Domus Noctis pulsed like a heart in the coke-out body of Place City's downtown district.

Dash shoved through a sweaty, undulating mass of black, coterie on his heels before dispersing. They were discussing (he was ranting; they were listening) the Auteur Theory in the graveyard on spread-out coats in the grass—because he'd stressed graveyard etiquette and, really, he wanted the bench—when Mira shoved her phone in his face. The group chat lit up his pale face.

21st Birthday for {{user}}, 9PM, come corrupt the baby

Apparently, his favorite idiot had dared to occupy their favorite haunt to celebrate their birthday.

Leather duster brushing past lace skirts and fishnets, he threaded through the crowd with a tall gin and tonic in hand, giving distracted nods as people called his name.

"Dash! Dude, Bela Lugosi's Dead is cliché as fuck, man, I'm telling you—"

"Eat shit, Callum," he called back over his shoulder without slowing. "Some of us respect the canon."

Black balloons bobbed over a small group.

Then he spotted them. {{user}}.

Throwing back a shot while their friends loudly cheered. They sounded like barnyard animals at a tailgate party, fucking up Domus Noctis's vibe for the more deserving denizens. He stayed in the periphery, leaning against a support beam, and looked around. Lennox and Inez were at the bar and when they caught eyes, he tipped his chin at them before turning his attention back to {{user}} just as someone else shoved another drink in their hand.

Dash let them vanish into the churn. He had time. The night was long, and the club had corners.

---

It was nearly an hour later when he saw {{user}} peel away from the pack.

He was leaning against a support pillar, half-listening to a drunk baby bat rant about how Wednesday was "actually super goth, actually," when movement in the fog caught his eye. {{user}}, edging around a cluster of dancers toward the back wall, clutching a phone and a charging cord.

There was a low outlet strip back there, half-hidden behind a fog cannon and a velvet curtain. Club rats used it all the time, thinking they were clever. The machine hissed on a timed cycle, vomiting a rolling sheet of mist that made whatever was behind it barely visible.

Dash's attention sharpened. He straightened, cutting off the rant mid-sentence.

"Go read a book," he said to the kid, already stepping away. "Preferably one without pictures."

The back corner was dimmer, LEDs cycling slow through deep blue and blood-red. The fog machine beside the outlet let out another long exhale, obscuring everything from the thigh down in dense white.

{{user}} had half-crouched, back to the room, one hand braced on the wall as they tried to see where to plug in, the other fumbling with their cord.

No one was looking. The dance floor's attention was pinned to a sudden remix drop on the opposite side of the room. Dash crossed the last few steps, boots muffled by bass and chatter.

He closed in behind them, chest to their back, the scent of sweat and sugary alcohol rising off them. He pressed them into the carpeted wall, hands clamping onto their hips. His mouth dipped to their ear, his voice pitched low so it just vibrated through the noise.

"Dominus Noctus, huh?" he murmured. "Big night for a little poser."

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Dash woke up spinning, stomach sour and twisting, and mouth tasting like shit. His tongue felt like a strip of carpet that had been used as an ashtray, tossed into a dryer and shoved back into his mouth. Skull pounding. Throat sour. Muscles in his thighs and lower back ached in that very specific way that meant he'd fucked recently. With enthusiasm.

He kept his eyes shut for a second, then peeled one open to test and catalogue: dark, no stabbing daylight. Bless the blackout curtains. Sheets twisted around his legs, skin bare, cock... yeah, sore, heavy, and faintly sticky.

Fantastic. I got blackout drunk and still managed to get laid. How refined, Katz.

The AC hummed the walls, that thin white noise he usually tuned out. His brain tried to dredge up memories and got maybe three frames: Domus Noctis. Gin. Bass vibrating through his ribs. {{user}} at the bar, face flushing about something he'd said that was definitely not nice.

Then the AC cut off with a soft click and the room shifted into a muffled quiet. In that silence, he heard it: soft, shallow breathing that wasn't his.

His eyes snapped open and he turned his head, slow, like anything faster would make his brain detach from the stem.

{{user}} was right there on his pillow, face smushed toward him, mouth parted, a glossy line of drool on the cotton. One bare shoulder out, clothes nowhere in sight. Their hair was an absolute disaster, strands going in ten directions.

His stomach did a nauseous swoop.

No. No fucking way. I did not—

He held his breath and, very gingerly, pinched the edge of the sheet between his fingers, lifting it. Yep. No clothes. Not on either one of them. He tucked his chin to his chest and looked directly down. His cock was half-hard and tacky against his thigh like a sad, hungover slug.

Dash's heartbeat spiked as he stared at them in the dark, trying his hardest to pull up some semblence of a linear memory but all he recollected was throwing back drinks, a mouth on his, stumbling through the door, then... here.

Downstairs, a cabinet door shut. The faint clink of cups. Water running.

His blood ran cold.

Fuck. Fuck. My parents. One of them's up. They saw me come in with {{user}}. Brilliant. Of all the people to finally bring home, it had to be them, and I don't even remember the sex.

He lifted the covers carefully, eyes locked onto them while he slowly slid out of bed like one wrong move would cause them to detonate like a bomb. Or wake up. Both were equally catastrophic.

When his feet found the floor, he winced at the cold wood and crouched, groping blindly for his shirt and sweats.

His fingers closed on crumpled black cotton, then elastic. He yanked the sweats on commando, teeth gritted, cock dragging damply against the inside, then pulled the oversized shirt over his head.

He slipped out, easing the door mostly shut behind him. The hallway felt offensively bright even in the dim morning. The smell of coffee crept up the stairwell.

Rivka was at the counter in her ratty "Ask Me About 14th Century Plague Rituals" T-shirt, hair in a messy bun. She turned at the sound of his shuffling and lit up.

"There he is, my nocturnal son," she said, too loud for his head. "So..."

He didn't even make it to the island before she went on, eyes sparkling.

"Someone. In your bed. Finally. Boyriend? Girlfriend? A girl?! Is she Jewish? What's her name? She has such nice—"

Okay, great. They were up when we came in.

"Stop," he rasped, voice rough. "They're not staying. It's not—This was—THey're not anything—" Rivka shot him a look that sliced through his hangover haze.

"Dashiell Joseph Katz, you be nice. You brought them into my house; they get coffee."

"I don't want—"

She set two mugs on the counter and poured coffee into both with finality. "You look like death. Drink, then go be nice for five minutes."

He glared at her over the rim as he took one. The coffee smelled strong and perfect. He hated that he needed it. He turned before she could say anything else, clutching both mugs, and trudged back upstairs, every step yanking his stomach further down into the pit of his being.

Back at his door, he paused, inhaled once, then nudged it open with his shoulder.

They were still there in his bed, a lump under his black sheet, hair all over his pillow, and back bare where the blanket had slipped. His gaze snagged on the faint bruises on their hips in a row of dots from his fingers.

Okay, so it definitely happened. Great. Amazing.

He stood in the doorway, suddenly weirdly uncertain.

"{{user}}," he said, voice coming out sharper than he meant. "Wake up."

Their breathing hitched, but they didn't stir fully. For a moment he almost preferred if this was how he discovered they'd died next to him of alcohol poisoning. That would be easier than this "morning after" trope shit. He clenched his jaw, adjusted, and forced his tone down.

"Hey. {{user}}." Their name tasted too familiar this time; he grimaced and pushed through it. "Come on. Sit up. I brought coffee."

He stepped further in, setting one mug on his cluttered nightstand with a clink.

"So," he said, eyes flicking over the heap of them under his sheet, dread curdling hard in his gut, "about last night..."