the settings because, in a mysterious and irritating turn of events between yesterday evening and this afternoon, his foot has moved too far away from the gas pedal for comfort. He tries to turn on the radio and gets nothing but static.

“How does he live like this?” Daniel mutters to himself.

He could have walked; it would have been easier. Possibly also faster.

Stacy lives in a house in the suburbs, which is wild. Rhinebeck is barely a dot on the map; how it can have suburbs is a mystery. And yet, Stacy and her family managed. It’s probably cheap real estate, or it was ten years ago when they bought it. Daniel can only dream of owning a home someday. Even in upstate New York, it’s not likely on a single salary.

At least, it’s not likely without owing the bank money for the rest of his natural life, which Daniel is not into as a concept. He got away with a ludicrously small number of student loans by attending a UC school and burning through his entire college fund in undergrad, then working as a TA throughout grad school. But he’s very aware that’s an incredibly privileged position to be in. And he’s still paying off those loans. He’s not really interested in spending his whole life in debt.

Not that renting an apartment is all that dissimilar from debt.

Either way, he doesn’t see himself in a free-standing four-bedroom house with a large, squat garage on the side.

The yard is a little unkempt, and a section of it appears to be dedicated to a variety of plastic toys that should not have been left out in the storm two nights ago but definitely were.

Daniel eyes it as he walks up the drive and to the door. He’s not sure how old Stacy’s kids are, but judging by the toys, at least one is in the single digits.

He rings the bell.

It takes Stacy about three minutes to answer, but she calls from inside to let him know she’s coming no less than four times.

“Oh, Daniel!” she cries when she opens the door. “It’s so good to see you!”

“Hi,” Daniel manages before being wrapped up in a massive hug. For such a small person, it’s amazing how firm her grip is.

“Come in, come in.” She beckons him into the house. This was Daniel’s intention in coming here—talking to another human being about what happened, maybe feeling a bit comforted—but he feels weird and intrusive about following her into the house and toeing off his shoes. He’s only ever been here for faculty dinner parties once a semester with four or five other colleagues.

Stacy seats him on the living room couch, which takes up a solid third of the room and is a little too worn through to be really comfortable. “You want something to drink? I can make coffee, or cocoa, or—”

He tries to tell her he’s fine, but he ends up with a cup of cocoa and a plate of toast with sausage links left over from the Allan family breakfast anyway.

“How are you holding up?” Stacy leans in a bit too close as he eats. She has her own cocoa, but she’s not touching it.

Daniel shrugs awkwardly and swallows. “I’ve been better. I thought maybe…I don’t know, I needed to be around people. I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course, Daniel.” Stacy pats his shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Daniel pushes a bite of sausage around his plate. The Allans are syrup on sausage people, apparently, and it’s disconcertingly sticky. “Remember parents’ weekend last year? When the film department did a screening of student films and—”

“Oh god.” Stacy grimaces. “Do I ever. The registrar’s office was getting phone calls for weeks.”

“Mario stayed till three in the morning cleaning up all the stains after the students, um, innovated 5D filmmaking.”

She shakes her head ruefully. “I didn’t know that. Not gonna lie; I still wish he intervened before they sprayed an audience of parents, students, and other professors with ketchup.”

“He had a lot of feelings about artistic freedom.” Daniel makes a face at the memory, somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “I can’t claim I agreed with all of them, but…”

“You talked to him a lot about stuff like that, huh?” Stacy leans back on the couch and takes a long sip of her cocoa.

Daniel shrugs again. “I guess. We’re academics; it’s part of the business, right?”

She shakes her head again. “I think I’m too old for that. Or maybe it’s the kids; I don’t know. Feels like I’m always running around taking care of them, or I’m running after administration and students.”

It would probably be tactless to agree that she’s a good ten years older than him and Colette and Mario. Probably, he should say something else, but he can’t think of anything. He eats more toast instead. It’s gone soggy after sitting around all morning.

“Do you remember the faculty retreat two years ago?” Stacy asks.

Daniel nods around his mouthful.

“It was such a disaster.”

“It was?” Daniel asks. “I mean, I thought so because I hate faculty retreats. But everyone else…”

She sets down her mug and stares at him. “Daniel, we debated the ethics of professor-student relationships for six hours. The motion against it failed by two votes, and now everyone is still upset about it.”

“Isn’t that just normal academic posturing?”

“I guess.” Stacy looks out the window at her dreary yard. “Like I said, I don’t get much of that these days. I remember Mario went out on a snack run midway through the second hour, and he kept handing them out to everyone, filibustering on both sides.”

Daniel laughs. “He loved chaos, I guess.”

“He did.” Stacy makes a noise that might be laugh if it were happier. “Did he think it was funny? Or was he actually interested to hear what people were arguing?”

“Probably some combination.” Daniel sets his plate aside. “Hey, Stacy?”

“Hm?”

“I…I feel like I should be thinking about him all the time, and I am. I’m also… Is it really selfish that I’m terrified whoever did it will come back?”

Stacy blinks for a second, and then she gasps. “Oh my god, Daniel, I didn’t even think about that. It was right by your apartment building, wasn’t it?”

He nods.

She pats his shoulder again.

It does make him feel better. “Hey, I have a good one. Lobellpalooza, last year.”

“Oh boy,” Stacy groans.

“Yeah.”

Lobellpalooza is the campus-wide festival weekend right after the seniors hand in their senior theses. There’s a fund for musical and performance acts, which would be outrageous in any reasonable society, but for a liberal arts college, it’s on the small side. The whole thing is a nightmare for Residence Life and Housing as well as for Health Services and Counseling. So much alcohol poisoning, so much nonconsensual groping.

The students not affected by either of the former love it.

Last year, the favored main act turned them down (hearsay has it she took a gig playing her bizarre electronic music at a billionaire’s yacht party instead, and given what Daniel knows about Lobell’s financial situation, who can blame her). The planning committee came up with an alternative, JimmyJamz, a flash-in-the-pan R&B star from a tiny island in the Caribbean. He had one hit when Daniel was still in undergrad.

“So, I wasn’t on campus, obviously.” Daniel makes it a point to be as far away from Lobellpalooza as he can without inconveniencing himself. Seeing his students drunk, high, or both would be embarrassing for everyone involved.

Stacy purses her lips. “Lucky you.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, Title Nine stuff.” She waves her hand dismissively. “I would love not to have to witness Lobellpalooza, especially given all the senior theses I have to read right about then, but every time, I get a call on Friday evening at some point about something terrible that happened to someone.”

“Ah.” Daniel picks at his fingernails. “Well, that makes this story less funny.”

“No, no, I bet if you’re not tied up in all that, it’s a great time. So long as you’re not…you know, affected.”

“Sure,” Daniel agrees slowly. “Well, Mario and Colette liked to check it out from a distance when it was late enough the students didn’t notice the professors being about. Last year, he called me three times from the JimmyJamz concert to keep me updated.”

Mario spaced the calls apart over forty-five minutes while Daniel was trying to sleep, which made the whole thing more of an exercise in FOMO than a friendly gesture. It was only the following morning when Daniel listened in to the two extra voicemails Mario left after he turned his phone off that revealed JimmyJamz arrived several hours too late for his own concert and then proceeded to play his only hit in a loop for a solid hour.

Mario still sometimes talked about it.

“That concert was a disaster.” Stacy groans at the mere memory, and from an administrative perspective, Daniel knows why. Lobellpalooza stories really are only funny from a comfortable distance. “I can see why he’d call.”

“Oh, yeah.” Daniel snickers. “Half an hour in. Hey, Rosenbaum. Just wanted to let you know he’s playing the same song. If he weren’t so off-key, I’d think this is an Ashlee Simpson situation.”

Stacy snorts and then covers her mouth as if she hadn’t meant to laugh.

They sit in silence for a while after, apparently both out of Mario stories. Daniel has a few others, but they mostly involve alcohol or Mario intentionally creating chaos of some sort, or both. And Stacy seems as though she doesn’t appreciate that given her memory of the faculty retreat incident. Daniel’s starting to wonder if now is the time to extricate himself from this situation, now that he’s eaten her food and let her comfort him like some sort of emotional sponge. He should probably offer to help out with whatever fallout is happening at Lobell first.

A key twists in the lock, and then a sudden influx of noise alerts Daniel to the fact that Stacy’s family must be home.

“Stace?” a man calls. “Stace, are you here? Can you take Jason to soccer?”

Stacy’s eyes close briefly. “Hi, honey.” There’s a level of cheer in her voice that was absent a moment ago. “I’m sure I can make it work, but I thought you were going to?”

Stacy’s husband pokes his graying head into the living room and waves at Daniel. “Yeah, but only because I thought you couldn’t. It’s been a day. Some kid threw up in the locker rooms again; had to call the janitor back after hours to deal with it.”

Daniel shakes his head. “The American public school system.”

“You said it, man.” Stacy’s husband makes a “right on” gesture with his fist, which makes it seem as if he and Daniel have a lot more in common than they do.

Daniel feels pretty comfortable about having forgotten his first name because there’s no way he remembers Daniel’s. Daniel has curated a lifelong ability of being utterly unmemorable to PE teachers, and he’s sticking to it.

“I’ll be ready in a second, Mom,” the kid that must be Jason calls from somewhere in the house. “I just gotta find my cleats!”

“No problem.” Stacy’s voice has gone high and hectic, the way it does right before some major faculty event. “I’ll make it work. I should drive over to Lobell again anyway while Jason’s at practice.”

“You’re a star,” her husband says with an incredibly sleazy wink. It would be less weird if he weren’t ten years older than her and a PE teacher, Daniel’s pretty sure.

“That’s my cue.” Daniel gets to his feet. “Thanks for having me, Stacy.”

“Anytime. And if you need anything at all—”

“I should be saying that to you.” He’s firm, trying not to give her husband the stink eye. “Let me know if there’s anything, at work or otherwise.”

It might be his imagination, but he’s pretty sure she hugs him extra tight before they both get into their separate cars, her with her awkward, pimply teenage son and him with a wince as he remembers again how terrible Tony’s car is.

He checks his phone before he drives.

Colette still hasn’t answered him.

Does he go home to his apartment now and watch more bad crime shows? He should probably go shopping first, while it’s light enough that he doesn’t fully psych himself out.

It’s only four in the afternoon. There’s a lot of day—and night—left for Daniel to get through. He’s groggy from having slept weirdly, and he can already feel himself edging toward last night’s panic at the idea of getting through the rest of the day alone.

A new text comes in on his phone.

hey Daniel, my windshield guy came through superfast. wanna work overtime with me again today?

It’s followed by a winking emoji, and then by this is Tony btw.

Daniel’s not proud of it, but he breathes a sigh of relief. He doesn’t have to spend the rest of the day in his apartment alone.

Anything to stop driving your terrible car, he texts back, adding the emoji with its tongue sticking out so Tony can tell he’s mostly kidding. He puts the car in drive and, after a quick pit stop at home to change into a nicer shirt and grab a few supplies, he heads for Kingston.

The weather is, if possible, worse than it was yesterday. The bridge is still nightmarish, and dark clouds are piling up overhead. But Daniel feels more like himself when he pulls into the parking lot at the garage than he did yesterday. That, he reflects, is both a good sign for his mental health and a bad sign for his ability to seduce a hot mechanic. What if Tony was only into him yesterday due to the slightly unhinged vibes?

He takes a deep breath. Tony invited him this time. He checks his hair in the rearview mirror, realizes there’s nothing he can do about it, and gets out of the car.

The reception area is empty, the computer already turned off. Gianna must have left early again, or maybe the shop closes at four; Daniel didn’t look it up. He’s trying to power through by not letting himself think about the actual practical ramifications of Tony’s life. If he did, he’d have started googling Tony, the store, and everyone else who works here obsessively yesterday, and that would have been stupid. He pushes open the door to the workshop and goes straight through.

There, bent over the hood of Daniel’s car, is Tony. He’s lifting the broken windshield out carefully, concentrating fully on what he’s doing. There’s a little frown line at the middle of his forehead. He must have been wearing a flannel shirt for most of the day because it’s crumpled up on the workbench in the corner. Tony is down to a white tank top and his jeans, and both have motor oil stains on them. Daniel’s not sure why he’s so attracted to the sight, but he’s not complaining.

He waits for Tony to place the windshield down carefully, leaning it against the wall, before he says, “Hey.”

Tony straightens immediately. “Hi.” He waves, then looks at his own hand, clearly realizing he’s still wearing heavy-duty gloves. “Uh…”

“How’s it going?” Daniel asks.

“Good. We are right on schedule with your windshield. How’d my girl treat you?”

Daniel takes a seat on the stool he sat on the first time they met. He’s not going to start thinking of it as his place or anything, but it’s nice to feel like he could have a regular seat in Tony’s garage. “Absolutely terribly. As I’m sure you know.”

Tony laughs and starts scraping what looks like old rubber out of the sides of the hole where Daniel’s car used to have a windshield. “You gotta treat her right, and she handles fine.”

“You’re kidding.” It sounds rude as soon as it’s out of Daniel’s mouth, but he can’t help himself. “You’re not one of those guys who’s into the whole…cars as women thing, right?”

For a long moment, Tony’s quiet as he concentrates on cleaning the last of the gunk out of the windshield hole. Daniel’s terrified he’s stepped on some secret mechanic’s code of honor.

Then, Tony straightens and grins at him. “Yeah, I’m messing with you.”

He walks over to the workbench, close enough that Daniel can smell his aftershave, and picks up something that looks, to Daniel’s untrained eye, like a paint gun.

“Your face does a really funny thing when you think I’m being mildly politically incorrect though,” Tony informs him. “Like you can’t figure out if you have a moral duty to be mad at me. It’s kind of worth it.” He cocks his not-a-paint-gun and grins at Daniel, waggling his eyebrows.

“Okay, what is that thing?”

“Just my caulk.” Tony’s voice is innocent.

“Your what?”

Laughing, Tony explains, “It’s a caulking gun. I couldn’t resist.”

Daniel rolls his eyes to hide that he still doesn’t really know what it is.

“I’m gonna put a new layer of urethane down, and then we can get your new windshield in,” Tony tells him and does just that.

It’s all over remarkably fast. In Daniel’s head, replacing a windshield was a long and complex project (and if he were the one doing it, it probably would be). Why he’d driven over yesterday afternoon thinking Tony could magically get it done is anyone’s guess. Daniel wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. It’s good to know he’s not taking up a full workday for Tony though.

When it’s all said and done, the actual work takes only a little over half an hour.

Tony carefully sets the rubber seal around the edges of the windshield and steps away from the car, admiring his handiwork. “There we go.”

“So.” Daniel’s voice is as casual as he can make it. “You said it takes an hour to dry?”

Tony turns to him. “I did say that, didn’t I. And you were wondering what we could do in the meantime.”

“I don’t remember wondering that.”

“It was implied.” Tony winks.

Daniel moves toward Tony as if drawn magnetically. He loops his arms around Tony’s neck and leans in, a hair’s breadth away from a kiss.

Thunder rumbles so loudly above them that, for a second, Daniel thinks the garage roof is going to cave in.

He pulls away, startled.

“Another storm?” Tony peers out the garage door. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Is it bad?”

“It’s not good.” Tony gestures Daniel over.

Rain sheets down so hard Daniel can hardly see ten feet ahead. The streetlights are the only hazy point of light ahead of them. It looks like the world is ending.

Daniel pulls his phone out of his pocket. He has a text from Stacy and one from his mom. His weather app has sent an alert for inclement weather. There’s an extra exclamation point on it, which means at least one road has already been closed. He’s supposed to drive in that in an hour.

“Okay.” Tony speaks slowly, as if afraid he’ll spook Daniel. “I’m gonna suggest something really crazy, but hear me out.”

Turning to him, Daniel raises an eyebrow.

“If you drive in that, you’re gonna fuck up your brand-new windshield. Or, you know, get in an accident. Let’s get a motel room.”

It’s almost exactly what Daniel was hoping for secretly, anything to keep him from spending the night alone in his apartment.

“Don’t trust me enough to take me to yours?” Daniel jokes weakly.

Tony grimaces. “I live with my parents.”

That tracks with the whole family business thing. It should probably be a red flag, given Tony looks to be in his midtwenties, but Daniel’s too busy being relieved it’s nothing to do with him that Tony didn’t ask him over. He peers outside again and tries to picture driving across the bridge in this weather, if it’s even still open. The Hudson is so big its waters are usually placid. In this, it will be terrifying. “I don’t care if it’s crazy. I’ve been having the most insane week of my life anyway. Let’s do it.”

Tony pumps his fist once in victory.

After locking up the garage, he drives them—slowly, carefully—through the rain. Irritatingly, he drives his car so smoothly Daniel nearly forgets how bad he was at it. They end up at a dinky little place called the 9W Motel, which is scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as Daniel’s concerned. Naming the motel after the road it’s on is tantamount to admitting its only claim to fame is being better than sleeping rough.

Tony sends him in to get a room key, saying the receptionist knows his mom, and he doesn’t need that. Small-town woes.

Daniel’s going two for two here on the questionable sexual decisions with this guy. He thinks this as he unlocks the door to their room and pulls Tony in, out of the rain. Shacking up for the night in a skeevy motel room with a mechanic he’s only met twice. He doesn’t know Tony’s last name or much of anything about him beyond that he has a potentially strained relationship with his sister and doesn’t like the fourth season of Buffy. Daniel doesn’t even have a change of clothes with him.

Somehow, he doesn’t mind so much when Tony pushes him against the closed door and kisses him.

The thunder still roars above them, but the room is warm and not totally hideous, and Tony’s mouth is slick and wet against his. Daniel officially doesn’t care about anything outside of these four walls, at least until tomorrow. He kisses Tony back and runs his hands up under Tony’s T-shirt.

“Fuck, you’re so hot,” Daniel mutters between kisses, utterly distracted in the best way.

“Me?” Tony laughs incredulously. “Fuck, baby, look at you.”

Daniel doesn’t think he’s anything special, but Tony kisses both of his cheeks, licks a hot line up his neck, mouths at his collarbone. All the while, he undoes Daniel’s shirt button by button until it’s hanging loose and open, and then he stops and gazes at Daniel.

“Look at you,” he repeats, quieter.

Daniel’s every instinct is to cross his arms over his stomach, to make a self-deprecating joke, but he can’t think of anything at all to say. Not when Tony’s looking at him like this, all hunger and honest, open desire.

He has nothing to be ashamed of; it’s just his body, and someone likes it.

He cups Tony’s jaw in one hand and rests the other on his hip as he kisses Tony, slow and deep, with every ounce of appreciation he can muster for this wild, wonderful night.

When they pull away, Tony turns a fraction to press a kiss to his palm.

Daniel’s heart thunders in his chest. “What are the chances of you fucking me tonight?” he blurts out.

Tony’s eyes slide shut. “Really fucking good, sweetheart.”

“I was hoping you would say that.” Daniel pulls the condom and single-use pack of lube out of his pocket and throws them on the bed.

Tony whistles. “Boy Scout.”

Daniel shrugs. “I knew I was coming to see you, didn’t I?”

He pulls the hem of Tony’s tank top up. and together, they get it off. Daniel lets his fingertips skim lightly over the paler skin of Tony’s chest and sides. “Ticklish?” he asks when Tony flinches.

“Little bit,” Tony admits, a smile pulling at his lips.

Daniel takes ruthless advantage, and the ensuing tickle fight propels them across the room toward the bed. On the way, Daniel’s shirt falls off his arms, and they both kick their shoes off.

The bed has loud springs, but it turns out Daniel doesn’t give a shit what motel patrons in Kingston might think of him. When Tony kneels between Daniel’s legs, blankets Daniel’s body with his own, and nips at his collarbone, he throws his head back and groans.

“What do you want?” Tony murmurs in his ear.

“I don’t want to feel anything but you,” Daniel tells him. “I want to be overwhelmed.”

“Wow.”

Daniel looks up at Tony. Should he play it off as a joke? Should he rephrase? He can—

“Tall order, but I’ll see what I can do.” Tony grins. “Big brain like yours, college boy? I don’t see it turning off easy.”

“I think you can do it.”

“Challenge accepted,” Tony says, and that’s the last they talk for a while.

That doesn’t mean Daniel doesn’t make noise.

He moans into Tony’s mouth while Tony kisses him hot and wet and slick and sloppy as they rock together, going from interested to desperate in a matter of minutes.

He hisses when Tony moves down his body to toy at his nipples, sensitive and pebbled with arousal.

He sighs when Tony strokes his sides, which are a little too soft in his own image of himself but apparently just right for Tony.

His breath hitches when Tony reaches for the lube and sets one wet finger at his entrance.

He’s hard by then, hard and dripping against his own stomach, but Tony bypasses his cock entirely.

It really doesn’t bear thinking about the noises he makes as Tony stretches him open, first one finger making him sigh and groan, then two making him produce the strange stuttering groan Tony appears to be an expert at drawing out of him. Finally, when Tony slips in a third finger and angles them up to stab right at Daniel’s prostate, he shouts up to the ceiling.

“Enough,” he pants, barely able to catch his breath. “Please fuck me.”

“Hmm.” Tony lets his free hand stroke gently down Daniel’s side. “I don’t know. You don’t seem overwhelmed yet.”

He repeats the motion of his fingers, and Daniel nearly cries. The third time he does it, Tony licks once, delicately, at the head of Daniel’s cock, and Daniel can barely think.

“Wish we had a second condom,” Tony says wistfully. “I’d get you off like this once, and then again on my cock.”

If he were at all in his right mind, Daniel would tell Tony that he’s wildly underestimating Daniel’s refractory period, but right then, Tony pulls his fingers out and all Daniel can seem to do is whine for more.

“Shh, I got you.” Tony fumbles with the condom wrapper and then slots himself into place between Daniel’s legs, warm and heavy and solid.

It takes Daniel’s breath away, that first slide of Tony’s cock into him. He’s not as ready as he thought he was, or maybe it’s been too long, but it’s so much at first that he can barely even see.

Tony seems to get it, and he holds steady, unmoving at first.

It’s only when Daniel finally gets his eyes open and sees the clench of Tony’s jaw that he realizes how much effort it’s taking him. He’s shaking with it.

Daniel hooks his heels together behind Tony’s back. “C’mon,” he demands, with a taunt in there somewhere—show me what you’ve got, make me feel it—but he loses his words and his breath all over again when Tony starts fucking him properly.

It’s not only the movement of his hips, the slow slide in and out, the gradual build of pleasure; it’s his words.

“You feel so good, baby,” Tony croons. “You’re so perfect for me like this.”

Praise drips from his tongue like honey, and Daniel laps it up, urging him on with pleas and his heels, digging into Tony’s back to get him to move that tiny bit faster.

Before too long, his thighs start to cramp, and he has to let his legs fall open on either side of Tony. Tony takes it in stride, pushing Daniel’s knees toward his shoulders, and oh fuck, Daniel wasn’t aware his body still did that; it’s been a hot minute since he was stressed enough to try yoga, but the angle of it…

“Please,” he moans, “right there.”

“I gotcha,” Tony pants, and he does. He’s doing so good; he’s fucking Daniel steady and thorough and hard, and Daniel isn’t thinking of anything at all but the rhythm of their bodies and how turned on he is.

He scrambles to reach between them, to stroke himself a little, but Tony’s too close to him, he can’t get a hand in between. It’s devastating to feel this much pleasure and have nowhere for it to go, and Daniel feels tears build behind his eyes.

“Oh, you’re ready for it, aren’t you,” Tony says, and then he’s pulling out and away, and Daniel reaches for him desperately.

“Shh, no, wait a second,” Tony tells him. “Get on your knees, yeah?”

With Tony’s help, Daniel manages to turn over shakily, propped on knees and elbows, and then Tony slides into him again, and he makes a sound like he’s been gutted.

Tony’s hand wraps around his cock, and pleasure slams into Daniel so suddenly he knows it’ll all be over in a matter of seconds.

“Wait,” he breathes, and Tony pulls away.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Tony asks, hips stilling.

“Don’t want it to be over,” Daniel manages.

Tony laughs. He starts to move again, just as fast, and god, whether or not he’s touching Daniel, it feels like Daniel might explode.

“But you’re so ready for it,” Tony murmurs in his ear. “Look how wet you got, baby. You want it so bad you’re dripping with it. Lemme make it good for you.”

Daniel whimpers.

Tony’s hand snakes around his cock again, and fuck, there’s no stopping it now. His balls tighten and clench; Tony fucks in at exactly the right angle, and Daniel comes with a strangled groan.

He’s used to orgasm being a moment of stillness, but even through his clenching and writhing, Tony keeps fucking him. It would have been a good orgasm, but with Tony continuing to pound his prostate ruthlessly, Daniel can’t seem to stop coming. He shoots rope after rope of come onto the tacky bedspread and then all over Tony’s hand, and Tony keeps going. Each new thrust sends another shockwave of pleasure through Daniel’s gut, and he knows he has only seconds until it turns to painful oversensitivity, but it’s so good he’s still panting and moaning and gasping like he’s being filmed.

“Oh my god,” Tony mutters into his skin, shell-shocked and shaky. “Oh my god, Daniel.”

“Come on.” Daniel reaches behind himself to rest a hand on Tony’s hip. “Fill me up.”

With a guttural groan, Tony follows the order instantly.

Daniel has never felt more powerful or more desired in his life.

Not even the lukewarm hotel shower can dim his buzz in the aftermath, nor the smell of stale cigarette smoke that lingers in the sheets. It’s a queen-size bed, big enough for two, but it should be weird, sharing a bed with someone new.

It’s not.

“Fuck, I needed that.” Daniel groans as he stretches out on the bed, Tony curled beside him, propped on an elbow and watching.

“Seemed like it,” Tony agrees. “Anytime you have another crazy week, let me know.”

Forcibly, Daniel rejects the thought of his week. He turns onto his side, back to Tony, and lets himself fall asleep.