Damien Lockwood had always considered himself impervious to absurdity. Yet, on this particular morning, he stood at his office window, watching the city glint beneath a pallid sun, replaying the weekend's calamity with a mixture of incredulity and mounting irritation.
All because of one night.
One photograph.
One man.
Xavier Blackwell.
Damien exhaled slowly. Utterly farcical.
And yet the consequences were catastrophically real.
But to understand the maelstrom currently engulfing him, he had to revisit the evening where it all began the night of the Tech Titans Gala.
The gala had been a spectacle of opulence: chandeliers dripping like crystalline constellations, violins humming in the background, champagne flowing with sybaritic abundance. Damien, immaculate in a charcoal suit, moved through the crowd with the cool precision of a scalpel. Investors approached him with reverence; rivals avoided him with equal fervor.
His gaze had drifted across the ballroom and collided with a familiar figure, Xavier Blackwell.
Cold. Poised. Untouchable.
A man whose beauty was almost austere, as though sculpted from winter itself.
Their eyes met only briefly. A flicker of acknowledgment. Nothing more.
Damien resumed conversation with an influential Singaporean investor when a strange warmth unfurled in his chest. His vision shimmered at the edges, subtle, but unmistakable.
"Excuse me," he murmured, voice steady despite the vertigo. "The room is slightly stifling."
He stepped aside, catching sight of Xavier across the hall doing the very same, a hand resting lightly against one temple. Their mirrored movements might have been amusing under different circumstances.
He made for the exit, but the dizziness intensified, blurring lights into watercolor streaks. The cool night air outside provided little relief. A passing concierge, concerned and overeager, ushered him into a waiting hotel car.
"Sir, we've arranged a room nearby for your comfort. Complimentary."
Damien didn't argue; the haze made protest cumbersome.
Inside the hotel lobby, the world swayed. He dimly registered another figure standing beside him, equally unsteady. When Xavier's profile came into focus, Damien almost laughed.
"Of all people," Damien muttered.
Xavier blinked at him, eyes glassy from the same invisible toxin. "You're… loud."
"I haven't said anything," Damien replied flatly.
"Exactly."
Damien would have retorted, but the receptionist interrupted with a saccharine smile.
"Apologies, gentlemen, we're having an unexpected software issue with our booking system. It appears we have only one available suite for the evening. Terribly regrettable. Of course, we can"
"Fine," Damien said, just wanting a place to collapse.
Xavier frowned. "I don't share rooms."
"You can take the floor," Damien murmured.
"I'm not an animal."
"Then stand."
The receptionist, terrified, practically shoved the keycard into their hands.
The elevator ride blurred. Their shoulders brushed accidental, yet electric. The corridor swayed beneath their feet. When the door clicked open, the room's amber lighting felt surreal, warm, indulgent.
Damien set a hand against the wall to steady himself. Xavier took a step forward, miscalculated, and collided into him.
Damien inhaled sharply.
Xavier's breath ghosted his collar.
The room spun in molten circles.
"We're… too close," Xavier murmured, though he didn't move.
"That would require you to step back," Damien replied, voice low.
"Can't."
Damien wasn't sure who leaned in first, perhaps neither. Perhaps both. Their shadows converged; the space between them vanished. Lips brushed. A tentative, disoriented contact that deepened, becoming warmer, hungrier, shaped by confusion and a strange, inexorable pull neither could name.
Xavier's fingers curled briefly in Damien's lapel. Damien's hand found Xavier's waist, an instinctive, steadying motion rather than intent. Their breaths tangled; the world dissolved into heat and blurred silhouettes.
And then
The night folded into darkness.
The next morning arrived like a blade.
Damien awoke to a dull throb in his skull and a disconcerting warmth beside him. The sheets were tangled; his suit jacket lay discarded on the carpet, half-crumpled against the leg of the chaise. Damien stared at it for several moments, the fabric blurred by the throbbing behind his eyes. The room still smelled faintly of expensive cologne, hotel linen, and something warmer, the vestige of someone else's presence.
Someone who, regrettably, was sitting up in the same bed.
Xavier de March.
Damien inhaled once, shallow, controlled, before turning toward him fully.
Xavier looked… disheveled.
Which was astonishing, because Damien had previously believed Xavier incapable of appearing anything less than meticulously curated.
The younger man's hair, normally sleek and disciplined, now fell in tousled waves across his forehead, thick, obsidian strands glinting blue under the morning light. A single lock curled against his temple in a way that looked dangerously, irritatingly soft.
His eyes, a shade Damien had never bothered to notice before, were a cool argent, silver-gray with an almost metallic sheen. Bleary, slightly narrowed, they held the unmistakable expression of a man attempting to reconstruct the previous night from fractured, inscrutable fragments.
His mouth, damn it, was flushed at the edges, the lower lip slightly swollen, giving him an air of accidental sensuality that Damien refused to acknowledge. Even hungover, Xavier possessed an absurd kind of beauty, the kind one encountered in portraits of fallen princes.
His left ear glinted with a singular piece of jewelry: a black diamond stud, small yet unmistakably expensive. It caught the light like a shard of midnight. Damien found it incongruously elegant, an aesthetic contrast to Xavier's otherwise austere demeanor.
And beneath the rumpled white dress shirt, only half buttoned, was the faintest glimpse of ink.
A tattoo.
Thin, architectural lines peeking from his collarbone, disappearing beneath the fabric. Something geometric, perhaps symbolic. Damien felt an irrational jolt of curiosity, he'd never imagined Xavier as someone who decorated his skin with permanence.
Despite his disarray, Xavier's posture remained composed, shoulders squared, back straight, as if defiance alone were holding him together. His physique was lean, sculpted with the kind of understated athleticism that suggested strength without ostentation.
He looked up.
And for a moment, the room was too still.
"…What the hell happened?" Xavier's voice was rough, frayed at the edges.
Damien cleared his throat. "I was hoping you could enlighten me."
A humorless laugh escaped Xavier. "You're joking. I can barely recall leaving the gala."
Damien pressed his palm to his forehead. "We were drugged. Not lethally, just enough to obliterate coherence."
Xavier's gaze sharpened. "You're certain?"
"I do not drink enough to become… this," Damien said, gesturing at the room. "Neither do you, presumably."
Xavier scoffed. "Presumably."
Silence stretched between them, heavy, mortifying, threaded with the remnants of last night's misjudgments.
Finally Xavier exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose. "This is a disaster."
Damien couldn't disagree. "Yes. Quite a comprehensive one."
Xavier swung his legs off the bed, planting his feet on the floor with slow deliberation. He winced when he stood, nothing improper, merely the ache of someone who had slept terribly and in the wrong clothes.
He picked up his tie from the floor, glancing at Damien with palpable annoyance.
"That receptionist," Xavier muttered. "Double-booking the room. Of all the improbable imbecilities"
"That," Damien interjected coolly, "is the least catastrophic component of last night."
Xavier shot him a glare, sharp, direct, beautifully expressive in its displeasure. "Don't tell me you plan to inform anyone."
Damien's expression hardened. "Of course not."
"Good," Xavier said. "Because this…" he gestured vaguely between them "…never happened."
"Agreed."
"And no one, absolutely no one, can know we were in the same room."
Damien tilted his head slightly. "A mutual omission."
"A pact," Xavier said, crossing his arms. "No disclosure, no explanation, nothing. We return to our respective lives and pretend the universe didn't make the world's most appalling administrative error."
Damien studied him.
The stiff posture.
The controlled breathing.
The way his fingers curled slightly, betraying the tension he refused to voice.
"You're afraid someone saw us," Damien observed.
Xavier's jaw tightened. "I'm not afraid. I'm realistic."
Damien allowed a small, wry exhale. "Then we share realism. If this gets out, the media will cannibalize us."
"Then it won't get out," Xavier said sharply. "Because neither of us is incompetent."
Damien nodded once. Slowly. "Very well. Silence, then."
"Silence," Xavier echoed.
A mutual vow formed in the quiet that followed, a tacit, reluctant oath between two men who would rather incinerate themselves than expose a moment of vulnerability.
Xavier reached for his jacket.
Damien watched him in the mirror, watched the way Xavier composed himself with methodical precision, pulling every thread of dignity back around his body like armor.
He looked almost princely again.
Almost untouched.
If not for the faint, traitorous flush still lingering at his lips.
Xavier moved toward the door.
Paused.
Looked back at Damien with an expression Damien couldn't decipher—something like disdain mixed with reluctant acknowledgment.
"Lockwood."
"Blackwell."
"We forget this ever happened."
Damien inclined his head. "Consider it forgotten."
But as Xavier left the suite, silent, graceful, devastatingly composed. QDamien knew one thing with perfect, irritating clarity:
He would not forget.
Not a single detail.
Damien descended the hotel steps with measured composure, each stride a deliberate exercise in control. The morning air was crisp, almost too bright, the kind of light that felt accusatory. He adjusted the cuffs of his shirt, ensuring no trace of last night's disarray remained.
He had almost convinced himself the incident could be neatly excised from existence.
Until the first camera flashed.
Then another.
Then a dozen more.
"Mr. Lockwood! Over here!"
"Is it true you spent the night with Xavier Blackwell?"
"Care to comment on the photo?"
"Look this way—Damien!"
Damien halted mid-step.
Photo?
A sick, sinking dread unfurled in his stomach, slow, deliberate, venomous.
"You are early today, Mr. Lockwood," came a strained whisper from the hotel doorman, who leaned close as if proximity could shield Damien from the frenzy. "Someone leaked an image. The press… they've been gathering since dawn."
Damien's breath stilled.
He didn't need to see the image.
Not yet.
He knew.
Xavier.
Him.
The room.
A camera was shoved forward, screen glowing. Damien instinctively stepped back, but the image was there, unavoidable, crystalline, irrevocable.
There, on the journalist's phone, was the photograph:
Two men, half-covered by white sheets, asleep or perhaps in the aftermath of exhaustion.
Damien's arm loosely draped near Xavier's shoulder, ambiguous enough to destroy them both.
Xavier's face turned toward him, the morning light catching the curve of his jaw.
Their clothes strewn on the floor.
Their expressions indistinct but intimate enough to ignite a scandal.
A perfect disaster.
"Mr. Lockwood," a reporter shouted, "are you in a secret relationship with Mr. Blackwell?"
Another: "Is this why you both left the gala early?"
The cacophony was instantaneous, carnivorous.
Damien pressed forward, stone-faced, forcing a path through the swarm. "No comment," he said, voice low, lethal in its restraint.
The moment he reached his car, his driver slammed the door behind him.
Silence swallowed him whole.
And then his phone began to ring.
First his assistant.
Then his PR team.
Then the chairman of his board.
Damien ignored them all.
But the text messages poured in regardless:
STOCK DROP: 8.4%
INVESTORS DEMANDING STATEMENT
BOARD CALLING EMERGENCY MEETING AT 11:00
DAMIEN ANSWER—THIS IS A CRISIS
WHERE IS XAVIER? IS THIS REAL?
Damien inhaled deeply.
"Of course," he muttered, "the universe has chosen violence today."
By eleven o'clock, Damien sat at the head of the obsidian conference table, the long glass walls of the executive room reflecting the tension back at him.
The board members appeared on-screen in a mosaic of disapproval and alarm.
"Mr. Lockwood," began Mrs. Harland, a woman whose eyebrows perpetually hovered in judgmental arcs, "your… indiscretion has triggered a catastrophic PR incident."
Damien clasped his hands. "There was no indiscretion."
"You're in bed with Xavier Blackwell ," snapped another. "Literally!"
"That photo is ambiguous at best," Damien replied. "And fabricated at worst."
A scoff.
"Fabricated? You look very un-fabricated in that bed, Damien."
Damien's patience thinned with clinical precision. "We are not making public statements based on conjecture."
"We're losing investors!" shouted Mr. Kellan, whose tie seemed too tight for his own good. "Seven have already paused negotiations. Two are threatening to withdraw completely."
"And our stock is plummeting," another added. "If you don't provide an acceptable narrative, the market will invent one."
Damien's jaw flexed. "I will handle it."
"You had better," came Harland's cold reply. "Or the board will be forced to consider… leadership alternatives."
The meeting ended abruptly.
Damien stared at the blank screen, exhaling slowly, deliberately, as if he could breathe structure back into chaos.
That evening, Damien found himself at an exclusive bar, a dim, secluded establishment with a mahogany counter polished to a mirror-like sheen. He rarely sought counsel, but Adrian had insisted.
Adrian slid a drink toward him the moment he sat down. "You look apocalyptically irritated."
Damien downed half the glass. "A photo. A single photo. And suddenly the entire financial ecosystem collapses like poorly made soufflé."
Adrian smirked. "Well, it was a very compelling photo."
Damien shot him a glacial stare.
"Alright, alright," Adrian relented, raising his hands. "Let's dissect. You and Xavier wake up in the same room, already scandalous. Someone photographs it, now catastrophic. Both your companies are hemorrhaging confidence. So the question becomes…" He leaned in. "What stabilizes this?"
Damien pinched the bridge of his nose. "Nothing short of erasing the entire internet."
"Or," Adrian said, twirling his glass with infuriating ease, "marriage."
Damien froze. "Adrian."
"Hear me out." Adrian smiled, sharp and strategic. "A narrative of romance is infinitely more palatable than a narrative of scandal. Investors forgive love. The media adores a dramatic revelation. A temporary union would neutralize the crisis instantly."
Damien stared at him. "Marriage is not a public relations contrivance."
"It is when you're a CEO," Adrian replied. "Face it, Damien. You need a counterstory. A strong one. And Xavier Blackwell is, unfortunately, the other half of yours now."
Damien looked away, irritation and reluctant logic clashing in his chest.
Adrian's voice softened just slightly. "You don't have to like him. You just have to survive this."
Damien swallowed a mouthful of whiskey, the burn grounding him.
"And what makes you think he'd agree?"
Adrian's lips curled. "He has no choice. Neither of you do."
Back in his penthouse, well past midnight, Damien finally opened his phone.
He scrolled past dozens of messages until he found the one he needed.
Xavier Blackwell .
His thumb hovered.
Then he pressed Call.
The line rang once.
Twice.
A third time
Click.
A breath.
A voice—smooth, clipped, beautifully irate.
"Hello."