Chapter Text
The city skyline is fraying around the edges.
Fluorescent street lights reflect rays off the flush of Daniel’s cheeks, following the curve of his lopsided smile.
Daniel usually wouldn’t have this many drinks while on a “work outing.” But the night had dizzingly shifted from a friendly coworker encounter to a full blown bar hop.
Their writing team got holiday bonuses across the board earlier in the day, and for whatever reason that called for additional celebration. Celebration that consisted of shooting those dollars down the drain of their gullets. Tom, the leader of this excursion, is an editor and the only one of the group that Daniel actually enjoys conversations with in the office. Daniel’s only a part time consultant after all, he never gets along with slimy big publication types. But with Tom’s lovely persuasion, the group had metamorphosed from two writers, one editor, to five drunken acquaintances.
Daniel was plotting his excuse to go home even before the idea of seeing a drag show was whiffed into the air.
“It’s just down the block, it’ll be fun.” Tom knocks him in the side while suggesting such.
Daniel is 53 years old. He had his “fun” in his youth. Enough of it to last a lifetime. Now he was easy to tire and never found himself out past ten.
It was ridiculous that he’d let the night go as far as he had. Maybe he was bored. Maybe the holidays had him lonely. Maybe having a drink in hand, with strangers to polish his ego, was alluring.
But before he gets the chance to talk himself out of it, he is being shooed along by yet another bouncer.
This club is dark and moody, with red and purple lights that pour over a wooden stage. A drag queen is already warming up the club for the night. They wear a towering blonde wig with blue and yellow butterflies poking out from inside and a dress that looks like it’s made from moss and tree twigs. It could barely contain their voluptuous body beneath it.
Tom, beside him, asks about drinks. Daniel jumps at the opportunity to fill his hands with something, so he isn’t just awkwardly fidgeting.
Yet again he wonders what he is doing by the time he pushes his way through bodies, to the bar. The line is impossibly long and patrons are slurring out orders like a bunch of goth zombies.
He’s nearly sober when he issues his order and begins the next long wait. Peering over the crowd, he notices another performer is halfway through a performance - their song being something by Evanescence.
His youngest daughter might know this song. Christ alive, what is he doing here?
The overworked bartender hands out his drinks and Daniel fumbles to leave an additional tip before gathering up the two drinks in tow. By the time he turns back to the crowd, it’s double in size.
Where the hell did all these people come from?
An announcer on the stage is cracking jokes that Daniel doesn’t really understand. Some tasteful, some suggestive. He feels a bit embarrassed of himself as he squirms through people to try to find his group.
He feels the gin in Tom’s drink kiss his hand as he gets shoved around by drunken goth youths. Somehow, he finds himself near the front of the stage. He awkwardly half listens to the announcer wrap up as he chances one more glance around for someone he might know.
“Girls and gays give a hearty welcome to our main event… Alison Wonderland!”
People start to scream. Horror movie level screaming. Daniel has zero idea why.
He’s decided to give up searching for coworkers. There’s too many damn people. Hell, they might have left him behind. Instead, Daniel gears up with the proper ammo to fight his way to the exit sign - he downs the rest of his drink, and Tom’s.
The announcer brings the mic real close to their mouth as they whisper, “Or, if you’re a lucky little rabbit, she might let you call her Alice.”
With that, a wall of people push towards the stage and he gets ushered even further from the exit sign. Twisting in a half drunken state, he suddenly finds himself belly up with the stage - now with the perfect view of the main event. Great.
The crowd goes silent as the lights drop.
Suddenly a familiar drum line. Heavy and washed out. He instantly recognizes it. The song is “With Teeth” by Nine Inch Nails. Finally, some music Daniel would actually listen to.
It begins with a fade into the chorus, just like the other songs had.
A torn lace wrapped leg appears from left stage. It's thin and tapping a heel to the stage floor, teasing the crowd.
The drag queen wears red bottoms. Not that Daniel knows that much about shoes, but those were easy enough to remember.
He isn’t gay.
During the last two lines of the chorus, “Alice” slinks her way on stage. In a tight dark purple dress and black lace corset, she moves like a panther. A goddamn animal. It’s a little impressive.
Her head is down, pretty black curls shadowing her face. The light overhead is harsh on her, everything else is dark. Everyone inside the club, including the light operator, wants her to lift that pretty head of curls and show her face.
Alice lives to please, apparently.
By the last drum beat of the chorus, she whips her head up - facing the light head on.
And she’s gorgeous.
Breathtaking, really. Like she was plucked from a painting and thrown onto the stage of a drag show.
She licks the gloss on her deep red lips and parts them to mouth the words of the next verse.
Wave goodbye.
She bends in half dramatically. Her lacy gloved hand trails down her right leg and up, real slow. Her amber eyes dance playfully across the crowd. A few people yell out and whoop.
Alice’s accentuated hips sway like a girl. Like a hot girl. Daniel swallows dryly, he doesn’t know what to make of that.
She almost looks like she’s moaning when she opens her mouth again.
To what you are.
Her hand takes its time walking its way to her upper body now. Daniel feels a bit of blood rushing. All over really. He catches himself wondering if her tits, caged beneath that tight dress, are real. Flesh and blood.
There’s a part of him that wants to find out.
The rules have changed, the lines begin to blur.
Amber eyes catch his wandering ones. His face goes hot with embarrassment and shame. Daniel feels his heart hammer away at his chest. He’s sure the moment will pass, she’ll look away.
But Alice doesn’t look away.
She makes you hard.
The way she mouths that last word is intentional. Her eyes roll back for a moment, savoring the lyrics on her lips, before locking back on him.
She smiles and steps closer.
Her gaze is like a vulture peering over a nest of eggs. She looks like she wants to poke at him until his shell spills yoke.
It comes on strong.
She drops to her knees. A gasp echoes from the crowd. Daniel catches himself unconsciously leaning closer to the stage. He’d blame the alcohol.
At this angle, he has a perfect viewpoint of her chest. There’s a purposeful cutout in her dress to show her cleavage and it’s struggling to contain those perky breasts inside. Daniel feels like a fucking pervert as something tense builds up in him.
Jesus Christ. She is crawling straight to him now.
Like prey; innocent and injured one moment, then a deadly predator the next. His head is spinning.
Alice stops her sinister crawl just in front of him. Her legs spread as she sits up on her knees and Daniel has to fight himself not to look down. But where else can he look?
Just as she knows she has him hooked, she whips her head around to the beat so her curls bounce playfully.
The crowd loses their minds, and she eats it up.
The smile on her face is playful, yet cruel. Like she hates them. And like she loves them more than anything.
Amber eyes. A flash and they’ve returned to Daniel, as if they’d never left. As if there was no one else in the room.
You finally found the place where you belong.
Her lips sync with the words, but her eyes pour into his. Screams from the crowd swell, he can feel someone shoving to his right.
Alice is leaning over him now.
That animal, the big cat from before, it’s coming for him. It’s going to tear him to shreds. He feels the inherent need to beg for his life.
With Teeth.
Daniel’s head is spinning. He’s practically squirming, like he needs to peel out of his skin. His stomach twists up in knots.
He shouldn’t feel… nervous. But he does.
With Teeth.
She extends her index finger to his lips. It trails along the outside of his mouth. Intent on making its way inside.
With Teeth.
That soft warm finger slips in like a hard lemon candy. Daniel lets it, expecting sweetness on his tongue as a reward. But he’s impatient, he wants to bite down and break open the soft center.
With Teeth.
“Bite,” she instructs, as if she’s rooted her way inside his dirty mind. Her voice is honey, her accent is syrupy smooth. Her index finger squirms inside, as if afraid, but the thumb caressing his jaw beckons him. “Bite me, big boy.”
The sound of the music fades away. The screams of the crowd as well. The sweat, bodily heat, even the very air in the room seems to be swept out from under him.
Daniel bites down.
Alice lets out a real moan now. Her head arches back, so she faces the ceiling and Daniel feels the pinch of her thumb’s nail digging into his skin. Black curls find their home on her bare back, painting her warm skin.
Daniel doesn’t even realize his jaw has dropped until she gently pulls her finger away and sticks it into her own mouth to taste.
After she’s had her fill of him, she leans forward and whispers to him, “Good boy.”
Then she stands as the chorus begins to fade.
The screams of the crowd come back into Daniel’s ears like rushing water. His face grows impossibly hot as he realizes what he’s just done in this very public place. Who he’s done it with. He can feel his throat tighten at the feeling of people around him, eyes staring.
The crowd throws wads of dollars to the stage as sweet Alice beams a cute, almost mocking smile. The money is like dog kibble and the pups have come to supper. Two leather clad men in collars and dog ears crawl across the stage, picking up dollars in their mouths. She pushes them around with a highly trained heel as they do so.
But Daniel pays the dogs little attention. His eyes are trained on Alice instead. With the back of his hand, he absentmindedly wipes his mouth.
Daniel’s hands shake as he drags himself away from the stage. Backing into someone, he stumbles from the alcohol. The lights are spinning above him. Everything is too loud. His pants feel tighter. He finds the bathroom in a blur, and locks the door behind him.
—
Thump, thump, thump.
Harsh fluorescent lights pour over the bathroom sink like the headlights of a car.
Thump, thump, thump.
Daniel splashes his face again. The cool water does nothing to beat the burning in his cheeks.
Thump!
“Come on, man. Y’can’t have t’whole bathroom. I gotta piss!” Some drunken idiot has been knocking on the door for the last couple of minutes.
Daniel is hunched over the sink, hand trailing over the hard outline in his tight pants. They weren’t so tight before. He wasn’t so sensitive before. Alice, did that.
“Fuck off!” he yells over the pop music blaring from outside the bathroom. “Use the ladies!”
Daniel lets out a low whine as he finally faces the inevitable. He undoes his pants and yanks them down bitterly.
He locks a vicious grip around his cock and roughly starts to pump. He imagines Alice with her fingers in her mouth, licking off the taste of him. Then he pictures her kneeling and taking him into her mouth. Rock hard and warm in between those glossy red lips. The gloss smearing along his shaft as she bobs back and forth.
He comes in a single minute.
Daniel is left panting over the sink, muscles impossibly tight from the intensity of the orgasm.
The sobering realization is slow to wash over him, but strong. He’s 53 and mostly-drunk in a dingy club bathroom, as if he is a man half his age. And he’s lusting over a girl… half his age.
He is not gay, he tells himself.
She looks like a girl… he is not gay.
Once he’s collected himself, he rinses out his mouth and slicks back his hair. Throwing the bathroom door open, he shoves past the drunk outside the door.
There’s no point in staying, he needs to go home and sleep off whatever this is. Plus, he’d be damned if he saw Alice amongst the other queens propped up at the bar. He slinks past them in a hurry. Keeping his head down, he follows the succulent light of the exit sign once more.
Daniel throws open the door so fast it slams against the wall of the building. The cool night strikes his face like a sudden rush of sobriety. The winter air is like icy water washing over his skin, finally stifling that burn in his cheeks.
It’s a long walk home.
“Hello, Mr. Front Row.”
Fuck.
That same honey sweet voice. Daniel feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up.
Alice is standing there under the dim lamp light of the alleyway. She has her back against the wall, just an arm’s length away from where he’d slammed the door open.
Still dressed in that tight purple dress he’s obsessed with, slung over her shoulders is a dark wool shawl to keep out the cold. Her hair is tied up with a clip now, revealing sparkling black earrings. He hadn’t noticed them before. He’d been… distracted.
“Cigarette?”
She holds out the offer between her fingers. It ropes Daniel back into the moment.
“That is,” she continues, flashing a polite smile. “If you have a light?”
Daniel would make fire out of thin air if he had to. But luckily for him, he has a zippo in his jacket pocket.
He takes the cigarette from her hands, their fingers touching for a split second. Then he distracts himself by gathering the torch for her.
Fire ignites from the lighter after a snap of the lever, and she leans in with a cigarette between her teeth.
She is just inches from his face now, and she looks just like a girl. She’s just too pretty. It makes frustration build in his chest. Because how could she not be a girl?
She has to be a girl.
As soon as her cigarette is lit, she turns away to lean against the wall again. She doesn’t thank him, it’s an equivalent exchange after all. He passes her and for a moment he thinks he’ll walk away, but then he curses himself and leans against the wall beside her. He lights up.
Alice brings smoke into her lungs and re-introduces it to the night sky.
“I don’t usually sit at the bar after shows,” she comments, unprompted. “Patrons can get chummy.”
Daniel scoffs and nods understandingly. He stands straight again to leave her be, but she speaks again before he can make a break for it.
“You don’t look like the type.”
“Sorry?”
She turns to him, slim body arching against the brick wall. The side of her forehead presses against it so she can rest her eyes on him.
“You don’t look like the type to be here. That’s why I picked on you.” She blows out smoke again, from those dark glossy lips. He can smell it as it floats near his face.
“Yeah. Well, you pegged me right.”
She tilts her head, and Daniel quickly reconsiders his phrasing.
“I mean— This isn’t for me. I came with friends.” Daniel shoves his cigarette back between his lips before he can mumble out anything else.
He takes a long drag. The paper burns up quick.
“I don’t see them.”
“Yeah. Me fucking either.” He blows out the smoke and quickly replaces the air in his chest with yet another drag. His hands are shaking.
She crosses her arms in front of her chest, readjusting to make herself more comfortable.
“So, drag shows aren’t your particular scene. What is, then? Knitting? Gardening? Musical theater?”
“I’m straight. If that’s what you’re asking.”
Even in the corner of his eye he can see her smirk, like she’s just won a bet. She’s fucking toying with him.
“I was asking about your hobbies,” she replies, as innocent as a nun.
Daniel pauses, then turns to scan her for an ounce of sincerity. Maybe she’s just too pretty to say no to. Maybe she knows that. Stubbornly, he admits his only real interest. “I’m a writer.”
“A writer.” She blinks. “Are you any good?”
“Depends how much wine you’ve had before you read me.”
Then she giggles, and the sound is like a symphony. Any lingering apprehension or nervousness is forgotten. He’s all encompassed by her again, just like when she was crawling on that stage.
“If you’re a writer, maybe I’ve heard of you.” That smile sticks around for a bit, until she brings her cigarette to her lips again.
There’s a line of dark red along the thin cigarette, from where her lip gloss has spread. He’s reminded of the visual of that red spreading all over him .
Apparently he’s thought about it a bit too long, and she’s grown impatient. “Are you going to tell me your name, or do I have to start pulling teeth?”
Daniel clears his throat. “It’s Daniel. Molloy.”
She nods and if she does recognize his name she doesn’t comment on it.
“And…” He chuckles, it’s tight in his chest and awkward. “I’m guessing your name isn’t really Alice.”
“Quite the inquisitive journalist.” She remarks, playing with the black rosary around her neck. “When I’m not in this cute little dress, I’m Armand.”
Daniel feels his heart sink into his stomach. The weight of the name itself, Armand, it’s enough to make him feel like his knees will hit the pavement. It confirms the question wiggling about in his brain since he first laid eyes on her… him? He’s out of his damn depths.
Before his brain can collapse in on itself, she laughs and again it feels as though the very sound has gripped him and saved him from a fatal fall. And it isn’t mocking or cruel - it’s fond.
“You’re funny, Mr. Molloy,” she tells him and he kind of likes how she uses an honorific for him.
“I aim to please,” he responds, sardonically.
They stand in silence for a beat or two. Daniel isn’t even smoking anymore. He feels the heat of the cigarette on its race to his fingers. The thoughts rushing in his head are enough to give a man his age a damn stroke.
She’s grown tired of the cold, or him, or waiting for him to say something - whatever it may be, she turns to walk towards the door.
As Alice’s hand hits the door knob, words erupt from Daniel’s mouth - surprising himself and his counterpart.
“Wait. Do you have like…a business card?”
Alice, Armand, whoever she wants to be, smiles and turns back. Her amber eyes are trailing all over him, curious. “Are you writing an article on drag queens, Mr. Molloy?”
The quiet politeness of her words entirely betrays her dominating performance, like a spark of vulnerability. Like cheese on a mouse trap. Daniel isn’t sure if he cares if he’s caught.
Daniel didn’t expect to ask his initial question so he is even less prepared to back it up with additional. Maybe she senses this, maybe she is being especially merciful when she pulls out a pen from her fur coat.
“Give me your arm.”
Daniel does as he’s told, his heart pumping as her cold hand wraps around his forearm to hold it still. He considers pulling his arm away, apologizing, and making a run for it - but it’s like his feet are rooted into the ground.
With a swipe of the pen, she writes something down.
“Here’s my MySpace. You… You know what that is, right?”
He scowls. His age clearly shows. “Yes. I know what that is.”
Of course, he doesn’t actually have a MySpace account. Pushing mid 50s - he is, in fact, too old for that. But he has two daughters who refuse to leave him behind in this new wave of “social media”. He knows enough to get by.
“Then, you can look me up.”
She tosses her cigarette to the loose gravel below and stomps it out beneath her heel. Daniel can’t help but feel a bit envious of that cigarette as she walks back inside.
She doesn’t say goodbye, he doesn’t either. Daniel just stares dumbly at the ink on his arm. His thumb rubs the surrounding area mindfully.
Purple ink reads; “@DrinkMe.x.EatMe”.
Daniel finishes the remainder of his cigarette in a single pull.