by BT
Note: This story first appeared in the zine Homosapien Trois.
Cigarette smoke drifted upward, along with the strains of a Kurt Weill melody rendered with too much precision. The Eberbach castle's piano was kept tuned, but it had been played only as a duty -- a meticulously performed, self-imposed duty -- since the death of Klaus's mother. Lorel von dem Eberbach had loved music, and Klaus inherited a recollection of her joy in it, but little of her talent.
Nonetheless he played the concert grand piano with an amateur's random inspiration tempered all too much by drilled-in regularities of rhythm. The quality of performance, if he had been aware of it, might not please Klaus, but the action of it satisfied him in some moods.
It was, for instance, nothing whatever to do with Dorian Red Gloria.
The capricious Englishman had been included on Klaus's last mission, something which was becoming enough of a habit to annoy Klaus. Eroica had, in addition, reiterated his now-customary claims of love (whatever that meant) toward the person of Major Eberbach. It had been quite embarrassing.
The demands of a tricky figuration took Klaus's attention back to Weill. The music was a pleasing, abstract pattern that commanded a manageable emotional response. He could enjoy it, and leave it behind when he closed the lid back over the keyboard.
The same procedure could not be applied to the Earl of Gloria, not even in metaphor. Recollections of the mission just past ran, unchecked and unbidden, through Klaus's mind despite his best efforts at self-distraction and his firm intentions. Eroica had said...
Weill faltered to a jolting halt. Eroica had said:
"You're afraid to let me touch you. You're afraid you'll like it!"
"I certainly do not intend to find out," said Klaus.
"You really don't even know what you're missing," was Eroica's reply, less in censure than wonder. "Aren't you curious at all?"
"No."
"I thought all virgins were curious."
Klaus had to stop and formulate a response to that. At last he said, finally and simply, "No."
"No, you're not a virgin, or no, you're not curious?" pursued Eroica's mocking voice.
Klaus thought it wasn't any of the Earl's business.
In the castle's music room, he rose from the piano and threw open green damask curtains to reveal dark twilight behind the glass windows. He could not seem to stop recalling that hot Mediterranean evening now, in idle moments. All this thinking about Eroica was nothing but self-indulgence, a sort of reassurance that the thief's proclaimed predilections and proffered friendship -- and other attractions -- meant nothing to him.
Of course, there was nothing they could mean, to him.
Klaus gazed out into darkness, into the dim reflection thrown onto the window glass by the music room's lamps. Eroica's uninhibited celebrations of the senses, his pleasure in color, in good food, subtle scents, clothing of all descriptions, had first seemed irrelevant to Klaus, and later seemed merely frivolous. By now, Klaus knew they were intrinsic to the puzzle Dorian Red Gloria represented, but that made him no more eager to approach the problem.
Even if Eroica fascinated him beyond the unexplained talents which were useful to NATO on occasion, beyond the eccentric tactical ploys as adroit as any Major Eberbach might have produced, the Major could hardly allow such recollections to affect his life in any way. It was simply not proper... not possible.
Abruptly, Klaus pulled the draperies back across the window. The view was too dark and oppressive, reflections looming in monstrous shadow. He returned to the piano and lit himself another cigarette.
He wondered if the Earl cared for music.
# # #
Dorian picked out two painstaking chords on his guitar, winced at the inept brangle of sound, and tried again. Music like any art pleased him, but like all arts it required practice. Patiently, he set himself to master the finger-changes.
Presently a mellowly-plucked tune emerged from the instrument under his hands, and Dorian smiled in delight. The sound, although modest, was accurate; the tune was a dry little piece of wit from *Die Dreigroschenoper.* Mack the Knife... Klaus the Gun, thought Dorian. That was appropriate. The weapon-crazy German major needed only a soundtrack to be perfect melodrama. He sang softly, "Und der Ma- jor, der hat... Lu- ger..." German failed, but not inspiration. "...Which he car- ries, all the time."
Dorian stopped to snicker and his hair, inadequately restrained by a striped chiffon scarf, bounced into his eyes. He pushed it back, stretching his cramped left hand and then his cramped shoulders.
He thought of how the Major had reacted to him -- finally, a reaction! -- during that nasty job in the muggy weather on Corsica. Did the Major realize Eroica had been teasing him... well, mostly... because Major Eberbach was so easy to pique? His attempts at restraint were so amusing, his annoyance so transparent and occasionally revealing. Dorian wondered if Klaus was even aware of how his frequent pursuit of Eroica, on whatever excuse, could be seen by any observer.
Dorian shrugged and fingered another phrase on the guitar. He and Klaus were not precisely friends, not colleagues, barely co-workers. When they worked together on a job there was more obstruction than cooperation toward Eroica's goals, and the Major claimed the same for his. The two of them were frequently at daggers drawn, or pistols. But even then, there was something between them that was not quite enmity. "And the Ma- jor, has a wea- pon, that no- body, ever sees," muttered Dorian, in Mack the Knife's meter.
There had been *something*, all right, during the job on Corsica, but all in all it had ended inconclusively. The job itself was finished with two of Misha's men captured and two more beyond further capture of any sort and the scrap of treasure they'd carried secured. Before the half-hour of action that had brought it about, however, Dorian had had to spend nearly three days cooped up in a little, camouflaged tent isolated on a rocky hillside, waiting with the Major for Misha's agents to come over the ridge into their trap.
The Major, with his usual congeniality, had ignored any unnecessary conversation. Dorian, bored, had made the usual remarks designed to egg the Major into an entertaining state of outraged fury. He had succeeded: Klaus did a cold, monosyllabic simmer, until:
"Eroica, you're becoming offensive," the Major said in a dismissive tone.
"At last!" Dorian crowed, perhaps overdoing it. "Was it something I said?"
"For a change."
Dorian stopped to evaluate the moody tone of the Major's reply, and took in the careful, subtly defensive posture in which Klaus was sitting and the rather blatant fact of his gun, just cleaned, being neatly and rapidly reassembled. Was Eroica not only an annoyance but a threat to the Major? Dorian reviewed the specifics of what he'd just said. Well, it could be taken two ways. At least. But, just why should such a splendid specimen of manhood as Major Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, six feet two of him and all muscle (except the armament, Dorian thought enthusiastically) find Eroica a threat? As he clearly did. And he *did* follow Dorian.
Dorian smiled up at the emerging stars in the English evening sky, which was for once clear enough to show stars. He hummed a phrase, remembering words to the effect that no one questioned Mack the Knife, and no one could therefore ever pin blame on him. But when one did ask the right question...
"Oh, good, I'll say it again," he goaded. "If you're not curious, why not? And if you are, why not admit it?"
"Why should I be 'curious'?"
"Because I'm here to be curious about." Dorian moved to where Klaus sat and, daring, stroked his hair.
"Don't touch me!"
"Oh, is it too much for you?"
Klaus did not explode, but merely looked at him, frowning. "You are insufferable."
"You know I am, darling." Dorian tried his most effective drawl.
The major said levelly, "We are confined to this area until Misha's agents decide to move. Could you attempt to simulate civilized behavior until then?"
"Well, yes," drawled Dorian, and sat down beside the Major. "How civilized do you want it?"
Klaus stared at him. "What do you think I want?" He was sweating, though the summer night's heat could nearly explain that.
"This," said Dorian, dropping the camp drawl, and sliding an arm around the Major's hard slim waist, which froze instantly into shocked immobility. "And this," he added, and kissed the barely-parted lips.
Klaus didn't move for several seconds: long enough for a one-sided kiss that couldn't, Dorian hoped, be mistaken for a pleasantry. "There's no one here to see us. You know we'll have six minutes' warning if the Russians decide to take their walk tonight. You can find out anything you want from me. Now." He pulled Klaus close against him and began rubbing one hand up and down a sweaty back.
Klaus did nothing to stop him.
"You want to know, don't you," Dorian whispered. It wasn't a question.
Klaus took a long breath, not moving otherwise in Dorian's arms, and let it out. At last he did move to grab Dorian's free wrist, and held it tightly, doing nothing else. Dorian waited.
"This... is not to be remembered," said Klaus finally.
"I'll never mention it," Dorian promised, knowing he'd won, and kissed Klaus again. This time the mouth under his softened and, hesitantly, responded, and presently Dorian noticed that Klaus's body wasn't hesitant at all.
# # #
Klaus played music he remembered from long ago, from when his mother was alive. "... Wer kocht ihn ab, der alle abkocht? Wieber." He wasn't thinking about the words, was trying to think of nothing. "Ob er will oder nicht -- er ist bereit."
Dorian. The memory of body moving on body, the strangeness of skin touching skin other than hands...
He closed off the thought and stared at his hands on the piano keys. The song continued and the words came into his mind: "Whether he wants or not -- he's ready."
Klaus closed his eyes. He'd been ready for it with Dorian, despite his wishes. He'd been ready faster than Dorian, but Dorian had only smiled and had gone on touching him all over with skin and body and hands.
Klaus played one more phrase of the song and stopped, pulling back from the keyboard. It seemed that he couldn't refrain from thinking about Dorian. Eroica. No matter what Klaus had said, or promised to himself, something had changed for him:
Afterwards Dorian said softly, "Not a virgin now."
Klaus suppressed his uneasiness, he hoped. "No."
"Were you, before?"
"You seem to think so."
"Klaus, I wasn't serious. That was just a line, something to get a rise out of you. I guess it did."
"What did you think?" asked Klaus. He didn't like the idea that Dorian could guess correctly about such a thing.
"About you?"
"Yes."
"Do you really want to know?"
The air still surrounded them with sticky heat; the alarms were blessedly silent. "Yes," said Klaus, impatient with the word games.
"Promise you won't be angry," said Dorian.
"I see you did think that I was without experience."
"I don't believe you're here now just to prove I'm wrong," offered Dorian.
Klaus, who was not sure of any reason for his recent actions, said, "I have no proof of anything. Neither do you."
Dorian, inches away, lay in silence for a moment. "Are you going to deny me in the morning?"
Klaus felt relief at the suggestion. "Yes. I can't... this can't happen. It shouldn't have."
Dorian rolled half over and looked him in the eye. "Then why did it happen?"
"I don't know."
"Because I was here?"
"Yes." That was right. It was definitely Dorian's fault.
"Does it happen when someone else is around you? Agent A? Or Z? Or that pretty contact boy in Marseilles?"
"No! None of them could... I couldn't."
"None of them tickles your fancy. I bet not. None of them dares, or goes to the trouble to try. But I do. Think about that, Major."
Sitting at the silent piano, Klaus thought about it. He had said nothing the next morning, nor had Dorian. He had said nothing throughout the day of tense boredom and the long evening, but he'd listened to Dorian's easy chatter carefully. It contained nothing he could construe as an invitation.
After they were arranged in their respective camp beds, Klaus heard a sigh from the opposite cot. "Klaus?"
He had not known he was waiting, but he answered instantly. "Yes."
"Klaus, come here. Don't make me go there."
Without a word, Klaus obeyed, sliding onto the narrow bed nearly on top of a naked Dorian. It soon became clear that the position was felicitous for both of them.
# # #
Someone turned on the lights inside, but Dorian stayed out on the terrace, enjoying the cool summer evening air and the late twilight. He tried out another song from *The Three Penny Opera*, although he had no idea what it was doing in the play. He remembered the song clearly: "... For the Army asks nothing of what you are, and you march from there to the end... The soldier's un- der... The canon's thun- der... From Green- land to Cape Horn..."
Did that explain anything about Klaus?
The Major hadn't spoken to him since they'd finished the Corsica job, except once during debriefing, as impersonally as one human being could speak to another. That had been two weeks and four days ago.
The Major had said, after the second and last night in the tent on that rocky mountainside, that he meant to forget the "incident," and that he expected Dorian to do the same.
Dorian hoped he hadn't meant it. Dorian, who considered himself a relatively experienced judge, rather thought the experiment had been quite successful. Klaus had participated actively after the first stunned moments, his halting cooperation soon becoming unpracticed but urgent lovemaking. Dorian knew he would never forget the tentative intimacy they'd developed in those hours.
But only Klaus could break the vow of silence that Klaus had imposed.
# # #
Klaus tried again to lose himself in the meaningless song from some topsy-turvy radical Weimar-era play. "... Denn bevor es Nacht wird, liegt er wieder droben." His mother had liked the music. It had nothing to do with Dorian.
But Dorian... The words of the song haunted him suddenly: "Before it's night, he'll be back there again."
Klaus stopped playing. Dorian had... He and Dorian had... He knew perfectly well what they'd done, though he shouldn't think about it. He remembered, vividly, a warm living body pressed against him, busy hands stroking deliberately to rouse desire.
He could nearly feel it now, the memory tangible in his flesh.
It had been poor judgement on his part to allow it. He knew that now. He should have known it before. Any sane man would have known it, regardless of personal circumstances. No sane man would allow Dorian Red Gloria anything, particularly not anything like...
Dorian's weight pinned him, legs sliding between his. A hot push at his groin reminded him that Dorian, too, needed release. His own recent sensations were echoed in Dorian's motion....
Klaus jerked his mind away from it. Again.
It was hopeless. He stared for one more moment at the piano keys, at the ordered row of blacks and whites, before he removed his fingers from them and turned away. He sat still for a moment: breathing, trying to think.
He could talk to Dorian again.
To what purpose?
Klaus sat for another moment: thinking, trying to breathe.
He didn't care. Whatever had changed between himself and Dorian remained changed.
He rose from the piano stool and walked through to his study, to lift the handset of the telephone there. Eroica would be at his residence near London.
He punched the number from memory.
# # #
Dorian rang off only when the silence after Klaus's curt farewell and the click that followed had stretched into half a minute. The subdued conversation had hardly taken three minutes altogether, but his heart still raced. Klaus wanted to see him again.
He wandered back onto the terrace, pulled the scarf off his hair, and shook his curls back before turning his face up to the star-strewn summer sky. Klaus wanted him; Klaus hadn't been able to forget.
His guitar still lay on the bench where he'd left it. He seized it and picked out the sweetest melody in Weill's wry music, and sang his hopes to the night: "We won't have a written agreement... No flowers, no altar, no forms..." He picked out another line, and went on: "Even the dish that we eat from won't last -- So throw it away, fling it high! We'll love for a while or we won't love... No matter the where or the why."
Dorian smiled shakily. Klaus could never give him a guarantee, but he would come back again and again, to love for a while. It wouldn't matter where or why.