This piece's done as another exercise after Jo sent me a picture of Katsuya tied to the chair.  It was something she made to accompany an article she'd written for a Taiwanese publisher about 'moe'.  And a slightly battered Katsuya is that to her.  Jo and I have a usual exchange of inspiration. Sometimes I'd suggest an off-shot scenario or shorts that, if given time – she’ll draw it out.  Sometimes she’d draw something that is a challenge to me to write something to wrap around it.

This is one of them.  Although I know the ending of the story lend itself to a “to be continued”, it likely won’t be.  It’s an interesting premise but Jo and I agreed that ITW and its prequel will lose ‘something’ if Katsuya’s a constant magnet of bad people who wants to do bad things to him. So likely this beginning will be given to Jaki, who have a long running story of two CIA men in lust/love.

For now, it’s for your entertainment.

Sorry about the awkward formatting. I guess LJ don't do word-wrap.


      He had been left sitting here for a while.  He hadn’t any notion of time or how long he had been here except that he had sat here, bound to this chair so tightly that he could barely feel his fingers.  The cut over his right eye had at least stopped bleeding, although he'd had to shut it – the blood stung.

          The single light bulb that hung over him was domed, showering him with bright light that gave him a headache.  He didn’t know where he was, except that there were trains that went by in the distance -- he'd counted three since he'd startled awake in the chair.

         After some time there had been more discomfort than pain, his body becoming used to the nagging sensations.  Perhaps numbing his reaction when he heard the door to the room open and someone with hard-soled shoes come in.  His right eye opened slightly and he had to force himself to keep it open, as he heard a chair being dragged along the concrete floor toward him and placed at the edge of where light washed into dark.  His visitor turned the chair around, the back facing him and sat down.  Katsuya could barely make out the silhouette of crossed arms that lay across the top of the chair.  Knees, clad in expensive dark slacks and the tips of shined leather shoes poked through the shadow and into the light. 

         “Sorry,” the man said, after he'd regarded Katsuya for a while.  His voice was rough; probably a heavy smoker.  “My guys didn’t mean to hurt you.  They didn’t expect you to put up a fight.”

         “I could dismiss your people’s oversight if I had somehow earned this kidnapping,” Katsuya said.  “Who are you?”

         The man’s right foot tapped.  Katsuya could sense a grin on the man’s face then.

         “Not the least bit scared?”

         Katsuya didn’t answer.  He stared ahead, trying to adjust to the dark and trying to make out any features of the man.  The bright light only made his headache worse.

         “You sleeping with him?” the man asked.

         “What?”

         “Unless you are the serial dating kind, which I don’t think you are, you know who I am talking about.” There was a slight Boston accent to his voice. 

         “Your question didn’t answer mine,” Katsuya said.

         A laugh answered him, an explosive sound in the small, hollow room. 

         “You’re cute,” the man said.  He lowered one of his arms until his hand came into the light.  His ring and middle fingers were adorned with heavy gold rings.  “But I can only tolerate cute in small doses.  You should answer my questions when I am being cordial to you.”

         “Will you untie me?” Katsuya said after weighing his options.  “I can’t feel my hands.  I’ll talk to you.”

         There was a short, contemplative pause before the man got up and circled in the outskirts of the light.  Katsuya could smell a mix of cigarettes and cologne as he came closer.

         “You are a good looking boy,” he said.  There was a slight sound of fabric rustling.  Katsuya flinched when a handkerchief blotted the cut on his forehead.  “Shame that my boys hurt your face.”

         “I appreciate your concern,” Katsuya said. 

         The handkerchief wiped away enough blood from around his right eye for it to open fully.  The headache eased.

         “Krause used to date the stripper-type, good looking but disposable.  Guess his tastes have matured,” the man said with a chuckle.  The handkerchief was withdrawn. 

         “If your dispute is with Detective Krause, why am I here?”

         Fingers laced through Katsuya’s hair then, combing it with alarming gentleness. 

         “A matter of unfortunate timing and opportunity,” the man said.  The stroking of his hair continued.  “For you anyway.  The boys weren’t expecting you to be at Krause’s apartment.  They snatched you before they realized they had the wrong guy.”

         The stroking stopped.  The fingers left and there was a different sound -- the slight metallic snap of a pocket knife.  He’d heard it often, back in college when he'd had a neurotic classmate in his study group who would snap a knife open and closed repeatedly without awareness -- a way to keep his physical self occupied so his mind could focus on his books. 

         “When you rob a place,” the man continued, as he slid the knife blade through the rope knot between Katsuya’s wrists and sawed at it,  “even if you realize you took the wrong thing, it’s not my philosophy to ditch it.  Everything has value.”

         “Is that why you theorized I'm sleeping with him, because I was at his apartment?”

         The knot was cut through and the rope loosened and fell away.  The man touched Katsuya’s fingers and rubbed them before stepping back.  He left the binding wrapped around Katsuya chest, tethering him to the chair.

         “Sure,” the man said.  He walked back to the chair and sat, this time hanging his arms over the back.  He wore a gray dress shirt with silver cufflinks.  A silver link bracelet peeked under the cuff on his right wrist -- a man who had money and liked to express his wealth.   “But it’s a sense, too.  I can see how he’d go for someone like you.”

         “Someone like me…,” Katsuya said.  He almost wanted to smile for no particular reason, except that he couldn’t have fathomed in a million years that he would be sitting here having a ridiculous conversation with a man he couldn't see.

         “You had a NYPD access badge on you, but no police badge,” his captor said.  “So…?”

         “I’m the department psychiatrist,” Katsuya said.  “No one important.”

         “If you're important to someone, then you're important,” he said, gesturing with one hand.  He laughed at his own musing.

         “I haven’t seen your face.  I’ve not seen your men’s faces.  If you let me go.... “

         The man cut him off, wagging his index finger as he did so.  “Then you’ll forget what happened and not report this?”

         “So you want to keep me to bait Krause?”

         “What I’ll do to you will be so much more than what I could make him feel, even if I had him now in that chair instead of you,” the man's voice had dropped to a low whisper.  There was muted excitement in his words that made Katsuya’s blood run cold.  “Do you think he’d take his own life if I told him the only way I'd stop hurting you would be if he killed himself?”

          Katsuya felt his throat close in that instant.

         “Would it be an act of strength or weakness, if he did that for you?” the man asked.  “I suppose we’ll find out how much he likes…or loves you, huh?”

         He stood and pulled a cell phone from his pocket.  Katsuya grimaced, realizing the phone was his.  The man looked through it first. “Popular,” he said finally.  “Thirty-two missed calls.  Most of them from Krause.”

         “From how you speak of him,” Katsuya said,  “you must've known each other a long time ago.”

         The man stopped looking at the phone. “Yeah,” he said.  “Long, long ago.”

         “How did he wrong you?”

         He didn’t answer.  Instead, he raised the phone.   “Look pretty for the camera,” he said, and clicked the picture before Katsuya could turn away. 

         The flash lit up the room, but it was too bright for Katsuya to see the man in that brief fraction of the second.  He saw white spots instead. 

         The man took another picture.  “We should document a “before” just in case we accidentally ruin your face.”

         He stepped into the light, although Katsuya still couldn’t make out most of his features. 

         “I like nice things,” the man said – stopping in front of Katsuya and towering over him.  “I’ll do my best to make sure you look good, to the end.”

         He leaned forward, just enough to blot out the light.  Katsuya’s eyes focused quickly on his face.  He had seen him before, although the man obviously didn’t recognize him.  He couldn’t pull up the memory, even as the man bent down to his eye level.  He was handsome, in a rugged way.  There were lines on his face – not from age but something else -- a hard life?  He could be David’s age, at most only a couple of years older.

         “Maybe if we both play this right, this could have a happy ending.”

         The man lifted Katsuya’s chin up by his thumb and forefinger.  There were callouses on his fingertips; a sensation Katsuya knew well.   David had callouses  on the fingertips of his shooting hand from his gun.  Like David, the man probably spent hours a week at the range.

         “Maybe you’ll have a very nice, pampered life with me after this is over,” the man said.  His mouth swept over Katsuya’s in a tentative kiss.  After a second pass, his tongue slipped through parted lips.  Katsuya was frozen, fighting the instinct to bite down on the tongue licking against his that tasted of cigarettes.  The kiss wasn’t hard, but it was uncomfortably long.  When it finally broke, the man looked pleased.

         “Bet I can give you better orgasms than he can,” he said.  “Fuck you so hard you’ll forget who Krause is.”

         There were several choice comebacks that brimmed on his tongue, but Katsuya held them all back.  The man was baiting him, testing him, trying to gauge how easily he could be intimidated.  Although he was, Katsuya was glad his ego wouldn’t let it show. 

         The man’s smile only broadened at Katsuya’s silence.  He licked at Katsuya’s lower lip once, then straightened, waiting a few more seconds for a reaction then leaving when there was none. 

         If he hadn’t still been bound to the chair, Katsuya would not have remained sitting.  He closed his eyes, the wash of white being replaced with red.  His mind refused to register what had been said to him.  Instead, he focused on the single thought that was in his mind:  David…. Please find me quickly….