AU - Rat

[everymonstrousthing]

In the days after she goes, he's Dirtyhands more often than not. He stalks Darrow, sharp enough to cut. So little soft left in him. It's worse, because he'd let himself soften. He'd let too much of Kaz Reitvald come back and now reminding himself how to be the man he was in Ketterdam is hard work. It hurts.

Still. There's rough work to be done. So here he is.

The air in the club is close with tobacco, the smell of bodies. Kaz's mouth makes a moue of distaste as he slips up to the bar and orders gin, neat. He leans his back against polished wood, looks up at the stage. He's in time to catch the tail end of the performance.

Comments

[plaguedrat]

Rat isn't careful around people like Kaz. Not because he doesn't care but because, in a frustrating way, he does and he knows that Kaz Brekker does not want to be handled carefully but to be feared. He can't offer up fear either, because he has too little for his own good, but he can walk across the stage and make eye contact, his slate gray eyes visible through the fall of his loose hair and the sparkling trails of glass crystals falling from his tiara.

His song can offer peace and comfort, but tonight he tells jokes, makes up funny stories, and disappears almost perfectly into someone else.

[everymonstrousthing]

The transformation is startling, not that surprise shows on Kaz's face. He looks up at the stage and, if he concentrates, he can see Rat there, tucked away. They have, as Rat once commented, a lot in common. Transformation is, perhaps, one of those things.

Not for the first time, though it was always tempered by the knowledge that it would lead to nothing, Kaz notices how beautiful Rat is from some angles.

He knocks back the rest of his gin and orders another.

[plaguedrat]

Transformation is easy when trying to cope with what made him. It becomes a challenge as much as a balm and Rat has needed both in large quantities since he was a child. He takes his bow and disappears backstage, lingering as he hears the audience shout for just another minute of him and the emcee teases them for their loyalty.

When he reemerges, it's in tight jeans and an ambiguous shirt, his hair tied back to show off the sharpness of his face so that he becomes more Rat and less Eve. He's off the clock now, but he feels like lingering.

"Hey stranger," he says, coming by.

[everymonstrousthing]

"Hello."

If pressed, Kaz would admit that Rat is one of the very few people he counts as a friend, one of the very few people he feels any measure of warmth towards.

"I almost didn't recognise you."

[plaguedrat]

"That's generally the intention," Rat says. He sits in the chair opposite Kaz and cracks open a bottle of water for himself. Funny that he works at a bar but rarely drinks himself. It's a mark of their mutual respect and understanding that Rat considers asking Kaz how he's holding up, though he doubts Kaz wants to open up.

Instead, he gestures at the drink. "Top you up?"

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz looks at his glass like he's debating for a moment and then he holds it out in one gloved hand.

"Thank you," he says, and what liquor he's already drunk has gone to his head enough that he doesn't even try to hide the fact he's studying Rat's face.

[plaguedrat]

Raising an eyebrow, Rat smirks at him and delicately takes the glass from his hand, playing up his mannerisms. "I'm off the clock, Kaz," he reminds him. "I'm not nearly as fun when I'm myself."

[everymonstrousthing]

"You too?" asks Kaz, and that strikes him as funny, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He leans back in his chair. Nothing has been fun recently, not the Crow club, not the occasional fight he's picked, nothing. "Fun seems to be eluding me, of late."

[plaguedrat]

Rat glances at Kaz over his shoulder, giving him a look that's equal parts playful and threatening. Both know what the other is capable of doing as his real self. "How about that drink, then?" he says, taking the glass over to the bar to get topped up while a server offers Rat more bottled water, which he takes.

[everymonstrousthing]

That look sends something through Kaz, clambering down his ribs to curl dark and tarry in his belly. It's not an unpleasant feeling - he'd almost forgotten what feeling anything was like.

"I'm not going to say no."

[plaguedrat]

Smiling, Rat sets the glass in front of Kaz, letting it click audibly against the side table. Distinctly less exciting, he chugs the rest of his first bottle of water, parched after the stage lights, and cracks open another. "Well there you are," he says, gesturing at Kaz to drink.

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz lifts the glass in a lazy toast and knocks back a lush, green swallow of gin. He watches Rat drink, head tilted slightly to the side.

"You don't perform again tonight?"

[plaguedrat]

"No," Rat carefully thumbs water away from his lips, careful no to smear the delicate gloss. He might be off the clock but that doesn't change that he enjoys playing the part. "I've been here since noon. I'm done for the night."

He can go home, should go home, but he doesn't like dealing with the empty spaces. The places full of past tense.

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz finds himself distracted by the delicate way that Rat touches his lips. He finds that he's not listening when Rat talks, that he only catches the tail end.

"I should walk you home."

[plaguedrat]

"Afraid I'll get to stab someone without you there? I'd hate for you to miss out on the fun." Rat asks it with a deadpan expression, alluding to the last time they met on his way home from work. "Definitely wouldn't do it for my company."

[everymonstrousthing]

"Because I sought you out by accident," points out Kaz, taking another sip from his drink, rolling his eyes a little. "Because I always have. Because you're absolutely not worth knowing." He makes a soft, dismissive noise. "Fine. I'll go somewhere else."

[plaguedrat]

Rat doesn't like to admit it then, but a spike of loneliness hits him at the thought of going home alone. He doesn't like letting it show, likes to pretend that nothing hurts him, even loneliness, even loss. So he raises his water bottle at Kaz in a mocking toast. "I didn't say I wouldn't do it for your company, just that mine's terrible."

They've both been in gray moods lately.

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz echoes the toast with his glass, knocking back the rest of his gin before he sets the glass down.

"So maybe we deserve each other," he says. "I'm offering to walk you home, not proposing marriage."

[plaguedrat]

"We'd be a terrible married couple. I never clean. We bicker." Rat lounges back in his seat, still feigning dainty femininity, and lolls his head back to gaze at Kaz. "Better close out your tab, then."

[everymonstrousthing]

It's distracting, Kaz realises, whenever Rat lapses into femininity like that. It sits against the memory of him fighting, graceful and frightening. Ka finds himself unbalanced.

"Right," he says, pushing to his feet, speaking to the bartender. He returns to the table and raises an eyebrow. "Ready?"

[plaguedrat]

As he stands and zips up his jacket, Rat steps fully into himself. Even with the makeup, he's unmistakably Rat, the kind of hardbitten boy coughed up from his equivalent of Kaz's Barrel. It makes them even.

"Ready," he agrees. It's not terribly cold, but it's cold enough that Rat tugs on his own leather gloves.

[everymonstrousthing]

And just like that it's his friend standing in front of him, familiar but not necessarily safe. A little tension leaves Kaz's shoulders. He finds himself almost disappointed.

He steps out of the club in silence. He knows the way to Rat's apartment well enough.

[plaguedrat]

Rat gestures in front of him and walks until he and Kaz are abreast but not touching. The reason behind it escapes Rat but he's still noticed how Kaz keeps himself away from contact with others. He has his guesses, his own experience to rely on, but Rat doesn't actually ask.

"Surprised you still come visit me when you have your own roost now."

[everymonstrousthing]

"What can I say?" Says Kaz, glancing across at Rat, leaning his weight on his cane. "There's something about you."

[plaguedrat]

He laughs then, a careful fragment of humor. "And this after you've seen me without makeup too. I had no idea you were under such a spell," he jokes. Cutting Kaz a smirk, he turns the corner on the way out of the warehouse district and up toward Dimera.