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]

"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.

[everymonstrousthing]

"Proximity," says Kaz, smirking again, shaking his head. "You live on a lower floor than me. Can't stand the thought of all of those stairs."

[plaguedrat]

"They invented elevators for that," Rat tosses back. They both know why Kaz doesn't want to go back and why Rat doesn't want to go home alone but they're not the type to say it.

For Rat, able-bodied as he is, the walk is an easy brisk one. He pretends not to slow down for Kaz, putting on the show of checking his phone and getting distracted.

[everymonstrousthing]

He knows that but sometimes he climbs the stairs anyway because it reminds him of Per Haskell's place, of home.

"Tell me you'd prefer me to go home and I'll go."

[plaguedrat]

"Your home or mine?" He asks it carefully, letting some of the seriousness shine through."Because no, I don't prefer you go. I make a good distraction."

[everymonstrousthing]

And there it is. A thing they've both been dancing around.

"Yours is closer to the ground."

[plaguedrat]

"So it is," Rat agrees. And he supposes that's that as he makes his way home. He walks close to Kaz, but never close enough to impede, to raise the questions that neither of them really want to answer.

[everymonstrousthing]

He's not drunk enough to not know that, maybe, this is a bad idea but he's had enough not to care. Sometimes, he just wants to take the risk.

[plaguedrat]

Even walking from the warehouse district, Dimera looms into sight soon enough and Rat nods at Kaz, taking out his keys. "I hope you don't mind cats," he says, mouth quirking. He already imagines they'll have to be shooed into another room.

[everymonstrousthing]

"I've never minded cats," says Kaz, and he recognises it as Rat feeling out boundaries, and he ducks his head against an uncharacteristic flutter, like wings against his ribs. "In so much as crows and cats coexist."

It's meant as a joke.

[plaguedrat]

"Better or worse than rats and crows?" In deference to Kaz's pride, Rat takes them up the stairs rather than the elevator, keys flipped already into his palm. He doesn't want to admit it out loud but he's privately relieved not to be alone tonight. First Grey and then Marius had made Rat into someone accustomed to company. To love. At least tonight he might have the former.

[everymonstrousthing]

"Find both on battlefields, don't you?" Kaz limps, a little, up the stairs, but he's used to compensating and he knows better than to try and hide it from someone as shrewd as Rat. It's not necessarily a weakness, anyway.

[plaguedrat]

He nods, smiling even. There's a certain level to which he enjoys escalating games of hide and reveal, crouching the truth in metaphor and symbolism. In that, he and Kaz are a match.

The key turns in the lock with a click and a chorus of meowing starts up behind the door. Rat nods with a look that reminds Kaz of his earlier flippancy.

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz raises an eyebrow at the veritable cacophony of noise from the other sid eof the door.

"Are you sure you need me?" he asks, smirking. "Sounds like you might have company enough."

[plaguedrat]

"I'm very sure." It dances toward being an admission of need and Rat turns his attention to opening the door, blocking the three cats from making it out.

"Wine?" He asks mildly.

[everymonstrousthing]

"Yes," says Kaz, stepping into the apartment and immediately starting to shrug out of his overcoat. Underneath, it's familiar tailoring - waistcoat, shirt, watch-chain, tie. He leans his cane against the wall. "Please."

[plaguedrat]

There's a gravitas to how Kaz carries himself, made only more severe in his layers and sharp lines. Rat can understand, even if he wraps himself into a different disguise than that. It also makes him want to needle and Rat shrugs out of his coat and the sweats beneath it, draping both indolently over the back of a chair before he retrieves glasses and a bottle of red wine. Once again, his appearance is somewhere Between. Sharp shoulders and collar bones are visible in the wide scoop of his shirt and his hair hangs loose in pieces, falling into eyes made gentler and rounder with makeup.

"Help yourself," he says, uncorking the bottle. "I'm going to wash my face."

[everymonstrousthing]

"Pity," says Kaz, which is an admission of something that neither of them have mentioned, that might not even be happening here. He doesn't elaborate further, reaching for the bottle and pouring them both a glass.

[plaguedrat]

"And here you struck me as a man who doesn't like being deceived," Rat says. He moves backward to his bathroom, pulling his shirt over his head and it exposes a smooth, flat chest, marked with faint scars and the bullet scar in his shoulder.

He is not a convincing substitute for Inej.