Chapter Text
Kal burst into the shop, hair still damp from his meeting at the bathhouse.
"He found me," Kal said, hands shaking as he came in.
"Who? Lucian?" Teunis said, dropping what he was doing with the shop ledger. "Lock the door."
Kal shut the door but didn't lock it, leaning back on it heavily. He looked a mess, like he'd all but run back from the bathhouse. "Not Lucian. My–Marcus."
"Marcus," Teunis said flatly. Another of Kal's hideous romantic farces, though heaven knew where he found them all. Like dredging the river for every awful bit of debris.
Kallius made a face like he'd swallowed something rotten. "My–master," Kal said finally, like dragging it out of him.
Teunis' brows shot up. No wonder Kal was so rattled. "So lock the door," Teunis said, more rattled than he cared to admit at the thought of Gaius turning up to look for him. "I'll go out the back and get Elasus to scare him off, you go upstairs and pull the curtains." Like they'd done when Lucian had come sniffing around again.
"He's not–he didn't follow me," Kal said, finally steadying a bit to drag a hand through his hair. "I'm meeting him tomorrow."
"You're what?" Teunis snapped, getting up to push Kal away from the door and lock it.
Kal, the idiot, smiled. "He asked me to lunch. Like we're friends. He wants to give me my jewelry back," Kal said with a shaky laugh, like this was a wonderful joke and not a plan for his old master to reel him back in and destroy his life. He breezed past Teunis into the studio.
"You're not going, are you?" Teunis asked, following Kal back. "Kallius? Are you?"
Kal paced around the studio, rubbing his hand over his mouth, and Teunis knew what he was going to say before he said it. He had that look, the same look he'd had when he'd gotten it in his head to tell Caecilius that they were both quitting and starting their own studio. "I'm going to see him," Kal said finally, done pacing.
"You're not."
Kal gave him a mulish look, head full of stupid, prideful nonsense. "I am. I want him to see who I am now."
"He's not going to," Teunis snapped. "All he's going to see is a whore, because that's all you'll ever be to him. You know that." Teunis had heard enough about stupid, awful Marcus from stupid, drunk Kal to know that.
Kal took out his silver cigarette case, his stupid affectation for when he was deciding who he wanted to be, what character he wanted to play. "It's not for him. It's for me."
"You're a fucking idiot," Teunis said bitterly. This was going to go exactly the way it had with Lucian and then Teunis was going to pick up the pieces again, because he was also a fucking idiot.
Kal laughed to himself as he got his cigarette lit and went to open a window away from all the flammable paint. Kal swore up and down he never smoked while he painted, but Teunis had come in to the studio enough mornings to find ash around the easel to know exactly what kind of idiot he was. "It'll be fine," Kal said, like Teunis was the unreasonable one. He'd said the same about the disaster of an exhibition he had planned.
"You're going to fuck him, aren't you," Teunis said flatly.
"No," Kal snapped, half turning to glare at him. "Never. Of course I wouldn't."
"I know you," Teunis said, stabbing a finger at him. One of these days Teunis was going to come to work to find the building burned down. Or else show up and find Kal had been voted a member of the all-women academy with Teunis on his coattails; there was very little in-between with Kal. "And you're going to fuck him once to prove something to yourself. You have terrible taste in men."
"Present company included," Kal said sweetly, like he thought he was so clever. He would have been unbearable to whore with, pretty and flirty and absolutely poison.
"Yes, present company included," Teunis snapped back, all the reasons Kal had been fun to fuck once or twice but maddening to live with. "Why can't you just fuck someone nice for once?"
Kal just smiled at that, stupid. "What's the fun in that?" he said.
Teunis gave him a long, flat look. Kal smoked and just looked placidly back at him. "You know you don't have to do what he says anymore," Teunis said finally, trying to talk some sense into him, but talking sense into Kal had always been like talking to a stone wall.
Kal gave him that mulish look again, serious. So he'd figured out who he was going to be. For now. "I know that," Kal said, that dangerous, even tone he got when he was putting on a front for citizens. So there was going to be no reasoning with him after all. "I want him to see who I am. That's all."