Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
Rain turned the ugly grey back alleys uglier and greyer. An unpleasant place to meet his end, but Klaus didn't see he had much of a choice. Zlenko's men owned too many people in this city, and the net was closing in. He had no allies here who would risk their necks to save him, and NATO's resources were far beyond his reach after six months undercover with the scum of the Earth.
He gave a bitter, feral smile as he limped along the alleyway. That damned Director had finally won his petty game of one-upmanship, and sent him on a mission that he wasn't coming back from.
If the bloated old toad were to appear right now, Klaus would almost be glad to see him. After the vile company that he'd been keeping, his boss's many disreputable habits seemed barely more than quaint little foibles.
Maybe it wouldn't be so very bad to die here. There were images from the last six months that he'd just as soon have permanently erased. But he knew that Zlenko's men wouldn't let him go quickly or cleanly - and even if a peaceful end could have been guaranteed, Klaus von dem Eberbach was not a man who knew the meaning of surrender.
He had a bad feeling he might be taught before the night was out. There was slim hope of making it out of the city, still less of escaping the country. There was little chance his injured leg would bear him far if he had to run or fight. And there was-
Dorian Red Gloria.
Klaus blinked, twice, sure that he must be hallucinating the familiar face under someone else's waterfall of golden curls. But no, it was definitely the Earl, disappearing through a shadowy back door in the company of two men who looked distinctly shady.
But not Zlenko's men. The brutal gang of mercenaries Klaus had infiltrated would have no place for an unpredictable free spirit like Eroica - and the fop, for all his flaws, would never stoop to the base level of working with such men.
Perhaps that made him a better man than Klaus, ultimately. Eroica's crimes were whimsical, the theft of shiny pretty things that served no useful purpose. There were things that Klaus had done in the name of preserving his now useless cover that would never wash away.
So perhaps he didn't deserve the lifeline that he'd just spotted, but his lonely months of exile undercover had forced him to face an uncomfortable truth.
He didn't want to die alone.
Klaus hurried towards the closing door, half afraid as soon as the Earl was gone from his sight that he might have been a mirage after all - and what did it say, in his hour of extremis, if this was the image that his mind conjured?
Maybe just that he couldn't think of anyone else in the world, except perhaps his sentimental old fool of a butler, who would genuinely be happy to see him.
With his injured leg he couldn't make it to the door in time to stop it closing, but he hammered on the hard wood until one of the men reopened it with a curse.
"Go away! You have the wrong address," the man said sharply, moving to slam the door again. Klaus shoved his bad leg in to block it, trying not to wince as the edge of the door caught the poorly bandaged wound.
"I must speak to the man who just went in." He didn't dare give a name, not even a nationality. He'd already blown his cover; he wouldn't blow Eroica's as well. Whatever he was doing here. "The blond man, with the curls. Let me speak to him."
The man sneered in disgust. "His lordship doesn't need any more admirers. Get lost." He made to slam the door a second time, and Klaus grimly braced himself for the pain.
But then, from further inside, a rich, familiar voice; one that Klaus was usually infuriated to hear, but today unlocked something in his chest, letting loose a flood of deep relief. "Oh, one can never have too many admirers, I find." The door opened wider to reveal a politely expectant smile and brilliant blue eyes that widened in delighted recognition. "Oh, my..."
"Klaus," he said, in the space Dorian left him, because he couldn't use his rank and there was no point clinging to his ruined cover. The thought of that identity and the sins that went with it made him ill.
Dorian's smile shifted into something softer, warmer, and his eyes positively sparkled with glee. "Klaus," he repeated, tasting the name like a mouthful of wine. "Of course. How lovely to see you again." He slipped his arm through Klaus's to guide him in.
It was a liberty that should have made him tense with fury and suspicion, but instead he found himself almost undone. An affectionate touch, and a window back into the old life that now seemed so far remote, like the first breath of clear air after drowning. He closed his eyes, afraid of what betraying things might glisten in them.
Dorian didn't seem to notice, chattering away as he led Klaus through into what he quickly realised was an art gallery with a formal event in full swing. Penguin-suited idiots and women in evening gowns drank champagne and laughed too loudly as they pontificated over what he guessed must be valuable artworks. Dorian's ridiculous frippery seemed to fit right in even though there was nobody else here dressed anything like him, but Klaus was wholly out of place in his muddy boots and grease-stained pullover.
Hans Bauer's clothes; the remains of his cover identity still clinging to him like a half-sloughed snakeskin. He grimaced in sudden revulsion. This brightly lit place with its white walls and the preening crowd around him made him feel all the more filthy.
"You must forgive Vinnie," Dorian was saying. "Don Volvolante is rather insistent that his men take good care of me."
That placed Dorian's allies, if not the reason for his presence; the Mafia were no friends of NATO's, but they were also unlikely to have been bought by Zlenko. Klaus allowed himself to be towed passively through the crowd, Dorian pausing to utter airy reassurances to various people he seemed to know that smoothed the whispers following them. Old friend just dropped by, car trouble, you understand, do excuse us...
"The gallery belongs to an associate of Volvolante," he said as they left the main hall. "I have some private rooms upstairs."
Klaus supposed he should protest against the clear dangers of following the thief back to his boudoir, but he was too weary to bellow, and besides, what option did he have except to accept?
That thought cut too deep, with a painful sting of truth that reached beyond their current situation. Who else, if he'd met them in this godforsaken place, would have taken him in without a question? No one who wasn't being paid to work for him.
Dorian led him up the stairs and through into what he only belatedly realised was a bedroom. Klaus tensed as he closed the door behind them, but for once at least the thief's curiosity outweighed his lascivious intent. "Now, Major," he said brightly, "to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"
It was hard even now in his dire straits to make the admission. "I... require your assistance," he said awkwardly. Dorian grinned in delight.
"Ah, well, it happens that I'm engaged in some business of my own right now," he said. "I'm afraid you'd have to supply quite some motivation to convince me to set it aside." His coyly flirtatious look was one step shy of fluttering his eyelashes.
Klaus could only sag, too weary to muster the ghost of his usual anger. "What do you want?" he asked simply.
The wrong response, it seemed, for Dorian's eyes softened in concern. "Major... Klaus," he said, because of course he'd take that simple exchange at the door as licence to use that name forevermore, "what's wrong?"
Klaus sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. 'Everything' would be the honest answer; more honest than he probably wanted to be even with his defences at their current low ebb. He settled for a more pragmatic truth. "I... require transport out of the country. I was on a deep cover mission that... failed."
That he'd screwed up. He'd needed to stay the course to get more information on the people funding Zlenko, but seeing the victims mount up, his own hands increasingly bloodied with the part he played in the group's actions...
He'd taken a foolish risk, sabotaged the group's operations in a way that could be traced to him. Now his cover was blown, and none of NATO's goals had been achieved. Klaus had stood by and allowed innocents to be harmed - participated in the crimes of Zlenko's group - and it had all been for nothing.
Neither honour preserved nor duty completed. So what did he have left?
The fop was watching him. Klaus straightened up, drawing a deep breath, though he had the uneasy feeling of transparency that only Dorian ever seemed to bring out in him. No one else dared to scrutinise him that closely.
"I need to get clean," he said abruptly, standing up. "And out of these clothes." The idea of continuing to wear the rags of his vile cover identity revolted him.
Dorian wasn't so concerned that he couldn't muster an impish grin. "Well, Major, I'd be only too happy to help you divest yourself," he drawled.
"You-" Klaus searched for an appropriate rebuff, but his thoughts were slow, and the usual insults felt tainted after the true degeneracy he'd witnessed. "You are an indiscriminate flirt of dubious moral character!" he managed.
The words only made Dorian grin wider. "Oh, Major, from you that's practically a compliment," he said. "And I'll have you know I'm a very discriminate flirt."
Klaus didn't see what was so discriminate about becoming obsessed with a man who was incapable of returning his interest, but arguing with Dorian's insanity had never got him anywhere before, and right now he was just so crushingly tired it seemed wholly pointless to try.
Dorian seemed to understand his inability to think, moving towards the doorway without waiting for further input from Klaus. "You'll have to wear something out of my personal collection, I'm afraid," he warned over his shoulder. "Vinnie and Anthony might be closer to your style, but they're not close to your height." The don's two bodyguards were squat and muscled to the point of looking like gorillas.
"Anything," Klaus said. Even going naked in front of the Earl would be preferable to staying in these clothes a moment longer than he had to.
He sat in numb grey blankness until Dorian returned, bearing a soft bundle that he accepted without even looking at it.
"I'm afraid I shall have to return to the party for a while," Dorian said, sounding honestly regretful to be leaving Klaus's company. Crazy Englishman. "No one else will bother you up here. The flat has a private kitchen, if you're hungry."
No doubt stuffed with decadent indulgences and disgustingly rich sweets, unless the stingy bug had been allowed along. Right now the thought of fancy party food turned Klaus's stomach just as much as rancid leftovers from the miser's dustbin-diving. He nodded tiredly.
Dorian hovered as if considering some further word or gesture, but with unusual discretion decided against it. "I'll return as soon as I can. Don't go anywhere, my darling Major - you've come to me of your own free will, and I don't intend to let you go that easily." He gave a predatory smile, and thankfully slipped away before Klaus's weariness could trip him into blurting out the painful truth.
He had nowhere else that he could go.
The flat had a luxurious bath, large enough for several people to have shared if they'd had some perverted desire to do so. Klaus avoided it in favour of the simpler, faster option of the shower. He had little choice but to borrow Dorian's toiletries; he felt far too filthy to forego them entirely.
The soap was scented, but not offensively so: nothing that would leave him smelling too much like a woman. The shampoo smelled of coconut, and purported to bring out natural curls. Klaus hoped it was exaggerating its claims, or he'd come out looking like that bloody awful sketch the police artist had drawn of him in Rome. He washed his hair with the stuff twice in any case. He swore he could still smell brick dust and smoke from the last explosion that he'd helped set.
Ordinarily he observed a strict shower routine; lingering was decadent, and besides, he was always afraid the butler would suspect him of indecency. But today he stayed under the water long after it had faded from warm to cold. He scrubbed himself multiple times, and tried to think of things other than his time with Zlenko's men.
He thought of Dorian.
That rush of emotion he'd felt upon hearing the fop's voice; partly the dizzying flood of relief, but also a kind of reciprocal warmth in response to the delight that Dorian always showed on seeing him. Was that fondness? Affection?
He knew it wasn't lust. Klaus had never felt that kind of desire, not for women, not for men, and it continued to mystify him in other people. Physical arousal, at times, yes; his body could be stirred by inconvenient sensations - fever heat, awkward vibrations, the brush of overly sensual fabrics across his skin. Sometimes he woke up in the morning with a pressing urge... but taking care of that need was a solitary act of pleasant relief, not much different from emptying an aching bladder. And just as with his other bathroom activities, he found the thought of being watched during the event distinctly unpleasant, and the idea of outside assistance actively horrifying.
He'd never envied others their obsession with each other's body parts. Why should he, when he was free from the prison of biology, not forced to seek out partnership from some frantic animal drive to copulate? He could live far more happily alone, never needing to accommodate anybody else's irritating habits.
He wasn't sure he'd ever before fully appreciated the difference between being alone when he was working every hour, surrounded by over-earnest Alphabets and attended by an annoyingly sentimental butler, and being truly, genuinely alone, isolated among people that he loathed and couldn't trust. Where would he be when the work was gone, when his father and the butler pre-deceased him? As they inevitably would, unless Klaus came to an ugly early end.
He shivered, the icy shower no longer bracing, simply cold.
So many things he'd once been proud to tolerate suddenly seemed too much to take. He hadn't felt so overwhelmed since he'd been a young child.
Of course, then it had been just the illusion of scale that made his problems look big, and they'd been solved by equally small comforts: the deep rumble in his father's chest as he sang the Panzerlied, a plate of warm chips served up at Sister Theresa's table.
Klaus would have been pathetically grateful for either of those childish comforts right now. But he was, as always, alone.
He got out of the shower and inspected the bundle of clothes, relieved to find Dorian had provided him with adequate layers rather than the flimsy nothingness he'd undoubtedly considered. The Earl's clothes fit his frame well enough, even if they felt clingy and insubstantial. Soft cotton trousers and a cashmere pullover; nothing that Klaus would have chosen for himself, but they covered enough of his body to at least make him feel fully dressed. He hadn't been comfortable exposing skin since he'd left childhood; it seemed to invite touches, send signals in the alien language of flirtatious gestures that he'd never understood.
Dorian's intentions, at least, were always easy to read. He stated outright what others coyly hinted at, and in its own way it was as comforting as it was disgraceful. At least Klaus knew where he stood, even if it was somewhere that he didn't want to be.
Or did he? He'd never been so unsure of himself. To be less alone... would it be worth even submitting to the alarming things that Dorian wanted from him? He couldn't imagine it, didn't think he could ever bring himself to do it. But it would be no easier to force himself through such intimacies with a woman; their overtures had never been any less disturbing to him, just harder to justify chasing off with the same vehemence.
Dorian had never been chased off, no matter how often and forcefully Klaus had tried to make it clear that he didn't want, would never want those things. Was it simply that he thought Klaus had to be lying to him? If Klaus made his best effort to acquiesce, and proved his sexual deficiency beyond doubt, would Dorian abandon his futile quest and finally stop pursuing him?
He couldn't tell if it was only his current black mood that made that prospect fill him with despair.
He checked and rebandaged the wound on his leg and then left the bathroom, where he found Dorian waiting for him. Amazingly, he managed to refrain from any comment on seeing Klaus wearing his clothes. "Will you eat?" he asked instead.
The thought was still nauseating. "I would rather just go straight to bed," he said.
Dorian grinned. "That's what I always like to hear." But there was a lightness to the teasing, without his usual obnoxious insistence, and Klaus found that was not so bad, or at least not worth making a fuss over right now.
Everything seemed like far too much effort for him right now, including anger. He simply followed as Dorian led him through to a room he must have prepared in the presumptuous assumption Klaus would stay. Or had he already said that he would? It should worry him that his recall was not nearly as sharp as it ought to be, but worry too was lost to the same fog. More than anything, he needed to sleep, more deeply than the half alert state he'd maintained for months, surrounded by terrorists that he couldn't trust an inch.
Compared to what could have happened to him among Zlenko's men, the prospect of Dorian's wandering eyes and occasional wandering hands seemed only a very small fear. The Earl might be perverted, but at least he meant Klaus no malicious harm. The worst he need fear with Dorian watching his back was that he might stare at his backside too much in the process.
"My men will be moving the artworks out tomorrow morning," Dorian said. "We can smuggle you out with them. Once we're past the border, you should have no problem making your way back to Bonn."
He grunted, not doubting the thief's words, but unable to quite believe the truth of them. The office in Bonn and Schloss Eberbach felt like they belonged back in another life now, as distant and foreign to him as his schooldays. He could no more conceive of going back to that existence than he could imagine wearing short trousers and sitting a classroom reciting memorised religious passages.
But Dorian was here, a bright spot in the darkness who nonetheless did not seem out of place in the criminal existence of Hans Bauer. A bridge between the old life and the one that he lived now.
Or had been living. Whatever else was still to come, his time as Bauer was assuredly over. And yet his deeds and personality lingered on, like an indelible stain.
He didn't want to be Hans Bauer any more - but he wasn't sure that he remembered how to be Klaus von dem Eberbach.
Klaus von dem Eberbach would not be here in this flat, meekly following a degenerate with designs on his person to a bedroom without suspicion or complaint. But he was so tired - and really, was anything that Dorian might attempt on his person worse than what Klaus had been doing to himself?
"Here we are," Dorian said with a bright smile, opening the door onto a bedroom with a flourish. Should he find it objectionable? He studied the room dully, unable to muster much of an opinion. A double bed with sea green bedspread and no obvious frills. A painting of a farmhouse on the far wall, and for some inexplicable reason one of a pear. Neither of them contained any under-dressed people, so they probably weren't valuable art.
He grunted, and stared blankly at the bed, aware there was a sequence of steps that would get him into it but not sure that it wouldn't be too much effort to attempt. Not sure that he truly wanted to take the deep sleep that he needed, knowing the suppressed images of Bauer's life that waited to descend on his mind once it was defenceless.
"I'll be right next door," Dorian said. His tone turned warmer and more teasing. "Unless, of course, you'd prefer company...?"
"Yes," he said, before he considered the implications, or indeed had thought anything at all. He became aware of the stunned silence beside him, and fumbled for further words. "I don't want... anything... Just-"
"Company." Dorian smiled and gave a sketchy pretence of a British-style salute. "Understood, Major."
He seemed to know what was Klaus was asking for, which was good, since Klaus himself had no idea.
He stood blankly in the doorway while Dorian turned the covers down, patting the bed in a way that seemed more encouragement than seductive invitation. "Rest, Major," he said, with a soft smile.
He left the room to... make whatever preparation he considered necessary. Klaus was too tired to feel trepidation. He sat down on the bed, and thought about the process of lifting his legs up on top of it. It seemed like it would be a lot of work. Maybe he could just go to sleep like this.
He was still sitting with his head bowed and his feet on the floor when Dorian returned. He'd changed his clothes for some sort of loose, gauzy, blousy thing that left his forearms and his collarbones exposed, and his feet were bare. He closed the bedroom door behind him and went about routines of setting things down, opening and closing drawers, as if the fact he was about to get into an occupied bed was nothing out of the ordinary.
Perhaps to him it wasn't. Klaus really had no concept of what Dorian might do at home, whether he found partners to share in his libertine lifestyle, whether sleeping in the same bed like a married couple was a thing that they did. It never occurred to him to wonder about things like that.
"Come on, now, Major," Dorian said, turning the covers back further to expose the foot of the bed. "Are you such a tank you even sleep on your feet? You can't possibly be comfortable like that."
"'m comfortable," he muttered, just to be contrary, but he swung his legs up onto the mattress all the same. As soon as he was on his back, he sank back into the bed like a whole-body sigh. Dorian tucked the covers back over him, a strangely intimate thing; not like the nurses doing it for him in hospital when he was too injured to bend, but rather evoking an older, half-submerged memory: the butler, when he was a child.
Herr Hinkel had always hovered after tucking him in, the sense of some unmade gesture lingering in the air; something the butler clearly felt ought to be offered, but that it wasn't his place to supply. Sometimes Klaus felt like his whole life had been lived on that cusp, waiting for a gesture that ought to exist but never came. The sense there should be... something, but he did not know what.
He stared up at the ceiling as Dorian rounded the bed and lifted the bedcovers on the other side. Was this it, then, the missing thing that he'd been waiting for? Or was it locked away in those experiences he could never touch, the feelings everyone else had that he couldn't feel or even comprehend? He tensed when he felt the bed dip as Dorian got in on the other side, expecting to be crawled all over. Could he stand it? Was he obliged to, as the price for this impulsive request he'd made? But rather than get overly clingy, Dorian simply propped himself up on one elbow to look down at him.
Such ongoing scrutiny from close quarters quickly grew disconcerting, even though he couldn't make out Dorian's expression very well in the dimness. "Stop that," he said, frowning.
That was definitely a smile. "Stop what?" Dorian said, sounding brightly amused.
Klaus searched for a term that didn't make him feel like an idiot. "Ogling," he said.
Dorian chuckled. "Major, much as I do enjoy a good ogle now and then, all of the interesting bits are covered," he said. "I'm just looking."
"Well, stop it," he said petulantly. He didn't want to close his eyes with Dorian hovering there over him, looking.
"If you insist," Dorian said easily. He lowered his head to rest it against Klaus's shoulder, and reached out across the covers for his hand. Klaus stiffened as a thumb stroked over the base of his own. What was the etiquette here? Was he supposed to understand what such a signal meant, as others always seemed to?
"Don't try anything perverted," he warned, just in case.
"Oh, of course not," Dorian drawled lazily. His hand formed a loose circle around Klaus's wrist, thumb tracing over the pulse point. The sensation caused a strange tingle along his nerves. He couldn't decide if it was unpleasant.
Dorian smiled and stretched beside him with a quiet yawn. "Go to sleep, Major," he advised.
After a long time in the dark, Klaus did.
Klaus woke in the uncertain hours before dawn, almost disoriented before the unfamiliar weight of a body resting against his pulled him back from Hans Bauer's wretched bedroll to the present. With his usual lack of discipline the Earl had sprawled out in his sleep, drawing Klaus from his habitual sleeping pose to move with him, so that he was now lying on his side, almost on his front, Dorian's upper chest resting warm and heavy against his back and both their arms loosely curled together across his stomach.
Dorian's face was pressed against his neck, and he was snoring. There was nothing remotely elegant or seductive about it.
He found he didn't mind it, overmuch. The warmth was soothing, lulling him back down towards sleep where ordinarily he would be wide awake, and while Dorian was hardly a lightweight, he wasn't lying far enough atop of Klaus to crush him, only to provide an encircling pressure. It felt... secure, like being strapped in by a safety belt. A reassurance that neither of them could be removed in their sleep without the action waking up the other.
Klaus searched himself for disgust or desire, and found neither. He felt no yearning for the snores pressed against his neck to become kisses, or for the barriers of clothes between them to be gone; the thought of any greater act of intimacy than that was still unfathomable. But this closeness in itself was quite acceptable; might even, if it were less strange to him, be entirely pleasant. Not precisely comfortable, but... comforting.
He wondered if it could be possible to have... what? A romance without romance? A marriage without marital relations? There were no words for such things, so perhaps they were things that couldn't exist. And even if he tried to invent such a relationship for himself, who would ever want to be the other half?
Only Dorian; Dorian, who would gladly seize whatever of Klaus he could have... and would never stop attempting to take more. He'd always been unshakable in his belief that he could take Klaus for his lover, despite years of receiving nothing but outrage in response. He could only start redoubling his efforts now that Klaus had shown enough weakness to yield even a little. He was a shameless hedonist, never making any secret of his lustful designs.
He could never be content with this, this quiet holding, a passionless companionship. He might claim he was in love, but he was a selfish creature at heart - and how could Klaus begrudge him that, when he himself was such a stubborn and uncompromising man? Maybe it was his place to yield, if he expected to ask anything of Dorian - but he knew that he could not.
This could not be, this imaginary life that he'd foolishly allowed himself to picture. They could share this peaceful bed until the morning, but then Dorian would wake, and no doubt consider Klaus well-rested enough to resume his full-frontal assault. Klaus would warn him to back off, and he would laughingly ignore it, and Klaus would shout and defend himself... And then this quiet truce between them would be gone, and they would be back to their old roles, nothing changed. He was an idiot to dream it could be otherwise.
And yet in the dark, with Dorian's quiet breathing beside him, it seemed perhaps that it might be all right to go back to sleep, and hold onto the dream a little longer.
End