The Fatima Curse

The place wasn’t what Uriel had expected at all. In truth, the skin bars he had frequented in his younger years were dingy, disgusting places, where a man was as disturbed by the stickiness of the floor beneath his boots, as he was by the dust growing on the dimly lit stage; or the rats that were chewing through the walls. This place, however, was grandiose and expensive. At the door, their I.D. was checked, amusing Uri, who’s twenty-six years had been kind to him, and infuriating Shu, who shoved his in the man’s face and proclaimed him a moron.



“Well, this certainly is a step up from everywhere else we’ve been sent,” Uri remarked as they walked through glass doors and stepped into the show room. The stage was actually three that connected. Just like at a circus, Uri remarked to himself, and he wondered why the thought made him feel so bitter. There were waiters in fancy suits and combed back hair, a bar that was not all flashy neon, but the kind one might find in an expensive hotel or inn. Uri felt underdressed immediately in his white t-shirt and blue jeans, but he hardly felt any embarrassment as he and Shu were motioned towards the bar, where Uri ordered a scotch (sans rocks), and Shu fired up a cigarette.



“Yeah, not too bad,” Shu agreed, nodding his head through a swirling cloud of smoke. “Kinda classy for a… well, you know.” He smiled here and elbowed Uri playfully in the side. The taller man gave a pained smile and shrugged one shoulder. He said nothing, and Shu slipped easily into silence. It was unusual that his partner refrain from speaking, but Uri was not the type to question his good luck. “Y’know,” Shu said suddenly, and Uri rewarded the man in his mind. A whole five seconds without talking. It had to be a world record for the tiny Asian man. “It kinda smells nice here. I was expectin’ it to smell like ass and feet.”



“It does smell nice.” Uri agreed, taking a whiff of the air and wondering what he could compare it to. Shu compared it to the fleeting sweetness of perfume, the kind his old girlfriend had used to wear when she wanted him to put his hands on her. Uri, meanwhile, stacked it up to the light sheen of sweat a lover’s body will wear when the line between temptation and submission is firmly at hand. That bittersweet little aroma that floods from a person’s pores. He shivered and happily swallowed half of his scotch when it arrived.



“So, who’s the guy?,” Shu asked under his breath. Reminding Uri, rather unpleasantly, that they had not come here to get plastered nor to take in a little show on either of the three lovely, well lit stages. Uri scanned the establishment with his skilled eyes, taking in the faces of rather cultured businessmen. Their ties loosened, their usually neat hair unkempt, their briefcases on the floor, forgotten, beside them. They were all unassuming and uninteresting, until Uri’s eyes fell on a rather portly fellow that stood near another man, the two obviously engaged in what they would undoubtedly call an “animated discussion.” With every word from the seated man’s mouth, the overweight man’s face would grow redder and redder in agitated fury.



Uri pointed one slim finger. Shu followed this and placed his eyes on the man. “Holy shit,” Shu said with a little laugh, “Free fuckin’ Willy.”



Uri opened his mouth to scold his friend, and then found a deep, booming laugh taking the place of his lecture. He clapped a hand over his mouth, chuckling against his palm until his stomach cramped painfully, his sides throbbed, and tears trickled down his cheeks. Shu smiled with triumphant satisfaction, forming a gun with his fingers and cocking his wrist back as though the imaginary weapon had fired. “That’s numero dos, amigo,” Shu remarked in his best (or is it worst, Uri pondered humorously) Spanish accent. “Made chu laugh twice now, eh, eh?”



“Come on, get serious,” Uri ordered, but his lips trembled with a smile, and his face was still sopping wet with the tears of laughter he had shed. Death is so strange, his mind whirled, without his consent, Even in the face of it all, you can still manage to crack a smile. Get your head out of your ass, Uriel. He knew the advice was good and should be followed, and he wondered if it were death that was strange, or Shu. No one else could make him laugh this way certainly. Uri shook his head to clear it, and placed his now cold, detached eyes on the obese fellow with the red face.



Uri grabbed Shu’s wrist and pulled him close. For a moment, the Japanese man though his dark friend meant to kiss him, and - with flustered expectation - Shu pursed his lips. Uri, however, turned his eyes down to the backpack he had brought, opening this and rifling through it for a moment before slapping the manila folder on the bar top. Shu jumped and stifled a gasp of both shock and pleasure. Uri released his wrist and rapped three dark digits on the folder. His eyes were warning on Shu’s face.



Shu mashed out his half smoked cigarette with great lament and pulled the folder closer to him, opening it, peeking around, and reading the documents it contained:



John Fletcher is most well known for his contribution to the Safe Neighborhood initiative, which helps filter out all past sex offenders and make them known to the parents in the targeted area. This is quite ironic, considering what Mr. Fletcher has been accused of himself.



Shu paused, straining his eyes on the looping scratch of his Master’s handwriting.



Several sources link him to a rash of grisly and brutal murders back in ‘96, when he was a congressman in Raleigh, North Carolina. These murders happened in the span of five months, between October ‘95, and March ‘96. Three girls went missing, the first was found, decapitated and marked with lashes and welts that signified struggle and rape.



Shu turned the page and felt his heart drop to his knees. There was a picture of a smiling little girl with gap teeth. Tears pricked Shu’s eyes, and he rubbed at one with the back of one hand, sniffling softly. “Jesus, Uri… I can’t…”



“I know it’s hard,” Uri said, softly and compassionately. He took another sip of scotch and nodded his head in understanding. “But you have to, Shu. Keep going.”



Shu sighed and blinked past his tears, turning the page again to read on. It seemed that the third had been found in much the same manner as the first. Only the second seemed to differ; no signs of rape had been evident. No signs of anything had been evident, truly. The girl had been too badly burned to learn anything of what had happened to her. Shu felt his stomach tighten and tremble with the threat of losing his breakfast. A cold sweat had broken out on his forehead, and the folder shook in his hands through trembling fingers. Uri gently took this away, closed it up, and stuck it in his backpack.



“We’re just here to get a feel for where he goes at night,” Uri explained. He tried to use a soft and rather paternal tone with Shu, taking his friends tremoring hands and holding them rather tightly as he looked into Shu’s wet, wide eyes. A moment of both pity and love washed through Uri’s system, and he felt the urge to kiss those lips once more. Felt the need to take Shu against his body and hold him until the terror passed. “So I don’t want you doing anything rash, alright? You have to keep your head. Shuuichi.”



Uri growled the name in a stern whisper as Shu’s body kept its violent quivering and tears spilled down his pallid cheeks. “Get it together,” Uri commanded, and the compassion was gone from his voice. “We can’t afford any screw ups, and I can’t hold your hand anymore. So. Get. It. Together. Now.”



Shu nodded, fumbling for his pack of cigarettes and spilling both the pack and the little cancer sticks all over the floor. Uri hopped up from his stool and knelt to retrieve them, sticking them back in their container and lighting one for Shu. He puffed in the nicotine, felt his head swim dizzily, and handed the cigarette off to Shu. Shu took deep drags, as though it would be his last one ever. After a few lengthy lungful, he seemed to calm down somewhat, the trembling subsiding and the tears drying on his cheeks.



Uri stood, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and bringing Shu up, slinging an arm across his friend’s wiry shoulders. Uri’s mouth was on Shu’s ear then, and the smaller man felt his stomach twist this time not with nausea, but with a lust so primal and so disorienting that he barely contained his meek moan of interest. “Keep walking with me,” Uri said, and Shu released his held moan as Uri grabbed his hand and led it to his crotch. “Touch me, Shu. It’s what the people here expect.”



“In your fuckin’ dreams,” Shu laughed jaggedly, pulling away from Uri and shoving his tingling fingers through his unkempt jet-black hair. He kept the palms of his hands against his forehead for a moment, cooling the hot, damp skin. “You’re gonna have to try a lot harder than that to get in my pants, Uri, but I can appreciate your persistence.” Uri laughed softly and took a seat, tipping his dark face up to Shu. And for a moment, Shuuichi was floored by Uri’s beauty. The lights - dim overhead, but bright around the stage - washed over Uri’s face and showed every angle of his features. When Shu could breath again, he inhaled deeply and took a seat quickly beside his friend.



Shu opened his mouth to say something, of what he wasn’t sure, but he was saved by a voice that boomed from the four corners.



“Ladies and Gentlemen,” the voice began.



“Ladies, yeah right,” Shu mumbled.



“Exhale proudly presents its finest attraction. The lovely, the decadent, the beautiful; Leon Fairfax!” There was light applause from the scarce and scattered audience. Uri, ever vigilant, watched the pudgy hands of John Fletcher as he clapped, his red and sweaty face tipped up to the stage with almost a little boy’s expectation. “Looks like Jumbo’s got another little fetish he hasn’t told the wife about,” Shu whispered, leaning over to Uri. The dark man nodded to this, centering his own eyes on the stage as the sheer curtains parted and a man, certainly not much younger than himself, emerged.



Time stopped. In truth, all things stopped. Uri forgot how to breathe. Forgot how to think. Forgot all things but the color of the man’s eyes, the glimmer of the lights on his pale and rather luxurious skin, the flaxen hue of his trundling, bountiful hair. Uri swallowed through a throat that felt too tight. Shu said something, but he didn’t hear it. The voice that spoke through the loud-speakers might as well have been God aching to communicate with an outcast Adam. There was nothing in the world but the blonde man. There was nothing, no one, but Leon.



Leon…

~~~~~++++~~~~~

Leon stepped out on stage, and the same thing that always happened kept the trend. Every pair of eyes, including those of the wait staff, turned to find him. He wore nothing on this particular gig; just a feather boa and a broad, flirting smile. The boa, black and soft against his naked body, was held before his waist, his lipid eyes staring out at the crowd as he gave a teasing twirl and showed a glimpse of his firm, naked backside.



As he combed his heavy lidded emerald eyes over the patrons, he found one man who particularly caught his interest. He was dark, tall, beautiful. His eyes were an arresting shade of light blue, his hair down in spikes around his transfixed, gaping face. Leon smiled with seductive charm, writhing and grinding his way to the edge of the stage, hips working and swaying in perfect time to the booming, rather cheesy music. He leaned over in a cascade of blonde hair, his green eyes twinkling and captivating as they looked down on the man mere feet from where he stood. The boa was thrown out, being caught by one quick, dark brown hand. Leon’s smile became something almost predatory, as he pulled teasingly, questioningly, on the other end of the boa. He saw those ice blue trail down his body, saw them widen with the size of his cock, saw a blush form on those dark, mocha cheeks. “Come a little closer, big boy,” Leon purred, and he could sense the shiver that moved through the Arab man’s large, well-built body. “Let me get a good look at you.”



The boy beside the man, Japanese and stunning in his own rights, narrowed his already slanted eyes at Leon and then snapped these orbs to his friend. The man on the other end of the boa, however, did not notice. He stood and stumbled closer, staring up in awe at the honey-blonde man on stage. “You have anything for me?,” Leon asked in another low, rumbling breath, bending lower to brush his lips and his question against the other man’s mouth. “Mmm?”



The man kissed him suddenly, strongly. Leon laughed into his mouth and pulled back, brushing his fingers down the man’s face as he panted hot and heavy on the man’s slick lips. “Anything else? Anything green?” The dark man fumbled in his pocket for his wallet and pulled out a bill, sliding the paper up one creamy calf and over the inside of one thigh. Leon moaned softly as his cock was brushed with the man’s wrist. He took the bill and backed up a little, wrapping his body around the metallic pole in the center of the stage, letting his feathered boa drop to the stage as he swung around the cylindrical object with his long blonde hair flowing behind him.



“What’s your name cutie?,” Leon called over the music, flashing a broad smile at the man who stood there hypnotized by him.



“Uriel,” the man answered, in what was a shaken, roughly aroused voice.



“Meet me in the Champagne Room, Uriel,” Leon ordered. “I’ll make it worth your while.”