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"I have your papers on the Frederickson case, sir."
Ozymandias turned from the view of the city towards the voice he didn't recognize. The face he did. He'd seen the young man among the paralegals bustling about underfoot at the head office of his law firm. The fact that the young man had been there at all meant he was promising material. Lawyers who were promising material and whose names he didn't know were not the sort of people Ozymandias wanted carrying his papers around.
"Where's Poole?"
"A sudden heart attack, sir."
"And what about the other associates?"
"In a meeting, sir. Mr Geller asked me to deliver these."
Ozymandias gave him a long, appraising look. The man must have been in his late twenties by now, but there was something in the androgynous, fresh face that still provoked the use of the word 'boy'. More than that – look at the curve of his lips, the languorous eyes, the cloud of blonde hair waving around his face. This was a naughty boy.
"You can leave them at my desk," Ozymandias said at last, and turned back to contemplate the skyline. "Oh, and ask Mr Geller to see me first thing in the morning."
-
Alan Shore left the office feeling – not disappointed so much as frustrated. He was 26 years old and he'd spoken to Adrian goddamn Veidt, and that was a big deal, but it could have been a hell of a bigger deal, too. Why hadn't he said something?
Nobody should be able to impress him so far as to shut him up. Nobody.
Alan Shore was 26 years old and he was hungry.
He went home that night to his beautiful, crazy girlfriend and allowed himself to be seduced into three hours of acrobatic, reprobate sex.
Three months later Alan was recovering from a hangover at his desk, wondering which pile of run-of-the-mill industrial fraud cases he was to catalogue next, when Poole, whose heart attack had turned out to be indigestion, approached him with an almost wild look in his eye. "What did you do this time?"
"What?" Alan pushed hair from his eyes. He really should get a haircut one of these days. He wasn't quite up to speed yet this morning. What had he done last night? It was all a bit of a blur after the bit where he'd finished reading the goodbye note and reached for the scotch. He was pretty sure there had been some dancing and bright pulsating lights, and making out with someone he'd never met at the back of the bar. How he'd wound up home and awake before 9 am was anyone's guess.
"We have Adrian frickin' Veidt on the phone asking for you. Line 2."
Alan's fog rushed off him. He grabbed the phone so fast he dropped the receiver twice before pressing the button to take the call. "Alan Shore."
"Hello, Mr Shore," said Adrian Veidt's voice, still powerful and seductive even over a phone line. "I wonder if you'd like to come and see me later tonight."
"Sir," was all Alan managed.
"Around 7 pm?"
"Of course."
"Mr Shore. This is an invitation, not an order."
Alan was silent for a beat. The implication he suspected might not be what was intended. But then, they'd all heard the rumours.
The possibility of them being true, of him being the one to confirm them for himself, woke up all the last corners of his abused body and mind.
"Understood," he said at last.
"I'll send a car."
-
Adrian could take this boy out without even thinking about it. It wouldn't even raise his heartbeat.
Alan shoved Adrian's face into the gleaming, spotless surface of his desk, hard, spoiling it with saliva from his crushed lips. "You'll do it again until you get it right," Alan said. His voice was completely emotionless.
"Yes, sir," Adrian managed. Alan let go of the back of his head and he straightened himself up, shivering slightly with pleasure and anticipation.
"I'll begin again," said Alan, crossed his hands behind his back, and began to pace the spacious office. "Alan Shore to Dr Thompson, M.D. 4th of January, 1986..."
Adrian slipped a fresh piece of paper into the typewriter and began again.
-
Adrian had studied the techniques of dozens of escape artists and yogis and mastered them all.
He gritted his teeth and wrapped his hands around the leather strapping him into the bed as Alan Shore fucked him, his hips slapping against his buttocks with wet hard sounds that echoed in the vast bedroom.
The city spread out before them, beyond Adrian's 180 degree glass wall. Adrian was still wearing the demure women's suit with the skirt pushed up around his waist, the conservative scarf a touch too tight around his neck.
Adrian's mouth hung open, the orgasm starting somewhere between his balls and solar plexus, stoked and coaxed by Alan's cock.
-
Alan sat behind the desk at the most luxurious, the most exclusive and most expensive office in the United States of America, perhaps the world. He let his eyes roam across it, allowed himself to imagine, to drink in the dream.
Alan sank his fingers in Adrian Veidt's hair, rubbing the back of his head slightly as Adrian unzipped his trousers with his teeth.
-
Alan drew in the smoke through the Cuban cigar, keeping its heat inside him for a beat before letting it billow out above him. He was sticky with sex, but the usual post-coital peace eluded him. It helped clear his mind to look at the pretty swirls of smoke wafting up towards the roof lost in darkness above.
Adrian was curled up at his side like a big, powerful cat. Alan touched his face absent-mindedly, drawing circles across his cheek, and was rewarded by a flick of tongue against his index finger. Just like a big cat.
At some point, Alan figured, he'd have to bite.
-
"So what happened?" Denny asked, his face contorted in that look of disgust mixed with morbid curiosity that it held whenever they discussed matters of a homosexual or otherwise unpatriotic nature – and Adrian Veidt was both.
"The world nearly ended," Alan said with a slight frown, rolling the cigar between his fingers. "Everybody was affected. That includes me – and even him. I guess I thought I'd better lie low for a while. Pursue a different career, even." He took a drag, pulling the smoke into his lungs and blowing it out towards the Boston skyline. "He didn't call after me. And why would he? I was hardly the only little boyfriend he had."
"Is that why the CIA still has a file on you?"
"Probably only one of the reasons. I've run into a lot of trouble during my life, Denny."
Denny snorted. "It's the only way to stay on the air."
"To powerful white men, the last vanguard of privilege." Alan held up his glass of scotch.
"That's us," Denny clinked his glass and they drank.
-
Among the government files on Ozymandias there was a list of names and numbers with linked photographs. Among them was one of a Luciferian young face, long hair spread out on a silk pillow, Adrian Veidt's hand splayed across his chest.