Chapter Text
September 15th – present
Finding the place where Alastor had arranged to meet him had proven to be some kind of a quest, considering that that asshole loved dragging him to unlikely places that not even Google considered reachable; once it was a place open for more or less three days that didn't even have a website, the other time it was a home-restaurant and therefore “it's obvious that it's not marked on the map, Husker, don't be silly”, the yet another time it was a sort of traveling kiosk stuck in an unknown area of Central Park.
It seemed to be one of Alastor's favorite amusements to make his life miserable.
This time, by some chance dictated only by karma that had decided to give him a break, the taxi had abandoned him in the middle of the Wall Street area; from there, following the bizarre directions to reach The Red Lotus had been an interesting adventure – it's a fact that doctors have unlikely handwriting.
So, fully hungover and with yesterday's clothes, he showed up at the only old-fashioned Chinese restaurant in that profoundly modern neighborhood.
The waiter at the entrance had let him in by looking around discreetly, as if he were accessing some secret club – but knowing Alastor, it could have been like that.
He had been waiting alone for at least fifteen minutes, sunk in the jade green velvet armchair around a round table with a revolving tray in the center; the waiter had taken him to a sort of private room, separated from the other tables, occupied only by Asians or businessmen that who knows what they were talking about. Certainly not the weather, considering the air of profound discretion displayed by all the waiters.
He had ordered some water – no aspirin, alas – and had already finished it, so there was nothing left to do but massage his left temple, his cheek resting indolently on the palm of the same hand, his elbow propped up on the aforementioned table.
All he had to do was distract himself and not think about the smell of fried food that wafted through the restaurant, which under normal conditions would have made him very hungry, while at the moment he was only thinking about how much he wanted to barf even his soul.
He closed his eyes, in yet another sigh of the day, while the flashes of the night before crossed his brain in a rush of pleasure.
Blond hair clenched between his fingers, the silver ball of a piercing tickling his nipple, the freckled back into which he had sunk his nails, the sound of fabric stretching until it tears, an amused and excited moan whispering in his ear–
“Husker, my good friend!”
Henry gasped a bit, reopening his amber eyes and blinking a couple of times to raise the gaze and focus on the one he was waiting for: Alastor and his perpetual, charming smile.
They'd met at Louisiana State University – that time in life when Husk thought business studies would really get him somewhere, but the lure of Las Vegas and casinos had been too great.
The promise of a faster, more glittering and adrenaline-filled gambling career had been far more attractive than years of study and subsequent work; he had dropped out after the first year, without exams or money in his pockets: the clandestine poker club held by the fraternities had been a great way to lose, win and then lose again.
He had gained Alastor, however, a School of Medicine freshman who for some reason unknown even to Husker had taken a liking to him; in his own way , of course.
Henry was pretty good at reading people – especially at the gaming table – but after all these years he had never really understood what was going on in the head of that asshole who had beaten him at poker so many times that once he had forced Husk to run around campus in his underwear to pay off their bet.
“You're late.” Henry groaned, watching the man take a seat in front of him, undoing the button of his dark red jacket and automatically smoothing out the high-tailored black shirt he was wearing underneath, which underlined the caramel shade of his mulatto complexion.
When he wasn't busy chopping up corpses as a medical examiner – locked away in the Lennox Hill Hospital morgue, where he could stay away from people – Alastor had a tendency to dress in an almost anachronistic manner.
A charming gentleman from another era.
“Actually, the early one it's you. I specifically chose to give you a different time from our agreed appointment, considering your tendency to be late even on the most important occasions.” he pointed out, removing an imaginary lint from the shoulder of his jacket and smiling again at him. Sharply.
He looked him up and down, coldly, and Husk felt as usual under scrutiny. Except this time he was pretty sure he couldn’t get away with it.
Alastor wrinkled his nose a little, looking vaguely disgusted.
“Tell me you're not wearing the clothes from your walk of shame, please.”
“The clothes.. ?”
“The ones from last night, Husker. Tell me you didn't choose the day before the interview that I so generously obtained for you with one of my contacts to get drunk in some seedy– That's a hickey.”
Although the question mark was missing, Alastor's raised eyebrow and that smile tinged with a shade of disgusted amusement made Husk’s thick eyebrows rise.
Yet another flash of the night before – a tongue running over his Adam's apple, making him moan, before a mouth latched onto the left side of his throat to suck softly as Henry's hands slid between the thighs that pressed him against the mattress to search for something – made him blush on his ears. Unmistakably.
He brought his hand to the left side of his neck, massaging a purple trace that in his haste that morning he hadn’t even seen in the mirror.
Maybe he had purposely avoided looking.
He cleared his throat, nonchalantly, tugging the wrinkled collar of his shirt up a little further. His silence was a telling enough response – as was Alastor's scolding sound.
“Embarrassing. How old are you, thirteen? Thank you.”
The last ‘ thank you ’ was for the waitress – a pretty Asian girl with a red dress, who had brought them the menu without saying a word.
“I didn't notice.”
“That someone’s mouth was trying to peel off a piece of your skin? For sure.”
“Look, just because you don't like to fuck doesn't mean that–”
The next words got stuck in Husk's throat as Alastor's dark eyes lifted from the menu to glare at him, both incandescent and lethal: a red-hot, sharp and far from friendly blade.
He swallowed, vaguely uneasy.
“Sorry.”
Alastor lazily turned a page of the menu, adjusting his small round glasses with thin metal frames and returning to stare at the writings in English and Cantonese.
“A gross and messy pastime that doesn't even deserve my attention.”
“I know.”
“But yours does.” he replied again, peering at him over his glasses and accentuating that inscrutable smile again. “I thought you were no longer having sexual intercourses with your wife.”
Husk settled himself better in the suddenly uncomfortable seat.
“I told you confidentially.”
“I don't consider slurring drunk on my house’s sofa to be a conversation worthy of the discretion that certain matters deserve.”
Husker sighed, for the umpteenth time, dropping the menu and resting his elbows on the table to go back to massaging both temples now, leaning forward a little on the table. Alastor's highly polished and formal vocabulary – practically devoid of a Louisiana accent, by choice – didn't help his headache. At all .
“It wasn't my ex-wife.”
“Oh right, the divorce signature. It was yesterday, right?”
He knew it very well, yet that need to reiterate the concept in an arrogant smile made Husk want to stop holding his head and smash Alastor’s face instead.
He limited herself to glaring at him, not saying a word.
“So what was it, a sleazy farewell fuck? Lidia’s final act of compassion towards you?” Alastor asked, rather bored, turning the pages of the menu as casually as he talked about Henry’s sex life and what was left of his marriage. “I think I'll have the lacquered duck.”
Henry remained silent, his mind drifting elsewhere again.
September 15th – three hours earlier
The Naked Man sat up between the silk sheets, stretching lazily – he stretched his arms upwards, bending his left elbow behind his back and pulling it with his right hand before relaxing his shoulders and cracking his neck in a satisfied breath.
Regardless of Henry's question, as if he hadn't even heard him.
Husk, for his part, slid to stare at him with renewed attention, following the path of freckles from his thin shoulders along his slender chest, getting stuck for a couple of moments in the left nipple’s piercing – the one he had sucked between his teeth, to make him moan in a way that he remembered perfectly and that threatened to transform that morning hard-on into a full erection – and continuing downwards, where the hips tightened to reach the line of the lower abdomen and what was under the sheets.
Now, with the stretching, not so much under.
“Yeah, I'm still hard.”
Husk, caught red-handed, yanked his amber eyes to search for the stranger's, locking onto that hazel gaze that shone with mischievous amusement. Something that then became a hint of laughter – crystalline and dirty at the same time – as he ran his fingers through his light blonde hair to untangle the tuft.
“Relax whiskers, nothing happened.”
Well, this was definitely not what Henry expected.
He blinked.
“.. What do you mean.” he asked, warily, watching the Naked Man get out of bed and head towards the bathroom. In the room. In what looked, to all intents and purposes, like a hotel room of some sort.
But more than the furniture, Henry's gaze focused on the stranger's bottom – equally freckled, with a small stylized heart tattooed on the right cheek.
Husk’s hands sunk there, holding on tightly, when he had taken off the stranger’s black shorts to reveal a pair of pink lace panties under which was an already hard cock that had made Henry’s mouth water.
Husker shook his head – bad idea, given the hangover – to get back into focus.
“Meaning you were so drunk I was about to give you a head and you fell asleep.” replied the Naked Man’s voice from the bathroom, from which came the sound of water from the drain, then from the sink and then he reappeared wrapped in a white bathrobe that he was lazily tying at the waist.
First, Henry noticed the hotel's monogram – one of any Best Western around New York. Because he was still in New York, right?
As he thought about it, his aching brain decided this was the time to really dwell on the stranger's words.
He frowned again, his ears red and his expression annoyed.
“Hey, I don't–”
Dark.
A new flash.
Time that rewinds quickly, back not even clear how many hours but which fits into the plot at a certain point of the evening at the Black Dot. The guy with the beers he had bumped into, the stranger's intervention, the other two glasses of whiskey and the chatter at the bar; the work as dog sitter, the photos of some kind of chihuahua dressed in a pink sweater, a slightly nasal but genuine laugh that rings in his ears. The other's knee pressed against his, a freckled nose that wrinkles as he stares at him, long fingers that casually run through his salt and pepper quiff to underline that it suits him, that gives him the look of an actor from Hollywood in its heyday.
Husker opened his mouth, without a sound coming out. Not yet.
The Naked Man tilted his head slightly towards his right shoulder, raising his left eyebrow in a perplexed manner.
“You don’t .. ?”
The stolen jacket so no wallet or house keys, the offer to pay for a taxi in exchange for a cigarette; the glimmer of the gold-encapsulated canine, in the orange light of the streetlight. That stranger who had spoken to him, who had treated him without coldness, who had filled the deafening silence in his head and made him forget for a couple of hours the desire to gamble everything he had left in his account at the first table poker – his voice had been more effective than all the alcohol he'd downed that evening; his irresistible desire to feel that smiling mouth on him, to feel better. A little bit'.
Henry cleared his throat, again, as the memories tangled up pleasantly on each other.
Just like them, tangled in the cab. The direction muttered by the stranger to the taxi driver, the hotel reception, the blue carpet in the corridor after the lift in which they kissed again. And again. And again. The click of the electronic key to open the door, the breathing in the darkness of the room and the urge to tear off one's clothes to feel the skin under the fingers, the lips. Mixing moans with growls, with clenched-teeth curses for a devouring pleasure, the silk sheets under his back and the weight of a thin, warm body crouched on top of him. The fingers threaded through those blonde locks, the pleasant and sleepy languor given by the alcohol and the sensation of feeling so good, the touch of the stranger's mouth that descended lower and lower from his chest to his lower abdomen and then–
Dark. Again.
“..Anthony.”
The blond blinked again, straightening his head and stretching a half-smirk that was both amused and perplexed.
“So now you remember my name.”
Henry nodded, covering himself better with the sheets, even though being dressed only in a dark red silk tie didn't give him that much authority. Anthony, in fact, snickered again.
“You were already wasted when we started drinking. I'm surprised you managed to remember my name.”
There was something underlying that comment that Husk was unable to grasp completely. Perhaps the fact that the other had averted his gaze to look around for something, perhaps the crease of his lips – awared and a little bitter – as if that were a situation that happened quite often. Not the ( lack of ) sex with a stranger: the fact that in the morning, whoever was there, rarely remembered the man they had spent the night with.
He frowned again, undecided whether to consider that sensation real or not, while Anthony resumed speaking with the fluency of someone who always seems at ease in every situation. The left shoulder of the bathrobe slipped down, almost as if it were more of a dressing gown than anything else, as he bent down to rummage without even asking permission inside Henry's pants for the pack of cigarettes.
Husk, still too confused by the pieces of the previous night that were slowly fitting together in his brain, said nothing.
Anthony, thankfully, still had words for both of them.
“I paid for the room.” he began, lighting the cigarette – his tone a little slurred due to the filter held between his lips. The fact that he shouldn't smoke in the room seemed like an absolutely negligible detail. “No worries. But I recommend that you go and report the theft of your jacket and wallet like, now .”
He took a thick, satisfied drag before exhaling the smoke from the left corner of his lips and pinching the filter between his fingers so he could speak again, his hazel gaze locked on Henry.
An indecipherable flicker.
“You know, I really, really wanted to–” he sighed dreamily. “–fuck, but considering how drunk you were, maybe it’s for the best.”
Husker cleared his throat, for the umpteenth time, scratching the back of his neck a little uncomfortably and looking away from the blond with a grumpy expression to look at literally anything else in the room. After a couple of moments, he focused on the burning cigarette that appeared before his nose.
He raised his amber gaze again to catch sight of Anthony, who in the meantime had approached the bed again and was grinning at him eloquently, offering him his own cigarette – which Henry took, thanking him in a silent nod.
“We could reschedule and finish another time, what do you say?”
The question caught Henry quite off guard and he nearly choked with the smoke. He exhaled, eyeing the tip of Anthony's tongue teasing the golden canine in a mischievous smirk.
“I am—”
Married, separated, divorced? Messed up, unemployed, a gambling addict?
The events of the day before and the signing that decreed the end of his marriage crossed his mind along with a thousand other details that a stranger, no matter how friendly, certainly shouldn't know.
“Married.”
You’re always a shitty liar when you're not at the gaming table, Husky.
Anthony remained pretty unfazed, simply crossing his arms across his stomach lazily and raising his left eyebrow for the millionth time.
“Ah-anh. And where is your wedding ring?”
Henry raised the hand holding the cigarette to notice the obvious absence of the gold band on his left ring finger. He sighed, taking another drag and ending up passing the cigarette back to Anthony, who took it from his fingers.
“It's complicated.”
September 15th – present
“It's complicated.” repeated the Henry of the present, sitting in that jade green armchair in The Red Lotus restaurant, with a splitting headache and a sense of guilt that he couldn't understand whether it came from having almost taken advantage of Anthony – even if he was the drunk one – or from lying to him so blatantly.
Maybe both.
“My interest in this story ended five minutes ago, Husker, focus on your order. I’m hungry.”
You could always count on good old Alastor for a few words of comfort.
As if summoned by the needs of the doctor’s stomach, the silent waitress from before appeared at their table with a notebook to take their orders.
Henry suppressed a half-snarl and the desire to get up and leave only thanks to the reason why Alastor had arranged to meet him in that sub-species of opium den disguised as a restaurant.
He tightened his fingers, between the silver-streaked temples, and ended up running them all the way to the nape of his neck to straighten his quiff and try to calm down while Alastor reeled off his lunch to the diligent girl, who took note – Anthony's fingers in his hair had given him a completely different, pleasant sensation.
He waited for his turn in silence, basking in that thought for a couple of moments before the guilt came back to bite his stomach. Or maybe it was just the alcohol that threatened to spill out , upon smelling a trail of spring rolls passing by their private room.
“Just a coffee for me. Black.”
The waitress took note and left, despite Alastor's expression of placid disappointment.
“I invite you to lunch and all you order is a coffee?”
“No, you set me up for an interview that by some bullshit-astral coincidence is in your lunch break, so don't fucking bother me.”
“Mm, fair enough.” Alastor cut him short, in his usual smirk, leaning back and intertwining his fingers – very firm, those of a surgeon if he hadn't chosen not to deal with the living – to stare with interest at the aquarium that separated their table from the rest of the room.
Husker remained silent for a few moments, thoughtfully smoothing his tie.
Pale hands, with freckled knuckles, that had tugged and pulled that very tie out of the way unbuttoning his shirt. Anthony's excited voice panting against his ear, one button after another: don't take this one off, I want to hold on to it while you put your—
“So.”
This time it was Henry himself who tore himself away from these thoughts, which were rapidly becoming pretty unsuitable for a conversation of any kind. As well as threatening to make him hard again.
“Who is this mysterious contact of yours?”
Alastor stared at the fishes, tracking the floating path of a surgeonfish – blue and yellow – in the tank next to them. The everlasting smile, this time with his mouth closed.
“All you need to know is that he is one of the tycoons of Wall Street and that he needs to move large amounts of money without too many controls.”
Now Husk understood why he had chosen that place for lunch.
“Money laundering?”
Alastor shrugged casually.
“Not directly from you, no.” he specified. “He has a place artfully constructed for this task, a refined speakeasy that works wonderfully. But his last bartender had–” Alastor paused, slowly drifting up to find Husker's amber eyes, a dark shadow at the bottom of the black gaze. The smile, as always, just right there. “An unfortunate accident. So, he needs a replacement.”
Wonderful.
“A bartender.”
“A trusty no-questions-asked bartender, Husker, and I immediately thought of you. Do you see how much I value our friendship?”
They weren't the exact words that came to Henry's mind, but he didn't have time to express his disappointment before Alastor's gaze fixed on something beyond the fish tank and he accentuated his smile, getting to his feet.
“Zestiel, my dear, what a pleasure!”
Husker got goosebumps, in a shiver that had nothing to do with his hangover or the desire to throw up. You didn't have to be too expert in Manhattan's not exactly legitimate undergrowth to have heard the name of the man who was approaching their table – tall, black, dressed in an absolutely refined way – associated with various not too legitimate financial operations.
A rich, elderly tycoon who believed he was still in the days of Al Capone.
He turned to focus on him and kept an eye on the man as Zestiel passed the aquarium and shook Alastor's hand with vigor and a few laughs here and there about the weather, the threat of possible rain that afternoon and the business in which the medical examiner himself was apparently involved.
Who else does a gangster need but someone who can get rid of the bodies?
“Zestiel, meet Henry Husker.”
Alastor's bright voice broke him out of his reflections, making him blink a couple of times again and lift his amber gaze to search for Zestiel’s pitch-colored one – who smiled slightly at him, with the look of someone who was evaluating every detail of who he was staring at.
Suddenly, the hickey on the left side of his neck seemed even more obvious.
Henry cleared his throat, bowing his head in a hint of greeting.
“Pleasure.”
“Sit down, my dear, we have already allowed ourselves to order. Husker?”
Husk slid back onto Alastor, forcing himself to let go of Zestiel – who, in response, continued to stare at him as he sat down in the only remaining seat.
The doctor's smile was one of the most unreadable he had ever seen on his face.
“Let's talk business.”