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American Idol Fic: Black Bird Singing 7/13
TITLE: Black Bird Singing
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: NC-17 eventually
SPOILERS: Uh. This is AU. This is deeply, deeply AU. No one has wings, that’s about as much contact with “canon” as it actually has.
PAIRING: Michael Johns/David Cook.
SUMMARY: Somewhere, Michael’s life went wrong, and he’s not entirely sure where.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six



Part Seven

Michael did not think that he had ever had a reason to scrutinize his apartment as an outsider would see it before, and he did not think that he liked it, either. He doubted that it was flattering. He employed a woman to come in twice a week, so it was not as if he was living in his own filth, but the entire apartment was a curious mixture of the impersonal and the vaguely sleazy, as if a porn producer lived there. The furniture was nice, and that was why he had picked it out; there was no parallel to David’s crossword puzzles to mark that an actual person lived here, rather than the decorator of a model home. Michael grumbled obscenities beneath his breath and decided that it was much too late to worry abut that, especially if David was only going to see the inside of this place once. He made sure to pull the door to his workroom closed and placed an order to a grocery store that delivered to invalids, agoraphobics, and movie stars, explaining that he needed to do a large deal of cooking that night with next to nothing in the way of food available to him and that he had ribs which would not allow him to lift heavy objects at present. They delivered everything that he had requested within two hours. After that, there was very little to do other than to get ready and brace himself for pretending to be a decent human being, one more time.

David Cook, as it turned out, did not subscribe to the Hollywood religion of being fashionably late. He arrived at eight on the dot. Michael buzzed him up and had the door open before David even had time to knock. “You were able to find it again.”

“It hasn’t been that long since I drove through the numbered streets.” David stepped inside the apartment at Michael’s gesture. “I feel like I should have brought flowers or something.”

“And I would have killed you.” It was easier than Michael would have thought possibly to pretend that everything was okay here, and that in itself was oddly soothing. Beth was right, then. This was just they way that things were, and every moment that he continued to fight it was just another moment of wasted effort.

“Hey, what smells good?” David asked as he wandered without needing to be directed towards the kitchen.

“Fettucine primavera”, Michael answered. “And not catered, either.” At David’s incredulous look, he defended himself, “Hey, I told you that my ex-wife taught me how to cook.”

“But I thought that you were lying to impress me,” David said. He lifted one of the pot lids without asking so that he could look inside. Michael already liked the way that David was moving around his home, easy and comfortable. He wished that they would have time for David to do it some more.

Stop that.

“Because I have to let you know,” David continued. “I was lying my ass off to impress you.”

“Really.” Michael grinned, leaned in close to David so that he was all but pinning him back against the sleek marble counter. “And what were you lying about? The amazing house? The career? Oh, I’ve got it.” Michael mock-widened his eyes. “Carly’s really your wife, you have three kids, and she’s coming over here to kick my ass right now.”

“She could probably pull off that last one. No.” David was unconcerned by Michael’s sudden intrusion into his personal space. If anything, he inclined himself even closer, and Michael’s idle thoughts on porn producers of earlier stopped being so innocent by half. “The whole suave, confident, have a gorgeous man in my house every day thing that I was doing? Yeah, just so you know, that was total horseshit.”

“I make you nervous?” Michael deliberately lowered his voice until it was a rumble from deep within his chest. He skimmed his lips lightly along the side of David’s face and felt the stubble.

“You have no idea how much.” David sighed. “You going to kiss me or what? No one likes a tease, dude.”

Michael grinned and decided to give the rock star what he wanted. Someone tasted like they had spent most of the afternoon popping breath mints in anticipation for just this occasion, and that same someone made an eager noise from the back of his throat and grabbed hard at the front of Michael’s shirt to keep him from going anywhere. Underneath the sharp bite of the mint there was a taste that was purely David, acutely male. It was this that Michael sought out and this that he tried to memorize, knowing that his time to experience it was being measured out in finite increments. If he was going to be a whore, then he was going to take as much out of this as he possibly could before it had to end.

“Food’s going to burn,” he pulled away and murmured finally. David’s lips were swollen, his eyes just a little sex-glazed. Michael did not think that he had ever dated anyone so pale before, and he wanted to stare at the way that lust brought a flush up into David’s cheeks all night.

“Tease,” David blurted out again. His voice was ragged. If he actually said Michael’s name while he sounded like that, Michael thought, then self-control be damned, he might be surprised how quickly he got what he wanted.

“Always leave them wanting more,” Michael quoted back at him as he pulled a colander from one of the cabinets and set it down in the sink.

“This is what I get for being a smartass,” David muttered. He ran his hand through his hair and was making a visible effort to pull himself back under control as Michael turned his back on him. Michael was just starting to pour the water when he was startled by David’s arms around his waist and David’s lips on the back of his neck. It was all that he could do not to scald himself.

“Jesus!” Michael exploded as he somehow managed to transfer pasta from pot to colander without flinging most of it across the counter. He could hear a raw note in his own voice and wondered if it was doing to David what David’s own was doing to Michael. “What were you saying about teases?”

“Uh-uh.” David shifted his hips a little bit closer. Question answered. “See, that’s not how it works. A tease is someone who deliberately gets someone else all wound up just so that they can leave them hanging. I’m a slut. Completely different.”

None of this conversation was giving Michael any thoughts that were making it easier for him to stick to the script. He drew a shaky breath before he turned around in David’s arms. David released his grip and braced his hands to either side of Michael on the sink instead. He was close; his liquid-hazel eyes were the largest thing that Michael could see. “I’m not supposed to have sex,” he said.

David blinked. Clearly, whatever entendre he was expecting Michael to pitch back in the game that they were playing, that had not been it. “Why, you got a ring that you’re hiding from me?”

“No, I’ve got broken ribs, remember? One of the conditions is no sex unless I want to wind up choking on them.” Michael did not think that he had ever used a doctor’s advice to keep his libido under control before in his life. He did not know which was worse, that he had to do it in the first place, or that he was using it on one of the first opportunities to get laid by someone that he felt an actual spark of affection for in a long time.

David leaned back slightly. “When you said that earlier, I thought that you were being cute,” he said. “Really?”

Shit, he was a tease and he was a whore, so he might as well embrace the best of all that these fine categories had to offer. Michael took up the space that David had just vacated, making them as close as skin on skin again, and watched David’s eyes dilate. “Yep. So if you want to fuck me, you had better make it once in a lifetime.”

“I think it’s time for us to eat,” David said quickly, and took a step back. Before Michael could do the same, David swarmed back into his personal space long enough to whisper quickly, and in a voice that made Michael’s blood rush, “Just so you know, though? I’m backing off so that I won’t get to that point, not because I don’t want to.” His slow grin nearly killed all of Michael’s resolve right then and there. “Because I really want to.”

With a parting shot like that, it was all that Michael could do to concentrate on serving dinner. He was sure that he drank too much, yet again, downing one beer before the last one scarcely had time to settle, and praying that the legendary libido-killing effects of alcohol could kick in any time now, no, really. David didn’t even bother to match him, but instead watched from the other side of the table with liquid eyes, the corners of his mouth crooking up just slightly. Michael was starting to think that he was David’s own private game here. It made Michael want to do far more than watch David from across a table.

“Show me your place,” David suggested when they had finally finished, and Michael was loading up the dishes into the washer to be dealt with later. He leaned lazily against the kitchen counter with a beer dangling from his fingertips; Michael thought that it was his second, and that he had barely done more than play with it at that. Even though David’s comment was entirely innocent, Michael could not but help thinking that there was an invitation to spend an extra few moments in the bedroom, while he was at it.

“Sure,” Michael said, though the very thought of it made him feel more nervy and soon to jump out of his skin than he could remember being in a very long time. He couldn’t be the good guy and he couldn’t be the asshole, and this in-between place was not something that could rest in with any peace. “It’s not exactly a mansion, though.”

“Mansions are boring.” David followed Michael into the living room, and Michael could already see the thoughts whirling behind his eyes: it didn’t look as if anyone actually lived here. He had purchased the furniture because it was expensive, because it was so explicitly male that it was guaranteed to piss Stacey off, and because if he was going to sell himself on the street then he would be damned if he did it without a fat paycheck accompanying it. None of it had been chosen because he had really wanted it.

“Sweet sound system,” David exclaimed suddenly, and made a beeline for the stereo system that was set into the walls on either side of Michael’s television. Michael hesitated slightly before he followed. This was dangerous territory that he was allowing David to step accross, and yet neither did he know how to stop it. David began rummaging through the CDs that Michael had set in haphazard stacks in front of the system and made a soft whistling sound. “Nice taste, bro. The Doors, Sam Cooke, the Beatles.” David looked back up at Michael with a slight frown marking his face. “You just keep surprising me.”

Michael shrugged and leaned in close so that he could watch David’s slender artist’s fingers moving among the cases. “I don’t know why. What you see is what you get.”

“And you’re a shit liar, too.” For a second, Michael was certain that David was going to tell him to give it up because he knew everything and probably would have welcomed that moment, but David continued, “You work at a sleazy job--yeah, don’t look at me like that, it’s sleazy--but you have non-sleazy musical taste. You say that you barely play the guitar at all, but you touched mine like it was breaking your heart.” David looked up; his eyes were wary, and Michael wondered what it was costing him to make this speech at all, if he knew how much forbidden ground he was actually treading upon. “I dunno, it’s just not adding up.”

“You want to hear me sing in the shower?” Michael said sourly. His earlier struggle with is own libido was being dealt with him quite nicely at this point.

David tried to give him that sex-grin again; it fell a little short. “I’d love to hear you make all kinds of sounds in a shower.”

“I used to sing,” Michael said shortly, ignoring David’s come-on. “Tried to be a musician for a while, had a few close calls, it never quite worked out. So I got over myself and took a real job. That what you wanted to hear?”

David had taken a step back when Michael began speaking; Michael was not sure that David was even aware that he had done it. “Sorry, man,” he said. “Didn’t mean to tread on your tail.”

“It’s fine. I’m over it.” And if David was smart, he would take that as the door slamming shut that it clearly was and back off.

“No, you’re not.” David was the stupidest smart person that Michael had ever met. He reached out and took Michael’s hand in his own, running his thumb across the knuckles. It was the most innocent contact that they had had yet, and it still made Michael’s mouth go dry and made him forget that David had just dragged an admission from him that had not been spoken aloud for the better part of three years. Michael didn’t like to forget about what and who he used to be; as far as he was concerned, he had always been a bottom-feeding paparazzo, destined for one end only, and as long as he could keep raking in those paychecks he would be just fine. “But I’m not here to play psychiatrist to a grown man, so.” Those fingers, God. “Show me the rest of your place.”

Michael heaved a sigh and wished that David’s words had removed the stone from his chest, but it had only settled in deeper. “There’s not much left,” he said. “Just the bedroom.”

David’s eyes darkened, and he touched lightly at his lower lip with his tongue. “Really.”

“Why do I get the feeling that taking you in there will be a little like taking a heroin addict into an opium field.”

“Hey.” David ate up all of Michael’s personal space by leaning forward and against him, and touched his lips lightly to Michael’s own. He pulled away before Michael could deepen the kiss in the way that he so desperately wanted to. “I’ll have you know, I’ve never touched anything stronger than pot in my life. My ability to withstand temptation is necessary.” David placed his hand flat against Michael’s belly, just above his jeans. Michael did not think that six inches of space could be so entirely maddening.

“You’re a son of a bitch,” Michael managed. “I just want you to know that.”

“Pot and kettle, baby.”

Michael’s mouth twitched, and he took the hand that David was teasing him with. “Come on, then.” He led David down the hall and into the bedroom. He hadn’t bothered to fully make the bed, as leaning over for the length of time required would have meant medicating himself into insensibility before David had even gotten there, so it was rumpled and looked as if two bodies had just risen from it. David’s breathing hitched a little beside Michael.

“Told you,” Michael murmured to him, a note of satisfaction in his voice. He turned and placed his face against the side of David’s neck, inhaling the scent of him and listening to the way that David’s breath stuttered.

“Shit,” David managed finally. “I’m a rock star, right? We’re supposed to get ourselves into all kinds of trouble.” He tugged Michael out of the bedroom with him and, the second that they were clear, pushed Michael up against the wall. Michael’s lips were already parted; David did not disappoint, taking Michael’s mouth as if he meant to devour him and pushed his knee negligently between Michael’s thighs. Michael felt as if every nerve that he had was being shocked into life at once as David’s leg brushed higher and yet not high enough, and he made a low sound. Fucking ribs. Fucking Beth. Fucking all of this that meant he and David were never going to get much farther than this point.

“Think that’s about far enough,” David murmured, finally drawing back. There was a point of color set high in each cheek.

“No, it wasn’t,” Michael said in throaty protest. He leaned forward again.

“I meant for me,” David said. He flashed a crooked grin. “Too much farther and I’m not going to be able to stop.”

That was one of the hottest things that Michael had ever heard in his life. He licked at his lips and tried to decide whether or not he could stand yet without the wall behind him holding him up. It was a coin toss, but in the end he made it. “Doctors don’t know everything,” he said feebly.

But David’s attention had been pulled away from him. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing towards the closed door of Michael’s workroom.

Michael felt his entire body going from sex-loose to rigid and wary. “That’s where I work when I’m not taking photographs,” he said, and shrugged. “Cleaning them up, getting them ready to sell, that kind of thing.”

David looked back at him, and his expression was ambiguous. “Can I see it?” he asked. His voice was so soft and unsure that Michael was not even convinced that David really did want to see inside, or what Michael’s reaction would be to the question. He had flipped out irrationally enough over a simple comment on his musical taste, after all.

Michael hesitated. “Why not?” he finally said. When this all came to its final and inevitable ugly conclusion, he did not want David to be able to say that he had not seen it coming on some level. He opened the door ahead of David, for David did not seem quite willing to touch the knob, and flicked on the light. David blinked in the doorway for several seconds before he entered. Michael wondered what he had been expecting of the place where Michael did his most important sleaziest work. Twenty-four hour writhing girls and S&M gear? Certainly not an ordinary-looking office with a computer sitting on a desk and shelves on which various cameras rested. Michael had discovered that he just liked them, liked the way that they fit together and came apart, even when they couldn’t be used to take pictures of people in their most private and shameful moments. “Sorry, I keep the hunchback and manacles hidden away for weekends.”

“I was expecting something different,” David admitted as he strode forward and ran his fingers along the top of Michael’s computer, which had software on it that cost more than a year at a state college. “A darkroom, at the very least.”

“Welcome to the digital age,” Michael said. “I do most of my work on a computer.”

David made a soft sound that might have been his attempt to either hold back or force a laugh, Michael could not be sure. “It’s hard picturing you as Dilbert.”

“Luckily, I get paid a lot better.” Michael shifted his weight from one foot to the other. It was making his nerves jangle, to see David standing in this place. It seemed wrong, somehow, like removing the fourth wall and letting the audience rush the stage. “It makes it worth it.”

“It does?” David was crouching down to look at Michael’s printer as if it was not something that he had seen a thousand times before.

Michael rolled his eyes. “Don’t,” he said.

“No, I’m just...I’m just trying to get it.” David’s smile was nervous for one of the first times since Michael had met him. “See, I keep seeing this side of you that jumps out of cars and pulls doors open during accidents, and who’s smart and fun and decent, and then you take pictures of people cheating on their spouses and vomiting on their shoes, and sell them for money. It confuses me.”

Michael took a small step back towards the door, even though this was his space far more than it could ever be David’s and he should be more comfortable here, not less. “Maybe people need to know these things about their celebrities,” he said. “Maybe we pay more attention to people who are famous for no other reason than being famous than we do our politicians, so we have a right to drag them down off of pedestals that they don’t deserve.”

David, still crouching on the floor, made a soft and disbelieving snorting sound. “That sounds like you wrote it just for the occasion,” he said. “Maybe people aren’t perfect, and the least that we can give them is some grace when they make mistakes...or at the very least we can not make up mistakes that don’t exist in the first place.” Michael was stonily silent. David sighed. “How does it work, anyway? You chase people all over town, and then what?”

“I don’t think that you could be more transparent if you tried.”

“But I am trying, see? Give me some credit here.”

Michael sighed and sat down in his office chair. It was comfortably upholstered leather, could give him a heated massage if he hit the right sequence of buttons, and right at the moment was making his skin crawl. “Some paparazzo are strictly freelance,” he said. “That means that they go around, they take their pictures, and they sell them to the highest bidder. They get paid by picture, and they don’t have any guarantee that anyone will want to buy what they shoot.” Michael folded his hands over his abdomen. “I’m a little higher on the food chain; I have an employer.” A thin smile. “Maybe you think that that’s like having a raging case of gonorrhea instead of full-blown AIDS, but it’s true. I have a regular salary. I run around taking my pictures, then I give them to my boss. The really good ones get me a bonus. If she doesn’t want them, then I’m free to sell them to the next highest bidder.”

“Your boss sounds a little like a pimp,” David observed softly.

Michael laughed; David did not realize how close to the mark he had actually come. “Most bosses sound like pimps if you view them the right way,” he said. “And anyway, she would be flattered by the comparison. Beth’s a tough lady.”

David shook his head slightly and rose to his feet. He put his hands to either side of Michael in the chair and leaned in close. Michael’s libido, unable to shut down and let his brain do its job unimpeded for once, observed that now would be the perfect time for a lap dance. Michael stared up into David’s hazel eyes and wished that they could just be kissing again, because his mind found so much more rest there than it did when they were trying to have conversations.

“You’re better than this, is all that I’m saying,” David whispered before he leaned forward and placed the very softest of kisses to Michael’s cheeks, his forehead, each of his eyes, anywhere other than where Michael really wanted David’s mouth to be right then.

No, I’m not, Michael thought, but with David hovering over him like that, looking at him like maybe he could be, it was so damned hard to voice the thought aloud. “How do you know?” Michael asked instead, his voice a low whisper.

David finally gave Michael what he wanted and pressed his mouth to Michael’s lips. It was light and gentle; Michael was not entirely sure what he was supposed to do with it before it was gone again. “I have a feeling,” David whispered to him. He pressed his forehead against Michael’s for a moment, shocking warmth of skin on skin. “And I’m usually right in my feelings.” Michael sighed. David seemed to hear something in that sound, though it could not have possibly been what Michael was actually thinking. He could tell because David did not slug him in the face and leave the apartment immediately. “Come on. This room gives me the creeps.”

Michael followed David from his workroom without complaint, but scarcely let him get as far as the living room proper before he was grabbing David by his good arm and swirling him around. “What--” David started before Michael kissed him, kissed him hard, and nothing like the way that David had touched his lips to Michael’s own moments before. Michael wished that David would actually kiss him like he realized what Michael actually was, something that you took what you needed from and then ran right the hell out on before the ceiling fell down. Since he wouldn’t, Michael would manage for the both of them. He drove David backwards with the force of his mouth and ground their hips against one another. When he felt David’s body respond, he shoved his hand down the front of David’s jeans in order to make absolutely sure that he had his attention.

“Jesus,” David hissed and jumped, sure to give Michael that attention without argument. There was a ragged note to his voice that Michael wanted to hear over and over again. His hips surged forward and against Michael’s hand. “I thought that you weren’t supposed to have sex.”

“So you’ll have to be gentle with me,” Michael whispered back, even if that was the last thing in the word that he wanted. He was doing this, prostituting himself. The least that he could get out of it was an orgasm, and for David the chance to take it out on him before he knew quite what it was that Michael had done.

David made a whuffing sound that maybe would have been a laugh if Michael’s hand upon his cock had not been stealing so much of the rest of his breath away. He gave in and grabbed at the back of Michael’s neck to drag him forward hard and against David’s mouth. “You have no idea,” David growled when the inevitable moment in which they had to breathe finally came. “You have no idea how much I have been wanting to do this all night.”

“Thought that you prided yourself on your self-control.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

Michael laughed, and if it hurt, then it also felt good, too. “I’m not quite that masochistic, just yet.” He pushed David backwards and onto the couch that he had made far too much for. It was about time that it earned its price tag. “We’ll have to get creative.”

And David made a low and desperate noise that was the single hottest thing that Michael had ever heard in his entire life before he reached up and fisted a hand through the front of Michael’s shirt so that he could drag him down and on top of him. Michael landed with an oofing sound that was partially surprise and mostly pain, but found only a few seconds later that he really did not care. David unbuttoned the front of Michael’s jeans with an ease that made Michael wonder what else he could do with one hand and then, hello, here he was finding out. Michael arched and gasped as David grasped Michael’s cock and ran his callused thumb across the tip before he pumped up and down, his grip tight and the calluses making Michael’s entire body feel like it was was going to shudder apart.

“You play a hell of an instrument,” Michael grunted as he struggled to maintain the ability for speech.

David laughed and, in one graceful movement, flipped the both of them over so that Michael was now the one reclining beneath him on the couch. He did it so quickly and so gently that Michael’s ribs scarcely even had time to realize that they were being moved, let alone set up their usually clanging protests. “Dude. You’re going to have to make peace with the fact that you’re not funny,” he said before he bent his head down and kissed Michael again. Michael was so distracted by this that he did not notice immediately when David shifted. Then David was taking both of their cocks and holding them against one another as he shifted, creating a friction that Michael had never felt before. He gasped and arched, cursing out that doctor for being right, but the thought of stopping never crossed his mind. He couldn’t remember ever wanting another human being in his life like this. Michael kissed David’s stubbled cheek while David continued to rub their cocks against one another; he tried to surge his hips upwards and was stopped by David, laughing softly, putting the hand encased in the cast against his hip in order to keep him still.

“Shh,” David said against Michael’s ear. “Relax, I don’t want this to end in a trip to the hospital. Let me do the work.”

And if he could do things like that to Michael’s cock with no more than a whisper, then Michael could not help but think of all of the things that David would have been able to do if they had ever progressed to dirty talk. He dug his teeth into his lower lip hard enough to open the old wound and send a taste of copper into his mouth while David continued to prove every time that Michael thought he couldn’t get any hornier that he was wrong. There wasn’t a drop of blood left for his head as David continued to rub their cocks against each other, and it was only David’s hand on his hip and his voice against his ear, calling him beautiful, amazing, a dozen different things that Michael wished he wouldn’t say, that kept him from flying right off of the couch and into the stratosphere altogether. Michael came with a hoarse cry that he could not swallow back in time to keep it purely to himself, and he hated it. David did the same a bare second later, spilling a sticky mess against both of their bellies. Michael didn’t mind. David allowed his weight to drop down against Michael, but gently, and rested their foreheads against each other.

“This is getting really intense,” David said. He was speaking in a whisper so low that Michael did not hear his voice so much as he felt it, the faintest of tickles against his cheek.

“Yeah,” Michael started, and had to swallow so that he could begin again. “It really is.” He lay still with his eyes half-closed and listened as he and David began to breathe in tandem with one another. He dreaded the moment when David would have to go, but he forced his tongue to move and asked, “Do you want to stay the night?”

David leaned back, placing his elbows carefully so that he would not hurt Michael, and looked him in the face. “I probably shouldn’t,” he said, and smiled his crooked smile. “Don’t want to be clingy.”

“You could be clingy,” Michael assured him, and meant it. “I definitely would not mind if you decided to be clingy.”

“Still.” David’s kiss was sweet and lingering. “I should go.” As he pushed himself up and put himself away, his gaze lingered over the length of Michael’s body. “I wasn’t lying, you know. I do think that you’re better than this.”

“I know you do,” Michael answered. He could see in the darkening of David’s eyes that it was not quite the answer that he had been looking for. David left with little else in the way of small talk, his body language clearly reluctant, and Michael was left to close his eyes and ask himself, one more time if he was doing, clearly not the best thing, but at least the most bearable one.

I do think that you’re better than this.

The answer was clear.

Michael stared up at his ceiling for long enough to allow the sweat to turn clammy and cold across his body before he pushed himself up and tucked his spent cock back into his jeans. He rinsed himself off quickly in the bathroom sink and then strode towards his bedroom, only one mission on his mind. He was amazed that David had not sensed the forbidden object there purely on his own nearly preternatural powers of intuition. It made Michael’s side ache to kneel down and pull it out, but he did it anyway, his fingers desperate to touch it. The guitar case was covered in dust and had clearly not been handled in a very long time. Michael could only barely remember kicking it under the bed in a fury; he was pretty sure that he had been drinking on that night. With shaking hands, Michael ran his fingers over the clasp that held the case closed and thought, desperately hard, about opening it.

Michael left the case where it was and left the room quickly, glad only that he had managed not to kick it again. He went to his workroom instead, and threw himself down into his chair hard enough to make him think that a drink or a pill would be in order before the entire business was over. The computer made a soft humming sound as it came to life; he had paid a lot for its efficiency. Michael opened up his photo editing program, then the individual files themselves. He stared for a long time, and then began to drag each one of them into his trash folder, listening to the soft clicking sound that they made as they disappeared from sight.

End Part Seven

Continue to Part Eight