Disclaimer: I do not own "Sleuth", or Jude Law's hot ass.
Warning! Rated R for F-bombs and F for R-bombs.
The leather is cool under his cheek. He hears the car door slam outside but doesn't register the sound. All around him the house hums soothingly.
It was only a game.
Tindle dances just out of reach, blond and tan and mocking, beautiful, both of them beautiful, but Maggie hadn't his spirit, his fire. It wasn't until now that he'd realized how much better Maggie's taste was than his.
A game with a knife and gun.
The little shit made pretense to fuck his wife, fuck Andrew Wyke out of a rightfully won possession. He'd only meant to throw a little scare into him.
All her dresses, Chanel, Dior, that miserable coat that made her look like an Italian streetwalker. It fit Tindle, though. Suited him.
Funny lot, Italians. Culture isn't really their thing.
He'd spent a lifetime under glass, remote, touch him and you might feel book paper, not skin, not human warmth. Maggie had liked that, hadn't she? At first. The house was her little joke. It reflected the man inside, she'd said. And she'd laugh. Oh, how she'd laugh. And he'd pour himself a scotch.
When Maggie laughed she showed all her teeth. She looked like a damn farm animal. He could imagine the two in bed, rutting. Yes, that was the word for it.
When Tindle laughed his lips crept up to show his eyeteeth. Andrew Wyke knew a carnivore when he saw one.
I just sucked you in and blew you out in little bubbles, didn't I?
The name Milo is a fairly innocuous one, come to think of it. Men named Milo never fucked the protagonist's wife, did they? Men named Milo were always one step behind, they were the slow ones, PC plods who bumbled evidence. Men named Milo didn't stage elaborate games, didn't have minds like that.
And the last name, Tindleini? Sounded like a bloody dessert. Or a brand of cheap book matches. Or a silly hairdresser who had no more sense than to spit on a gift. A gift given by him, Andrew Wyke, author-knight. He could have anything. Anything.
Jamaica, Barbados, the Côte d'Azure.
He'd never taken humiliation well. But coming from Tindle, it was almost a gift. He'd been outsmarted, fooled by an out-of-work actor. Jesus, he'd been breathtaking. After the first time he'd almost been able to fool himself into thinking there was something more to it. That Tindle was a man of subtlety. Their tango had been played out over trick floors and trapdoors, but when the chips came down Tindle was a better dancer than a fencer. Two times had been two too many, and Tindle didn't know how to quit when he was ahead.
He hears the whirr of the elevator and almost believes it's bringing Tindle back to him. Curled up on the bottom, wrapped in a five-thousand-dollar coat now worthless with his blood.
She's coming back to you, you know.
Well, I don't want her.
He swallowed, listening for the door. Did she still have a key? He didn't think he cared.
A little wife who was younger than him, her only use had been ornamentation. Had she ever thought different? Had she ever been stupid enough to think he'd loved her? She was stupid–extremely so. She fell in with a man even more stupid, stupid enough to ask her away from a husband who had more power in his little finger than most middle-European countries.
Stupid, stupid man. It had been such a lovely game, until he'd ruined it. Wyke wasn't a romantic; he'd had no feelings to hurt. But in a game where the rules were traced in sand, Tindle somehow managed to cross the line.
Or perhaps it was his fault? You didn't open yourself to someone who's been plotting your downfall; offer them something of yourself when they knew the value of nothing.
Perhaps he was just a silly old man. A man who had never really been touched until the man his wife used to commit adultery did so. A man in a glass-and-metal fishbowl, distant, malevolent, cold. Cold as the wire sculptures, cold as the bed beneath him. No, he had no feelings to hurt.
We fuck each other, that's what people do!
Ahhhh, quite wrong. We fuck one another, but we take turns. I fuck you, then you fuck me, ad infinitum. Nothing in this world is mutual. Tindle wouldn't accept his collar, wouldn't be kept.
How odd, Wyke thinks staring up at the ceiling, that after all these years, it had to be a hairdresser.
She told me you were no good in bed, but she never told me you were such a good manipulator.
He wasn't good in bed, that was true. He'd long given up on knowing how to touch someone. He fucked with his mind, slow, exquisite, masterful. Tindle fenced like he fucked, dancing here and there, jab, parry, thrust, never in complete control of the situation or himself.
He was an upset, skipping about, mocking him, touching him. He bounced on his bed, speaking with his body. You'd fuck me if you could, he said, but you can't. You don't know how and can't bring yourself to try. Coward.
He could've tried. He might have got his courage up, but Tindle had ruined the moment. Tindle had slapped his hand away, the hand holding the gun. He hadn't known any better than to fuck with him at the wrong time. He'd danced out, and something in Wyke had snapped. He didn't feel, that was a lie, but he had pride. He was cold, but it was self-imposed imprisonment. No one fucked with Andrew Wyke unless he said so.
Quite a few people like my body, but I can't think of anyone who likes my mind.
That's because your mind is shit, do you hear me Tindle? Do you hear me all the way down on the floor? Your mind is like my body, useless. We could've had something, been something, but you can't sit still for a minute and consider. Think about what I was offering! Andrew Wyke does not stoop down to just anyone! I offered you freedom, I offered you my obedience, my…
I have no heart, he realized. Not to speak of.
It was the only way he knew how to deal with people, wasn't it? Offer them things. Tindle had been the only thing in the world he couldn't buy. That just made him all the dearer, didn't it?
Footsteps. Did she try the elevator, see what was inside? Surely she wasn't foolish enough to come up? She'd said he was malevolent. Really, he'd never hurt a fly. Tindle had attacked him, it was only under duress that he'd shot him. Sure, it wasn't physical confrontation, but since when had anything physical mattered to him?
Today, he thought. Today when Tindle had been living, breathing, everything he wasn't. Tindle was warm, engaging, and attractive. It was almost a mockery of all the effort Wyke had spent courting Maggie, buying her, getting her to marry without a damn prenup. Then in one fell swoop it was all Tindle's. It didn't matter that she'd come back, Tindle had taken her, and now Tindle was gone, not his, but not hers either. Tindle belonged to himself. That was more than Andrew Wyke could say.
Small, tripping footsteps. She was wearing her grey leather pumps. She'd always looked smashing in them. He wondered if she had worn them when she met Tindle.
It's only a game, a game with a knife and gun. A gun that wasn't a gun.
She plodded up the stairs, and he lay paralyzed on the bed. Tindle, though he lay dead, was freer than either of them would ever be. At least he was his own man. Maggie was a slave to her appetite, and Wyke had played on that because he hadn't the courage or the means to lure someone worthier to him. Wyke had lost the heart he didn't have to a man that had only kissed him to mock him.
The house was him, and Tindle lay at the bottom of a pit that grew deeper as the minutes ticked on. The house whirred, shutting off for the night, leaving him helpless in a bed that had never been used. Why would Maggie come to him? He was impotent. Now it was undoubtedly fact. Tindle lay dead, by his hand, but Tindle had always really had control.
The steps faded outside his door, a creak signaled her approach. He lay on the bed, tasting scotch and Milo, missing the warmth that had never been his, and now would never be.
There were quiet thuds as she walked across the floor to him. He didn't look up. Perhaps she had a gun in her hand, perhaps a bouquet, but she had seen Tindle's body, that was undeniable. If she didn't kill him now she would just do it later. He felt the metal in his hand but did nothing, looked at nothing. He was cold, dead, impotent. Just like his house.
A waft of her perfume, the slight hiss of her inhaling. Somehow, he could still see Tindle's face in the elevator, lying there peaceful, content. He was well out of it. Wyke would never be out of it. He had lost the game, and would now concede to the winner.
"Hello, Darling."
Author's note: just saw the "Sleuth" remake all the way through for the fist time today, wrote this to celebrate. The original is a classic, I'd recommend seeing it, but I'll always have love for this movie. Partly inspired by the review saying that Wyke and Tindle "fight over a gun that is not a gun", the phrase just stuck with me.