He's rendered himself vulnerable by saying it, but he can handle this. It doesn't matter, it's no more than a lapse in dignity he can cope with. It's nothing against the spike of desperation, the white-hot longing, animal need mingling sharply with the hunger that's tearing at him, and the agony of sorrow. He's been starving himself of feeling for such a long time, it is like drops of fire on his skin. Blistering. Welcome. Making him crave more, relentlessly debasing himself, like an addict gone cold turkey.
Raoul traces the scar. "It would be more comfortable if you could lie down," he says, sounding like a medical examiner.
Old habits, it passes through Katze's fogged mind as he gets up and lurches to the bedroom, the path so familiar he knows it blindly. He drops onto the bed that almost fills the wide room and sprawls out on his back. The bed is plain white. It has metal posts and railings at its foot and headend, a defined isle of crisp linens beneath a mirrored ceiling. There are mirrors on the walls too, and soft light suffuses the room with a golden dusk Iason had found complimentary to his skin. The place is clinically clean and sinfully inviting.
Raoul's scent drifts into the room and the light brightens. He sits down on the mattress and without asking pushes Katze's tee up. Katze notices that Raoul's hands are bare. His skin is warm and dry, his touch firm as if he was scrutinising a test subject.
Any touch will do now. Katze bites back a groan and rises towards those probing, prodding fingers. They brush over his chest, trace the contours of his ribs, the arches of his hips. They run up the faint trail of copper hair that runs from his crotch, dip into his navel and wander along the ridge of his stomach. They are curious, and Katze feels as if a thousand eyes crawl over his skin, mapping out scars and marks, sinking feelers into his flesh and sending currents through his nerves. Sweat starts to sheen his body and makes the sheets beneath him stick to his back. He can feel his groin like a phantom limb, and the image of his body, complete and glowing, rises in his mind. He almost sobs.
"Aren't you afraid?" Raoul asks, pausing in his exploration. His thumb sits in the hollow of Katze's throat, his fore- and middle finger tap lightly against the pulse at the side of his neck.
"And you?" Katze grinds out, "Aren't you hard?"
Raoul rises. Katze hears the clink of a glass being set down on the drinks cabinet and the measured swish of clothes. It recalls other images, and he covers his eyes with his arm.
"You learned the secret," Raoul says quietly as he returns, a warm, heavy presence. "You know what makes us the way we are."
"Whatever," Katze murmurs, rather put out. In his mind, scraps of an argument spring up, replaying like a hung-up file. He can hear his voice, younger, panicked, who cares whether you get it up without flipping a switch? I won't tell anyone, I can keep a secret... And Iason's retort, delayed, his tone a mixture of anger and anguish, heat and ice and endless pain, here, now it's solved...
"There is no middle ground for us." Raoul lies down and turns on his side so he can watch and touch. "We can't be spontaneous. We make a decision, and once this... drive inside us is unlocked, we become ordinary."
"And that's how big momma keeps control over you," Katze rasps. Iason hated me for finding out. Knowing about the plot against him saved my neck. A life for a life, all because I figured he couldn't screw without help, unlike me.
"There can be no order without control," says Raoul, blandly. Katze can smell him, feel his hair that fans over Katze's chest when Raoul leans over him to touch one hard dark pink nipple. He looks on with interest as Katze's skin ripples with goosebumps. "Are you cold?"
"Jesus," Katze breathes, "haven't you read enough scientific crap to get it?" He grabs Raoul's hand and puts it over his crotch. "Here. Touch it already. I got no hangups. I like it. Use your hands, mouth, teeth, whatever makes you feel good. I showered. I rinsed out. I prepped, like a good toy. You can disinfect yourself afterwards." He means to sound ironic but the words taste bitter.
"You knew this would happen?"
"No. But I thought it might." Like, curiosity killed the cat? Feels like the joke's on me, Iason. Katze pulls off his tee. When he leans over the side of the bed to drop the rag, he can feel Raoul's fingers slide to the small of his back, then up his spine to pause between his shoulder blades, then examine with the same measured curiosity the dark stripes and knotty scars that mark his skin there.
"That would have hurt," Raoul notes.
"You doing a pathology lecture, or what?" Katze slumps back and finds himself looking up at Raoul who has propped himself up on his elbow. Katze busies himself, unbuttons his jeans and shuffles them off, along with his underpants, socks and shoes, and kicks them off the bed. Raoul's gaze is intent. His hair sliding over Katze's skin makes the redhead squirm.
"Can't you turn the light down?" Katze grunts.
"Don't you want to see?"
"No," Katze snaps. "I don't."
xxx
They both know enough about these things to make it pleasurable. There is no question about who will do what, who will yield and who will not. It's an imbalance of power that is as rigid as Jupiter's laws. His decision made, Raoul moves through the act smoothly, without hesitation, careful to give as much as he takes, as if his satisfaction comes from watching as much as doing. Perhaps more. He is used to watching. To Katze, when he can think in between blasts of lust, Raoul never seems to leave explorer mode. There is no connection beyond the flesh, and Katze is relieved about this. But when Raoul tenses, Katze drags open his eyes and looks up at him. To see Raoul's eyes glaze over, then close as he throws his head back, his hair a halo of pale gold, his teeth biting hard on his lower lip as release shudders through him in silent abandon.
It's an image too familiar. Too painful.
Katze squeezes his eyes shut and turns his head into the pillow, willing the burning inside him to wither until it is buried under a layer of ashes.
Raoul rises without a word and goes to shower. Katze turns onto his stomach and buries his face in the messy sheets. He crosses his ankles and starts moving his legs, the motion quick and nervy as it ripples through his body. If his feet were to touch the floor, he'd be running. He grabs the top railing with one hand. Reaching beneath himself, he touches where Raoul's fingers had been earlier. It had taken Katze all of his willpower to hold back with Raoul making him squirm. Now it only takes him a few practised strokes to bring himself off.
xxx
He listens to the rushing of water in the shower until it stops. He can hear Raoul's steps and the soft rustling of clothes as he gets dressed. Later, when Katze has smoked a few cigarettes, pulled on his rags and thinks he can bear facing Raoul behind Iason's desk again, he steps out into the office space to find Raoul working already. As if nothing had happened.
Well, nothing DID happen. Good job that, thank you, please come again...
Raoul glances up at him. "I thought you might have fallen asleep."
Katze feels the urge to button up his coat, to wrap and cover himself in all the layers he can get. He opts for another fag instead, but the packet is empty apart from two Black Moon. He shakes his head. "You weren't that bad."
Raoul's lips twitch. "It was pleasant. But you refused me."
Katze stares at him, wondering how he could have noticed. Perceptive, for someone without practice. It's not a comfortable thought. "I couldn't come, that's all."
"I can't be Iason," Raoul says, his voice empty of expression.
There is a small, breathless silence, before Katze crosses the room to sit down on his chair opposite Raoul. For a few moments, they just look at one another, silent, probing. Raoul's gaze is cool, dispassionate as always, but beneath the layer of composure Katze can see something else. And recognising it like his reflection in a mirror, the storm inside him begins to subside. A weary smile passes over his lips as he allows this surprising calm to flood him.
"No," he says at last, "Neither can I." But we can be alone together. Close and out of reach. Keeping our familiar distance. You still jealous, Raoul? Perhaps he just didn't wanna spoil you. It doesn't matter anymore. I'm learning too. It can be different. There's pleasure without pain.
And when Raoul shares the rest of the bottle with him, Katze thinks for a breathtaking moment about scrunching up the packet of cigarettes in his pocket. About two Black Moon dissolving into a pinch of lethal dust that he can shake off like flakes of the past. His fingers clasp the packet. And then he pauses, and lets go. He reaches for the glass instead and drinks deeply.
xxx
Raoul is demanding in a relentless, entirely purposeful way. They're tense with each other, in a way that keeps them both wary. Their talk is only about work. There is too much of it, and Raoul finds reasons why he wants Katze involved. There is Iason's estate, a complex web of firms, names, connections so sensitive they are like tripwires on a bomb. There are accounts, both open and hidden, funding streams and political ties that need to be unravelled, cut or serviced. Katze knows that Raoul is using him, the outsider that can easily be neutralised.
And I know how Iason ticked, Katze thinks, staring at the documents and columns of figures on his laptop screen. His eyes feel scratchy, the ashtray by his feet is overfull. Perhaps better than anyone. Not that it did any good when it mattered...
Beyond work, there is not much else, and Katze buries all that happened where it won't irk him too much.
xxx
One night he stays too long to go home after they're done. There is no point driving to his place for the sake of snatching two hours rest in a dank, long unmade bed and with no food or drink in the house. He sleeps on the couch that had been delivered to the office suite some time back. Katze is sure it's no coincidence, but it doesn't matter what Raoul was planning when he got the thing. Katze, a lifetime ago, has decided that all that counts is reality. He likes facts, edges, the hardness of what is. He never dreams.
But he has nightmares, shrieking visions that torment him the moment he lets his guard down. They storm through his mind when he isn't looking, when he is to weary to keep up the shields of reason. He never tells Raoul about them, and unless he passes out on something or other, he never sleeps through. That night is no different. He jolts awake with his heart pounding, his pulse racing, his skin bathed in cold sweat. The echo of a gasp, the chortle of a drowning man, still in his ears, the fogs of a nightmare in his mind, Katze lies frozen until the terror fades and he recognises his surroundings. Shaking, he pulls himself up. His feet are tangled in the blanket, as if bound. He shivers in the gently climatised room that seems too large, too empty. Too still.
Groggily, he frees his legs and gets up to dig for his smokes in the pile of clothes on the floor. He is naked apart from a pair of loose shorts that hide his body, or what he doesn't want to see of it. When he lights up, his hand shakes so much, he has to try a few times before the little flame sets the tip of the fag aglow. He wanders out onto the terrace, into the smoggy night with its smells of exhaust fumes and concrete dust. The bowl of fog casts a jaundiced hue over the glittering city, and the chasms of streets have turned into bands of light.
His chest feels tight. He tries to rub the hurt away, but it sits inside him like a rock, cold and heavy. The smoke burns in his eyes, making them water. He can't bring himself to turn when he feels a wash of warmth, then a hand, fingers touching his scar, tracing it firmly, then more gently.
"Your offer," Raoul says in his deep, cool voice, "it wasn't for me."
Katze draws up his shoulders. Raoul's hand settles on the bannister, close to Katze's elbow. "I thought about certain things. Perhaps..." He pauses, taps the bannister with his fingers, a quick cadence, just once, before drawing a slow breath. "It might be a good time to re-evaluate-"
"What are you saying, Raoul?" Katze cuts in quietly. "You liked it?"
There is another small break, a second of hesitation, before Raoul says, "Yes."
Katze sucks in a lungful of smoke and lets it stream from his nostrils. "Well, at least you've fucked a pure blood." There is bitterness and laughter in his tone, an odd mix that jars Raoul.
"Yes," he says. "It helps. I believe I am starting to understand some of Iason's ideas."
"And you're not scared anymore? They might come and bite you. Boo."
"Why are you still clinging to the past? It makes you brittle. You could at least let your hair grow."
Katze feels like freezing and burning inside. "No," he says roughly, "I don't belong here."
"You could stay."
He's heard it so often in his mind, it's an old track and he has his answer, his hard-edged shielf of facts, ready. "Big momma won't like it. How would you explain it, huh?"
"I will deal with this when it comes up."
"I've heard that before. It cost me my nuts."
"Then what is it you need?"
Raoul's question startles Katze from his morose mood, pricking his mind and grating over his self-pity. He thinks for a few moments, flicks some ash away that in a shower of sparks floats away on the night-breeze. "I don't know," he says bluntly, "I have no idea what I need."
xxx
Carmen Echo! Thank you for your wonderful feedback throughout this story, and for helpfully pointing out where I could improve. You're a star! Cheers, LH