Who: Andrew and Trystan What: Exploring Winter Palace Where: Andrew’s House When: Feb 1st Rating/Warnings: Language, drug references
It was Andrew’s turn, apparently, and he was downtown in the black Lexus, looking for the strawberry blonde on the street. “Bloody God, what am I doing?” he asked himself aloud, spotting the man closer to the street this time. He had hedged a lot of bets with this one. They paid enough to keep him gambling, never quite hitting the limit that would force him to throw in a hand. Here he was again, taking another roll of the dice, or another hit at the table.
He hit the automatic locks so Trystan could get in, looking him over. “I see you survived the holidays,” he said, masking whatever else was on his mind. “I did as well. Wait until you see the house, and yes, I wanted a rather big one.” He wasn’t sure if Trystan would like it. He definitely wasn’t born in a mansion, as Andrew had been. “Smoking is only outside, by the way. If Blake agreed, so can you.”
“How have you been?”
"Who the fuck is Blake." It was asked with little genuine interest. Windows were immediately lowered as spiderslim legs clambered into the black vehicle, a complimentary filter pluming into the arid heat as the door slammed and they pulled away. Already, there was displeasure in that pretty tenor -- smoking on others' terms had never sat well with the whore.
"I've been. I needed some time to fester." A wry smile painted his lips pale, those envy eyes skirting to the driver in a vain attempt to quell motion-induced nausea. His legs crossed, his spare hand finding its way to a thigh that wasn't his own.
"What about you, baby? Aside from finding a house and someone worth deigning a name~" It was the typical brand of mockery -- pretty and sweet and contrary, with those hands leading the way.
Andrew smiled when Trystan asked who Blake was, but he didn’t answer. He was fairly sure it wasn’t based on any sort of jealousy, but perhaps an infringement on territory. He couldn’t see Blake and Trystan getting along very well, or perhaps they would. Andrew certainly didn’t need that complication.
“What are you festering over?” Andrew asked, glancing to the side when he stopped at a light. He allowed the hand to rest right where it was. It was where it was going to be later anyway, so they might as well jump right in. He pushed the accelerator lightly, driving out towards a more suburban, wealthy development. As they drove past the golf course, gone was the glare of the lights, and the sounds of the casinos. The traffic dissipated, save for those that were heading back to the more luxurious side of town.
“Go big or go home, right?” he laughed as a gate opened to reveal Winter Palace. Andrew had simply named it from the street it was located on. When he and the realtor had their discussions, it was always the Winter Palace house. It seemed appropriate for the house that stood before them. “I’m not sure if I’ve been in all the rooms yet,” he said as he opened the door. “It is mine to enjoy, paid in full.”
"I’m sure it is," the whore managed past a grin, far more a grimace. The gate, already so telling in its protected grandeur, furnished an eye-roll, one that was lost to the depths of their surrounding darkness. A sickness had settled in the pit of his stomach, one quelled by the anticipation of a much-needed arrival, and as the vehicle came to a halt in the driveway the whore couldn't have escaped soon enough -- moving quickly in comparison to his lethargic cadence so steeped in opiate lulls.
"Jesus Christ." It was muttered under his breath, a filter crushed by the magnitude of the home before him. It was a stately beast -- utterly overcompensatory and far too full-figured for a solitary inhabitant. He looked up at the monstrosity, eyes raised as high as those gutters lining the roof.
"And you say smoke's going to hurt this thing? It will take years for it to reach the fucking ceilings..." Still, the filter was foregone to the gravel beneath them, resigned to snuff itself in the stones marking its tomb. He drew up beside the Duke, smelling of perfume and sex.
“It’s just a house, Trystan,” he grinned. “I know that it’s large. I like large spaces. I also like windows, and really, it wasn’t that expensive considering. The pool is spectacular, and I’m not going to be alone forever.” He linked an arm through Trystan’s and led him up to the door. “Believe it or not, the house I grew up in was larger.”
He opened the door, disabled the alarm and turned the lights on. They stood in the foyer, the sitting room laid out before them in a spacious, open design. “Would you like a tour? You might find a few rooms that you like.” He knew that Trystan might not be used to this, more used to seedy hotel rooms where they charged by the hour, or even the luxuries of the Wynn, but this was much different. How many clients took him home? He wasn’t the average client.
Entwined with the man beside him, the whore took in his surroundings with little surprise. It was everything the Duke presented of himself -- lavish, esteemed, large, utterly proper. The foyer greeted them with an emptiness that only large houses could have, despite all furnishings. Their voices echoed, presences drowned, and with a careful, deliberate slip the whore was to the nearest sideboard, inspecting its finish as he spoke.
“How ostentatious.” His eyes scanned the doors before them, settling on the large staircase.
“What rooms do you think I’ll like, baby~?” It was a question murmured with curiosity that had been previously absent, a crescendo marked by the unspoken expectation to be genuinely impressed, or else. He ambled towards Andrew once more, fingers slipping beside Italian leather fixed with a beltloop.
“I’ve already seen your bedroom furniture.” A smirk, sick and sweet.
“Perhaps a little, but while it is something to show, I didn’t buy it for that. I like it. I get a little claustrophobic in small spaces.” This was a huge leap and he knew it. Trystan did have the right word, and he knew how it would appear to most, but it hadn’t mattered.
“Do you like billiards? I do have a table in the game room,” he offered, walking Trystan down the hall. “The bedrooms are upstairs, and all the other stuff is on this level. There are no elevators.” He opened the door to the game room, which appeared as a grand entertainment center, complete with the table, a big screen TV, and a small wet bar. Decorated in maroons and browns, the room was spectacular. “I also have a small office which is going to be a library.”
"This puts a skew on your perception of what a 'small' office is." He surveyed the game room, eyes lingering on the wetbar and little else. He didn't care for television -- hadn't turned one on in over a decade -- and had never played pool in his life, though many men begged to see that he try. His fingers tangled in his back pocket, instinctually heading towards that black carton that held cancerous securities. Instead, they fluttered past in momentary double-take, remembering that asinine rule that made him feel he'd returned to a penitentiary rather than a prestigious mansion.
"I hope it'll be a decent library, not just books on business and international politics."
“Well, let’s go have a look.” Andrew looped his arm through Trystan’s again. He had an idea, something he thought might do quite well.
The office was set on the opposite side of the hall, stretching back to the opposite side of the house. Outside the huge windows, there was a view of the grounds and the pool. Along the side, there were empty shelves, fit for long lines of books. “This looks like a project for you, if you wish to take it up. How do you feel about building a library, one that doesn’t just contain books on International Policy?” He arched a brow towards Trystan, knowing that he was playing to one of the man’s passions.
The whore fell silent. Looking upon the empty rows he merely stood, his arm still entwined with the heir's in nothing but their own lies. There was little external reaction -- just a brief flicker of disbelief and the shadow of a grimace.
"I doubt you'd have interest in anything I'd choose." He pulled away, dismissive. His hands were fleeting -- hummingbird-quick to that back-pocket that cloaked all his securities.
"I need a cigarette." The door was terse behind him, resonant and catastrophic in its implications.
“You are running, Trystan,” Andrew said, not turning around when Trystan went for the door. He waited for a minute and then caught up quickly. “Let’s go down to the pool.”
He led the way down the steps and across the expanse that was his home. He opened the french doors that led outside to the pool area. There was already an ashtray next to a lounge chair that he had left for Blake’s visit. “It’s not that big of a deal,” he lied easily. “You have exquisite taste, and that is what I want for a library. You are perfect for stocking the shelves with the best material.” There were many more reasons behind it, but he was trying to soothe the raw nerve that he seemed to have touched. Trystan never ran, didn’t withdraw like that, even when he was attacked for drug habits and other matters.
“Did you like your Christmas gift?” He hadn’t mentioned it, but Andrew had known it was perfect. He didn’t see how anyone with Trystan’s abilities with language, not come with an extensive knowledge and love for literature.
“Do you know how fucking cruel that is?” Black paper sweetened with sugar and clove sparked alight between his lips. His tone was even and calculating, a mastery of self-control in the wake of what he wasn’t ever meant to have. The question regarding his gift went entirely unaddressed -- lost in the sea of something far greater than that.
“Letting me take charge of something that I could never have?” The admission sent a shudder down his skeleton spine, settled at its base with a wrenching severity. He inhaled deep, drew dizzy on the filter between his lips as he waited for an answer -- still standing, still wanting to be outside the Duke’s physical proximities.
Andrew certainly hadn’t looked at it that way, but he had to admit that there was some truth there. “Why can’t you? Trystan - ,” his hands rubbed his temples, “You know that you are welcome here, even if it is just to spend time in the library. In a way, you would very much be a part of it, and I’m not that cruel. I wouldn’t leave you out.”
He contemplated his next statement, chewing on the inside of his lip. “Each person designing rooms are important to me.” He left it simply there. If Trystan decided not to, there wouldn’t be anyone to fill in. He would end up doing it himself.
"That's very fucking benevolent of you," the blonde countered, pacing languidly like a cat in the Duke's wake. Smoke followed him -- trapped his head in its fogginess retraced time and time again like a painting, reworked in the silence of ashes drawn upon to quell the temper in his lungs.
"I don't understand what you fucking want with me. You insist you're different, you fucking buy me all this shit, you allow me into your home -- what the fuck am I to you? What does being important mean to you?”
Andrew sat on the chair, trying to figure out what to say. He wasn’t sure how to answer it. There was honesty, but that wasn’t always the best solution. “What is there to understand? I want you to trust me, which I have never given you a reason not to.” That was the simple answer. It would take time to work up to the more complicated one.
“Why is it all so impossible for you? Do you think you are not worthy of being here? Do you despise yourself so much that you don’t think you should have nicer things?” He looked at Trystan, not entirely sure why he was angry. He had an idea of where it might come from, and he didn’t like it. Expectations were hard to deal with. “I’ve never made any demands of you. I happen to like you.”
"People don't buy me for that!" He rounded on the Duke, cold and cruel. His voice ripped in the middle, choked on the vitriol wearing it ragged on the cuffs of curled smoke.
"I can't uphold any sort of expectation when there isn't one from the start! Are you that lonely that you're hiring a fucking prostitute to keep you genuine company?"
“No there isn’t,” Andrew said, almost too calmly. He sat forward, elbow on his knee, tapping his lips with a finger. “I also didn’t offer you money for the job. For your love of books, and a healthy budget to create a library,” he said, dismissive in tone, “this is something you would like, if you dared to step out and try something else.”
His eyes leveled, a little annoyed. “I will also add that I do have other friends. You and I have only been together a few times, and I could afford you a lot more than that, if I choose too. There are a thousand of you, some better, some worse.” He looked directly at him, the thin waif-like man in front of him. A raw nerve ached, but he kept it out of his voice. “You can leave whenever you like, go straight back to the gutter that you put yourself in, and another will take your place. You decide.”
He stood up, walking towards the French doors, turning to look at Trystan again. “The difference between me and your other clients is that I actually give you a chance to be something more than a whore.” With that, he walked in the door, making sure he was far enough out of sight before exhaling.
The unfinished cigarette was cast from his fingers, rippled along the surface of that pristine pool that had likely been tended to earlier by men working as illicitly has he was. He watched Andrew with a petulance that was visible in every haggard feature of his -- an indignation that wore weary on his arched brow. Truth settled between them, hung as heavy as the consideration of those last words that settled so deeply in his gut.
"You don't have the right to do that," he whispered -- out of earshot, out of mind. Those spiderthin legs stalked after the heir, threw open the french doors that had separated them in Andrew's wake.
"Why."
Andrew heard the doors open and his head cocked to the side. So he appeared when given a choice. He could have left and didn’t. If Trystan was determined, there wouldn’t have been anyone to stop him from simply walking away. Andrew was accumulating a gamblers dream, cards that could be played, and the odds were turning.
He wiped his face of expression, although he made another round of mental calculations. “What is the question? Why you? I think the better question is, what are you afraid of?” His voice softened, a little more reflective than the stoic look on his face. “You are a talented man. You know this. You put forth an image, and you expect people to treat you a certain way, and I walk on that line. You don’t deal well with change, even for your benefit? I have other reasons as well.” Trystan was not handling all the information well, coming all at once. Perhaps he had tried hard to ignore the details of the two of them, choosing instead to put them into a box that he understood. It was an ill fit, which virtually guaranteed that the contents would spill, or in this case, explode.
"Those reasons being? You're not making fucking sense." His fingers came to skirt those collapsed veins gracing his inner-right arm, brushing away the bruises of one needle too many. He kept his distance -- remained alley-cat content to watch from afar.
“Why does it have to make sense? Somewhere in that little dark heart, you want this. Somewhere in that little dark heart, you don’t want to push me away. If you did, you wouldn’t be standing there. You would have ran off and called a cab, or walked back to town.” He leaned against the wall, arms crossed across his chest, completely calm.
“I want you to do this, not for me but for yourself, with complete access to the library when you want it. I wouldn’t have you build it to throw you out the door. I’m not that cold. I like you. I know what you are, and I know what you do, or at least part of it.” He looked at his arms, scarred as they were. I’m choosing you anyway, giving you a chance, not out of some deep humanitarian need to help those less fortunate, but because it’s you.”
“Why do you choose to stay in the gutter? That doesn’t make sense.”
"I need far more than what you gave me for Christmas to fill those shelves that are sitting vacant in your study." He drew near, perfume and clove heavy on the air that surrounded him. He hissed into Andrew's ear as he passed, determined to make it to the door barely breathing,
determined to make it out alive.
"And don't you ever fucking call it a choice."
The front door had the last word, echoing its finality throughout the foyer.
Andrew knew he had to let him go if that was his choice, although his first instinct was to run after him. He hated the sick feeling in his gut. Instead, he pulled out his phone. I did tell you that I would fully fund the project. He sent the text, and then cursed himself for doing so. It was a desperate move.
It is also a choice. Nobody is forcing you into service, but perhaps you.