Archive of Our Own

It has been over a decade since Sunday last stepped on a stage. The Penacony Opera House gleams with history, the plaster worn in places and the gold in need of some polish, but it is as every bit as beautiful as the pictures had made it seem. The quiet clicks of his shoes as he strides across the stage echo into the empty audience as he takes center stage, and once there he closes his eyes and tilts his head back.

No song comes from his mouth.

It is there in his throat, but his teeth refuse to unclench and release it to the wild. The song didn’t belong to him anymore. He had no right to it.

The stage was meant for one person only, and it was—

“Brother.”

Sunday sighs, a smile coming to his face as he turns to see his sister. “Robin.”

Her hug is light like gossamer, drifting through his fingers as he tries to grab hold of it.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she says, her voice wavering with emotion.

“You were promised a stage, sister dear, and I always keep my promises.” He pulls away, giving her a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes as he can see the scar on her neck where her necklace fails to hide the jagged edge. “And I promise, it was a very good deal.”

A deal made in blood, the former head of the family buried six feet underground with his lips sewn together. Sunday hadn’t cried when he died – he had merely hidden the blood stains on his sleeve and covered his face in a dark veil of mourning.

Yet Robin still wears her furrow of worry on her brow, marring her delicate features as she steps back to stare at him more firmly. “You promised the stage would be ours as children. I want you to sing with me.”

He feels when his smile becomes a mask, tight along the edges as he tries to placate her. “My voice is nothing compared to yours, sister dear. I would only tarnish your glorious song.”

“You’ll only make it better.” She grabs his hands, light as a bird’s wings as she brings them to her mouth to press kisses along his gloved knuckles. “It’s so lonely to sing by myself.”

His heart pings painfully, but the smile never leaves his face as he cups her cheeks and wipes away the tears that gather along her lashes. “You won’t be alone. You’ll only have the best performers by your side, just as I will be, though in a more administrative role. Now no more tears. They’ll ruin your voice for practice in the morning.”

The comfort does not sate Robin, but she nods regardless. It is an old argument, a dance so routine at this point he could tap dance it blindfolded and half asleep, and he knows she grows weary from the constant appearance of it in their conversations. As she walks away, he can see the weight she bares on her frail shoulders, and there is nothing more he wants to do than to keep to their childhood promises, but in an adult world there was no room for the promises made between children.

A far away sound echoes, a laugh if not distorted by distance. Sunday narrows his eyes into the rows of empty chairs, unable to see a cause for the noise. He stands in the faded spotlight that flickers, straining his ears, but he hears nothing else except the beat of his own heart. It skips a beat, two, and he turns to walk away as the light finally gives out.

~*~

Under Sunday’s meticulous gaze, the opera house comes alive again.

With the Family’s finances firmly in his grasp, he spares no expense in rejuvenating the old place. Not renovating, not changing a single thing, for he does not want to rattle the ghosts he knows that linger in dark corners. He wants the age to show, but he wants to show the masses there was nothing wrong with a few wrinkles, that there was beauty to be found in history.

He wants it to look as it had when he was a child as he had watched his mother sing on that stage. Bring the glory from the past and drag it into the future, regardless of the technological advances that have been made since then.

The halls are familiar, but his steps lead him to frustrating dead ends, and he frowns as he looks at the blueprints with the contractor.

“This is supposed to lead to the basement. Who blocked it?”

“Sorry, sir, there’s no paperwork about it that we can find.”

“So there’s no record of who boarded it up?” Sunday sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why would someone do that in the first place? It’s supposed to lead to another hallway with more storage facilities.”

“Well, good thing we can knock it down, boss. But we also wanted to let you know this isn’t the only odd thing we’ve found. Lots of doors have been plastered over, and sometimes the furniture seems to move around or the hallways change…it’s like the theatre is alive.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sunday says sharply. “The only ghosts that exist are the ones conjured up by overactive imaginations, and that’s how rumors spread. That, in turn, will affect the reputation of this place before it even opens up, so keep your mouth silent on the matter. Do you understand?” When the man nods hesitantly, Sunday can’t even feel appeased. “Good. Start on knocking down walls and finding me the way to the basement. I expect good news by noon.”

He leaves the man and his ghosts as he just barely refrains from stomping away. He is much too old to give into childish feelings, so instead of the stomp he merely strides with purpose away from the crew.

Hallways, moving? Preposterous!

His office is his sanctuary away from the madness that threatens to consume him, and when the door clicks shut he leans against it, letting out a stressful sigh that has been building all day. The tension in his shoulders drains as he walks towards his desk, looking over the mail he has yet to respond to, the contracts and other correspondence he is in desperate need of a secretary for. His laptop sits sleeping and waiting, and next to it –

Sunday pauses as he takes in the black sheep that sits among his flock of usual items.

A thick stack of papers sits neatly on his desk, a scrawled note of barely legible font attached to the top. He plucks it up, scanning it over.

Perform this is all it says.

Sunday raises a curious brow and looks down at what he now sees to be a play script. Despite the yellowing edges of the pages, the ink is fresh as he runs his fingers over the first page. The indentations speak of a fevered typing by an ancient typewriter, something not commonly found nowadays with the popularity of phones and computers. Still, curiosity clings to his ribs as he sits and starts to read.

It is about a beautiful young man, trapped in a cage of his own making. Coveted by many, who seek to break his wings and chain him to their greedy hands. Who uses his voice to tempt and seduce, when all the lonely boy wants is to love truthfully without the veil of his voice to cover people’s eyes. It is a siren song to his heart, the familiar themes that play through his own life making him put down the script more than once to collect himself. If he hadn’t known better, he would say it was his own story written in black ink on the yellowed pages, but that was impossible. No one knows of his dark deeds except himself and the God who watches over him.

Still, the songs written are beautiful, the story tragic in its simplicity. And the end, where the boy sees that his own lover is a figment of his lonely imagination, created by his own voice and destroys himself, is the perfect scene where the curtains shall fall.

With script in hand, he makes his way to the stage where his sister practices with warming up her vocals. Resplendent even dressed down, her smile is radiant when she turns to him.

“Sunday,” she greets, moving to meet him as the crew works around them. “Look at how it shines!”

“And it shall shine brighter when you take center stage and perform on opening night.” He does not see her eyes dim, nor her smile crack as he hands her the script. “And I found the perfect one for you.”

Robin takes it hesitantly, her smile not meeting her eyes as she thanks him. “Where did you find it? It looks ancient.”

“It was in my office. I’ve already consulted the databases, but I haven’t been able to find it. It doesn’t even have the writer’s name on it.”

Robin hums in contemplation, flipping through the first couple of pages before she lands on a song. “But brother…the lead is for a male part.”

“And we shall change it to fit you,” he says easily, seeing the argument and attempts to shut it down. “It’s perfect for you and your range.”

Yet Robin does not seem accepting as she continues to flip through the script. “It would change the meaning.”

“Nonsense, it’ll be the same regardless of gender.”

“It is a male lead with a male lover. A forbidden romance during the time it was written in, with a heavy emphasis on religious guilt,” Robin recites, somehow like she knows it before reading the whole thing. Hurriedly, she adds, “I think you should sing it.”

He holds up his hands as she attempts to hand it back to him. “I’m afraid I can’t. This is a part for you, Robin, and it would please me if you accepted. If not, we will find another play to perform.”

Robin would sing regardless, Sunday decides. With a subpar manuscript or the one in her hands, it would be her voice to fill the theatre with light, just like how their mother had done before.

Smiling, he pushes it closer to her until it touches her chest. “Study it. We’ll gather later to figure out the changes to be made.”

He departs with a kiss to her forehead, ignoring how she touches the tender scar on her neck.

Sunday means to return to his office. He tries, repeatedly, but finds himself turned around at every turn, more confusing than the last. After twenty minutes of turning corners and meeting dead ends, Sunday starts to wonder what has happened to him. He knows this opera house like the back of his hand, could find his office with just a touch of fingers to the plaster to lead him, but he is oddly lost.

No, wait…

This…isn’t the proper hallway?

Sunday stops, brow furrowing as he stops to take in the area once more. It is similar to the many that make up the veins of the theatre, but there are differences that he knows doesn’t belong in this hallway. The painting that hangs on the wall is not the one that belongs here. When he looks out the window he does not see the gardens below.

Somehow the morning sky looks clouded over with dusk, welcoming in purple-black skies where before it had been bright and sunny. Ozone is thick in his nose as he continues to walk, thunder rumbling from a distance as he checks his cell phone. No reception, he sees, and he furrows his brow as he stops once more.

An echoing creak of a door opening pulls his attention to the side.

There, as if beckoning him, is a door that does not fit in with the others in the hallway. Unlike the others with their handles of gilded gold and pale cream finish on the wood, this one is dark and heavy, the handle black and cold when he goes to pull it open. He expects a closet – he sees, instead, a small office that looks to be a writing room. There is a large desk in the middle, a vintage green banker’s lamp quietly sitting in darkness. Books spill from overstuffed shelves, stacked haphazardly in corners in a way that makes Sunday dizzy.

Sunday walks in, not hearing the door close behind him with a whisper. He is too enchanted to hear anything but the beating of his own heart as he approaches the desk. There are more instruments strewn about, from ink blotters to letter openers, all things that are mostly obsolete in this new world of technology, but still have a certain charm to him as he reaches over to touch the keys of the typewriter. Just drifts his fingers over the worn letters, feeling the history there through the peeling enamel and the indentation of the letters.

As he goes to press one, a shiver goes down his spine.  

Someone is in the room with him.

“Good evening,” the stranger croons from their shadowy corner.

Sunday is quick to quietly grab the letter opener in what he hopes is an unseen action. “Good evening.”

The man does not show that he sees it, but it’s hard to tell with the shadows in the way of the already dark room. “I’m not the type to receive guests this late in the evening, but I’m flattered it’s you, since I have a question that been burning on my tongue.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“Did you not like my gift, angel?”

Sunday retains his calm face as he delicately palms the letter opener behind his back. “And what gift is that, stranger?”

“The script, of course. Written for you. Yet you butcher it.”

The shadows part, draping loving hands over broad shoulders as the stranger moves from his corner and seats himself across from Sunday. His face is obscured by the darkness, and Sunday can only see the tip of a stubbled chin and thin lips that curl daringly upwards in amusement.

“Are you my mysterious writer?” Sunday questions.

“Not so mysterious if you know where to look.”

“Yet I don’t know you, good sir, and you dress like a vagabond.”

A huff of laughter. “How welcoming of you.”

The man reaches over to his lamp, pulling the small chain. Light fills the dark room, making Sunday momentarily blind as he flinches away. When he is able to pry his eyes open, there is no one there except a white rose with wilted edges sitting on the desk, waiting patiently.

Lack of sleep, surely, Sunday thinks as he picks up the dying blossom, hand shaking. He had spent the last few days working with minimal sleep–

“Another gift for you,” says the voice at his ear abruptly.

Sunday whips around, fist finding nothing but empty air and the fading echoes of laughter. He pants, adrenaline making him look wild as he catches the reflection of himself in the window that overlooks the city street – and catches the dark creature who snarls over his shoulder in a mockery of a smile.

There is no time to move. The larger body slams into him, knocking him forward into the glass. Sunday's palms slap against the windowpanes sharply, softening the blow as he gasps out a small cry of pain, mostly brought on by the suddenness of the attack and not from actual injury. The rose still remains clenched in his fist while the letter opener falls to the ground.

“Why do you run from the past?” his attacker asks, hard body pressed against his, large hands holding his wrists tight. “You won against that man, yet here you are, stagnating again.”

“Release me!”

Instead of listening to him, the hard body presses closer, until Sunday can feel all the buttons and clasps that cover it intimately as they bite through the delicate cotton of his suit.

“Sing my songs, angel. I wrote them for you.”

“I won’t ever sing. Not for you, not for him, not for anyone! Release me!”

Power wraps around his vocal cords, coming out crystal clear and aching as it fills the small office. Sunday expects the man to fall to his knees, ears bleeding at the intensity – but the man merely chuckles and presses closer, leaving Sunday to gasp with Harmony in this throat as he feels the blunted curve of a hard cock press into his ass.

“Once more, with feeling,” are the amused words that manage to flit past the cotton in his ears.

Sunday doesn’t like to consider himself weak, but he knows he isn’t a fighter. Years with a pretty ribbon tied around his throat has made him soft around the edges, but the daggered ends of his words hurt his own throat as he snarls out, “RELEASE ME.”

The hands hold his wrists let go, though not without a gentle rub of a thumb against his wrist bone, letting Sunday know it wasn’t his voice that the man obeys, but his own amusement coming to an end as he plays with his prey. He turns around quickly, but the man is gone, leaving only the whisper of a kiss on the back of his neck as his hand clenches around the rose.

Sunday swallows the blood in his mouth and looks down at the desk.

There, the script lays, though this time the unnamed main character has his name written beside their lines.

~*~

Sunday stalks down the hall towards where his sister’s dressing room is. He can still feel the dark presence on his person, from the hands around his wrists and the cock rutting against his ass, and like phantom presses he flushes in anger as he feels the ghost of their touch echo over him.

But he was not the only one who lingered in the opera house, not the only person of importance.

Robin.  

She had been the last one to handle the manuscript for the play, and now it was back in his possession.

Robin, Sunday thinks desperately as he tries her cell one more time, her cheery voicemail asking him to leave a message. Robin.

The hallways bend around him, leading him to darkened doorways that beckon him forward with a skeletal hand. Sunday turns and turns away, back towards the fading light as his heart races. The shadows are there to tug at his clothes, to try to draw him back, but he resists.

Please leave a voicemail and I’ll get back to you!

He tries again to call, receives another recorded message. Again and again until the voice that comes from his phone is dark and deep, nothing like his sister’s angelic voice.

“Sunday.”

He abandons the phone, delighted laughter ringing from the small speaker as he drops it and starts to run. Every corner he turns he can still hear the tinny call of his name, somehow closer than before despite the distance he creates. Purred into his ear, pressed to the back of his neck in a mockery of a kiss, licked down his spine until stopped by the waistline of his trousers – each call of his name grows more and more desirous, and with it, Sunday grows more and more desperate as he runs.

His original plan is forgotten, mind a mess of fleeing from the invisible predator that stalks him through the halls. He can feel where his false cape of red flutters around his shoulders, can feel the phantom bite of teeth press into his shoulder as they whisper the better to eat you with, my dear. Even with every hallway changing to make him more lost with every turn, Sunday keeps running.

Claws run through his hair, not to stop him, but to play with him. Scraping sharp tips against his scalp, and the shivers it ignites turn from fear to something he doesn’t want to name. He knows he is physically alone in the hallway, but instinctively knows something is there, that no matter how hard or fast he runs there are hands on his body, trailing down his sides and cupping his ass, spreading over his thighs and teasing the area where they meet his groin. All over his clothes, but the touch burns away the fabric to make it feel like they touch his bare skin.

Even the light, from where it flickers in the distance, mocks him, and he feels no safety in its glow anymore. Set in this labyrinth, the minotaur chasing him, Sunday is lost. The walls fade to rock, harsh against his hands as he tries to use them to catch himself when he stumbles. His name echoes back at him, in turns loving and jeering, called out in his own voice. Over it is the slow tapping of boots against dirt, a jaunty little whistle accompanying it in a song he does not recognize.

The walls of rock fade to a forest, the dirt and pebbles under his feet turning into grass as he runs between trees. His red cape flutters behind him, anticipation rising inside of his gut that makes him laugh, dancing teasingly with flashes of his skin where the dress does not cover around his thighs, delights in the growls that echo behind him—

Sunday shakes his head, finding himself once more in the hallway of the opera house, Robin’s cheerful voice asking him to leave a voicemail once more. Still swathed in darkness, he sees at the opposite end of the corridor a stranger whose face he cannot discern.

“Good evening,” the strange man says pleasantly, like sweat born from fear wasn’t pebbling along Sunday’s forehead or drifting down his neck.

Yet somehow Sunday sounds calm as he repeats back, “Good evening.”

“Is there something wrong with my play that you hold?”

That he—?

And there it is, in his hands where his phone had been moments ago, the corrected manuscript that had his name instead. Robin’s dulcet tones are gone, replaced by something darker and deeper as it fades into just his name.

Sunday.

“I didn’t—”

The shadows around the man shift, and he starts to walk forward. “But you did. You picked it up.”

Sunday.

“No, I was trying to find—” freedom “—my sister.”

“Are you sure?”

No. “Yes.”

Sunday.

Sunday looks at the manuscript, and from the angle where he looks, he can see the tips of boots enter his vision.

“Sunday.”

“No,” he whispers to himself, even as a gloved hand grips his chin gently and tips his face up.

“SUNDAY,” the monster that has his adoptive father’s face screams.

Sunday blinks in the cocoon of blankets, and he finds himself on his bed, in his home, miles away from the opera house.

Sunday sits up, still panting as he looks around in disbelief. He is still clothed in his suit, but as he lays splayed out on his bed, it looks mussed as if he had been rolling around with someone frantically. There is an energy coursing through his veins still, that is tinged with something desperate from all the phantom touches, and it’s what makes him push to his feet and rush out of his room.

“Robin!”

He doesn’t bother to knock at her door down the hall from his room – he slams it open with all the panic of an older brother.

Robin stirs from where she sleeps on her bed, her pale lashes fluttering before sleep-hazed irises gaze up at him. “Sunday?”

Sunday the phantom whispers to him from that hallway, and he swallows as he gathers her in his arms.

Now Robin wraps her arms around his shoulders, and despite the sleep in her voice, she is almost fully awake now. “Brother, what’s wrong?”

“Are you alright?” he asks, pulling away to look over her.

“Of course I am. Are you alright?”

Her eyes take him in, and he knows how feral he must look as she takes in his wild hair and flushed face.

“I’m…I’m fine. I just,” and he cuts himself off, because how can he tell her what he had experienced when he himself wasn’t sure what had happened? A silly dream that bled into reality? Or a reality that felt like a dream? “It was just a bad dream,” he settles on, moving to stand and trying to straighten the wrinkles in his suit. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

But Robin stands with him, pressing her hands to his cheeks and smiling up at him. “Thank you for checking on me, but I think you should worry more about yourself,” she says, a hint of something in her voice that makes him look down at her in surprise, but she’s already leading him out of her room. “What time did you get back in? I didn’t hear you.”

He didn’t, but he doesn’t tell her that. “Late.”

“Have you even eaten?”

She leads him back into his room, towards his bathroom. He tries to think, but his thoughts and memories are a blur of hours that trickle into minutes that fall into a shallow pond of hazy recollections. When had he gotten in? When was the last time he had eaten? How had he gotten home?

Sunday is silent too long, but Robin doesn’t say anything as she starts the bath.

“You’re working too hard,” she says with a laugh, pouring in lavender scented oils and soap and using her hand to mix it into the water. “I know the opera house means a lot to you, because it means a lot to me too, but you’re the only one I have left. Please take care of yourself better, at least for my sake.”

She leaves him with a kiss on the cheek, and he stands there staring at the purple tinted water that steams pleasantly. Surely a bath would clear his mind. He doesn’t know why his brain is so foggy, but he attributes it to the stress of reopening the opera house, and he discards his clothes to the side as he sinks into the water.

The groan he lets out borders on obscene as he slides down. He gathers up bubbles and the oil-tinted water to pour over his shoulders, letting the scent drift into his senses and calm his racing mind. He drove home, he thinks as he closes his eyes. Yes, that must be it. He drove home, and in his exhaustion—

Sunday does not see the lights in the bathroom flicker out, but he can hear the voice that calls to him.

“Sunday,” the dark whispers to him, and Sunday gasps, eyes flying open as he sits up, memories falling back into place like a misplaced puzzle piece. When it all clicks, he feels his cheeks flush and his body warm up further than what the bath can do for him, all the while a dark chill tingles down his spine as he recalls his name being whispered into his ears.

Naked as he is, he feels vulnerable, and he unconsciously crosses his arms over his chest as the water sloshes over the sides of the tub at his movements. The scent of roses fills his nose, not the lavender his sister had poured into the tub to help lull his mind. When he looks down, he can see the white petals that fill the tub around his waist, their edges dyed black. They turn transparent from where they fill with water, sticking to his skin as he shifts to avoid them, but they cling stubbornly despite his best efforts.

They press soft kisses against his skin, leaving behind small blemishes in their wake as they fall from his frantic movements, pressed there as a gift by a loving mouth that belongs to the dark that creeps in the corners of his bathroom.

As he stumbles out of the tub, the flowers are gone, leaving only lavender scented water and bubbles when he turns to look back. Filled with panicked confusion, he puts a hand on the edge of the tub and leans down to inspect it – and a hand reaches up to stroke a thumb across his lips, smearing rose petals across them.

Once more Sunday jerks away, landing on the tile floor it a shocked gasp that comes more from the suddenness rather than from pain. Nothing else crawls from the tub, and he leaves the drain in as he rushes from the bathroom, back into his room where the shadows seem to laugh and coo at him. They trace insufficient hands over his arms and neck, through his hair as he hurriedly pulls clothes over his body. He gets so far as to pull on his button up pajama top before a sound startles him.

He reaches over to turn on the light, but stops as he stares at the corner of his room where a chair sits. Usually his chair for reading when he has the time, now he sees the shape resting in it through the darkness, how one ankle is resting against a knee and pulling the fabric of cotton tight across thick thighs. He can see the silhouette of a gloved hand pressed to a cheek, the other one tapping a silent rhythm against an upper thigh.

“Sunday,” the shadow man croons. “My angel of music.”

A gloved hand reaches out towards him.

“Come to me.”

It’s a dream, Sunday thinks as his feet lead him closer, it has to be.

Is it?

When his knees brush against the man’s, a hand reaches out to touch the dampened cloth he had tossed on his body. Around his wrist the shackle goes, pulling him closer until he’s straddling the lap of the shadow. His thighs glow against the darkness he is pressed against, the softness of his skin and the cotton of his top are violent contrasts to the leather and rough weave of the man, all sharp edges that press against his softness with an amused chuckle.

“Is it a dream?” the shadow asks, a thumb tracing over Sunday’s bottom lip. “Does it feel like one to you?”

The hand trails down to his open collar, to where the buttons are hastily and wrongly pushed through incorrect holes, and traces a bead of water that trails from Sunday’s hair down to his collarbone. Then those hands settle on his hips, the grip light but somehow unbreakable as Sunday follows the silent prompt to move closer. He settles higher up on the strong thighs, his bare intimate area pressing against a zipper and a rough weave of fabric that makes him shiver as the man he sits upon laughs.

“I have to be dreaming,” Sunday says, more to himself than the stranger. “There’s no way this is real.”

But his hand presses against a burly chest, and he can feel the heartbeat that kisses his palm.

The shadows around the man’s face recede enough to show an animalistic smile.

“Think what you want,” the man purrs, voice echoing like thunder in the distance as his hand moves up to press Sunday’s closer to his chest. The heartbeat turns into a war drum, victorious in its song as it takes its first captive. “Nothing will change the fact I need you to play the part I have written for you.”

When Sunday swallows, he tastes blood. “I can’t. It’s not my part.”

“Oh, angel,” is the rumbling admonishment tinged with amusement. “It was written for you.”

Hands resituate themselves on his hips, pressing soothing circles into his hipbones through the fabric of his sleep shirt. The tips of the other fingers tease over the curve of his ass.

Sunday shuts his eyes. “This is all a dream.”

Against his mouth, he feels, “Then wake up.”

With a gasp, Sunday sits up in his bed. The sun blinds him, his phone moments away from going off as his alarm approaches the time it’s supposed to ring. He stares at the chair, and in the dawn of morning light, it looks innocently empty. There is no dark and strong stranger there to beckon him closer, no rolling voice that makes him shiver with anticipation. He can still feel the scrape of rough cloth and belts against the skin of his thighs, and when he places a trembling hand to the area, he can see the red indentations of metal still pressed into his skin.

Downstairs he can hear the puttering of Robin, the smell of food cooking, and her rough humming. He could get up and go downstairs like normal, smile at her and eat her food…or, he thinks shamefully as he slips a hand between his legs to stroke his burgeoning erection, he could pretend to be a sleep for a few more minutes. He bites one of his knuckles to stem any sound as he touches himself, thinking of a disastrous voice in his ear, saying his name. He thinks of gloves hands swathed in soft leather moving his hand away and taking his cock in a large palm.

“Sunday.”

The whine he lets out is involuntary. He doesn’t know if his imagination makes the voice deeper and darker, or if that how it always was, but the croon of his voice makes him cum disgustingly quick.

“Good angel,” the voice continues, a rough, whiskered chin rubbing over his neck as a kiss is placed behind his ear.

Warmth settles along his back and holds him close as his mind slowly comes down from its pleasurable high. Sunday soaks in the praise and the comfort, turning his head to accept a kiss to his—

“Sunday?” A knock at his door, and Sunday feels his eyes fly open.

No one is there behind him.

“Sunday, are you awake?”

Robin does not attempt to turn his doorknob, which they both know he keeps unlocked. So unlike him, when he had barged in last night unprompted because of his panic. He is thankful, because he looks more of a wreck in the morning than he had at night, with his night shirt rucked up to his stomach, white coating his hand, face flushed and mouth panting.

Sunday licks his lips and croaks out, “I’m awake. I’ll be down in a moment.”

“Ah, okay.”

Robin doesn’t leave right away, lingering for just a moment, but the knot of anxiety in his chest loosens when he hears her house slippers slapping gently against the floor as she walks away. Still, he sits there in his shame and his uncertainty, and wonders what was a dream and what was reality.

He has the sinking feeling that none of it was the former.

~*~

The office he had stumbled upon the day before is no longer there. He searches high and low, but he cannot find the out of place door from the day before. The script is also gone, the first one without his name still in Robin’s possession.  

“Are you sure this is the only one you have?”

Her brow furrows in the face of his frustration. “Yes. Why, have you seen another one?”

“…no, I must be mistaken then. I thought there was a name for the main character, but I see that I am wrong.”

Robin attempts to speak to him more, but he feigns having meetings to escape back to his office. Despite the early hour of the day, Sunday feels exhausted, made worse by his pounding headache and rapid thoughts. The wood of his desk welcomes the hard thunk of his forehead as he drops it down only partially gently, trying to knock out the whirlwind thoughts that overwhelm him.

He is tired and also wired, balancing on a razor-sharp string that threatens to send him crashing to the ground below when he finds himself unbalanced on the tightrope. Reality fades into odd dreams, the dreams feeling too real from how they whisper into his ear or stroke over his lower back and his wings. The shadows whisper to him tempting things, banished only by light and his own ability to ignore them as well as he could.

He tries his best to keep his thoughts straight when he speaks to the construction workers or the performers, and he thinks he does a mostly okay job, at least barely passing, but he can feel the day beating him down with each second that passes, and it’s so tempting to leave his head down on the cool wood of his desk.

Hands curl around his shoulders and presses thumbs into a tense spot on his neck, and he sighs in pleasure. Robin always knew how to knead the stress out of him, and he takes in the presses and rubs with a purr.

“That feels good,” Sunday murmurs, humming appreciation as the hands tighten delightfully over a particularly tender spot.

A husky chuckle fills his ears, too deep to be his sister. “I’m glad.”

Sunday tosses himself from his chair and desk, whirling around while his heart beats rapidly in his chest.

There’s no one there. He is alone, but he knows that’s a lie, can taste it on his tongue as the laughter rings in his ears in time with his heartbeat. The fear he feels only makes the shivers in his thighs worse, because he knows that comes from a fearsome arousal.

He’s going mad, he decides as he starts to laugh, sinking to the floor. Lusting after dark words and creeping shadows – has he finally hit rock bottom? Have all his past deeds finally come to haunt him? Do his sins drive him to madness?

He stands, unable to take the weight of the shadows as he walks down to his sister’s dressing room. He needed to kneel by her side, come clean of everything, to show her the blood that stains his hands in an effort to stem the blood flow from her neck. Forgiveness is what he needed, he was sure of it, and as he approaches her door his hand touches the knob…only to pause as he hears two sets of voices that leaks from the small opening where the door isn’t flushed to the doorway.

“He is not well,” he hears Robin say, tears in her voice.

The male voice that responds to her is deep and dark, making the hair on the back of Sunday’s neck stand up straight in recognition. “No, he isn’t.”

“He can’t come to terms with the loss of my singing voice,” Robin continues. “It’s ruined—”

“There is hope still,” the stranger says soothingly, and Sunday clenches his fist when he can hear the sound of Robin as she buries her face in cloth – in the chest of the stranger when he sneaks close enough to look through the crack in her dressing room. “It will take time for you to heal.”

Who was this man, Sunday thinks as he grits his teeth. How did he have such a hold over his sister? Did he touch her as he did to him, with lustful demands hidden in a deep voice? No, he wouldn’t let anything happen to her again—

When he shoves the door open, in the quick second it takes for him to blink, the man is gone, leaving Robin to look up in surprise with her teary eyes.

“Brother—”

“Who is he?” Sunday interrupts.

“Sunday, please—”

But in his anger, he doesn’t see her tears or hear her pleas. He can’t feel the sharp bite of wood under his hands as he tears open her wardrobe, pulling clothes from hangers and tossing them to the floor.

“Stop it—”

“Who is he?” he repeats, turning on her.

But Robin isn’t there anymore. Or, Sunday corrects as he takes in the stage he finds himself on, he wasn’t in her dressing room any longer. It is not her who disappeared – it is him. And he’s not alone under the single spotlight, for he can see his shadowy phantom that haunts him that lingers off to the side waiting.

“You,” Sunday sneers, trying to find his feet under him as his head spins. “How dare you bother Robin—”

“Jealous, angel?”

“Leave her alone!” His shout echoes, rattling the ghosts that linger in the corners. “You can haunt me all you want, but leave her out of this! She’s been through enough without you messing with her!”

When Sunday blinks, the shadow is gone, but he knows the lie is there when he feels the presence along his back, a throaty chuckle near his ear making the wings there flutter in anticipation.

“Are you saying I have permission to mess with you?”

There is only a whisper of a shadowy kiss left when he turns to confront the strange man, and it makes the feathers of his wings bristle in anger.

“Why hide now when you’ve been so desperate to be seen?” Sunday calls out, expecting the tangled laughter next to his ear, but this time he does not turn to confront it.

“Is it not you who is desperate to be seen, little birdie?”

Sunday expects the hands that settle on his hips, the body behind him a solid wall of heat despite the coolness of the shadows that cling. He does not move, allowing his body to settle against the others as he spits out, “What do you mean?”

“Hmm, I wonder?” is the cruel return, made soft by the kiss pressed to one of the wings behind his ear. “You were born from a star, so it’s only natural you want to reclaim that light for yourself now that that hers is gone.” The hands turn him, and Sunday goes willingly to face his tormenter with his face of shadows. “Your mother was the shining star of this opera house, until your adoptive father from the Oak Family snuffed out her light. Or should I call him your kidnapper?”

Sunday narrows his eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t—”

“Oh, but you do, little birdie. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Halovian’s have a special skill connected to their voice, which is why your mother was such a popular singer. Her skill and control was unparalleled, dragging people into a cradle of comfort with her songs.” Sunday blinks, and the man is gone, leaving him defenseless as breath tickles over his neck. “Your adoptive father wanted to use her for his shady business dealings, and when she said no, he killed her and took both you and your sister under his wing to be molded into the manipulators he wanted.”

“ENOUGH!”

“But Robin was too weak,” the shadow continues gently, almost crooning as his grip on Sunday’s waist tightens. “They held the knife to her throat and—”

“—and I killed him!” Sunday snarls. “I made him put a fucking bullet in his brain with my song!”

His words crack at the end, echoing back at him in the empty theatre mockingly. His admission of guilt is stated over and over, a noose that hangs pretty around his neck like a string of pearls. Sunday pants, the adrenaline in him turning into an emptiness that fills him like a weight. And with the stranger his judge to his crimes, Sunday falls apart.

“He forced my hand,” he whispers. “He hurt Robin, called her useless.”

A hand cradles his cheek, gathering the tears that fall with a gentle swipe of a thumb. Even when his head is tilted back to face the man, he can see nothing past the shadows that obscure his face like a mask.

“I would do it again.”

“You don’t fear what you have done – you fear that you feel nothing but happiness that you have done it. Oh, angel.”

The kiss to his forehead is gentle, reverent. Comforting even. A touch that Sunday finds himself instinctively reaching out for as he closes his eyes, feeling the mouth move to his cheeks, his nose. He waits for the touch to his mouth, raising his head, but the lips press to his ear instead.

“Sing for me, angel,” the dark stranger commands, and Sunday is weak to the touches to his body as he tilts his head back and starts his song.

The stage feels like a foreign land, so long away that he no longer knows the language he had once spoken. His mother’s homeland, the very red of his blood as it reaches out to greet him. He can’t phase out the hands that rove over his throat and waist, pulling from him his lost song he had locked away so long ago.

He has no audience, but he feels the eyes of the ghosts who wander the opera house on him as he sings. All those who had stood before him on this very stage are there in the rafters as his voice rises. Higher and higher until only the roof is the only thing keeping it contained. He can taste nothing but tears in his throat, freedom on his tongue while the hands on his body play him like an instrument as they instruct and guide, press against his lungs and throat and waist.

The song is as lovely as it is broken, reflecting him as he shatters in the arms of the stranger who is the only thing that holds him together in that moment. He has been held together with nothing but fraying strings for so long that it’s the first time he has been secure.

As his song comes to an end, Sunday feels…lighter. The weight that has settled across his heart like an iron maiden has loosened, allowing it to beat for the first time since he had killed his adoptive father. A gloved hand settles over it, feeling its song in his chest.

“There you are,” is the crooning words that are soft and tender they could only be hiding the sharpness of steel underneath it. “Welcome home, Sunday.”

But his name clears his eyes of their tears, and he turns to glower up at the man who seems to smirk down at him. It is hard to tell through the distortion that covers his face, but Sunday can sense it is there, and rather smugly at that.

“You speak as if you know me. How?”

“Hmm? How do I know of your wicked deeds? Of your beautiful voice?”

Sunday attempts to pull away, the wings behind his ears ruffling in agitation. The stranger does not let him go.

“Are you a devil here to claim my soul? Perhaps an angel to guide me onto the path of redemption?”

When the stranger laughs, it shatters distant stars. “The only angel here would be you, so maybe that does make me a devil. But it’s not your soul I want. I want your song.” The struggle turns into a dance, Sunday turned into a dip as the man purrs against his neck as he draws him back up, “But not in the way your adoptive father wanted it. I do not want to bend and bind weak minds – I want it to be free. I want others to envy and lust after it, but I want to be the one to consume it.”

A dip, a twirl, and Sunday finds himself with his arms around broad shoulders as he tries to find his balance and shake away the dizziness.

“How are you truly any better?” he sneers. “You still want it!”

“Not to use. To hear, to fall asleep with it in my ear. I want it echoing in my heart.”

They are things similar to how his mother spoke of his voice, but there is no motherly love embedded in the words. Instead they are raw with need.

“Your mother wanted nothing more than to hear your song one day.”

“You speak as if you know her,” Sunday says accusingly.

“The stage knows all its performers and loves them all. But when the spotlight falls on the one,” the stranger pulls him close, lips brushing against his tempting as he whispers, “it knows it has found its star.”

The stage fades away as the curtain falls, and Sunday is pressed to silk sheets as a ravenous mouth consumes his. Unlike the soft plushness of a woman’s mouth, usually slick with gloss or lipstick, the mouth on his is rough from the whiskers that cover his lower face, dominating instead of the usual submissiveness that most of his previous partners had possessed. Gloved leather hands hold his wrists above his head, a thick cock grinding against his own that makes him sigh and gasp.

“Wait!” Sunday begs, turning his head away from the questing lips. “I don’t even know who you are!”

“Is it not my halls you wandered as a child? Did I not shelter you in the bowels of my heart when you were lost?” The voice lowers into a purr. “Was it not I who held your hand and told you stories? Nursed your scraped knees and kissed your hand?”

Memories covered in a haze of dust and years in between rattle in the back of Sunday’s head. “I don’t…remember…”

“No, I imagine you don’t.”

The pressure over him eases up as the man lifts off of him slightly, but his groin is still pressed daringly against Sunday's. Through the shadows that curl lovingly over the man's face, Sunday can see the dark smile that converts his lips to a weapon. Deep it slices into his torso, inches away from his heart that gives a traitorous beat as it fills with lustful anticipation.

“Angel, you will take center stage as the star of my play, and after the curtain has fallen, you will be mine.”

The lamp next to his bed flickers to life, and Sunday finds himself alone in his bedroom back at his home, painfully aroused and lost as he gasps. He swings his head desperately, trying to find the man, but he is gone, a memory faded into vapor. It leaves him cold and confused, a riot of emotions he isn’t capable of handling as he stands on trembling legs.

He relies on muscle memory to guide him to Robin’s room. How, he thinks as he knocks on her door. How did he end up back here, suit rumpled and mouth swollen and pink?

Despite the hour, Robin opens her door on his third knock, untired eyes glancing over him in concern.

“Robin…”

“Sunday?”

She opens the door wider, taking him by the elbow and leading him to her vanity to sit him down. This way, with three mirrors to reflect back at him, he can see how flushed he is, how his eyes glow. This was not the look of a man in fear – not with the edges of lust that still clung to his eyes.

“Who is he?” Sunday asks, more to his reflection than to his sister, but he’s grateful when she answers.

“A friend from a long time ago.”

A long time ago, when a gentle hand had led him from the dark of the basement, back into his mother’s arms. Who had told him stories of all the great people who had stood on that stage his mother was on at that very moment.

A friend?

He was never a friend, Sunday amended as he thinks of the hands on his waist and the breath on his neck. He had the ability to be so much more.

“That man…”

“He doesn’t mean any harm, brother, I promise!”

It’s not the harm Sunday is worried about anymore. It’s the lust. The passion that drives the man to touch him so lovingly, like he mattered. Sunday had experienced sexual intercourse before, more for business than for pleasure, even if the woman and men he had fallen into bed with had been passionate about their lust for him, it paled in comparison to what the strange man exuded.

That intensity is what frightened him the most.

Robin places her hands on his cheeks and tilts his head towards her. “Are you alright? You’re so pale.”

“I’ve caught a chill.”

The blanket Robin wraps around his shoulders does little to calm his shivers, because there was an underlying reason why they were there that had nothing to do with the temperature.

The man’s words echo in his head.

You will take center stage as the star of my play, and after the curtain has fallen, you will be mine.

“Robin…I will take your place on stage.”

Her wings spread out in surprise, but her eyes tell a different story, one that says she has already read and seen the ending of.

“Maybe one day,” she says softly, distant as a dream as she smiles, “it can be both of us on that stage, brother.”

When Sunday gathers her to him and presses her face to his shoulder, she does not disperse upon waking. She anchors herself closer, her happiness tinged with palpable sadness that Sunday feels the warmth of as she silently cries against his shoulder. He does not comment on it – he merely holds her closer.

~*~

The announcement of him replacing Robin starts speculation Sunday is quick to ignore. He does nothing to curb the curious looks and rumors that spread, only locks himself away in his dressing room and practices in private. When the director finally hesitantly knocks and requests his presence on the stage with the rest of the performers for rehearsals, Sunday holds his head up high and marches to what feels like the gallows.

Oh, he knows that they say about him. How he slit his own sister’s throat to ruin her voice so he could take her spotlight. How her talent lays dying in the scar tissue all because of him poisoning her. How jealous he must be, for what talent did he have—

It is Robin who defends him from the callous words. Even in a pretty dress and cute heels, she is a terror to be found in nightmares as she marches across the stage to one particularly harsh man and slaps him across the face.

“My brother is talented,” she hisses. “The role chose him as it wasn’t mine to play, and you will respect that, for the stage never forgets and the ghosts never rest.”

The man, stunned from her slap, blinks before anger colors his cheeks. “You little bi—”

BANG.

Everyone shrieks as a sandbag falls from above, landing next to the man and exploding upon impact. And as everyone cries and shakes, Robin stands there in the fading dust, a core of steel in her eyes as she says softly, “Don’t upset the ghosts, dear sir.”

She turns on her heels and walks away, the light tapping almost gentle in comparison to the chaos that unfolds. Sunday catches her eyes, sees her wink at him before walking into the dimly lit backstage. And if he stares a little harder, he can see where she raises her hand to give a high five to a shadow.

And if that shadow happens to have teeth that glint sharply, well, that was Sunday’s secret to share.

Over the next few months Sunday stands on stage during the day, and at night he finds an odd comfort in the arms of the stranger who whispers dark and devilish things to him, who also gives him instruction in his performance and tips for his singing. In the curtain the dark affords them, Sunday sits in the wide spread of the stranger’s thighs, his back pressed to a thick chest as he practices the range of his voice.

Sometimes there is a deep, rolling baritone that joins him, and sometimes there are biting nips along his neck that make his song break. Each night brings Sunday closer to the point of no return, closer to pressing his bare body against the darkly clothed one, but something holds him back when he feels like he’s tipping over the edge. Whether it be his own morals or those of the stranger, he does not know, but the farthest he can go is when a set of fingers press into his cheeks to help with his intonation, and his mouth turns to bite the gloved fingertip daringly.

A warm chuckle is all he receives as the man pulls it away.

“None of that now.” The finger taps him on the lips admonishingly. “Now sing for me, angel. That’s all I ask of you.”

The hand settles loosely around his throat, and Sunday tips his head back and sings.

~*~

The day comes far too quickly in Sunday’s opinion.

He sits in his dressing room, the outside noise dulled from his door being closed. The lights of his vanity are bright, his complexion glowing as his sister swipes makeup over his eyes lids and drags gloss across his lips. Sunday doesn’t know how she does it, but Robin manages to achieve making him look innocent and haunted at the same time, bringing attention to his eyes and mouth with her tools.

When her hands rest on his shoulders, she smiles at him through the mirror’s reflection.

“You’re ready.” A statement and not a question.

As he curves a hand over hers, he sees that it is her hands that shake and not his.

“Yes, I am.”

Robin leaves him there to go check on the other performers. Left alone in his dressing room, the only thing to keep him company are his thoughts and a bundle of white roses that sit in the corner. They overpower all of the other flowers in the room despite their simplicity, their scent somehow more potent, with each stem wrapped in black ribbon.

Sunday.

In the mirror, it is no longer his face that stares back.

It is the character he plays, innocent and naïve, hands cold from where they want to hold another’s to gain warmth. It is Sunday that stares back at him with hopeful eyes, the makeup brushed across them making them appear bigger and more naïve. But something deeper tells of his sins, of what he does for love and freedom while the oppressive and overbearing nature of his guardian presses down on his frail shoulders.

A knock at his door pulls him from his musings.

“Ten minutes, sir!” a young stagehand calls through the door.

Sunday rises, gathering his robed costume around his shoulders. “Showtime.”

He takes his place in the center of the stage and tries to remember how to breathe.

The curtains rise, and Sunday takes a breath.

The start finds him, the pious and pitiable young man, praying for freedom. His body is draped in gossamer, his wings dusted with glitter. He cannot see the audience, but can instead see their silhouettes from where they sit and stare at him. It had been a very long time since he had been on the stage, longer still since he had acted upon it, and he feels the nostalgia fill his lungs as he opens his mouth and begins his first song.

It speaks of seduction, hidden in the sweet notes of his voice that offset the words.

He plays the role a little too well. It is tailor made for him, and the need to act burns into ashes as he merely performs the role from his own experiences. He can feel the attention on him, taste the eyes that gather upon his form as he seduces and tempts weaker creatures with his voice. The touch of them upon his legs as he lifts his robes, to his collarbones as he drags his prey closer to him, they make him feel powerful, but they are not the gaze he wants nor needs.

When the time comes for his lover to take stage with him, Sunday waits.

The lights lower, the song’s beginning starting to hum through his body just as a man steps on stage.

Oh.

This man is not the actor that had been hired to be his lover of illusion. That man had been blonde and clean shaven – this man is rough around the edges, the stubble of his chin dark and eyes darker as he strides towards him on his cue. The smell of him is familiar as his gloved hands coast around his waist and pull him close, the lines of the part falling from thin lips in a rolling purr that sends shivers down Sunday’s spine.

“Lover mine.”

Sunday almost whispers out, “You…” but the echoing silence of the audience watching makes him swallow it down as the line replaces the single world. “You’re here.”

The music starts to play, and Sunday sings his song while his on-stage lover dances with him. When the husky baritone joins him, Sunday has to clench his thighs tight at the surge of want that runs through him. How do they look to the audience, he pauses to wonder as hands trail over his hips, up to his face to cup his cheeks. Do they look like two actors playing their parts? Or do they happen to look like something more than the pretty dream they sell to the audience?

Have they captured their attention on their tangled forms as their roles play out?

Near the end of the play, the tension is thick in the air. Not a single breath or cough from the audience interrupts them as they end the song entangled around each other, Sunday’s arms wrapped around broad shoulders while his lover holds him by the waist. Sunday waits for the man to say his line, and is desperate for it to be spoken.

His imaginary lover speaks as the audience clapping dies down. The stranger leans down, rubbing the end of his chin adoringly over Sunday’s cheek. “Say my name, loveling.”

Sunday’s mouth trembles only slightly as he whispers his line. “Gallagher.”

“Forever yours, forevermore.”

His lover fades away, leaving Sunday to sob in the spotlight as the reality of his life falls into place for the part he plays. His final song starts as his life ends, a dagger in his breast as he falls.

The audience erupts into applause, their feet clicking against the floor as they stand, enjoying his slow demise as they smile and cheer. Flowers are tossed, pulled from their stems so the thorns don’t press into his skin.

As he takes his bow, a hand curls over his, a body bending beside him to copy his movement. His stage partner, who rounds on him as soon as the curtain falls.

“Sunday, you’re mine,” is what the man says, a threat in the promise as he lays him down once more.

In the cradle of the beheaded flowers, Sunday is splayed open. He can hear the clapping of the audience behind the thick curtain, making them unknowing voyeurs to what they can’t see. Gallagher is gentle in disrobing him, leaving him naked and wanting to the ravenous eyes. The riotous applause is their witness to their coming together, as strong hands disrobe him while hungry eyes eat away at whatever is left of him.

 Sunday thinks there isn’t enough of him left to satisfy the stranger’s cravings, but the devouring mouth as it licks and kisses over his neck, makes him feel like there’s still enough of him left to satisfy the cravings. When the mouth closes over a wine ripened nipple, Sunday gasps and arches up into the solid body, rocking his naked cock against the man’s costume that is comprised of entirely too many belts and buckles. To show his displeasure, he rakes his nails through the head of brown hair, feeling the shiver of delight that courses through the man’s body at his actions.

“Oh, my angel of music, sing for me.”

When the head dips between his thighs, Sunday tilts his head back and begins his encore.

The mouth is too hot from where it licks and sucks over his weeping cock, cruel in its ability to find every nerve that sets him aflame in a way he has never felt before. Hands press against his thighs, positioning them over broad shoulders as the devilish tongue that plays over the slit pulls from him a harmony that shakes him from the head down.

One of his hands moves to grasp above his head, grabbing the dying flowers in the palm of his hand and gripping so tight their color bleeds against his palm. The other remains firmly in Gallagher’s wild hair, not so much as guiding it as it is a means to anchor Sunday in this reality, to keep him from floating away on the rising wave of pleasure.

“Gallagher,” he sings, breaking as his cock is swallowed and sucked. “Oh!”

The song becomes of vibrato as wet fingers probes between his cheeks. It pulls from him octaves that barely cover the sound of the audience who sit unknowingly behind the fallen curtain.

“Oh, angel.” And a tongue joins the fingers as the mouth falls from his cock.

The play has come to an end, but Sunday is still in his role, unable to part from the character who uses his mouth to speak and beg, uses his voice to sing his sorrow. The man that he isn’t sees through his eyes and sees his lover.

“Gallagher!”

Sunday can feel the grin against his skin, echoed in the wine dark eyes that glance up at him from between his thighs. The destructive mouth ceases the havoc it causes, licking instead up the trembling skin of his sensitive thigh and up to his knee.

“I want to see you,” is the dark demand, made soft by the kiss Gallagher presses to his knee. “I want to see you come undone. No more hiding from me, angel.”

The beast rises above him, and without the shadows to hide his face away, Sunday is at the mercy of the intense emotions that bear down on him. He can see the darkened pit of lust within hellfire eyes, with a core of something so soft that it provides a safe landing as he tumbles into their depths. It smolders, burning him as Gallagher leans down to devour his mouth, tongue dancing a wicked tango that leaves him out of breath as he tries to keep up with the steps and tempo.

The fingers that push and pull inside of him pull out, reaching up to trail their sticky wetness up the planes of his stomach. Over the peaked tips of his nipples, teasing as they give a gentle pinch to one, before it slides up his neck and cradles his cheek.

“Angel, sing your song into my lungs,” is the command pressed to his mouth, the blunt head of a thick cock nudging against his entrance. “Sing.”

Sunday anchors himself to Gallagher, winding his arms around his shoulders as he is breached, mouth desperate to be contained as he finds the receptacle for his song in the space behind Gallagher's teeth. As the cock sinks deeper, he sings louder. He fills his lover with sweet serenades, tender love songs that he can feel pull at his heartstrings as he feels the press of hip bones against his ass.

It is a tender moment, and Sunday needs it to crescendo into the final, tempestuous finale he so desperately wants.

“Gallagher,” he says sighingly, moving his hips minutely to feel the fullness. “Make me sing.”

The mouth against his is less of a smile and more of a knife, and it slices deep into Sunday as the man says, “As you wish.”

Sunday is not inexperienced by any means when it comes to sex, having used it has a strategic business tool in many dealings for his family, but there is something that feels distinctly different this time as the cock drags out of him, his body desperate to hold onto it, before it ruts back inside in a quick thrust. Searching for his pleasure points, a set of hands joining in the race as they trace over his sides and chest, tickle the sensitive area where thigh meets groin. Gallagher plays his body like he knows it, to conquer it.

The rhythm is quick and easy, the roll of Gallagher’s hips fluid and learned. Unafraid of trying something new, and quick to pull noises from Sunday that can only be whines and songs. Sunday’s wings on his lower back flicker and twitch, gliding up of their own volition to caress the flank of the man who seeks to undo him, drawing from the stranger a guttural laugh that is pure amusement.

“Pretty bird, I’ll take care of you.”

His midnight lover kisses him, the lips sweet but the tongue devilish as it licks inside to taste the symphony that he composes in his lungs. Together they create a masterpiece, demands for an encore ringing around them as Sunday comes with a gentle sob, the warmth inside him accompanied by a devastating kiss.

“Oh, angel,” Gallagher says as he pulls away, eyes fond, “I love you.”

And then he is simply…not there.

His lover is gone, the delusions of the character he has played leaking into his real life as the illusion fades. He lays in his in cradle of dead flowers, his own reflection in their ruined and used bodies as tears slip down his cheeks. Not his, but the man he has played, left alone as the dagger slides between his ribs and kisses his heart.

Behind the curtain, the audience continues to clap.

~*~

Life becomes busy.

Sunday's performance has led to a furor that is devastating on their ticket sales, his single performance becoming almost a cult like classic that he refuses to replay. The part is no longer his, given to a young actor with golden eyes and twilight hair, and despite the good reviews for Caelus' portrayal, the demand for Sunday to give a repeat performance grows.

But Sunday's song doesn’t feel right anymore. He has tried, oh has he tried, to replicate the vibrato and emotions of his performance, but they fall flat. Still beautiful musically, but there is no wanting in his breast or tears in his eyes to accompany it. The phantom dagger in his chest digs ever deeper, and Sunday hides the bloodstain with a smile and a buttoned-up suit jacket.

Robin watches as he fiddles with his cuffs, lovely as she smiles and runs her hands over his shoulders to smooth it out.

“Is there someone special coming today?”

“I’ve received word that there will be a visit from someone who might be a possible investor. Says he used to come here as a boy.”

“Someone from the Watchmaker Family?” Robin asks as she looks down at his schedule. “Didn’t their head pass on recently?”

“Those are the rumors, but that Family is notoriously private. I don’t know if whoever walks in here today is the head himself or a peon disguised as someone distinguished. But we shall smile and open our doors to all.”

“And maybe even our hearts.”

Robin lays a hand over his, where it beats traitorously under her palm, dagger be damned.

Sunday huffs a laugh, picking up her hand to kiss her knuckles. “Let’s start with doors first, sister dear.”

The Penacony Opera House has a different feeling to it now as he walks through the halls. There is a luster and glow to it that had been missing before, something that he could only recall seeing back during the time his mother sang on stage. It would be narcissistic of him to think it had been his doing, when so many others have put just as much effort in. How the people auditioning are out the door, the talents the stage sees are heartbreaking in their performances, and the amount of plays that have slid across his desk are mind-boggling.

The opera house is a living flame, and he had been the fuse. Now the fire was everyone else, and he hoped they continued to burn brightly in his place.

Sunday settles into his office, the time of his appointment drawing near. He straightens his desk, touching briefly the pressed white flower between the pages of his schedule book, and smiles as someone knocks at the door. A mask, one he has worn many times before, that feels too tight over his face as he beckons the person to enter.

The mask cracks in the corner as the door opens.

Sunday recognizes the stride of those muscular legs, barely contained by his trousers. Can see the messy attempt at taming dark hair, the lack of attempt at shaving. How the man's dark eyes slosh like wine in a green bottle, aged to perfection.

It's hard to keep an eye on the man's face when Sunday's gaze is naturally drawn down to the flash of chest showing through his unbuttoned shirt and straining vest that barely seems to hold the man in a decent state of dress. But it’s the man's voice that makes his knees shake as he holds his hand out.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Sunday,” the richly dark voice rolls out, accompanied by a smile that only speaks of rough tumbles and quickies in corners. “Call me Gallagher.”

Sunday looks at the hand. When he places his hand gently against the toughened palm, fingers curve softly over his.

Welcome home.

He smiles. “Call me angel.”