Who: Caz Rosier and Adrian Pucey. When: August 13th at 10 PM (backdated until last night). Where: Rosier Estate What: Another meeting. Caz answers a question. Adrian learns a little more about just who he is dealing with. Rating: PG. Fade to black ending.
Adrian hadn’t felt like himself for days. It was impossible to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he could feel Caz’s hands on him and hear his voice, even the feeling of his breath hot against Adrian’s skin. It was hard to concentrate on working, but as long as he had something to work on, he was all right. At least he had something to distract him, there. The weekend was hell. He had Caz Rosier on one hand, then he had anonymous messages via owl warning him to stay out of London. Adrian had no idea what had gone wrong with his life. He was just an entry-level kid working at the Ministry. What had happened?
The more unhinged he felt, the harder he worked to keep up his appearance. He wore a good suit to work that day, in the hopes that looking professional would keep him from watching the clock all day long. Was he looking forward to going to the Rosier Estate or dreading it? It was impossible to tell anymore.
After work he went out to get a few things at the shops and then got dinner at the pub, where he remained until around nine, nursing a few pints and trying not to think about Caz. It seemed like that was what he spent most of his time doing. Not thinking about Caz. Talking to people who weren’t Caz. That and working. He was taking on more and more workload at the Ministry just to keep his mind occupied.
At nine thirty, he went home and splashed some water on his face and took the Floo to the Rosier Estate. He arrived a little before ten; better to be early when the threat of maiming was there, he’d decided.
Caz was not so preoccupied, but then, he had the upper hand in this ‘relationship’ and he knew exactly where he stood and what would happen. When he did think about Adrian - which he did - it was to add to the mental list he was compiling of all the things he could do with the young man, all the ways he could use him.
It was true that Adrian was turning out to be quite the find, quite the gem. He worked in the Ministry, he was intelligent enough not to be immediately irritating, and he was so wonderfully malleable.
He was waiting when Adrian arrived, having settled himself into the sitting room just minutes earlier. Begemot, his black cat, sat on the sofa, carefully grooming, and lifted his sleek black head when Adrian stepped out of the Floo, watching the wizard with gold-green eyes.
“Adrian,” Caz said in his eerily even voice, his dark eyes as steady and as seemingly unblinking as the cats. “Do come in.” As if this was a friendly get together.
Adrian stepped out of the fireplace, not sure what he should expect to find in the sitting room. Maybe a bowl full of recently-chopped-off fingers? One of those medieval whipping posts? Or like a full-out torture chamber with all kinds of things he couldn't identify but would inevitably be used to inflict horrible pain on him? A whole potions lab full of things Caz would try on Adrian?
What he got was Caz and a cat. He looked taken aback for just a second, gaze darting between the feline and the man, taking a few steps further into the room, away from the fireplace. This was certainly not what he expected. He gave the cat just as wide a berth as he gave Caz, moving toward a chair.
He sank down onto it slowly. Adrian's unease was probably palpable; he had circles under his eyes and his movements seemed a bit too controlled. He was very vigilant, choosing a seat where he could watch both Caz and the cat without turning his head. For all he knew, it was a specially-trained attack cat and it was going to chew his fingers off. The thought had him curling his hands into fists, resting on his lap. "Hello," he finally greeted, so as not to be rude.
Once Adrian sat, Begemot seemed to lose all interest in him - fickle, as cats were prone to be - and went back to grooming. Caz’s eyes remained intent on him though, watching the stiff way with which he sat, as if he was ready to flee at any moment. Which pleased Caz - he would think Adrian a fool were he calm and complacent there. Especially given the conversation that they had had on the journals.
He had been dead serious that he would remove Adrian’s fingers had Adrian not come. It might have been a shame to spoil his hands, but he would have done it.
“I believe you had a question for me?” he said, head canting to the side. Caz purposefully had not answered the ‘have you killed anyone’ question, because there was no way he was putting that down on paper, even under wards that would only allow Adrian to read the words. He was far too cautious for that.
Adrian still didn't trust the cat. He swallowed hard, shifting in the chair and crossing his arms over his chest as he settled into his seat. He certainly hadn't forgotten the question he had for Caz. He'd been worrying himself over it for the past day. Was he involved with a murderer? Had Adrian let a murderer into his trousers? Well, let wasn't the right word. And that was another thing that'd been weighing heavily on him.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, watching Caz from a rather safe distance away. "Have you ever," he started, but his voice seemed to die in his throat. It wasn't the kind of question you just came out and asked because usually the answer was assumed to be no, in general. Most people were not the type of people who needed to be asked if they were a murderer. Caz was.
"Have you ever killed someone?" he finally forced his voice out, lips pursing afterwards as he waited for an answer. He felt like he might throw up, which was not an uncommon feeling for Adrian these past few days.
It was almost funny, the value that most people put on human life - and how easy it was to take it away. Caz had no such compunctions. He was of the mind that a good ninety-five percent of the world’s population deserved to be purged, destroyed, to let those who were somewhat worthy flourish.
“Yes,” he replied, without hesitation or a note of guilt or anything else that might show regret, or that he had a problem with his actions - or that he’d had to do it, out of self-defense or other such nonsense. He spoke the affirmative word quick and firmly.
“More than just one ‘someone’,” he added dismissively. There had been Muggles that died at his hands - or at the end of his wand - and there had been witches and wizards who had as well. There was little Caz enjoyed more than hearing someone scream in pain and fear, and watching the sparkle of life fade from a person’s eyes, until they were nothing more than an empty shell.
As though the 'yes' wasn't bad enough. Multiple people, it turned out, had died at this man's hands. The same hands that had been touching him only a few days ago. His arms uncurled so that he could cover his mouth with one of his hands, a reflex that he couldn't help. He swallowed back the sickness he felt relatively quickly, head giving a small shake.
He was in Slytherin house at school, sure, but Adrian had never been cruel. He would do a lot of things to climb the ranks at work or to get his political career off to a good start but killing anyone - or hurting them badly - was not one of them.
"Are you going to kill me?" he asked before he could reconsider that maybe he really, truly, didn't want to know the answer to that question. If Caz's answer was 'yeah, probably, some day' Adrian wasn't sure if he'd be able to go on with something like that looming over him. He did feel like a rabbit in a snare just then, dangling, helplessly waiting for a hunter to come and cut his throat.
“Why does that bother you?” Caz asked him. People were so strange with their emotional attachments, with their visceral reactions to the death of strangers - if it happened in a violent way. “They were not people you knew, or would ever know. Why does it matter?” Most people exploited other living things - animals that they ate - he just drew the line somewhere didn’t. And humans - be they Muggles or witches and wizards - did not like to be prey.
“Only if it becomes necessary to do so.” In truth, Caz saw in Adrian someone useful, which put him above most of the population, who he saw little more than fodder. Whether or not that would be a comfort was up for grabs.
“If you do what I ask of you, then that will not become a necessity.” If Adrian bent to his will - and of course did nothing to threaten his secrecy - then he had no plans to kill him. Or even to maim him in any serious manner. “You have the potential to be useful to me. Most people do not.” He might feed Adrian potions, but nothing fatal. He might practice spells on him, but nothing that would leave him permanently injured. He might play his body like a violin, watch him redden and bruise, but he wouldn’t hurt him in a lasting manner. Mostly.
"Why does it bother me that you've killed people?" Adrian had to verify the question that Caz was asking him, just to make sure he was honestly asking him that. He stared at the other man for a second before it clicked that Caz honestly didn't understand why it should be upsetting. He obviously didn't know right from wrong at all. "Maybe because it doesn't bother you at all," he answered.
At least Caz didn't say he was going to die. In fact, Adrian would be spared as long as he kept being useful to Caz. Adrian wasn't sure how much of a relief that was, but he did feel a tiny bit better. And even a little bit of better was good right now.
Adrian adjusted his tie a bit, pulling at the knot so that it hung more loosely around his throat. His suit was wrinkled from being in it all day, only serving to underline how tired and disheveled he felt. He sighed, trying to will himself to relax but he honestly could not manage that in Caz's presence. "So you're a cat person?" he asked, trying to bend the conversation back toward something a bit less terrifying.
“No, it doesn’t bother me,” Caz agreed. “Morals are just a construct of society. You think it is wrong because you’ve been told that it’s wrong since you were born.” That, and most people had at least enough empathy to be uncomfortable with the thought of murder, if not think it was outright reprehensible.
He glanced at Begemot briefly before looking back to Adrian. “I respect the feline mentality,” he replied. Cats were independent, and did what they wanted. They couldn’t be brought to heel in the same way dogs could be. They treated whatever domain they were in as their own. Caz liked the way cats behaved.
He would not, however, let the conversation go that easily. “Haven’t you ever wished someone would just disappear Little Rabbit?” he asked. “Haven’t you ever wanted something bad to happen to another person?” He wouldn’t believe ‘no’, considering how this whole thing had started with Adrian inadvertently alluding to the fact that he might slip a potion into someone’s drink.
Adrian watched Caz, listened to him, but he didn't really understand him. He pursed his lips again, trying to wrap his head around it. Murdering people wasn't really wrong, Caz was trying to tell him. It was just that everyone else thought it was wrong. He shook his head slightly, rubbing over his chin and then moving his hand around to the back of his neck, rubbing there for a moment. Adrian couldn't tell if he was really upset or he just thought he should be really upset.
God, he was going crazy.
The only thing that made sense was that Caz had a cat. Caz himself seemed more feline than most. How many times had Adrian felt like he was a mouse being batted around for someone's amusement? Plenty enough.
"But that's not the same as killing people," Adrian told him. "There's a huge difference between wishing someone would disappear and actually killing people." To Adrian, there was a huge difference anyway. Maybe it wasn't the same for Caz, he thought with a frown. "You don't look back and remember those people and feel bad?" he asked him. It was like Caz didn't feel guilty. Guilt was a pretty important emotion. It kept you from doing terrible things.
“Not really,” Caz disagreed with a small shake of his head. “You just want something else to do the trick so that you do not have to be responsible. I have no problem with taking that responsibility.” Mostly because he had no guilt complex to worry about. He felt no worse killing a person than he did squashing a fly. One was as unimportant to him as the others.
“No. I don’t.” Caz didn’t feel bad about most anything. He lacked the necessary emotional capacity for that. Guilt, empathy, compassion, those things were mostly missing from Caz. He looked back on the murders he had committed and considered the practical aspects of things. What he had done, how he could make the experience more pleasurable in the future.
“Those people meant nothing to me. Why would I care what happened to them?” He didn’t, and there were very few people he actually cared about in any manner. Even then, ‘cared’ was a stretch. His mother was important to him. And really, the list ended there.
Probably the worst part was that it wasn't entirely a surprise, hearing Caz say these kinds of things. Adrian had guessed that there was something off about him, right? And now here he was, hearing that Caz had murdered people and he didn't feel bad. And Adrian wasn't sure if it changed what he felt about him. Those feelings were already twisted and worrisome.
"I don't know," Adrian's voice was very small when he finally answered, his gaze dropped to the floor. He didn't have anything else to say about the matter, really. What else was there to be said? He chewed on his lower lip while he considered a way to change the topic. It was sore still from the last time he'd seen Caz, and for whatever reason, Adrian would not leave it alone so that it'd heal up. Every time he chewed at it, it was a painful little reminder. And he just kept doing it.
"What do you want me for, tonight?" he asked finally, looking back up at Caz.
Caz had had a purpose when he had called Adrian there tonight, but now, in light of the conversation they’d just had, and the fact that Adrian was clearly uncomfortable with what he had learned he decided he wanted something else entirely.
“Stand up,” he ordered, drawing his index finger in the air, pad up, tracing an upward path in the air. He waited for Adrian to do so before he continued.
“And undress.” That he expected Adrian to balk at, somewhat. However it was what he wanted. He wanted to make Adrian want him, even when he was repulsed by the idea of him, and the things he had done.