CasualWanderer82

I don't know. Is there such a thing as fate? Do our choices matter in the end or are they just meaningless, "futile devices" in the greater scheme of things...?

Luka woke like a man pulled from water. His body jackknifed upright, chest heaving, hands fisting the sheets before his eyes were fully open. The gasp that tore from his throat was raw and jagged, the sound of lungs remembering they needed air, and for three full seconds he didn’t know where he was. The room was bright. Too bright. Everything was normal. Everything was aggressively, insistently, impossibly normal. Luka’s hands opened slowly. The sheets beneath his palms were

The dining room was a mouth. That was Luka’s first thought as he stepped through the arched doorway and into its vaulted throat. The ceiling soared above them in a barrel vault of cracked fresco, saints or angels or something in between, their robes faded into watercolor ghosts, their faces blurred by centuries of smoke and silence. The walls were the color of dried blood, a deep Venetian plaster that seemed to breathe under the candlelight, pulling inward with each flicker, then releasing.

I'm humbled and honored by the mention. Curious choice among my collection as it's (no doubt) my most controversial project. But honored, regardless. Amazing initiative. I feel like I should follow your lead.

Thank you @dboggs9700 for giving the story your time! 🩵

Thank you @Modified Cub for always being so kind and championing my work.

Enjoy the story!

Such a beautiful thing to say @redw18 thank you...

Daniel crossed the street. It took four seconds. His feet found the opposite pavement. His hand found the door. The buzzers were brass, old, the names beside them handwritten on small, yellowed cards. He didn’t read the names. He didn’t need a name. He needed a floor. Third. The balcony with the plant. He pressed the buzzer. The intercom crackled. Nothing. The static of an old system processing a signal it had not expected on a morning that had been, until four seconds ago, a

I said surprised, not upset. 😉 Having a side of you that enjoys being submissive in bed doesn't necessarily make you a..."bottom". You didn't. I appreciate these discussions. They're important. And I'm happy to have them with my readers. 😘

I'm surprised by this comment... Daniel isn’t “becoming” gay over the course of the narrative, nor is he shedding one label in favor of another. What you’re witnessing is not a transformation of orientation, but an excavation of it, an uncovering of parts of himself that had always been present, even if they weren’t fully lived or understood before. His attraction to men, the intensity of that experience, none of it erases what came before. Nora was real. His past was real. And those things don’t suddenly lose their legitimacy simply because another facet of him has come into sharper focus. Bisexuality doesn’t disappear just because one side of it is, for a time, more vividly expressed. There’s also a subtle but important distinction between behavior and identity. The story leans into Daniel’s sexual awakening with men because that is where his internal conflict, curiosity, and vulnerability are most alive, but narrative focus shouldn’t be mistaken for total definition. To say “he’s gay now” risks flattening something that is deliberately written to resist flattening. Bisexual people exist. And as for calling him a “bottom”...that’s precisely the kind of shorthand the story is trying to move away from. Those labels can be useful in certain contexts, but they can also become reductive when applied as identities rather than dynamics. Daniel’s relationships aren’t meant to be decoded into fixed roles. They’re meant to be felt, questioned, and, at times, left unresolved. On Nora, yes, she is older, and that detail matters, though perhaps not in the way one might initially assume. Their dynamic isn’t there to “explain” Daniel’s sexuality, but it does speak to how he relates to intimacy, to guidance, to emotional safety. Age, in that sense, becomes less about influence over orientation and more about the shape of connection, who he feels seen by, and how. Ultimately, the story resists neat categorization because Daniel himself does. And that’s not ambiguity for its own sake. It’s a reflection of a truth that’s often simplified in fiction: identity, especially sexual identity, is not a box you step into once and for all. It’s something lived, contradicted, rediscovered...

Daniel Beaumont is a man who was built by other people. His mother designed the architecture. His father modelled the charm. His career rewarded the performance. His marriage confirmed the blueprint. For thirty years, every room he entered had already decided who he was before he walked through the door, and he was so good at being the person the room expected that he forgot there was someone else inside the suit. The story's inciting event, is not a sexual awakening. It's an archaeological one. Malik's hands don't create something new. They uncover something that was always there, buried under thirty years of compliance so total it had become indistinguishable from identity. What Malik finds, in one night, is the person Daniel truly is: a man whose spirit is fundamentally, constitutionally free. The freedom is the core. Not the bisexuality, not the openness, not the specific bodies or the specific loves. Those are expressions. Freedom is the source. The journey is not Daniel learning to love men, or learning to love at all. It's Daniel learning to refuse the architecture. Every chapter strips a wall. And the last chapter will, hopefully, break the most important one...

I'll have to revisit this comment...after I post the final chapter. 😉

It's wrapping up, yeah. Excited for you guys to read it. I'm in the process of editing, but I'm purposely taking my time with it. This was a "meeting" nine chapters in the making, so...

Are we talking fruit...? 😜 Thank you @Scrounger62 😘

Real vs. Imaginary. Who we really are Vs. What he see when we look ourselves in the mirror. That's an interesting conundrum.

Right?!

I love him, too.

Thank you for following this story @Vcs enjoy!

I'm so sorry to hear that, @FanLit 🤍

Life!

Just the way Daniel is. His whole, "fucked up", glorious self.

I think Daniel's journey is as much about self-discovery as it is about learning how "he" loves other people. And in his case, I dare say, how many different versions of that actually exist in him.