I.
There were bruises on the old man’s face.
In a week’s time, they would turn yellow. For now they were dark and vivid, as clear as they’d ever be. Minor cuts ringed his right eye: lucky his glasses didn’t lance into his eyeball when they broke. They pierced his skin instead, and he probably spent all night picking the shards out of his flesh with tweezers.
His lip was split. It hung swollen and lopsided — ugly, undignified. He dabbed it with a linen napkin as he made his morning tea, left bloodstains on the lace. Then he looked up, and his eyes without his glasses were unfocused and pale, and he smiled at Gregor. Shaky. Uncertain. Like a whipped dog.
“Would you like some tea?” he asked.
And goddamn him, really.
He almost made Gregor feel bad.
It was the most expensive flat they could afford. With their salaries combined, plus Anya’s second job, plus Gregor’s measly freelance articles for the local papers, they could afford to live happy. A beautiful house, a pleasant downstairs neighbor, a pristine upstairs flat with a view of the quaint little homes up and down the street. It was the perfect location: Anya could walk to work through the pale blue fog; Gregor could bike downhill with a view of the sunrise over the sea; and with a bakery just a few doors down, the morning air always smelled of bread and sugar mixed with Johannes’ morning tea.
Those were the scents he associated with his neighbor, his landlord, early on: bread and sugar and tea. Only later would new scents take their place: saliva, semen, blood.
“Morning,” Gregor said.
“Good morning,” said Johannes.
He had to walk straight through Johannes’ flat to get outside now, ever since the outdoors staircase broke. It was just one rotten step — but Anya suffered terrible nightmares of Gregor breaking his neck, and he suspected Johannes heard her crying — because when Gregor asked, sheepish and eyes downcast, if he could use the main stairs, Johannes gave a distant smile and said, “Anything to ease the young lady’s anxiety.”
Now the young lady was gone. And the rent was far outside of Gregor’s price range. And he still lived here.
And he took the main stairs anyway.
“For you,” Johannes murmured. He handed Gregor a cup of tea, rose-gold porcelain with a delicate floral pattern, filled to the brim with a clear tea that tended toward red instead of black. Flakes of dried orange peel floated among the leaves at the bottom.
It was so sweet it was almost sickly. Gregor sucked his teeth after one sip and set the cup aside.
“You’ll take a coat this morning?” Johannes asked.
Gregor glanced out the window at the still-dark sky. “It’ll be too warm for a coat today,” he said dismissively.
“I wish you would take one.”
Gregor pretended not to hear. The rest of their conversation was simple: wordless offerings of sugar and milk, quiet thank yous said under Gregor’s breath. On his bike, in the cold wind, that morning tea sat heavy in his stomach, formed a pit that dipped and jumped every time he hit a bump in the road.
So with every bump, every slam of his ass against the seat, every bruise and every jolt of nausea, he thought of Johannes.
Evenings, what Gregor liked most was to hole himself up in his flat with the door locked and his body planted at his desk. Sheafs of paper slid over the scratched wooden surface where he liked to work. In the corner like this, he couldn’t see out the window, couldn’t distract himself. He shoved his radio into his foot locker so he wouldn’t be tempted to listen. He glued his hand to his pen, his eyes to the paper.
If he was lucky, he got three hundred words in by the end of the day.
Evenings, when he needed quiet, there never was any. Evenings, there was always the quiet murmur of voices from below — a sharp peal of laughter from Johannes’ guests — the clever, lilting melody of the piano. Gregor squeezed his eyes shut, tried to ignore it all. The clink of glasses, the thick sweet scent of pastries wafting up the stairs.
The party dragged on for hours: long past sunset, when the moon was high and the streets were far, far colder than they’d been when the guests arrived. The ladies left bundled in their husbands’ coats. The children lay limp in their fathers’ arms, beautiful heads tossed backwards. Everyone who attended Johannes’ parties, it seemed, was ethereal. The ladies, like silent film stars. The men, like Greek gods. The children, like little nymphs, well-mannered enough to seem unworldly when Gregor compared them to the kids he knew growing up, the rough boys and girls who ran up and down the street outside the abbey looking for scraps of coal to bring home for their mothers.
He leaned back in his chair and watched the guests file out. The moonlight fell over his papers in a soft pool. He’d written maybe twenty words, scratched them all out, and his neck was sore and his mouth was dry.
With one hand skimming on the wall, he went downstairs.
“You’re more than welcome to attend,” said Johannes’ flute-like voice before Gregor even made it to the parlor. He must’ve heard Gregor’s footsteps on the stairs. “My guests always ask about you.”
“Me?” He studied the drinks lined up on Johannes’ serving table.
“They’d be enamored with you,” said Johannes firmly. He reached past the rows of empty glasses to grab one still untouched, a cocktail glass filled to the brim with sparkling liquor and a wedge of lime. A single flower floated in the middle of it, its petals still firm, not yet soaked by the alcohol.
“I don’t drink,” Gregor murmured, but he took the glass.
“It’s not very strong,” Johannes assured him.
“What is it?” He held the cocktail to his nose, closed his eyes, tried to guess by scent.
“They’re borage flowers,” said Johannes — softly, eyes hooded, smile distant.
“I meant the drink.”
“Oh — dear boy, it’s elderflower liqueur and gin, that’s all.” Johannes plucked another glass from the serving table and held it up, graceful and elegant, his rim clinking against Gregor’s before Gregor even understood they were toasting each other. When Johannes lifted his glass to his lips, Gregor’s arm moved of its own volition. He took a sip. A delicate blue flower petal, imbued with liquor, touched his tongue: sweet and herbal and heady.
He drained the glass in one go.
“I grow them myself,” Johannes said. His eyes drifted, settling on Gregor’s lips. Flushed with alcohol. Then his expression closed off and he took another sip. “Look at the ice cubes.”
Gregor glanced into his empty cup. Rattling at the bottom were two half-melted chunks of ice. Inside each one was a delicate flower just like the one he’d kissed.
“I freeze the base first,” Johannes explained. “Then I place the best flowers — the most perfectly-formed — atop the base, and fill the basin with water for another night on ice.”
“It looks nice,” Gregor said. The buzz of liquor was getting to him already; he’d gone without lunch today, partially so he could make his assignment on time, partially because he didn’t have the money. He glanced down the table, searching for leftover finger-food.
But Johannes misunderstood and handed him another glass.
“Shall I catch you up on the party?” he asked.
“The gossip?” Gregor asked, earning a half-smile. “No, thank you.”
“Shall I play for you, then?”
Gregor was halfway through a drink, so he couldn’t say no in time. By the time he swallowed, Johannes had settled down on the piano bench, his back straight and his hands poised over the keys.
“You’re … a concert pianist, yes?” Gregor asked, embarrassed that he wasn’t sure. His tongue was heavy and hot already; the cocktails were weighing him down.
“Yes,” said Johannes. “But don’t worry — I won’t bore you with professionalism tonight.” He glanced over his shoulder and there it was again — that half-smile. Different this time. The distance in Johannes’ eyes was gone; the polite mask had slipped. In its place was someone Gregor had never seen before: not a formless gentlemanly figure who took his rent and made him tea in the morning. Someone solid and real, with lines at the corners of his eyes and silver strands in his blond hair; someone with a faded scar on the cleft of his chin and fancy clothes beginning to wrinkle from a long night of entertaining.
Gregor sank down into the nearest chair, and Johannes began to play.
It wasn’t professional, that was certain. His fingers flew over the keys, fast and skilled, weaving over and under each other with so much mastery that Gregor couldn’t tell for the life of him whether Johannes favored his left or right. But the melody itself was familiar. He’d heard it, clumsy and slow, in a hundred seedy taverns and silent movie halls.
He’d never heard it quite like this. That darker, lower undertone played with the left hand. That light and airy tune played with the right. All of it intersecting, complementing, perfectly — and Johannes’ face was smooth and relaxed, and his fingers dragged down over the keys to give every note an extra boost of depth, and while his left hand picked out the notes fluidly, his right hand skimmed down, formed a gun, and poked the last note with his index finger.
Playful. Cheeky. Gregor crossed his legs and reached for a third cocktail, the seam of his trousers digging into his groin. A pleasant pressure started building there as the song geared up, faster and lighter on the right, darker on the left, where Johannes hit the keys so hard Gregor half-feared they might break. A lock of hair came loose and dangled over Johannes’ forehead, into his eyes.
So he closed his eyes, and he kept playing, eyelashes dark against pale cheeks.
“It’s better, of course,” said Johannes in a distant murmur, barely audible over the noise, “when a young man plays.”
Gregor tilted his head.
“Or a young woman,” Johannes went on, “in a cocktail dress, with her hair done up in ribbons. There’s a reason we concert pianists perform onstage, far enough away that the audience can’t make out our faces.” He hit the last few notes with that casual flourish, his fingers in the shape of a gun, and then he stopped, hands on his thighs, eyes open once more. “Beautiful music should always be accompanied by a beautiful picture,” he said. His lips curved into the ghost of a smile. “Unfortunately good pianists are often ugly.”
Ugly? Gregor studied Johannes’ face: the lines, the extra flesh around his jowls, the blemishes and graying hair. No, not ugly. But in the blue glass of Johannes’ parlor door, Gregor saw his own reflection staring back at him, sharp-jawed and dark-haired. He locked eyes with himself and took another sip, and this time he swallowed the pretty blue flowers whole.
“My wife…” Johannes shook his head. He turned back to the keyboard. This time he didn’t play; he only closed the cover, rested his hands on the gleaming surface. “My wife was beautiful. She played beautifully.”
Gregor’s stomach twisted, just a little. “I’m sorry,” he said. “When did she…?”
“She’s not gone,” said Johannes. He forced his lips into a smile. “She’s just … gone.”
Ah. Suddenly the liquor tasted bitter. Gregor set his glass aside. Everywhere he looked in this flat, there was a woman’s touch — the exquisitely expensive antique furniture, the tableware displayed in pristine china cabinets along the walls. The furniture was lush, in warm colors, red melting into pink. He’d assumed…
What had he assumed?
A cold flush settled in his stomach, between his legs, down his thighs. The crease of his trousers was painful against his cock. Gregor stood and straightened his trouser legs with a clearing of the throat, head swimming.
“Thank you for the drinks,” he said politely, “and the performance. But I—”
“Of course,” Johannes murmured.
And his strange, distant eyes followed Gregor all the way to the stairs, up to bed.
II
There was a boy Johannes dreamed about sometimes, perpetually fifteen: long-limbed and lanky, with dark hair and severe eyes. The sort of boy who woke up early to hit the football field while the grass was still wet with dew; the sort of boy who carried his cleats around his neck and came to class with sweat-damp hair, still smelling faintly of the field.
He was beautiful. He was cruel.
Most beautiful things are.
Johannes was fond of bruises. In another life, a less public sphere, he might indulge in more of them, especially on the face. He rather liked the one Gregor gave him after that night of drink: a ring of purple on his cheekbone, swelling his eyelid to a puffy cushion that hid the red-streaked ball beneath. Beautiful that first day, before it started to yellow, before it turned green.
And tender too.
In the garden, when Gregor was gone, Johannes hooked a wicker basket over his arm and kicked through the leaves with his head down, watching for fallen apples on his path. They weren’t his favorite fruit. Not decadent enough when baked; not sweet enough when eaten raw. But he liked the way the skin slid open beneath his teeth; the way that clear juice trickled down the chin of whoever bit into it and turned their lips a glossy pink. Children and young women, eating apples in the park, wiping their mouths on lacy handkerchiefs or their own sleeves.
Even better: an apple’s skin bruised deliciously.
Johannes knelt down now, fixing the crease in his trousers before he picked a swollen piece of fruit from the ground. The red skin was turning purple-brown, wrinkled and loose where the apple had started to rot. It gave way beneath his thumb, at the lightest touch. He could smooth the skin back and forth over the firmer muscle underneath, the tiniest hint of moisture seeping through to wet his thumb. And when he pressed harder — when he dug his thumbnail in—
The skin broke. The flesh parted.
The apple was filled with worms.
Bitter fruit, thought Johannes with a smile.
There was a beautiful boy he saw in his dreams sometimes.
A boy with a deep voice, a man’s voice, and a body still in the throes of adolescence. He wasn’t much younger than Gregor; they looked the same age, really. But the boy wore the uniform of the boarding school where Johannes’ mother shipped him as a child, a boarding school that had been defunct since Gregor was in nappies.
There was a boy in his dreams who sat straight at the far end of the classroom and always seemed to sense when Johannes was watching him — studying his profile — committing him to memory. A boy who whipped his head around to give Johannes a hard-eyed stare. A boy who muttered to his friends, who bent his beautiful head low and eyed Johannes like some new and precious meat hanging in the butcher’s window, stripped of all skin and bloody and raw.
There was a boy in his dreams who followed Johannes down the hallways after class.
“Drink, Gregor,” Johannes said.
Gregor’s lips were thin but perfectly made: never chapped or peeling, the most delicious shade of pink. He set them now into a tight line. When he was older, a frown like that would fold lines into his skin from the corners of his lips all the way up to his brow, but for now his flesh was young and taut, smooth as porcelain.
“I shouldn’t,” Gregor said, voice soft.
“Come now. Don’t disappoint a lonely old man.”
He said it jovially, but there was no warmth in his eyes. No need to put on a mask, a false spark, when Gregor wasn’t even looking at him. Gregor wiped sweaty palms on his knees and cast a dark look at the champagne flute in Johannes’ hand.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked, still hedging.
“The occasion, dear boy, is friendship,” said Johannes. Then, warmly, “Is that prestigious enough for you?”
And Gregor’s somber face cracked into the tiniest smile.
He took the glass. He put his perfect lips against the rim. He let the champagne rise to meet them, let it flush them.
He drank.
III.
There wasn’t much of a plot to this new story.
The first few lines had come to Gregor in a fit of inspiration: clear as winter sunlight, shining directly onto his brain. He’d been outside at the time, wheeling his bike tires through the dewy grass, and when those first clarion words popped into his head he wheeled his bike straight back around at a trot and left it crookedly leaning on Johannes’ front wall. He raced up the stairs without taking his boots off; he sat down at his typewriter, hands still stinging from the cold, nose still red.
And he wrote.
The cotton feeling of a heavy tongue. The sour aftertaste of whiskey clinging to his mouth. The haze in his head and the warmth in his limbs, like beneath his skin — in his veins — the alcohol was singing to him, vibrating sound waves big enough to heat his blood.
It was easy to write.
Easier to get lost in. Gregor’s hands moved automatically over the keys, so feverish that his fingertips were sore at the pads. His vision wavered — he’d gone too long without blinking — and his chest was still, rising and falling only for the occasional shallow breath between sentences. Anyone looking at him would have seen the sharpness in his eyes, the furrow of concentration between his brows, and left him alone.
But downstairs, just barely audible, Johannes’ piano was lilting through a melody, skillful fingers working the keys. It wasn’t the manic, merciless pounding of Gregor’s hands on the typewriter. It was artful — elegant — the lightest touch, the occasional flourish—
And it was driving Gregor insane.
He sat back from his typewriter with a scrape of chair legs against the wooden floor. A tight sigh escaped his lips. Eyes closed, he stretched his neck, smoothed the lines out of his face. Reached for calm. For concentration. For that magical trance-like energy that had been so easy to slip into … before Johannes started playing.
It didn’t come.
“Damn it,” Gregor muttered. He shifted his feet pointedly against the floor, hoping Johannes might hear him and realize — well, might be kind enough to stop. But the piano never faltered. And really, was there any instrument more distracting than a piano? Gregor could tune out a violin just fine. A flute or an oboe might actually help him concentrate. But a piano — clear and tinkling, like broken glass — seemingly so unobtrusive, so quiet and polite — it always grabbed your attention, whether you wanted it to or not.
So tell him, whispered a voice in Gregor’s mind. Go downstairs— and the taste of champagne was on his tongue again — and tell him politely that you need some peace and quiet.
He imagined it.
What he saw in his head wasn’t exactly polite. Johannes on his knees — Johannes with an ugly flush on his cheeks and sweat curling his hair — Johannes with his back against the wall — Johannes gagging. Gregor paced his room, shoulders stiff, and sat down at his typewriter once again. His fingers hovered over the keys. He didn’t write.
He didn’t go downstairs, either.
He listened to the clear, crisp melody of Johannes’ piano and he didn’t say a word.
It was cold that night. Spring, but still chilly. Johannes was always late coming back to the dormitory. He spent his evenings in the music room with Professor Fullenkamp, skipping dinner entirely so he could build his skill with the piano a little higher every day. Now, it was a long brisk walk back to bed, across the football field where the wet grass teased his ankles and the crisp air left his cheeks and nose flushed pink.
He heard them before he saw them. In the football shed, where the goal posts were kept between games, there was a light. Perhaps, when they first got here, they’d been whispering, but by now, they were loud and bold. The skunk-smoke of marijuana hung in the air and even from a distance Johannes could smell alcohol, something strong and cheap.
He paused by the door.
“I don’t mind it,” someone was saying. He recognized that voice. The beautiful boy who caught his eye in class, the one who always smelled like the field. “Maths is easy. It’s English that’s hard.”
“Not the swear words,” another boy interjected. “Ass, tits, bum, cock—”
“Bum isn’t a swear word.”
“It is so! Madame Englehardt told me.” He said it smugly, if a little slurred, and Johannes could imagine him smirking.
“She did not, you liar. Like she would ever talk to you.”
Johannes put his eye to the crack in the door. Inside, half the football team sat together, cramped in the narrow space. The boys on the floor passed a joint back and forth. The other boys, perched on the shelving and storage units, shared a bottle of smuggled rum. Their cheeks were flushed, their hair tousled. One boy in particular stood out. Drink made him looser, less severe. More beautiful. Even the glaze in his eyes wasn’t unattractive.
But then those eyes slid sideways and met Johannes’, and he knew he was in trouble.
“Get him!” the beautiful boy cried.
There was a murmur of confusion as Johannes took off.
“Who’s there?”
“What is it?”
“A spy! That skinny little shit, he was spying on us!”
The head-start didn’t last long. Johannes’ legs pumped and the cool air made his chest ache, but the other boys were taller, faster, fitter. Someone slammed into him from behind. Strong arms wrapped around his waist and hurled him to the ground. The impact, his head against grass, made his teeth rattle — and there was rum-breath warm against his lips — iron fingers twisting his wrists behind his back — a knobby knee pinning him to the ground.
It was the first time that beautiful boy ever touched him.
“Teach you to spy on us,” he said, breath hot. The rum bottle was in his hands. What was left inside it spilled out now, left the boy’s fingers sticky, wet Johannes’ shirt and left him reeking. He went still, breathing heavily, as the boy took the bottle by the wide end and pressed the narrow neck of it between Johannes’ ass cheeks.
A low chuckle went through the crowd around them. The other boys were eerily silent, almost still, their drunken eyes sharpening a little as they watched. Johannes stared out at the empty field. And the pressure between his legs grew, and the bottle was so cold it seemed to leach heat from his body, even through his pants. The rim of it brushed over his balls, teased at his hole, made him flinch and whine.
“I could stick it inside you,” the beautiful boy breathed. He twisted his fingers in Johannes’ hair, left his hands untethered — and Johannes, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, failed to fight back. He left his hands were they were, wrists crossed, like he was still being held in place. The bottleneck pressed tight against his asshole, hard enough to burn.
“Would you like that?” the boy asked.
“I—” Johannes said, and it came out as a sob. “I—”
The bottle twisted. The fabric of Johannes’ trousers creaked. He heard himself whimper, tried to hide his face in the coarse grass. At the front of his pants, where no one could see, his cock strained against his underwear, the ground pushing hard against him, just enough pressure — just enough danger — just enough fear—
With a pleasureless rush of heat, Johannes came.
He didn’t blush. He didn’t whimper. He lay there, his wrists crossed obediently, and when the other boys realized what happened — when the beautiful boy who’d pinned him down turned him over, lifted his legs like a baby, showed them all the stain on the front of Johannes’ trousers — Johannes endured it all with cool eyes and no expression.
The laughter was loud enough to deafen him. Johannes glanced over and met the beautiful boy’s gaze.
Neither of them were smiling.
Gregor was shy now.
Johannes watched him from the corner of his eye and tried to hide a smile. They’d been avoiding each other for weeks now — or more accurately, Gregor had been avoiding him, eyes downcast and posture tense every time they entered the same room.
It was cute, Johannes supposed. But it wasn’t as cute as being angry.
“Sit down,” Johannes said softly. It was evening, and he’d been waiting in the darkened sitting room for Gregor to come down. Gregor jumped at the sound of his voice and went still. “You seem so tense,” said Johannes, voice friendly. He patted the seat next to him. The loveseat was plush and tight, the cushions designed to push any two people who sat here into each other’s laps. Gregor’s eyes flicked down to Johannes’ hand and his skin went pale, just a little. Not nerves, Johannes thought, suppressing a grin. Anger.
Exactly what Johannes wanted to see.
“Come now,” said Johannes coaxingly. “You’ve been avoiding me for weeks, Gregor. I’m an old man now. I can’t just go out into the city and make friends the way you can.” He leaned forward and prepared a cup of tea for Gregor, adding a splash of honey-gold rum. “Sit. Indulge me.”
It was hardwired in Gregor to obey. He walked forward with the twitchy gait of a spider, and took a seat at Johannes’ side. Their thighs touched, one relaxed and the other wired.
“There now,” said Johannes, placing the teacup in Gregor’s stiff fingers. “That’s not so difficult, is it?”
“No,” said Gregor through numb lips. He lifted the teacup, then hesitated, his eyes perfectly blank, just a hint of the storm to come. Beautiful, Johannes thought.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t drink.”
“Ah, but that’s what you said last time,” said Johannes cheerfully, and he tapped his palm against the saucer just hard enough to tip the teacup against Gregor’s lips. Gregor drank, but he didn’t like it. That much was clear from the new tight lines around his eyes, the tension in his thigh where it touched Johannes’. “You’ve got a bit on your lip,” said Johannes, and before Gregor could protest, he leaned closer — so near to Gregor’s face that he could smell the scent of his skin, clean and soft like a child’s, just a faint hint of musk like a man’s — and he used his napkin to wipe the drop of tea from Gregor’s bottom lip.
“Don’t touch me like that,” said Gregor, his voice hard.
“Why not?” Johannes pulled his napkin back and froze there, inches away, his eyes widened in faux-innocence. “You seemed to like it. You didn’t move away.”
Gregor tried, too late, to flinch back, but Johannes already had him where he wanted him. He rubbed the napkin against Gregor’s bottom lip hard enough to hurt and then he pulled away, satisfied.
“You like it,” he said firmly.
“I don’t.”
Johannes folded the napkin around his finger. His eyes burned into Gregor’s. “You do,” he said, voice low, and he dipped the silk napkin between his own lips, let the fabric touch his tongue. When he pulled his finger from his mouth again, the napkin was damp with saliva and Gregor was practically trembling with anger, but he didn’t move away. Not as Johannes raised the napkin to the light. Not as he inched forward, painfully slow, to touch the napkin against Gregor’s lips again. Not as he discarded the napkin entirely, and not as he leaned forward, breath ghosting into Gregor’s open mouth, and whispered,
“Indulge a lonely old man, Gregor.”
It was only when he kissed him that Gregor moved. Iron hands twisted in Johannes’ shirt. A wiry forearm clamped over his throat. The floor crashed against his back, against his skull, as Gregor pinned him to the ground — one bony knee between Johannes’ thighs, their stomachs pressed against each other, their lips and teeth clashing in a clumsy, accidental kiss.
“Fuck,” Gregor breathed, and he scrambled off Johannes as quickly as he’d tackled him.
“So violent,” Johannes said, already smiling. He sat up slowly, making sure to wince as if his ribs ached — made a big show of checking the back of his head for blood, of rubbing his throat to soothe his windpipe. “My goodness, Gregor. You’re not nice at all, are you?”
Gregor had backed against the wall, his hands squeezing into fists. His fine-boned face flushed an ugly red, then went pale.
“Deep down,” said Johannes, eyes hooded, lips curled in a smirk, “at base, you’re as violent as a schoolboy, aren’t you? Cheered on by his friends.”
The color returned to Gregor’s cheeks with a vengeance. “You want to fuck, you old pervert?” he asked, voice rough. “Let’s fuck.”
In the commotion that followed, neither of them heard Johannes laughing. It was too low a chuckle, and it didn’t show on Johannes’ face. He wasn’t smiling. When Gregor yanked him to his feet, Johannes’ face was appropriately grim; his teeth were bared. He held still as Gregor tore his clothes open, tossed all that fine tailored fabric to the floor. He stood there, bare and trembling — not with fear — as piece by piece Gregor stripped him and left him nude in the middle of the sitting room, animal and naked amidst all his collected finery.
“On your knees,” Gregor growled, and Johannes sank readily to the floor. He kept his eyes down, demure, as Gregor circled him — a click of heels, a puff of angry breath. Then he watched those black shoes retreat to the other side of the room and waited for his next order.
“Crawl,” Gregor said.
Perfectly humiliating. Color rose to Johannes’ face. He slid one palm forward, then the opposite knee, scraping against the hard floor, and for a second he was a schoolboy again in his gym uniform, blushing scarlet as he and the other boys put their hands on the grass and their asses in the air for a bear crawl. Then, as now, Johannes felt the color slowly drain from his face, felt his mind leak away, the coils of his brain unspooling into something loose and blank. If someone dissected him now they would find everything inside his skull colorless and limp, ready to be molded into something new — and every step he crawled, every awkward shuffling inch he gained, his cock got harder. By the time he reached Gregor’s scuffed shoes, his cock was a firebrand against his stomach, thick and hot and aching to be touched.
“Look at me,” said Gregor, his voice low.
Johannes raised his chin. He kept his lashes low, knew how pretty he could look like this, his pupils blown. But the beauty of it, if it was still there, didn’t affect Gregor at all. His face was a porcelain mask; his fingers, when he clasped Johannes by the chin, were hard. His thumb pressed down on Johannes’ bottom lip, exposed his teeth, like a rider checking his horse’s health.
“Turn around,” Gregor ordered. “Back to me.”
Johannes obeyed. The skin on his knees twisted against the floor as he turned, threatening to break. Those fingers, clever fingers, traced down the line of his spine, over his hips, down the cleft of his ass while he closed his eyes and shivered from a hot-cold flush. Only then did Gregor reach below Johannes, between his thighs, to cup his balls in his hand, palm cool, fingers tight.
“You like this, don’t you,” said Gregor flatly. Not a question.
“Yes,” Johannes breathed.
“You like to be bossed around,” Gregor said. He squeezed until a lance of electricity shot up Johannes’ spine. Pain or pleasure, he couldn’t tell. “You like to be hurt.”
Johannes’ thighs trembled. He shifted lightly, as much as he could with his balls in Gregor’s hand. A hot smear of pre-cum leaked against his stomach.
“I like to be touched,” he corrected. “If I have to be hurt for that to happen, then…”
“So you don’t want this?” Gregor asked, and the squeezing got tighter, and Johannes had to suppress a wince.
“I’ll take it,” said Johannes softly. “If that’s all you can give.” He looked over his shoulder, let his hair fall over his eyes as he did so, the picture of a martyr: wounded and beautiful and full of faith. “If you think this is all I deserve,” he said, letting his voice tremble.
Gregor’s face hardened. The iron grip on Johannes’ balls disappeared. He turned back to face forward, eyes on the floor, as Gregor walked away. Johannes stayed still — perfectly aware of how pathetic he looked, how obedient — and listened to the click of his cupboards opening, the shuffle of papers and antiques as Gregor searched for something specific. Finally he found it and returned to Johannes’ side.
There was a whir. A click of a button. A flash of light.
“Consider this insurance,” Gregor said, and he took another picture of Johannes, nude and kneeling on the sitting room floor.
That night, cupping his bruised genitals, Johannes drifted off to sleep thinking of his wife. They were still married, but only in a legal sense; he hadn’t seen her in fifteen years.
Carmen was not a young woman anymore. But she’d been young once. When he closed his eyes he could see her as she’d been in conservatory, that first day he saw her: hair as dark and rich as chocolate, too long and exquisitely curled for a boy, too short and bob-like for a girl, falling over her eyes and down to her shoulders. Those long inkstroke lashes, that sparkling blackness of her eyes, dancing and intelligent as she met his gaze from across the room. She was dressed in men’s clothes, and she had a form so narrow that for a moment he couldn’t tell if she was a beautiful boy or a breathtaking young woman: high cheekbones and a rounded chin and delicate lips, all coming together to create a face like something he’d only seen in paintings of the angels.
But all things fade.
By twenty-three, she’d grown into a woman’s body, full hips and rounded breasts, not fat, certainly not fat, but no longer quite so thin. By twenty-five she’d gained some natural blotches on her face, grown out her hair, lost those buoyant curls. It wasn’t that she ceased to be beautiful. It was that already there were younger, prettier things around. Girls who still walked with a light step, men with narrow lines and hard planes on their faces, boys not yet hardened by the strain of puberty.
Johannes had been a boy like that once.
Eyes closed, he could see the conservatory again, the glass walls of the piano room — could feel the sunlight streaming through to warm his hands, his hair — could almost taste the girls he’d kissed there, pinned against the piano, the way he’d made them laugh by playing the keys between their spread legs. And before that, at Catholic school, he could remember the way his uniform hung off him, the casual childhood grace of his body, the way the bruises roughened his skin and blood rouged his lips and left him looking lovelier than before.
When he was twelve years old, alone in the dormitory, he stood before the mirror and dropped his nightshirt to the floor. He stood there naked and thin, his skin pale and smooth as cream, no hair on his stomach or chest, none between his legs. His cock back then was small and beautiful to look at it, flushed the gentlest shade of pink. If he was un-self-conscious, then it wasn’t because he was so young. It was because he was beautiful, and his beauty would last forever. Age would never ruin him. Puberty would never crack his voice or turn him into a man. He couldn’t picture his skin becoming rough and pockmarked; couldn’t imagine how his shoulders and hips would broaden, the thatch of coarse hair that would spring up over his skin.
He was beautiful when that boy at boarding school held him down and raped him in front of his friends.
He hasn’t been beautiful since.
IV.
They had a good thing going. Gregor’s skin always flushed a pretty shade of red when he was disgusted — angry — ashamed. And around Johannes, he was always all three. On edge, flustered, ready to blow.
Johannes smiled to himself. He was preparing a cup of tea when he heard the front door open and Gregor’s familiar tread in the parlor. Johannes half-turned, his face lighting up, ready to be sweet, cloying, pathetic. Whatever it took to get Gregor’s attention, his touch, his—
“Through here,” Gregor murmured, his voice warm.
“It’s nice,” a woman responded. Then she paused, her shoe scraping over the floor, and laughed at something in the parlor. “Oh, it’s like my grandma’s house,” she said.
Gregor whispered a laugh. When Johannes moved silently down the hall, he found them studying one of his statuettes. A pretty young lady — not as pretty as Gregor — touched the statue with one finger and tilted it back on its base.
“A friend of yours, Gregor?” Johannes asked, keeping his voice pleasant.
Gregor’s face shuttered. It was totally blank when he looked Johannes in the eye, but the young woman at his side … wide eyes, lips tightly shut, two high spots of color on her cheekbones. She knew who he was. She knew…
What had Gregor told her, about the filthy old man who lived downstairs?
“This is Nicole,” said Gregor with a flash of defiance in his eyes. His fingers clenched on Nicole’s pinched waistline. He bumped her hip against his own: that gesture, possessive and masculine, suited him. But it didn’t suit her. Where was the humiliation in bringing down a creature already so low? Where was the fun?
Johannes extended his arm. He indicated the empty living room, the staircase. He met Gregor’s eyes.
Defile yourself, he thought, if that’s what you wish.
And he sat, fingers clenched in his trousers, shoulders up to his ears, and listened from his living room as Gregor did just that. Upstairs, the narrow bedframe creaked and thudded, the headboard banging against the bookshelf Gregor had installed. Once there had been a sewage leak in the upstairs flat, years before Gregor came to live there. The pipes had frozen during a winter storm and sludge had dripped slow and thick through the floorboards, leaving stains on the finest wood. Now whispered moans and muffed laughter leaked through the floor in the exact same way.
Johannes closed his eyes. He saw a field of wet clipped grass. He saw the floodlights clicking on automatically, sensing motion on the ground, and a thin boy in a torn school uniform hitting the ground so hard it clicked his teeth together. He saw a boy like Gregor twist his fingers in a child’s hair.
It was the quiet thud of his front door closing that tore him back to the present. A cool breeze rushed down the hall as Nicole slipped out. Blinking, Johannes checked the clock and forced himself to rise, the muscles in his legs stiff and fragmented, entire sections closed off by lack of use.
He placed his palm flat on the banister. He took the stairs one at a time, the scent of sex fresh and acrid in his lungs.
“Gregor?” he called pleasantly, his throat aching. “Are you still awake, dear boy?”
Behind the bedroom door there came a shuffling of feet on the floor, a rustle of blankets. Johannes rapped his knuckles briskly against the wood.
“I’ve made some tea for us,” he lied. “Whyever did you send Nicole away alone? Shouldn’t you at least have walked her to the—”
The door cracked open. A flash of skin met Johannes’ eyes: a scowl on Gregor’s face and dark mussed hair and his muscled chest and he thought he was in control here, but it was Johannes who leapt forward and made the door bang against the wall, Johannes who wrapped his hands around Gregor’s neck and slammed his head against the floor.
“You’re naked,” said Johannes through clenched teeth. “How convenient.”
For a second, when he shoved Gregor’s legs apart and bit down on his bottom lip, instead of blood he tasted fresh-mown grass.
And he was gentle afterward.
“You’re alright, Gregor,” he said to the beautiful boy on the football field. He found a satin washcloth in the bathroom, one of his own, still perfumed with his favorite cologne. “You’ve been keeping tokens,” he said with surprise and delight. The faucet turned with a squeak; cold water gushed into the fabric and pooled in Johannes’ protected hand. When he left the bathroom, Gregor was still staring blankly at the ceiling, lying naked on the floor.
His chest rose and fell. Shallow breaths. His leg twitched when Johannes placed the cold, wet cloth against his skin and wiped the evidence away. No more filth. No more blood, no more cum. His lips traced every wound, blessed every clean spot on Gregor’s body.
Automatically, he combed Gregor’s hair back into place, noted the shivering limbs, the tight muscles, the clench of Gregor’s jaw. With a quiet soothing whisper, he bandaged all the minor wounds, folded a blanket around Gregor’s shoulders.
And he cataloged the new beauty of Gregor’s broken skin: the depth and variety of fresh bruises, blood vessels breaking just beneath the surface. Here they were like little black dots beneath the skin: here the blood pooled cloudy and lavender like spilled ink: here they were nothing more than a flush of red, destined to go darker in the morning. Johannes planted his thumb against the greatest bruise, the most beautiful blemish — the spot of darkness on Gregor’s left hip. He held Gregor still through the resulting flinch; he leaned close for a kiss; he dug his thumb into that aching flesh and felt the muscle and bone shift underneath the bruising. Beautiful boys on a football field. Beautiful girls on a concert piano. He bit down on Gregor’s bottom lip until the flesh began to part, and then he licked at the wound with a smile.
Worms in a rotten apple.