InsaneJournal

It probably ought to have been some kind of red flag or set off some emotional alarm bell or whatever the fuck that every time he rolled around to Daniel’s in his adorbs jalopy of a car, Lin felt like he was making a very big mistake. But red flags and warnings never really had been his thing. He mostly disregarded the clever few that managed to slip past his defenses. And, lbr, even if one such flag had been waved in his face by some trace and endangered instinct of self-preservation, he would’ve ignored it, because whatever, whatever, he did what he wanted (or whatever was contrarian enough).—Even though what he wanted often came back to bite him in the ass. Hard. With a sudden set of vampire fangs. Regardless, Lin had decided a while ago that wasn’t going to give Daniel the satisfaction of running him off.

So was it really a surprise to find him, dressed like he was hungover as fuck (which he was) in a Portland Trail Blazers baseball cap pulled low over shower-damp hair and dollar store sunglasses, nondescript yellow t-shirt, ringed around the collar and sleeves with bubblegum pink, matched with a pair of dark green slacks, in front of the recluse’s door for the second time in so many weeks without even a shred of his usual levity? Hint: No. It was probably almost expected. (Though, the cat litter under his left arm in a plastic pan and kitten food + toys in the plastic bag dangling from his right wrist were probably less expected, but hey, life was crazy like that.)

That didn’t mean, even still, that Lin wanted to be there. He honestly didn’t. -- Okay, disregard the use of the word ‘honestly’ there. He didn’t want to be there, he didn’t think, but mostly because he was tired, with lingering alcohol-induced weariness scratching at his eyes behind his shades like sand, and mostly because he had no fucking clue what was going on in his life anymore, like at all, and the last person he needed to know that was the man behind the door. But it was too late to turn back now. How would he explain that to Sam? (Sudden demon possession could possibly work, if he played his cards right...) God, he was so screwed.

With a groan and with his head back on his shoulders in defeat, Lin aimed a solid kick at the heavy door and swore, loudly, when it hurt his foot through the thin canvas of his shoes. (He wasn’t even going to bother trying the knob today.) Still, the kick was sound and the door rattled on its hinges at a satisfying volume. He only vaguely hoped God(s) might take mercy on him then and smite him or Rapture him or fucking something, but, deep down, he knew he’d never be so lucky.

---

For once, Daniel actually wanted to see a friendly face. He was out of his depth with the small fuzzy creature he had discovered wailing in his apartment, and even if he had whiskey practically coming out of his pores, he was smart enough to realize it when he was outclassed. Daniel found that he could not abuse the kitten enough to make it feel bad about itself and depart in tears, and it was so utterly helpless that Sam’s ultimatum that he would essentially murder it with eviction put him in a difficult situation. It horrified him that anything would be dependent on him, something he had determinedly attempted to avoid for years, but at the same time it was fascinating to have big eyes staring at him expectantly.

(He had no idea what the cat wanted, but he could tell it was something. The incessant noise was the biggest clue.)

Daniel secretly enjoyed any attention he managed to acquire on the journals, and by the time everything had wound down to a very pathetic help me he wasn’t all that worried about Sam and Lin coming over. It was both of them, after all, and he had some vague idea of one of them getting goo goo about the cat and taking it away in a basket with a checkered cloth or something equally ridiculous. Daniel felt that neither was in special danger of getting overly attached to him; he’d set Sam up far away, pissed off her boyfriend enough to drive the man back in her direction, and he’d managed to sting Lin everywhere he could find him in that damn book. He thought he should feel some kind of grim satisfaction, but he never quite made it. Instead he just felt worse, drank more, and tried to get to Passages in one piece when the whole thing got unbearable.

The kitten was interfering with the pattern, and Daniel was starting to get desperate.

He opened the door in a long swing of movement heralded by a chorus of incessant kitten mewing, and gave Lin a long look, taking in the fact that the boy was unaccompanied by a Sam-shaped safety net. Daniel hadn’t been sleeping that much and he looked fairly horrible and curiously fragile with the kitten attached to one pant leg by as many claws as possible. He was wearing a very thin college sweatshirt that had faded to a mute bluish gray, and he looked like he felt the cold in a way he had not before.

Daniel hesitated and then he said, tentatively, “You have something that’s going to shut it up?” He lifted one heel pathetically to indicate the white kitten, who rode out the movement with more mewing at a higher pitch.

---

Poor Daniel. Poor ratty college sweatshirt. A friendly face Lin was most certainly not. Not today. The boy's expression behind square sunglasses was sour, one of resigned frustration mingling with insolence, and a desire to be anywhere but here. (So basically, he looked like an underachieving teenager in first period pre-calc.) But even he, cranky and only just sober as he was, couldn't help but crack something of a smile at the ridiculous picture the door swung open to reveal: Daniel, who, by the way, wasn't looking so hot with the purple-blue moons hanging under his eyes like bruises and the general cold that came off of him (someone needed a fucking hug), with a fluffball of a kitten dangling from the ankle of his pants. srs Kodak moment right there.

“Well, actually I brought the litter and food for the severely romantic date I planned out for us, but they might work for the cat too. idk,” explained the boy seriously with no mention of Sam and no question as to why the man suddenly had a kitten. He tipped his chin so the sunglasses slid down the bridge of his nose enough for him to get a good look at owner and cat both. His eyebrows rose to a peak and then sunk once again behind the plastic shades, but he didn’t smile again. No. He stepped closer and steered his mind away from even thinking of thinking about the last time he was here. “Now back dat ass up, Romeo.”

Was he crueler now like Sam had said? Lin didn’t know. He couldn’t tell anymore. Maybe? Personally, he thought Daniel deserved it either way. Even if the drunk was the delicate, spun-glass flower Sam was convinced he was, he was a spun-glass flower that had been molded into a very realistic looking ass (Lin knew an ass when he saw one, trust). He also knew that sometimes asses needed kicking, this one especially. -- Still, the boy tried to remind himself of his own tendency to fall into the trap of thinking himself the victim, of believing that only his feelings were truly involved and that he had every right to protect them at whatever cost. Ass or not, glass was glass, right? Ugh.

He didn’t actually wait for Daniel to scoot out of the way. Lin ducked around the man and inside the refrigerated apartment, dropping the shit breaking his wrist and arm heavily. The sunglasses were placed in the bowl of the cap as Lin shed both and dumped them by the goods.

The world pricked with color again. He blinked. Then, gently and with obvious experience, he reached forward to pluck the kitten’s claws one by one from the material of Daniel’s trousers. It was then, as it wriggled in his hands, that he noticed its eyes. Blue. As blue as the dumbass’. White fur and blue eyes.

“Uhh.” Lin glanced up and got back to his feet, cradling the little thing in two hands as it continued to cry pitifully. Thank God it was warm. He pet its head with the pad of his thumb and raised one black eyebrow at Daniel. “Your kitten’s not deaf, is -” There was a short pause as the boy lifted the small, noisy animal a few inches, just enough to see what needed seeing. “- he?”

---

Daniel could tell that Lin was not feeling particularly friendly right then. It was a new phenomenon for him, and he forgot the cat just long enough to give the boy’s face a long look. It was one thing to cultivate a certain result, but another to see it in action, in a certain stark reality that made Lin less... boy. Lin looked tired and irritat-ed rather than bright and irritat-ing, and Daniel wasn’t quite sure how to reconcile the two. He was relatively sober and as such had a tendency to acquire details in a sort of mental shorthand he’d made a habit of in college, now a precursor to articles that would never be written. He thought about the ballcap.

Daniel had almost entirely tuned out the kitten by that time, and he looked in surprise as the small white furry thing transferred itself to Lin’s arm and chest to cling at whatever fabric or skin made itself available. Daniel was boasting several sets of thin red scratches on the backs of his hands, indicating several attempts to fetch the kitten from various places, and he watched with interest. Daniel was totally blank at Lin’s question, brown lashes flickering over half-moon bruises, and his face creased in a frown of undeniable concern. “I don’t know. Is it?”

Daniel moved closer to Lin in a willing, deliberate movement different from his normal behavior, pressing up against his shoulder in an attempt to stare at the kitten with some expectation that any such disability would make itself immediately known. Old book bindings, faintly metallic with air conditioning, sweat, whiskey, soap and water. Daniel always smelled like a drunk monk that had been left to die in a museum somewhere.

---

Lin pulled his elbows in close to his sides as he held the kitten, as if doing so and taking up less space, would mean less cold. (It didn’t.) His hair was shower-damp only where it laid nearest to his scalp and at the back, where it curled black against the nape of his neck, but even still, it served as a conductor of frigidity. Why Daniel yearned so fucking hard to recreate the Huronian glaciation in his apartment, Lin didn’t know, but he was glad to have warm kitten close. ...Despite the claws it hooked into his shirt, that nicked at the thin material and at the skin underneath.

The boy blinked at the other man when he admitted to not knowing, not reacting otherwise to the long bit of scrutinizing. Seriously though, was he the only person who knew anything about genetics around here?—Lin was almost surprised to see the expression of concern that glossed Daniel’s face. Heartless though he liked to appear, apparently not even Snow Miser Daniel Webster could withstand the cuteness of a wee needy kitty cat.

“It’s he,” corrected Lin loftily, sounding a smidge more like his usual self. He gazed at the kitten curiously. It—he—continued crying. He decided then that they should feed the little thing before they did anything else. That was probably what the meows meant.—But before the boy could move toward the bag with the food, Daniel’s shoulder was against his in a movement he immediately recognized as conscious, and this time he actually was surprised.

They were close now and he could smell the whiskey coming off the man’s skin, along with something that reminded him of the petri dishes at work, it hit him on the back of the tongue, like metal. Now he glared in earnest, because fuck Daniel for being a jackass. Then he frowned, realizing slowly that Daniel was waiting for the kitten to—what?—turn into Painty the Pirate (Spongebob, people. Spongebob.) and declare that he couldn’t hear them? jfc.

Pivoting on his left foot, Lin turned to face the man. They were only a handful of inches apart, and he didn’t look up. Busily, but gingerly, he untangled the kitten’s claws from the yellow of his shirt and passed him to Daniel without a word, arranging the man’s icy, red-scratched hands so he was actually holding the animal upright and securely, snug against his chest.

After a moment of silence, during which he did not move toward the food, he turned his eyes on Daniel with uncharacteristic solemnity. Lin’s irritation was somewhat subdued now because it was hard for him to be annoyed for more than five minutes. It was there, but it was now submerged. (His emotions burned hot and bright, okay, but they didn’t tend to last) A glint of humor bobbed to the surface. There was no glitter to it, but Lin smiled.

“You should name him. I’m really good at naming, if you want help. I had two cats growing up. MooMoo and John Baskerville. I named them both.”

---

A reactionary ripple of movement brought Daniel’s shoulders up and his body erect as Lin swung away to face him as if on a hinge. Lin was filled with all kinds of unexpected movements, because Daniel was accustomed to men swaggering (in distant, red wine memories) and women moving in a sinuous sway around him, like moons orbiting planets in curving lines. Lin didn’t do either of those things, and it was like being around an oblong ping pong ball that bounced in bizarre ways. Sometimes Daniel fancied he could actually feel all of the obscure pop culture references Lin was thinking but not saying. Like melting cotton candy.

Daniel tried to draw away before the kitten was busily deposited into his hands, which he felt were evolutionarily unsuited to appeasing wailing balls of white fluff, but he didn’t do it quickly enough. He noticed that Lin had been drinking, mostly because Lin didn’t drink what Daniel drank, and because Lin was looking at him as if someone had died. Maybe someone had. Daniel looked back and his expression changed. For about a microsecond, the look on his face strongly resembled the one he had given the kitten about ten seconds ago. It was gone in the time it took to recognize it.

MooMoo?! “You,” Daniel said, seriously, “are not good at naming.” Gingerly Daniel attempted to mush the kitten against his chest in the hope it might decide the needle claws were not necessary. No such luck. The mewing slowed down, but grew no softer. The high-pitched exclamations seemed to echo in the cold dimness of Daniel’s apartment, as the hidden speakers were silent.

---

Everyone with half a brain knew Lin was a motherfucking Wham-O Superball (the original 1965 kind) when it came to metaphors that had to do with kinetics and spheres, but whatever. Without telepathy, there was no way for the boy to know the false comparisons being made about him anyway, and so, he just peered out at Daniel with bleary brown eyes that caught a blip of something on the man’s face, some tension near the eyes and corners of the mouth, that failed translate into anything comprehensible before it vanished. His brain decided he didn’t need to know about that and nothing registered in any conscious way. Oblivious, Lin just scoffed dryly at the slander Daniel was spouting.

“Fuck you. I just christened Chessie’s piano, so I beg to fucking differ.” His voice was flat and unimpressed, as if he wasn’t thinking of the words that were whipping from his mouth as he left the man and the kitten to crouch near the bag with the food in it. He balanced on the balls of his feet as he fished out the generic pet food bowl made of purple molded plastic, along with the kitten kibble or whatever it was called when it wasn’t part of a Kibbles ’n Bits commercial. It trickled noisily into the plastic bowl.

Five seconds later, after using Daniel’s thigh to steady himself briefly, Lin’s hand stretched toward the man demandingly. He tipped his head back and rubbed at an eye with a couple knuckles. “Gimme Quintus Pedius.”

This was taking too long. It had been like, thirty seconds. The cat needed a name, even if he couldn’t hear it. So Lin supplied one. He grinned up at Daniel, though this time it was genuine, because he could already envision the reaction that was going to get, and there was little Lin liked more than getting reactions.

---

Daniel smiled at Lin’s retort as if the response had made all right in his world. It was a bizarrely trusting expression, and not one that belonged on the vinegar voice that scrawled out at the world of the doors in the journals. It would have suited Daniel far better if he had been falling down drunk, but on the scale of one to in a gutter, Daniel was hovering at a respectable on-your-feet three. Just because the same amount of alcohol would have put a stupid college kid down for the entirety of finals didn’t enter into the equation.

Daniel tipped his chin up to see the bounty of Hungover Santa’s bag, curious, and was therefore within reach and relatively steady when he was used as an impromptu stabilizer. He was silent through that, and said nothing until Lin was upright again and grinning cheekily into his face. Daniel’s mouth soured defensively, and then his bloodshot blues widened. Rotating broad shoulders, he swiveled the kitten temporarily out of reach. “What did you call him?” The Latin made Daniel think of Caesar, but that was about as far as his education and his alcohol habit allowed. Several synapses attempted to fire and then gave up the ghost to go have a pint down in the amygdala.

“That’s not his name.” Daniel stepped in and nudged at Lin with his hip to move the boy out of his way. He used both hands to wriggle around the cat’s tiny ribcage, which felt like a Faberge egg, and finally got it free so his tiny pink paws were flailing. Daniel set it gently face first into the food. “Does it even know that stuff is edible?” he asked doubtfully, tipping his head to get a better view.

---

Lin was mentally bundled up and ready for the coldness, for that little bit of storminess he figured would come from his palm on Daniel’s thigh. That he could handle. It was what happened just before that that he didn’t know what to do with. The bizarre uptick of the corners of lips that then stretched into a smile. What was that about.

“Um, Quintus Pedius. You know, the fucking deaf Roman painter. He’s like, the earliest known deaf person in recorded history or whatever. Keep up.” Lin shook his head and clucked his tongue as if he was most disappointed in his drunk, even as he was out manuevered by the man. (In truth, he was only mildly disappointed his joke had been lost on present company.)

Anyway, whatever. Once he had Daniel and Quintus set up with everything, Lin would go find someplace fucking warm, like a goddamn hearth or a convection oven or the pits of hell, and nap until his eyes stopped burning.

“He, you jackass. Not ‘it.’ And, you come up with something better, if you want to change it. Right, QP?” The only sound was of the kitten eating. (That answered that question.) Lin's voice was loud in the sudden, mewless quiet. He hushed himself a little and raised his eyebrows at Daniel. "See? He agrees with me. He says he thinks Quintus Pedius baller."

The boy broke his attention away from the scene in front of him then, and bent to grab the new litter box, in which the bag of litter sat,—but he paused mid-reach to give QP a stroke. (This startled the cat, which, to Lin's mind, was definitely a mark toward 'deaf.') Then he kind of forgot what he'd intended to do and just kept petting the kitten softly and talking to him soothingly in a low voice, mostly saying things about how he (QP) really did like his name and that, honestly, what did Daniel know about naming anyway?

---

Daniel was irritated that his general scholarly education was being belittled by a curly-haired brat that spoke in acronyms, and it showed on his face. He couldn’t be expected to know every artist that ever existed, and if it wasn’t political he rarely paid attention these days. Despite his best efforts, however, he did approve of pet names that had illustrious origins, even if he didn’t approve of pets in general. In Daniel’s experience, animals were either bred to jump, show, or sit in purses. None of these uses were especially flattering to owner or animal, and he’d avoided the practice on principle.

Daniel watched the kitten scarf the tiny kibbles with interest. Apparently it wasn’t all that complicated. Not like child-rearing or anything so horrific. Daniel stepped back a little as Lin started futzing around with the supplies, and he leaned one hip into the edge of the wall leading out of the entryway and into the apartment. The blue eyes watched with a resigned awareness, taking in more details as Lin muttered at the cat and swore at various intervals about Daniel’s general ignorance. Daniel wondered where Lin had been, and wondered why he’d bothered to shower before coming.

Daniel interrupted Lin mid-complaint to say, “Are you going to take it home then?” It made sense to him that if Lin knew things like kitten kibble and naming, and the two of them were conversant, fuzzball and boy would frolic off together into the sunset. Daniel worried that one or the other of them would break in half right in front of him and he wasn’t feeling up to witnessing it. He wet his lower lip with his tongue and shut his eyes slow in a nervous, shifting movement. He wanted a drink.

---

It wasn’t Lin’s fault that his mind worked like a complex number (a + bi; you know, two points on a plane coming together into an imaginary unit), while most others (but certainly not all) operated more like the additive function (remember linear functions in algebra? f(x + y) = f(x) + f(y), where each variable had its place and fit perfectly together with its friends). And it wasn’t his fault that his brain also seemed capable of remembering the most trivial of trivia. It was unconscious. Or done because it was fun and he was bored. He liked knowing things and he was good at it, so why not? He wasn’t so much (actually) ridiculing Daniel’s lack of knowledge when it came to deaf Roman painters who died in their youth, as just spouting things off because he could and because he always did, hungover or not. So the look on the man’s face, the distaste or irritation at mentally lagging behind the kid who wore purple sneakers and identified heavily with Kelis’ ‘Bossy' was funny. He just smiled to himself.

But then he was petting QP with the tips of his fingers, brown skin on white fur, and he was cooing at the kitten in the way of people who have had pets do, low and sweet. It was only when he was rudely cut off that he glanced over and up to Daniel. He set his chin on his yellow shoulder as the man leaned ever so casually against the wall. His eyebrows drew downward then into a dark expression. Immediately, his earlier annoyance returned, bubbling back to the surface of his face and turning the corners of his mouth down into a frown.

“No.” The word came out like a wall. Hard and unyielding. Lin pulled himself back to his feet and faced Daniel. Of course the man didn’t want this kind of responsibility. Well, too fucking bad. “Fuck you. Him.”

He said nothing wittier than that before he hugged himself. The Dom was dim ahead of him and the now semi-familiar silhouettes of books stood around them like so many headstones in a forgotten kirkyard. Lin sighed and looked away from Daniel. He wondered if his shoe was still in the bedroom somewhere.

“Come the fuck on. I’ll show you how to do the litter so I can fucking go and unthaw somewhere below the 66th parallel north.”

---

Daniel had never been all that good with numbers. He let the hotshots at the Wall Street Journal talk about money and finance, and he stuck to people, important people. Movers, shakers, the minds of people and the places they chose, those things were not made of numbers. Daniel had been good at people. He was not, however, any good at understanding Lin.

He had tried operating on certain expectations that went along with an analysis of Lin as a kind of boy stuck halfway to man, one that couldn’t resist attention and assumed the best way to get it was obscure references and colloquial humor. Such a person should have been easily diverted from whatever caught his attention, and Daniel assumed that Lin had figured him some kind of challenge, so he couldn’t figure out why Lin would return. At this point he blamed it on Sam, who must be feeling that she owed Daniel some kind of favor. Lin’s patterns continued to be erratic, however, and it made Daniel uncomfortable, like walking in a minefield.

Relatively sober and focused, Daniel watched Lin wrap up and make himself smaller. That was a defensive movement, and Daniel was surprised by it. Daniel shrugged his shoulders and looked around if the apartment, as if the cold air was suddenly visible. He eased away from the support of the wall, the dull blue pecked with worn cotton pieces seeming to separate from the gloom of the apartment into a silhouette vaguely male in its triangular shape. The pale bones that made up the harder angles of Daniel’s body softened as he drifted forward. “I’ll figure it out.”

Daniel’s lashes were low over the blue eyes as he watched Lin’s face, trying to find something there. “Are you sick?” he asked, suddenly, in exactly the manner he’d launched his last question. Daniel had a tendency to whip questions with edges out into the refrigerated air in the hope that Lin would answer from pure surprise.

---

The fact that Daniel had been unable to calm a fucking kitten the size of his two palms, that he had taken to the comms to reach out for help on how to remove a small animal from the top of a cupboard, that he hadn’t been able to come to the conclusion that cats needed food too, and also that he seemed to think QP didn’t know when food was edible, um, cast a whole lotta doubt on his blasé assertion that he would ‘figure out’ the litter situation. So, yeah, no, Lin didn’t believe that line of bullshit for one second and it showed clearly on his face, in the dark ring of his irises, and the flat line of his mouth as he glared at Daniel.

The expression only changed—and rapidly at that—when the boy realized he was being approached. Suddenly, he was worried and his eyes were wide. Lin drew his hands up swiftly to maintain space between himself and Daniel—now that there was no kitten to pass around, it seemed dangerous to do anything so stupid as this, and the boy was already feeling tired and confused and cold and he didn’t want -- he didn’t want this. He didn’t think Daniel was going to do anything. He was too apathetic, too cold. But, still.

The question too did its job. With the movement already having jarred him, Lin was ill-prepared to respond—to both question and the way Daniel’s eyes went half-lidded—and no quick words came to his rescue. Sick? He forced his hands into the warmth of his pockets to stop himself from wrapping his arms around himself again, realizing belatedly that was likely the cause of the query. He desperately wanted to turn this all into a joke, but he didn’t seem to be able to. Where was a laptop to smash when he needed one?

“Wow. Thanks for saying I look like shit, dickhead. No, Joachim, I’m not sick.” Lin palmed an eye and frowned at the coldness of his own hand. He was the kitten with his needle-claws; right now he was unsure in this huge apartment with the blue-eyed man and so he just tried to keep everything away. His hand went back into his pocket. “I’m hungover as balls, not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”

God, Sam could go fuck herself.

---

Daniel felt that logic didn’t enter the equation when small furry bombs crashed into your life and went off like air sirens. He was more disturbed by the idea that he needed to do something for someone else than he was by the kitten’s furry little problems, and he had been trying to maintain some distance in the hope the kitten would not remain his problem for very long. What if it died? Then that would be his fault, and Daniel knew himself well enough that he had to avoid something like that at all costs. Sometimes Daniel thought the entire purpose of his life was focused on not killing anything. It was funny if you thought about it long enough.

Daniel stopped moving when Lin put up his hands. He hadn’t intended to get any closer, had no thought of even getting close enough to touch, and he realized that Lin didn’t have a problem with the cold, he had a problem with him, with Daniel. This was a startling realization and Daniel frowned into the boy’s face. He hated the nickname because he didn’t feel there was anything at all priest-like about him, and it wasn’t as if he heard people address him by name all that often.

“Are you afraid of me?” Daniel asked, looking as if he did not believe this could even be an issue. He rocked his weight back on two bare heels and steadied himself there, drab in his washed out clothing and messy curls. The sharp blue eyes flicked down to Lin’s hands hiding in the front pockets and then back up again.

---

He felt Daniel’s eyes move over him in water-color paleness. They saw, surely, the defensive posture the arms between the boy and man presented, and Lin could almost hear the question forming before Daniel even opened his mouth. That was another good reason to stuff hands into pockets. Which was what he did. Immediately. ...Until like, three seconds later, when he realized that was just as obviously defensive as anything else he’d done. God. He might as well just go get a fucking crowbar to beat Daniel back for all his fucking subtlety. Lin closed his eyes a second, black lashes meshing together, because, dear God, why did his body have to treat him this way? Why couldn’t it just chill for a second?

“No.” He finally answered. His voice was quiet and his eyes opened slowly, dark on darker. He tried not to see the disbelief on Daniel’s face. Because he wasn’t afraid. Was he? He was uncertain, but he wasn’t afraid. ...Right? It occurred to him then that he didn’t know. Lin worried his own bottom lip with teeth, before opting to shrug. There was no further elaboration.

He thought about his shoe again and about how he needed to get it. But before he could drag himself away to go crawl underneath Daniel’s bed in search for the thing, as much as he wanted to, he found himself closing a few inches of distance between himself and Daniel with one sure step and eyes narrowed in defiance.

“You’re the one who’s afraid of me, and we both fucking know it.” Lin lifted his arm again. This time a long-fingered hand met the soft Maine blue sweater and the muscle of Daniel’s chest, on the right side, and pushed, one point of hard pressure. There was no heat behind the shove. It was sharp, but light. He was proving a point. To whom—whether to Daniel or himself, wasn’t readily apparent.

---

Daniel felt that he was on much firmer ground now. He had detected something, made a theory, seen it confirmed, and now the subject here was trying to disprove it by bravado. It would have worked if Daniel was as drunk as he usually was, but he was mostly sober right now and a sober Daniel was an observant Daniel, possessed of a disturbing amount of patience. Daniel was never planning on leaving his apartment; he had nowhere to go, nothing in particular that needed doing, and currently only two things to divide his attention from his own misery. One of them was headfirst into kitten kibble, and the other one was glaring at him.

Daniel was not a particularly strong man, and even when healthy he’d never been the type to run nowhere on treadmills or lift things that would only be put down again. Add in a few years of total ennui and you got someone who still worked only because there was some magic door to leach out the poison every week or so. Daniel fell back under the poke immediately. He caught himself after a couple steps back, putting a hand out to steady himself on the wall, and righted a few seconds later. He wasn’t angered or annoyed by the move, because he thought it predictable. Because he’d expected it.

He smiled slightly at Lin. It was a dangerous smile because it was small, light, and very rare. “Of me? Why? What could I possibly do to you?” It was a serious question, one accompanied by a very penetrating blue stare.

---

Well, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The clarity in Daniel’s eyes was enough to worry Lin further, even before the unnerving smile unfurled across the man’s creepily porcelain skin. The boy had almost been concerned—almost—when the man stumbled backward a step or two from the sharp shove that he hadn’t intended to be so forceful. Lin blinked rapidly as his brain pushed through the sandy remnants of a night spent drinking and finally interpreted the scene, the hand on the wall, and that fucking smile, and told him that the drunk was fine and that he needed to move. Daniel, he realized then, finally, was sober—or as sober as someone pickled in alcohol could be. lol. #nope

The boy frowned, though this time he succeeded in not throwing his hands up like a child trying to shield himself from a bully. Still, the few feet that spanned between them did nothing to save Lin from the perturbing, fucking soul-piercing stare the other man aimed at him. He felt like he was being dissected, laid out underneath the cool white of fluorescent lights, arranged on a sterilized slab of textured aqua glass, bits of him just here and there in those sort of muted shades formaldehyde produces in once-living tissue.

So he was scared.

Fuck this. Lin wasn’t a fucking book to be read. Something slid down behind his eyes and closed, taking some of the brightness with it, and he backed away. With his bottom lip poking out in a very serious pout, he shook his head, very unconvincing in his denial.

“Fuck you, Daniel. You’re a creep and you fucking suck.” He laughed helplessly at himself, though he meant what he was saying.—And then he retreated with one last glance at QP to make sure he was still cool.

Lin drew deeper into the frigidity of the apartment, quickly. It wasn’t safe, no, but -- he couldn’t leave yet. And he was still faster than Daniel, so he had faith that he could be in and out before he was caught. All he said as he looped a particularly tall tombstone was, “I need to get my shoe.”

---

That was not an answer. Daniel was used to casual insults, things sent at him in boredom or vengeance. Daniel himself favored short comments meant to sting, and he used those to occupy himself and also drive away anyone who got close enough to trouble him with their insights. It made sense to him that Lin used the same tactic, but only because Daniel assumed there was some lurking incident or connection Lin was hiding from him. Daniel liked to discover things hidden, and he had very little to occupy his time that wasn’t printed in black and white. His brows made a short inquisitive jump toward his hairline, all cupid’s dark curls and serene countenance.

Lin made a break for it, but not in the direction Daniel expected. Daniel made immediately to follow but paused to look at the cat, who had recently finished pushing the bowl into the wall with its face in an attempt to get one final kibble bit. Still crunching, it looked back at him guilelessly, and Daniel scowled. He turned and went after the boy, navigating the books and the come-standard striped furniture thoughtlessly. With the advantage of home ground, he caught up quickly, stopping in the doorway to his bedroom to watch Lin in his space.

“What, seriously? I thought that was a joke.” He laughed, though not necessarily kindly, more of surprise than real humor. Daniel probably had a thoughtless, generous laugh in him, but it wasn’t present. “I didn’t hide it, if that’s what you’re thinking.” The idea that he, Daniel, would keep a purple tennis shoe like some kind of prize was absolutely out of the question. He wondered what kind of problems Lin had in the outside world with only one shoe. He wasn’t sympathetic; getting hit with the rubber sole had hurt, even if he hadn’t actually smashed his glass and gotten cut, as he had implied only to bother Lin on paper.

The kitten tottered in, mewing again but with a softer, more self-satisfied air to the sound. It curled around Daniel’s ankle and he looked down at it, perplexed by the addition of its existence.

---

Not bothering to check if he was being followed, the boy crawled on top of the big, black bed unhappily. He didn’t think his shoe was being held as a weird sort of fucking prize. He just thought it was lost. So once he reached the edge Daniel had been nearer when the shoe had been sent at his head, he dropped onto his stomach, and, with hands flat on the cold floor and his head lowered, peered into the fucking black hole that existed underneath. No wonder it was like, sub-zero in here. And no wonder Daniel had no soul. It had obviously gotten torn away whilst he’d slept in his monster of a bed one night early on, leaving only an attractive dickhead of a husk behind.

Truly tragic.

Lin stretched one arm under the bed with a grimace, afraid of what might be under there (draugr? This was the crypt), until Daniel spoke. He sighed loudly and turned slowly, so very slowly, to level the man with a long, very annoyed look, like he could not fucking believe what he was hearing.

“Oh, really. All this time I thought we were playing an elaborate, emotionally abusive game of hide-and-seek. Damn. How ever will I go on.” Lin’s voice was dull, obvious in its sarcasm and not at all kind. He rolled his eyes and opened his mouth—but stopped mid-way through when he spotted QP rubbing against Daniel’s leg, adorable and oblivious and probably deaf. He frowned again and rolled back onto his stomach.

It wasn’t here, was it? Lin let his arms hang off the side of the mattress a moment, extended into the fucking freezing air that wafted out from under the bed eerily, and then he accepted defeat. So be it. He flipped back onto his ass, wondered briefly if he was going to die of exposure, figured yes, then scooched himself to the other side of the headboard. Shoes met the floor softly.

“Forget it.” He was mostly talking to himself. On his feet, he moved toward the door and Daniel. He paused to scoop up QP, which put him close to the man again. This was fine. He wasn’t scared. Nope. He cradled the kitten carefully to his chest with one hand, scratching under his chin with sharp fingers of the other for a quiet minute. QP purred. Lin gazed quizzically up at Daniel, then passed him the cat, arranging his hands as he had before.

If the dipshit had him so figured out, had all the pieces of the fucking puzzle, cutting him open with those blue glass eyes of his, then surely, he’d see this coming. Lin steeled himself, quashing his fear ruthlessly. He knew he could easily be shoved away, but that was alright too. If he was, he’d whip a shoe at the man’s balls. No one fucking beat him out of a victory.

He stood on the tips of his toes just a little, just enough to lean in, so he could whisper in Daniel’s ear with tickling lips.

“You are such a fucking jackass.” Ah, sweet nothings. Now, he should probably take his leave.

---

The kitten made itself comfortable on the cuff of Daniel’s jeans, setting a warm furry butt on his toes, and Daniel decided to leave it there for the time being, since he suspected that Lin might make another one of his unpredictable jumps, perhaps this time out the window or behind the bathroom door. Lin’s obvious dislike for the apartment should have been reassuring, but it made Daniel wonder what kind of places Lin liked if he didn’t like this one, or even what kind of place Lin himself lived in. An overgrown dormroom, maybe. Daniel threaded his fingers through the itchy curls behind his right ear and shifted his attention from the visitor on his foot to the one in his bed.

Daniel watched without blinking for a while. He had no idea where the shoe was, and the kitten had been running rampant for hours before Daniel woke up with it wailing in the kitchen. He wondered if all that rolling around was really necessary for just one shoe, and if that was really why they were here. Lin was clever enough to do something like this to torture him. Daniel had no idea why something as angular and skinny as Lin would be attractive. He wasn’t lush in the right places, and Lin never looked at him with any particular admiration.

Danie was silent while Lin gave up on his search and crossed the room again. He had a tendency to let his eyes drop to watch Lin’s feet and guess (incorrectly) where they would land, and then look up again at his face to see if there was a clue there which way he would go. In the shadow of the doorway, Daniel stood still while the cat was retrieved, waiting to see what would happen, thinking of nothing at all except that the air in his apartment was suddenly surprisingly cold, and very silent.

Daniel turned a rough cheek to meet Lin’s jaw as the boy leaned in to whisper his insult, and he moved quickly before the last syllable died. The cat was rapidly transferred to one hand and pressed against the curve where Daniel’s chest met his shoulder, and Daniel’s other arm shot out to cut into the wall a few inches from Lin’s face. Daniel moved forward so his body pushed Lin back into the bedroom, not far, just enough to prevent him from slipping out like he’d no doubt meant to.

“You done rolling around in my bed?” He said it in a very dark voice, with a certain flatness and rapt attention to diction. Daniel spoke much faster when he was sober, and his words had bite.

---

He hadn’t been rolling around. Looking for shoes was very srs bsns, Lin knew. He lost enough of the fucking things. Though most were only discarded in unusual places like the closet or something, rather than chucked full force at someone he’d just slept with's head. Technicalities. Anyway, regardless, it wasn’t his fault he was born especially callipygian. That was all genetics. And if the so-called “rolling around” underlined that fact, he certainly wasn’t to blame. He was all innocence. 100%. Maybe even 110%.

Not that that mattered now. Not when Lin was squeezing his eyes shut and a small, astonishing puff of wind was hitting his cheek, the backdraft from Daniel’s palm flying through the air like, right by his fucking face. The boy dropped back onto flat feet and blinked dark eyes open as he was jostled backwards and his exit was blocked. All in one fell fucking swoop. It was like the fucking Pagemaster—and Daniel was the stupid ass dragon that needed its gizzard carved out and Lin was Macaulay Culkin, except older and cuter and not on drugs. Which made QP the Whoopi Goldberg book of fairytales, he was 90% certain.

Only Daniel wasn’t just bad animation mixed with live action in a splash of pretty jewel tones. He was real, and his weight was real, and Lin was busy tripping over his feet as he stumbled backwards into the room. He steadied himself as quickly as he could, but by then, the thunderclap of words was breaking over his head and he almost winced. It was only sheer force of will that kept him from curling into himself, and Lin glared sharply up at Daniel with as much dislike as he could muster.

“I don’t know, baby. You seemed into it before. You fucking tell me.” Only in extenuating circumstances (e.g. if he was trapped in a hallway in a comic book world made real with a monster and a superhuman being that liked to hold knives to throats or something cray like that) did Lin’s need and desire to defy flag. Otherwise, he might fall back and he might try to keep distance, and he might even cower, but his lip knew no bounds. He figured, if he couldn’t slip out now—if he couldn’t run with a proverbial shoe to Daniel’s head (lol), then hell, he would at least try to go down swinging. Or what equated to swinging with him. Which was a lot of pouting and swearing. Still.

---

Daniel was paying careful attention to Lin’s expressions, and he was now seeing the boy for only the third (fourth... no, surely third) time and he noticed less of youth about him and more of what appeared to Daniel to be something earnest. He hadn’t known Lin could be earnest, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it. He had to take more of what Lin said into account, and immediately ran Daniel’s mind over the previous few minutes of conversation. Daniel hadn’t had time to really soak in the whiskey today, and he did it without effort. The blue eyes grew less sharp and yet more wide as Lin recoiled and grew small again.

Daniel took his hand off the wall and stood on two feet again. Automatically he brought his palm back and curved it over his stomach to catch a small tumble of white fur in interlaced fingers. The kitten was purring ecstatically for absolutely no apparent reason, attempting to knead Daniel’s palms with its small pink paws. His gaze never settled down on it, and despite what appeared to be its best attempts, the kitten was in no danger of falling.

Lin’s words appeared not to get through to Daniel at all. Not an eyelash quivered. Instead Daniel repeated different words. “Emotionally abusive?” he said. It was quiet, serious, astute. Daniel made a sound perfectly imitating the faint twist at the end of his last word, but edited to cut off the question. The blue eyes moved dangerously in the dim light, shining where they ought not, and growing darker than they should. Daniel seemed to withdraw with only a touch of his chin down toward his collarbone. Abruptly he turned and escaped out into the living room. “You should go,” he said, without turning back to project the voice. “If I find your damn shoe I’ll ship it to you.”

---

Continue to part II.