Page 16 of The Stars and the Stage
They barely had time to think, to breathe, before his tongue was in their mouth, the taste of him filling them up. But Diego’s body knew what they wanted, even if their mind was still struggling to catch up. They kissed Maddy back, fierce as the flame building through their core. Then they twisted their head a little too suddenly and their fang caught on Maddox’s lip.
Diego’s heart skipped. They jerked away. The panic didn’t follow, nor the flood of memory, but when Maddox tried to grab them again, to force them back into the kiss, the club’s safe word spilled out of them on instinct. “Nova.”
Maddox let go. He stepped back, his hands locking behind his neck, and he looked about to drop to his knees on the wet sand. “God, sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Diego punched his shoulder. That didn’t release the bubble of pain and fear and bitterness that blistered through them unbidden, and they wrapped one arm around his waist instead, burying their face into his shoulder. Their lungs constricted. Their eyes burned. Slowly, they began to cry.
Maddox wrapped both arms around them. He held them closer and closer until his limbs felt like a shield, his heart a comforting hearth. Diego hadn’t known they’d spent ten years in the cold until now, with his protective warmth on all sides. As their chaos of emotions passed, he fiddled with the tips of their hair where it stuck out from under their bandana. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?” he whispered. “The reason you won’t bite me, it’s because when you first told me your fangs had grown in, I asked you to… with the pliers.”
“It was a long time ago. I look at you now, and I don’t even see that person anymore. There’s no reason—” Diego choked back an angry sob, ramming their forehead into Maddy’s shoulder. “I should be stronger than this.”
“I will start bleeding here and now if you talk like that.” He pinned them to his chest aggressively enough to prove his point, but as he caught their chin in his large hands, he tipped their face towards his with the utmost tenderness. “You arenotresponsible for the way you internalize the trauma inflicted on you, only whether you turn around and inflict that pain on others.”
“But I did—I hurtyou.”
“Yes, and as I said, I let you.” He smirked, brushing his thumb along their jaw. “Also, I happened to like that pain. It turns out there’s a sexy explaination for why I was so obsessed with every kind of bruise you could give me in high school.”
Oh, fuck him. There had been a reason they worked so well together back then, and a reason they could still work, possibly better—and, Diego begrudgingly admitted to themself, healthier—than before, now that they both knew who they were and what they wanted. Diego couldn’t predict where this relationship would take them both, especially when there was still a chance it could all crash and burn, but that was no reason not to enjoy the ride. Literally. “You said you have an apartment here somewhere?”
“Yes?” He looked suspicious in the very best way, breathless and a little desperate.
“I can’t promise you my fangs, but how about you drive us there…” Diego bared their teeth, hooking two fingers into the edge of Maddox’s jeans. “And we see what other ways I can hurt you.”
7
Maddox’s apartment was oddly unremarkable, just a regular old second story two-bedroom with a strip of balcony, the layout so similar to the one Diego shared with Valentine that they moved through it instinctively. Maddox had filled the space with secondhand furniture and landscape photography. The stack of VHS tapes beside his TV contained a variety of fantasy and romcoms, with an official copy ofThe Princess Bridebelow a recorded version with a homemade label. A stack of boxes in one corner still hadkitchenandbedroommarkered on them.
Diego waited for Maddox to close the curtains, trying not to let their earlier fears get the better of them. He knew exactly what he was getting into—had already candidly wooed Diego’s partner for fuck’s sake. They would take things one step at a time, and Diego would accept whatever came naturally, whether that was simply a fun night of sex or a full continuation of the romance they’d started as teenagers, with or without fangs.
The knowledge felt like a weight lifted off Diego’s shoulders. As much as they loved the club, being the leader of a three-week long story came with a lot of expectations on what and how they were meant to give themself away. Here, in the privacy of Maddox’s home, Diego could let themself explore with the same freedom and security that the club’s guests paid for.
When Maddox asked, “What would you have of me, my lord?” Diego knew exactly what they wanted.
“Strip.” They bared their fangs, running their tongue along the point of one. “I want you lightly flayed and served to me, preferably on a stake.”
Maddox’s gaze was life itself. “It would be my honor.”
He started with his jacket, sliding it off his shoulders and tossing it dramatically over the back of the sofa. His fingers hooked in the collar of his t-shirt, then trailed down, tracing the defined lines of his chest through the fabric, before hooking into the top of his jeans instead. He grinned.
Under the modern, white-washed denim he had on a new pair of the same silken boxers he’d worn the first day he’d burst into Diego’s work, and it delighted them that they were his typical style. Diego was too ravenous just to watch any longer, grabbing the edges of his pants and shoving them down. As he stepped out of them, laughing, Diego made quick work of their own jeans, then wiggled their sports bra out from under their flannel, tossing it to the side. Last, they untied the bandana from their hair.
Their string of the Celestial Club’s fake sapphires and diamonds still hung safely in place. It felt right to have them there, a piece of their new home staying with them even as they gave a part themself back to their old one.
Maddox’s shirt joined their pile on the floor, leaving him, once more, in nothing but his silken underwear and that single strand of gems to match Diego’s. This time though, Diego was not circling at a distance. They pressed their hands to his abs, running them up and across in rough, hungry motions, trying to touch every bit of him that they’d lost over the last ten years. Somehow Maddy belonged to them again, impossibly and perfectly, and they were going to make their mark on him, brand him so deep he never strayed again; this beautiful, stubborn man who pushed and fought like he had already decided he would die at their feet, but froze, too, at a single safe word.
As his fingers found the top button of Diego’s flannel, they felt no hesitation in saying, “I’d like to keep the shirt on.”
Maddox hummed thoughtfully, leaving the buttons alone. “I remember you never liked to be touched there.”
“So you knew that part of me even before I knew myself?” Diego could not have anticipated how happy that would make them, nor how seen.
“Your chest was so beautiful, I didn’t understand why you were never into it. But it makes sense now.”
“And you don’t mind?” Diego refused to care whether anyone—Maddox included—would be disappointed in how they chose to live within their own body, but it made them sad to think that Maddox might have to miss a piece of the old them he’d once enjoyed.
The heat in his gaze set fire to their soul though, as he surveyed down the sweep of their neck and the lines of their arms, across their pelvis and between their legs, to where Diego could feel a very particular warmth growing, their body begging to be touched by more than merely his gaze. “All of you is beautiful,” he said. “I have plenty else to focus on.”
Diego had never felt more like ahe—more likehimself—in all his time as a lover. Magnificently, they felt no less genderless for it either. With Maddox, Diego could contain multitudes: they, and he, and starlight and fire. There was no part of them—of him—that his Maddy would touch that didn’t feel like home.
