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“Hello. Can I help you?”
Damen wasn’t sure who or what he was expecting, but he didn’t think it was this man – all glimmering golden hair and dark blue eyes and a well-set face. He smiled tightly at Damen, his lips a sweet pink color. Polite, Damen thought.
“Good afternoon. I’m Damianos Vallis, from Marlas Home Repair. I’m here about the, ah, window, yes?” Damen said, smoothing the hesitation with a bright smile. This was his sixth call today; could he really be blamed if his brain was a little fried?
The man seemed to lose most of his wariness, his shoulders relaxing as he opened the door wider and took a step back. “Oh, of course. Excuse me, I thought you were coming tomorrow. I’m Auguste.” He held out a hand, and Damen took it. Cold and wet, like a clam.
Damen was invited inside and was greeted by the scent of something like wood and sage and citrus that seemed to cling everything – Auguste, the random velvet furniture that surely no one actually uses, and probably the expensive star-printed wallpaper too.
“Lovely home,” Damen said.
“Yes, thank you,” Augsute said, nodding. “Please follow me. The window is upstairs.”
Auguste led him through the house. It was smaller, Damen realized, than it appeared from the outside. Old, fit for smaller, more malnourished bodies, if his sixth grade teacher was to be believed. It was elegant though, with high quality, ordinary items spread evenly throughout the house; a winding mahogany staircase, an expanse of Patran carpet, an antique chandelier, sweet family pictures beside stained-glass windows.
They didn’t linger, though. Down the hallway, beside a niche displaying an antique Vaskian vase, stood a door with the initials L.R. carved into it. Augsute took the doorknob in hand.
“The window’s in here.”
The door opened to a smaller room than Damen had expected. It was modest, but not exactly plain. There was a white bed pushed into the corner and paired with a bedside table, which displayed only a lamp and an unburned candle. There was a desk in another corner, decorated with a doily, an empty glass bowl, and a vase with dying flowers standing in murky water. L.R. was carved here too, in the top-back of the desk chair.
Beside the desk was the window. The area around it had been tidied and cleaned; the broken glass removed, along with the curtains. Everything smelled heavily of lemons.
Damen inspected the window a little closer, looking for the screws that held the window in place. Windows were always easy fixes, the kind of things that Damen’s father taught him when he was a teenager, before Damen even considered becoming a repairman. The new window was even already prepared based on the measurements Auguste had sent them.
“Alright. This should only take around.. twenty-five, maybe thirty minutes, then I’ll be out of your hair,” Damen said, turning back to Auguste. Damen couldn’t smell his cologne over the smell of lemon, so he took a step towards him.
“Yes, good. I’ll be in the sitting room if you need anything,” Auguste said. He placed his hand on the door handle, then removed it, leaving the door gaping open. “My brother may come in. If he does, ignore him.” And he left.
Damen savored the last look he’d gotten of Auguste’s yellow hair and surprisingly flat ass, then turned. A few dead leaves had drifted in on the mid-autumn air, so Damen threw them back outside. Alone, with nothing between him and the task of the repair, Damen could feel a palpable sense of unease. There wasn’t much of a draft, but the air got in all the same, stifling his shirt against his chest. The hole in the glass wasn’t that big; something had definitely been thrown in, maybe a brick.
Don’t get interested, Damen thought, pushing up his sleeves.
As expected, the repair was quick and easy, a nice light job at the end of the day. The room around him was stuffed and still, heavy like an unbroken storm, but easy to forget when he got into his job. The old pane was removed and a new one inserted in time for the rain. A splattering of droplets got on his forearms, but Damen was already packing up when it truly began beating the glass.
“Is it – fixed?”
Damen turned to the doorway. The voice was raspy and halting like its owner was supposed to be on his deathbed, not standing in the doorway. But damn, Damen really hoped the man wasn’t dying. His hair was such a pretty color in the lamplight - he must be Auguste’s brother.
“Yeah,” Damen said, rising. “This your room, sweetheart?”
The man flushed a little, but his face quickly turned back to a pale yellow color. “My name – is Laurent,” he said.
“Damianos Vallis. Damen, if you like.”
“Damianos.” He lifted his nose a little. “It’s more masculine – professional!” He fell into a coughing fit.
Damen chuckled, but was stopped by Auguste appearing behind Laurent. His blue eyes were hard like ice that went miles deep, and his cheekbones were sharpened by the lighting, like knives. His hair looked worse next to Laurent’s; lank and lackluster.
“What’s going on?” he asked, eyes unblinking at Damen.
Laurent turned around to look at him, but Auguste didn’t spare him even a glance. “I’m all finished,” Damen said.
Auguste nodded, his gaze traveling to Laurent. He switched to Veretian. “This doesn’t look like your room.”
“It did – two days ago, didn’t it?” Laurent said.
“Go.”
Laurent left, sniffling down the hall.
Auguste didn’t move. “Thank you, Damen. I’m sorry about him.” He held up an envelope. “Your payment is in here. I’ll walk you to the door.”
Damen took the envelope, felt the thickness between his fingers, let himself be led to the door and ignored the disappointment that jumped up when he heard the door slam behind him.
Oh well. Nik doesn’t like him sleeping with the clients anyway, he supposes.
~~~
Surprisingly, Damen returned to the de Vere house two weeks later, accepting the triple-duty door locks from Auguste curiously.
“It’ll take around twenty to thirty minutes,” Damen told him, admiring the new, clean flush on Auguste’s cheeks. It was fascinating, Damen thought, the way Auguste looked so handsome on his own, only to appear so plain beside Laurent.
“Alright. I have a few errands to run. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” Augsute said, slipping out the door. “Don’t speak to my brother.”
And he was gone.
The car buzzed its way out of the driveway and down the street. The sound of creaking floorboards replaced it, and suddenly Laurent was standing behind him.
“Where are you from?” he asked, picking up a chair that had been pushed against the wall. Maybe this is what rich people used that random velvet furniture for: chatting up the help.
“Ios,” Damen said, pulling out a screwdriver. “And you?”
“Arles.” Laurent set the chair down and sat. “Why are you in Marlas?”
Damen shrugged. “I came for school and never left. Why are you in Marlas?”
“My uncle was stalking me.”
Damen turned his head so fast he got a pain. “What?”
Laurent shrugged. “How old are you?”
“What the fuck? Did you report him?”
“Of course. The police haven’t done that much though, as you’ve seen.” He waved his hand in the air, referencing the window upstairs.
Damen felt like he was shaking, yet when he looked at his hands they were very still. He had the distinct sense of danger too, like something was watching him or that the doors and windows were really just illusions.
“How old are you?”
Damen was silent.
Laurent scoffed. “Do you have any siblings?”
Damen lifted up the screwdriver again, twisted out the bolt. Twisted out the other. “I think you should go somewhere else, Laurent.”
Laurent scoffed again. “This is my house, if you haven’t noticed. Do you always walk into other’s houses and tell them what to do?” New faceplate. One bolt, two– “You know what? I bet if my brother wasn’t coming back soon, you would already be pushing my head down your cock, wouldn’t you?”
The third and fourth bolts fell from Damen’s hand. In spite of the shaking ground, the dark spots in his vision, his tongue which stuck to the dry roof of his mouth, he stood.
And stood.
Laurent smiled a little, sinister. “What? Are you about to do it anyway? You don’t care that my brother will be back soon?”
Damen took the bolts again, ignoring the urge to screw them in Laurent’s eyes, and continued screwing into the door. He watched the wood be twisted from its place, falling in little curling confettis to the carpet. The metal pushed into what once was their place, building its own home.
“You can if you want. He might just kill you though.”
Damen twisted the next bolt in, and the next, and the next. Laurent said a few more things, prodding and cruel, but Damen had stopped listening.
When the job was done, he didn’t wait for Auguste to return. He left Laurent in the foyer.
~~~
“de Vere called again. I swear, that house must be made of glass or some shit. You wanna take it?” Nikandros asked.
“I’m full this week. Give it to someone else,” Damen said.
~~~
Someone had turned the TV on.
“How sure are we that that thing isn’t about to blow up?” Damen joked, walking into the break room. He grabbed a Dr. Pepper from the dusty old fridge and settled on the couch with the others.
A hot blonde woman was on the TV, her face cool and controlled, with just a touch of pity in the set of her eyebrows. The man next to her looked similar, nodding slowly at each point she made.
“—appears that Auguste de Vere was shot, and his brother Laurent strangled. Their bodies were found in the guest bedroom, where Laurent was sleeping that night. Their butler reportedly awoke to the sound of the gunshot, but by the …”
The woman continued, something about ongoing investigations and her uncle. Damen wasn’t sure what her uncle had to do with Laurent and Auguste’s murders, but Damen forgot it quickly enough. A sort of ringing seemed to overlay all other sounds. One of the guys said something about customers. Another said something with the words, off and okay and Damen.
When he turned, some of the guys had left. Nikandros was staring at him, his expression similar to the blonde’s, while Aktis, Pallas, and Lazar’s eyes stayed glued to the TV.
“Oh shit… They were yours, right?”