Disclaimer : All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of pace is the trick. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
AN: This is an AU take on No Night is Too Long (a bit of the film, a bit of the book) - what happens after Tim and Ivo have their talk about Isabel on the island. Ivo doesn't die, Tim never slept with Ivo's sister, and the events that make up the movie/book serve as background and little more. I just happen to love the characters Tim and Ivo. Likewise, I have borrowed Danny Reyes from Judas Kiss because I adore that character, though I am certain Carlos Pedraza (to whom Danny rightfully belongs) is a little appalled. I ask that he forgive me.
Stories tend to write themselves and I have no idea where this will end up. That said, know that I am holding out for an HEA for Ivo and Tim.
Happy reading!
~ Pace is the trick
Prologue: The Ghost Inside
Everyone has a ghost in their past, someone they would much rather keep there - buried, hidden. I'm different to most people. My ghost doesn't belong to me at all. In fact, I've never even met him; he died long before I ever entered the scene. But he is as real to me as Ivo. I know the sound of his voice - his laugh, his growl, his drunken slur; his peculiar narrow, slanted scrawl; I know his petulant expression when he didn't get his way and that look of utter serenity when he did. I know how his long black bangs fell over his left eye and how he constantly had to push them back to be able to see. I know that he only used his right eye for the lens and that is why his bangs fell to the left. Or maybe his hair grew that way and he adapted his camera habits accordingly. I know his favorite books, his favorite poet, his favorite foods, his favorite sweater. I know his undergraduate grades and how much money he borrowed to put himself through school. That is, until Ivo footed his bills. I know that he preferred cats to dogs but had the latter not the former, was a fast sprinter, a passable pianist and a better guitarist. I know the names of every one of his films. I know what he thought and how he felt.
I know that Danny was Ivo's first love.
Strange that I should love Ivo so much now when this same time last year I couldn't wait to leave him. How is it that a dead man could so threaten me that I would embrace what I had previously regarded as my prison? After the accident, I stayed with Ivo only from a lack of other options. He thought I wanted to end things because I was confused about my sexuality, that I was too young to accept the fact that I was gay. He felt that unresolved issues in my childhood had left me incapable of intimacy, that being vulnerable in love terrified me. I tried to tell him that I just didn't want to be with him, that I just didn't love him, but then he pointed out the unfortunate reality of my financial circumstances. I had finished school, had no job prospects and therefore no means of supporting myself. I intended to be a writer but that would hardly bring a steady pay check. It was much too late to start looking for a teaching position. I had, after all, assumed I would return to live with Ivo and figure things out then. He proposed that we keep that original plan, but that I stay with him for companionship rather than love. He had plenty of money to provide for me while I worked on my first novel and he even said we could lay off the sex for a while to give me time. (I asked time for what and that was when he launched into his speech about sexual identity confusion/vulnerability issues.) I was still recovering from falling nearly one hundred feet and almost drowning and was in no condition to fight back so I acquiesced and returned with him to Warwick. The laying off of sex lasted about a month and then Ivo was back in my bed. But he had changed, treating me with care and consideration as if I were too fragile to withstand the brutal mating rituals that had been the foundation of our relationship.
Such was our life before Danny. Ivo taught his class and I stayed home and pretended to write, taking pills to get through the day. He came home, we ate dinner, he graded papers, I read, we went to bed, we had sex. Occasionally, he traveled for a conference and I stayed home and pretended to write. He came back with lavish gifts for me, told me all about what he had done and who he had met and made me dinner. We ate and went to bed and had sex. Not once did he ask how the novel was progressing and I had a good idea that he knew what I did in my spare time, as if he had hired someone to watch me and report to him on my activities. I surfed the internet, watched television, read, saw my psychiatrist, got more pills, and took naps. Lots and lots of naps. Some days I didn't even get out of bed until Ivo was home.
In November, he had to give a paper in Seattle and insisted that I come with him. Nine days alone was much too much, in his opinion, for me to be on my own. Anyway, his sister had invited us up to Vancouver for her husband Kit's birthday. She wanted it to be a family affair, just the four of us in their cottage on Vancouver Island. Actually, I wanted to go. I wanted to see her again. I no longer fancied myself in love with her; I was much too angry at being a pawn in their game. But I was curious to see her again. Perhaps I just wanted revenge, wanted to show her I didn't care a thing for her in spite of my passionate declarations of love. So we set off for our early vacation. Of course I got sick on the trip and took to bed, feverish and vomiting. Ivo took care of me for the first three days until he had to leave for Seattle at which point Isabel took over. She was exactly as I remembered, only very much Ivo's sister and very married. I marveled at my stupidity as much as their duplicity.
On the fifth day of confinement - when I was feeling much better but too cowardly to face Isabel and Kit - I explored the small guest bedroom for something to do. I opened the drawers to a little nondescript desk tucked well out of the way under the eaves and that's how I found Danny. He literally fell out, face down, onto the floor. I picked up the photo without thinking, intending to put it back but the words Danny and Ivo, Budapest, 1984 in a most unusual hand caught my eye. Perhaps it was seeing Ivo's name or the location or the date but for whatever reason, I turned it over and that was my first glimpse of him - a young, thin boy with black hair and fathomless blue eyes. There was an animal-like sensuality to him, as if he wasn't entirely human and the way his arm rested easily on Ivo's shoulder told me they were lovers. Ivo was younger then but that wasn't the only difference in him. The past decade had not merely aged him, it had ravaged him. Beside Danny stood a different Ivo, one who was relaxed, rested, happy.
Happy.
My first knowledge of Danny was that he had made Ivo happy. That bothered me far more than it should have. I would have preferred that he and Ivo had been "companions", as Ivo and I now were. The fact that Danny had meant something to Ivo upset me. I immediately went on the defensive, reminding myself that I didn't love Ivo, that ours was a relationship of convenience, that he was older than me so of course he had had someone before me. But the two serene faces gazing at me from the photo rattled me. I felt threatened though I couldn't understand why. My security in knowing that Ivo worshipped the ground I walked upon was shaken. Suddenly there was somebody else, somebody he loved a sight bit more than he loved me.
I had to find out who Danny was.
Like Pandora opening that fateful box, I dug through the rest of the drawer, unearthing more and more evidence of the love affair between the silent boy and Ivo. I compiled the photographs in chronological order and moved on to sift the contents of the next drawer. This was a treasure trove. More pictures and oh so many other things. Letters and video cassettes and journals and diplomas. Daniel Carlos Reyes was unleashed from the lifeless lowboy, spilling like the ink of his uneven scrawl to the floor around me.
My ghost had found me. I would be haunted for the rest of my life.