Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Slow news day. In fact, the news has been dragging its five-inch gold stiletto heels through the shit since Thursday morning, and now it’s Sunday, and there’s nothing for it but to start making news up.

“Caesar Catilina 24-hour drug-fuelled hooker–”

Wow Platinum narrows her eyes and the culprit – an intern whose name has been a mystery since he started three weeks ago – swallows the remainder of the sentence along with the rest of their cheap coffee.

Another voice cries out. “Julia Cicero 24-hour drug–”

“Libellous.”

The word ‘libel’ has been thrown around a lot this morning but, as Wow reminds everyone, no mainstream gossip outlet has caught a whiff of a libel lawsuit in the last thirty years. Whether those laws are still in place is a moot point. So fuck it. Make it up.

“Mayor Cicero kills kittens.”

“Eats.”

“Mayor Cicero eats kittens. Too much.”

“Too boring! The animal cruelty angle.” Wow has been holding court since 9am, biting town on the tip of her pen, and is yet to have dignified a single word spoken by having written it down. “People don’t go in for sad dogs that live in cardboard boxes and lick their balls.”

“Well, what about the balls story?”

This is the first time Pippa Decius has opened her mouth all morning, and Wow’s ears prick up as the nib of her pen traces her canine tooth. “There’s a balls story?”

Pippa shifts on her chair, evidently excited by her sudden importance, and it is at this moment that the sun opens on the window behind her, lending her a well-timed halo. “You know the Mayor’s aide? Whatshisname… uh – Zanderz? Yeah, well I heard they took his balls.”

There is a heavy, expectant silence. An angel bearing testicular tattle. More ears prick, chairs creak as bodies lean forward, keening for morsels of gossip, hound-like, salivating.

“They… took his balls?”

“I heard it was a condition of the job. Welcome to the household. Snip, snip.”

“His daughter is medically trained, no? Maybe that’s why…”

“Don’t they tie your balls and wait for them to drop off?”

“That’s what they do with sheep.”

“You’re bullshitting us.”

“I heard it from a source of mine who used to work reception and now waitresses at Nero’s.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Probably so he doesn’t get any ideas and try to fuck his beloved Julia. No chance of a eunuch screwing the boss’ daughter.”

Wow stays steely, letting speculation like a series of electrons bounce and whirr around the nucleus of her cross-legged silence. Only when the mood becomes hysterical – “forced fucking castration in the mayor’s office?!” – does she speak.

“You sure it’s not the bitter lie of a fired reception girl?”

Pippa meets her eye with a sceptical huff. “Would you give a fuck if it was?”

Good point.

Pippa arms herself for the rain and takes a cab to Nero’s for a quick quote while Wow trawls the archives for a – uh, whatshisname – Zanderz. If they’re to publish a two-page spread on the man’s testes, it’s worth knowing who he is first. She knows a little, sure, but not a lot, so the readers will know even less.

It’s two floors down, basement level, in the birdcage, where they keep the archival records, all digitised, alphabetised, dating back as far as they give a shit about. The archive is kept by Maude, who is always asleep at her desk or reading smut, so Wow doesn’t need to pretend to be interested in her weekend, or even say hello. She passes her quickly and settles down at a monitor.

She looks him up, there aren’t many names under ‘Z’ and scrolls through some scant mentions, a few passing references, and a collection of photographs within which he is a background player, a bit-part with an affable smile and a too-large hat. And that’s that. All there is. He’s crying out for a balls scandal to liven him up a bit. The only trouble is that no one's really heard of Zanderz. A parrot on the Mayor’s shoulder without a whiff of scandal about him at all. Not a moment in the public eye more risky than an opening gambit to the Saturnalian Brass Band Festival or a rather ill-suited but ultimately harmless joke at a party.

No wife and it seems, no life. No family to speak of, or at least none on record. Never stated an opinion openly or privately. The human equivalent of white bread sopped in milk.

It’s a good story, though. A good lens, too. Helps with the political angle. The Mayor’s so toothless that his closest advisors have no balls – literally. And it’s sex, too. Which, to forgive the oldest adage in the book, sells. Old, but true.

Not that Jason Zanderz has the look for sex scandal or sex story or sex at all. He’s not what she would call sexy. He’s worlds apart from Caesar, of course. He’s short where Caesar is tall. Goofy where Caesar is stoic. And where Caesar’s an asshole, Zanderz could be – anyway. He’s sort of cute, in a sad way, like seeing a face in a vegetable that’s wilted a little, lying despondently on the chopping board. She taps the heel of her shoe on the toe of the other. Bites her tongue.

“He’s just peachy, isn’t he?” she drawls, like she’s bitten into him, saccharine-sweet, and found him overripe. “He’s not our usual victim.” She saves a picture of him tripping on a stair at a gala event a couple of months ago. He’s pulling an anxious expression, all teeth and brows, that screams ‘they took my balls’. A tight zoom on that expression and there’s your cover photo. Poor bastard. “He’s so clean I bet he squeaks.”

She hears footsteps behind her and the creak of her chair as it gives beneath another’s leaning hand.

“Do you think people will go in for it?”

They don’t have much choice. It’s this or kittens for dinner. And, anyway, Wow finds that she’s already gone in for it. This short, harmless little man in a cape; she can’t help but wonder if it’s really true.

“If you have no balls, can you fuck?” Wow asks.

The question takes her companion – Petra, editor – off-guard. Perhaps it shouldn’t, after having worked with Wow for three years.

“Is that relevant?”

“How is it not? Abstinence in New Rome? How unfashionable.”

“As far as I know… and I can’t say I know… you might be able to fuck, but you can’t…”

“Come.”

Petra clears her throat. It’s as good as an assent. Wow purses her lips and rolls the word across her tongue, humming to herself.

“We’ll publish. Front page. Lead with the sex, then get political if you like. And it’d be great if I could talk to him. What a scoop that would be. Life with no balls. When did you lose them, Mr Zanderz? Do you miss them, Mr Zanderz? Tell me, Mr Zanderz, would you want to fuck me, if you could?”

“He wouldn’t talk to us.”

“Oh, don’t be so sure.” Wow catches sight of herself in the chrome frontispiece of an adjacent monitor, like a silver picture frame, a portrait hanging in the Mayor’s house. “I have my methods.”

Zanderz walks to work in the mornings. It means he has to wake up earlier, but he’s been a morning person for years now, and a little lingering sleepiness is nothing a cup of coffee and a good breakfast won’t fix. Breakfast is usually oat-heavy, as fibre is good for the gut and a happy gut leads to a happy life. Or so his Mama tells him, and she hasn’t been wrong yet. He has oat milk in his coffee, too, which he drinks iced most of the year round, only hot in December and January, or particularly cold days in March.

Today is an iced coffee day, but it is a brisk one. He sees a robin perched on a bare branch as he passes by the park. Robins are very territorial, and its black marble-eye studies him with ill-intent. He passes by with a trotting step as an apologetic trespasser. He gives a wave by means of apology.

He keeps up the pace, quick, sorry, skipping, all the way to the Mayoral household, and doesn’t let up as he climbs the stairs, nor as he scatters across reception, but only slows when he reaches the desk. By this time, a measure out of breath, but in good spirits for the exercise.

The receptionist – Helen is her name, he knows the names of everyone who works in the building, it’s a point of pride to learn them – gives him a suspicious look.

“Good morning, Helen. How was your weekend?”

He’s hummed at by way of response. He’d have half a mind to call this rude, if he didn’t know Helen better, who he’d have thought didn’t have a rude bone in her body. She must be tired. Or busy. Or stressed. He gives her a wave and continues on.

Odd. Strange. But perhaps his imagination playing tricks. It seemed that Helen had the same wary, dark-eyed look as the robin in the park. He stops in the hall to check his face in one of the shinier of the silver picture frames. He hadn’t cut himself shaving. His nose is clear of detritus. His teeth are free of oats. His fly is up. There is nothing in his general person that he can imagine inviting any ill-will. Tired, busy, or stressed, he is sure.

He reaches his quarters and finds it clean and clear as he had left it. His office, as he delights in calling it, is not luxurious by the standards of the Mayoral house. In fact, it is a rather meagre square room with minimal, but practical furnishings. But it is exactly as he asked for it. A large window facing the park, and done up in green, which is his favourite colour. Dark green walls, curtains, and green leather on the desks and chairs. He doesn’t need an awful lot of space, but he does like things the way he wants them.

He hangs his cape on the coat stand, then his hat, and leaves the door at a friendly angle, ajar, in a way that says ‘oh do come in if you wish, no bother’.

In the end, it is not long at all before this silent invitation is taken and Habeus Princeton is stood sheepishly in the doorway. Princeton is not usually the sort to look sheepish. He adopts rather an air of haughty serenity. The change in his general demeanour strikes Zanderz at once.

“What’s happened?” he asks, gravely. His mind fires off in ugly directions. Public disorder. Election fraud. Traffic pile-up.

“You haven’t seen?”

“Seen what?”

“You’re in the – newspaper – the gossip column…”

His stomach churns with an odd mixture of anticipation and dread. He’s not, nor has he ever been, the type to get talked about. There was that joke a couple of months back, and the picture of him tripping on the stairs, but nothing he couldn’t shake off like water.

“I am?” is all he is able to manage, in a voice that he avoids sounding like a squeak.

Princeton brandishes the evidence. His gaze falls first on a picture, unflattering, before the words in bold make themselves known.

BALLS TO THE WALL.

MAYOR’S AIDE LOSES TESTICLES FOR JOB.

“Right. That’s – ah…” Zanderz pushes his knees together instinctively. “That’s… huh…" He clears his throat, and by the way his cheeks are burning he knows he has turned an unfortunate shade of pink. He eyes the paper, then the owner of the paper, back to the paper. "Wow.”

Chapter Text

Caesar can’t come over. She calls three times. Eventually, after letting her third phone call almost ring out, he answers and tells her simply that he’ll be at the Hellenic Gala Event tonight.

“And why aren’t I invited?”

He says that if she wants to go so badly, she’ll find a way to get in. This is true, of course. She’s gatecrashed more parties than she’s received invites.

“It’d be nice of you to ask!” she snaps as the line goes dead. The buzz of the call whines through the receiver as Wow lays amidst her unwashed bed sheets. “Asshole.”

It had been three weeks since they last fucked; and longer since he’d looked at her with anything other than a vague, pompous disinterest. He thinks he’s better than her, she knows that much. He’s starting to think he can do better, starting to get the itch for some rich girl, some grad school slut, some vapid little thing who’s read a couple of books and thinks she’s Ayn Rand with a boob job. He said something to her last time about his ‘Emersonian mind’ and it was all she could do to keep herself from scratching his eyes out. Serves her right for falling in love with a scholar, head full of Megalon and grandiosity, face in the pages of a book rather than between her thighs.

She’s become used to the feeling of not being wanted but lately it’s beginning to gnaw. Not least because she knows she’s hot shit. She could have her pick of them if only she wasn’t so hung up on him. Perhaps she should graze elsewhere. Caesar’s not all he cracks up to be. As a lover, he’s fine. As a man, he’s a pain in the ass. And, besides, now she’s finding herself thinking more fondly of a man with no–

She punches in the office number and tells Petra in no uncertain terms to get her a copy of the guest list. For the Hellenic Ball. For journalistic reasons. And, no, nothing is ever confidential if you want it hard enough. She only has to wait five minutes before an email pops into her inbox.

She scrolls to the bottom of the list immediately. Neatly alphabetised. Z. Zanderz. The only name under Z. Jason Zanderz. Well, goodie.

She’s horny and alone and feeling spurned and she needs to jump back on the Money Bunny bandwagon to feel anything again. A good story, a fresh scoop, and Zanderz ball-gate has been playing on her mind more than she’d care to admit in the thirty-six hours since the story broke. If she’s not careful, the story will go dead, and she’d hate to lose the thread before she reaches its end. She can’t help but be curious. What will Zanderz say to her? Maybe he’ll freak and admit it, blurt out his defect in a flurry of anxious energy. Or maybe he’ll fervently deny it, too fervently, and the lady doth protest too much. (See, Caesar, I can read Hamlet too).

She hopes he’s angry. Really fucking angry. Milquetoast men are so delicious when they’re angry. All bluster and trying to prove. No swearing, of course, so only polite insults here. All golly gosh and damn your eyes. She’d love to see that. Even better, she’d love to film that. Get it all on tape and feature it on tomorrow morning’s segment, blown up large on the biggest screens where everyone will laugh at him, and she can floor them all with her witty one-liners.

She’d like to break him; she isn’t sure why.

But before she breaks him, she must first impress him. No way of knowing whether he’s a tits or an ass man, so she utilises both as best she can. Long skirt, slit up the side, low neckline. A long gold chain that runs down the length of her breastbone and disappears in the folds of the dress.

A dress that is green, of course. She’s done her research.

“One of us is gonna have to change,” she quips, deadpan, grabbing a pinch of his forest-green cape before he flinches away. At first, he’s shocked. She doubts he’s been accosted at many bars before. Then, he sees his adversary, and he goes white. She might’ve attempted this strategy later on in the night, but Caesar is nowhere to be seen so she’s bored already. Perhaps he’d lied from the outset and never planned to arrive at all. Oh well, at least she has her entertainment now. “How embarrassing!”

His mouth forms around words, but he makes none. She’s forced to push the conversation further. “Where’s my drink?”

He stumbles around a few more words and is finally able to turn back to the barkeep and mutter, ‘Whatever the lady wants.”

“Whiskey, rocks.” It’s served in a sleek, shallow tumbler glass. “Thanks, sugar.”

Zanderz makes a face that suggests he wasn’t planning on paying. But he’s too polite now to refuse. Wow can’t help but wonder how much the Mayor is paying him. Or, rather, how little. She wishes she’d ordered something more expensive: the best champagne, by the bottle.

Wow takes her first swig and is particularly pleased with the crescent moon of her red lip left on the rim of the glass. She places it back on the bar in a particular way, angled so he might see it. He gives a sigh that tells her he has.

“I don’t believe we’ve actually been acquainted, Mr–”

“Ms Platinum.”

“Oh! My reputation precedes me.”

“I don’t know what you want–”

“I’m not working. I’m here for pleasure.”

“I know you take me for a fool, Ms Platinum–”

“Wow!” she insists, but he is steadfast.

“Ms Platinum… but I doubt you’re never not working.”

He seems proud of himself. Whether it is through some idea of his that he’s read her, somehow. Or if it’s just that he managed to finish a sentence. The next sip of her whiskey she takes, she fixes his eye, just to cow him a little. It works. She sees him wilt. Vegetable.

“Oh, pooh. You’re no fun. Nothing to say on the matter, Mr Zanderz? The people are desperate to know the truth.”

“I can’t say I know what business the Money Bunny has in my… biology…”

She must say, he’s holding up reasonably well. Showing his face at all certainly takes more balls than she took him for, mind the expression. He seems a tad embarrassed, now she’s here. But he also has this slight superiority that’s already making her itch. Like he’s above the tabloids. Above the gossip. Untouchable in his little Mayoral dolls-house. He seems confident that in a few days all this will blow over.

Wow twinges, irritably. “Oh, please, the Money Bunny thing is getting tired. I have my fingers in far more pies than that,” she scoffs, arrogantly. Two can play at that game. “And, besides, I didn’t write it. I thought ‘testicles’ was a bit wordy for the tagline, but there’s just so many times you can use the word ‘balls’ in a piece before people stop taking you seriously.”

“I understand.” And he smiles.

She knows what he’s doing. There’s cameras everywhere and, worse, there’s eyes. If he lets his facade slip for a second, it would be an admission of guilt. Whereas if he stays cool and calm, he’s untouchable. Clever. Media-trained. Makes her sick.

She looks at him, now, properly, for the first time. He’s shorter than she imagined, and she knew he wasn’t tall. He’s not handsome, he really isn’t, and yet –

He wants conversation brighter, jovial, and so he larks: “Have you seen the brass band?”

“Cut the crap, Zanderz. Are we going to tango or not?”

“Are we–?”

“Sit down with me. Prove the fuckers wrong. Show them you have the balls. Literally.”

“I’m not going to be on your show.”

“You don’t have to be! Give me a statement!”

She spiders her hand across the bar until he’s cornered between her arm, long and slender and pale, and the ferns of a potted plant behind him. He sweats like a guilty thing. Rapping her fingers on the marble, she grins, wolfish.

“I’m not…” His eyes flit up the length of her arm to where it cleaves the material of her dress. The same shade of green as him.

“Just some little answers.”

“My drink…” he mewls. His drink is currently on the other side of her arm and he hasn’t the courage to traverse her body, immovable and porcelain, to retrieve it.

“When did you lose them, Mr Zanderz?”

His chuckle is incredulous. “No comment.”

She is persistent. She’s learned to be. “Do you miss them, Mr Zanderz?”

His eyebrow quirks, curiously, one might say, sadly. “No comment.”

Wow cracks her knuckle against the bar. Kill shot. “Tell me, Mr Zanderz, would you want to fuck me, if you could?”

The question is like flint. He recoils as if sliced. He nurses a wound in the opening and closing of his mouth, the bundling of his hands into his breastbone. Wild animals cover their hearts when they feel threatened. Wow’s scissors sharpen.

“Would you?” she presses on the bruise. The ache is stupendous.

He says nothing.

The silence is everything.

Zanderz excuses himself, grasping his drink across the barrier of her steely arm, spilling just a little in the action, and retreating across the room to safer pastures.

“Mr Zanderz, are you–?”

He’d hoped it wasn’t showing. Or at least that he was doing a good enough job of smiling through it. Unfortunately his smile is showing as a grimace, and his hands are shaking.

“I’m fine! Good! I’m great! How are you? Have you seen the brass band? Wow – umm, no, goodness! Jeepers! Have you tried this cocktail? I can’t remember what it’s called. It’s good, though. It’s – blue.” He’s offered a baffled, blinking expression in return. It’s one he can’t look at for long. “Ah! Look! A drum-set.”

It’s like a saving grace. A drum-set without a drummer, caught in one of the yellow overhead lights. There’s to be a jazz band taking the stage later tonight, but for now the drum-set is alone and inviting.

“Excuse me, I’ll just–”

He pushes past the concerned congregants and takes a seat at the drum-set. He casts a nervous eye back to the party and finds he can’t see Ms Platinum anymore. Shame. Good! Good, yes.

She is attractive. He’d be mad not to –

He takes a drumstick and smashes the cymbal.

You have to be attractive in her line of work. It helps. It makes her victims susceptible. Like a praying mantis who decapitates its mate.

He pounds the bass drum.

Mate. How ludicrous. Whatever has got him thinking about mates. No, no. No need. She’s very pretty, sure. She’s blonde and she wears her clothes well and, well, it’s not often that he gets attention from ladies. It’s natural he should feel this way. He’s just a man, after all.

He picks up a form of beat.

It’s not much attention, though, is it? Not the sort he wants. Not amorous attention, not really. It isn’t kind attention, to be sure. It’s sort of cruel. Sort of mean. Sort of bullying. Public humiliation. Then why does he feel so –

He speeds up.

He should be furious with her. But he isn’t, somehow. He’s rather interested to see what she does.

The drums make an awful racket.

But he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t want her anywhere near him. He should file a libel lawsuit. But he forgets which laws really apply here anymore. He forgets which leg to stand on.

The cymbals crash. Again. Again.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

His drumstick snaps in two. Wood goes flying into the air. Almost takes his eye out.

His heart is left beating faster than he’s certain is healthy. His stomach quivers with a new feeling. He jams the broken drumstick into his thigh and presses it into a bruise. And, oh, the ache. The ache.

Chapter Text

Talk about a drum solo. She’s got the poor bastard wound up so tight he must be about ready to –

Caesar .

He’s on the retreat. Unmistakably him: black suit, polished shoes, tall, beam-like, moving swift and easy as smoke through a room that parts for him. The room is less kind to her, blocking and tripping as she dodges through to catch him. “Caesar!” Nothing. Not even a cursory glance or an instinctive turn in the direction of his name. “Caesar! Caesar!” His pace quickens. Two can play at that game. She moves faster. Cat and mouse, where she’s the pussycat.

He escapes into the night, into the rainfall, and dives into the backseat of his waiting car, where she has gained enough speed to slide in after him before the door can close.

“Caesar! Long time no see!” She places her bag on the seat between them in an effort to make herself settled. “If I was insecure – which of course I’m not – I’d think you’re purposefully avoiding me.”

“Wow,” he remarks, dryly, too dry for such a name as hers. “You are in my car.”

She scoffs. Caesar, Caesar, always obvious.

“Last time I was in the backseat with you, it was our car…”

“Not technically. It’s never been registered under your name.” Caesar gives a weary nod at his driver who is eyeing him warily through the rearview mirror. “Drive, Fundi.” The car gives a shudder and they’re on the move.

“Your place or mine?” she purrs.

“Can’t we just enjoy an evening drive together?” Caesar replies, steadfast. “Take in the sights. Survey the city.”

There’s not much to survey. The city lights are melting in wet streams down the window panes. Ribbons of colour licking one another on the glass.  Steam rises from the grates in pungent plumes and there’s a hooker on every corner. Sometimes Wow thinks they’d have a better chance of fucking Caesar than she does.

Bitches.

“Fine,” she snaps. Clipped. “A night drive.”

What follows is a silence that can only be described as icy. The tension runs cool and unwelcoming. Wow can tell that at various points Caesar notices a street, a demolition site, an old building, that he wants to comment upon, but he reminds himself of her general disliking for his architectural passions, and decides against it. At other points, Wow wants to kiss him silly, but she knows he wouldn’t let her, so decides against it. Instead, they simmer simultaneously on their too-far-apart seats.

Wow makes a habit of tapping the toe of her shoe on the front seat, steady and unbroken, until Caesar loses his patience and must speak again.

“You swindled your way into getting invited,” he remarks. “But you didn’t stay long.”

“You were paying attention?”

“It’s nine o’clock.”

“You didn’t stay long either,” she counters.

“There was no one there who interested me,” he parries.

“Well, there was no one there who interested me,” she lies. He knows her lie. She wears lies like diamonds on her jewellery; the flashier, the obvious. “And besides I was really there on business. A little investigative research.” She’s trying to play coy. The ‘I don’t care about you’ card. It rolls off him like the water on the car bonnet.

He’s becoming disinterested again. She sees it in the quick, darting gaze he issues from the window, dodging raindrops to set his eye upon something new and interesting and sexy. Something not her.

“What’s the deal with the Mayor’s aide, Zanderz?” she asks. She regrets it instantly. She doesn’t want to talk about Zanderz; not now, not with him, but she panicked and needed something to bring him back to her, even if just for a moment, even if it was just about that little man in green. But now that they’re on the subject, perhaps he can be of some use to her. She presses again. “You know anything?”

“You mean the one with no balls?”

Wow is flattered. Her ego flutters. “You read my article?”

“The headline was… compelling. It’s not very Money Bunny of you.”

“Oh, fuck off. You know I’m tired of that game.”

“So you turned your sights to genitalia?”

My sights are always on genitalia , is what she would say if she weren’t more interested in getting an answer to her question right about now. “Zanderz. Spill.”

“He was PA to Cicero when he was District Attorney. He’s always been a greasy little sycophant. But we know Cicero likes those, so it’s kept him in a job.”

“Wife? Kids?” She speaks without thinking and is surprised at the specificity and verve of her own line of questioning.

“Not that I know of. Though I’ve never had a conversation with the man that’s been anything close to enlightening on any topic. He’s five-feet of puerile small talk, polite nods, and neurotic prancing.” Caesar cannot hide his distaste for such waste. What a man like that might be if only he dreamt of himself as something more. “He plays the drums, though.”

“Yes, I saw that.”

“Which I didn’t know before. Just like I didn’t know they castrated those who joined the Mayor’s staff. Or the DA’s staff. Whenever it happened. If it’s true.” Caesar narrows on her. “Is it true?”

Wow shrugs. “He’s declined to comment.”

“Which you take as an admission of guilt?”

“Which I take as… an invitation… to be curious.” Wow clenches her fist in the skirts of her dress. She doesn’t like the swell of this conversation. She’s making herself distasteful to him, which is the last thing she wants to be. “This is boring me, now. Are we going back to yours or what?” Caesar need not remind her that she was the one to raise the subject of Zanderz in the first place, but he does feel the need to make it clear that there is no chance she will end up at his place tonight, nor he at hers. “Fine, just fucking drop me off.”

They do drop her off, closer to her apartment than she asks them to, on Caesar’s insistence. He’s so goddamn gentlemanly, it makes her sick. The only way she stops him from walking her up is by slamming the car door and running inside as quickly as she can.

Once in, she can breathe more normally. She lets her stomach go, her face, the way she holds her spine. Her body settles wearily into comfort. She climbs the stairs with the effort of the day dropping from her, leaving a gross trail of her sexiness damply behind her, up and up, until she turns to a familiar door, unlocks it, and finds the flat dark and empty as she had left it.

“Home sweet fucking home.”

She pours herself a deep red wine and manages to nurse the glass for two minutes before it’s drained. Another slug from the bottle quickly disappears, and the third she must shake out in drips and drops before rolling the empty glass into a corner where it will sit for weeks, maybe months, prettying up the place. Waiting for Caesar to arrive, perhaps, and tell her she’s been bad for not taking care of herself, pick up the empty bottles with a tut, and dutifully throw them away for her. It’s a little ritual they have. She makes messes so he can clean them. And he always comes to clean them in the end.

No need to undress. She likes the way the silk feels on her skin, bare, the flesh of her thighs, her nipples pert from the cold. Wow has two options when she’s home and depressed: drink or come. Sometimes both. Tonight is a both.

She lays herself down on her unmade bed, sighing at the feeling. Too dark. She stretches to switch her bedside lamp on. Too bright. The window overlooking the city bears into the room with its nightlights and traffic and never-ending hum. Billboards aren’t sexy. She turns away from the window. Tries the lamp again, this time with her nightgown (discarded, dirty) over the lampshade. Mood lighting. Better.

She rolls onto her back and without further ado drives her fingers unceremoniously inside herself and gives the requisite groan at the feeling. Her knees stick upwards. Her head butts awkwardly against two pillows. Right. Any minute now this should get her going. As long as she opens her legs, closes her eyes, and thinks of –

Caesar .

Caesar’s arms tracing, long, confident, water-like, along the sides of her body, curving around her breasts, her hips, down her thighs and between them. Citrus and sandalwood. The weight of a man, and the insistence of their body, unforgiving.

That’s it. She feels the quivering in her body that allows her digits to sink deeper, where it’s wetter, where she yields with a shuddering gasp. A few choice moans, a well placed ‘ohh fuck’, a little curving of her spine, lifting of her hips, and the careful craft of the shadowy man in her head. Her Caesar. Her Caesar. Who does exactly as she wants, loves her just right, pushes deeper with his strong hand.

“Caesar… Caesar…” Her voice rises, caressing the air, further and further until she imagines it might even reach him, somehow, subliminally.

She crooks her fingers and gasps. Yes. That’s just it. Her Caesar knows what to do. Her Caesar knows how to make her wet, how to make her come. Her Caesar has learnt the map of her body and how to navigate it.

Her Caesar, the dark figure of her imagination, rears backwards onto his haunches. Wow bites her lip and awaits him. She hears the soft click of his metal buckle. He’s hungry, his body bristles with it. Wow’s fingers move with more energy, curling just right. He unclasps his belt, his trousers, opens himself up to her. She opens herself to him in turn and –

No balls.

He turns his face to meet hers.

Zanderz .

She sits up with a start, pulling her fingers away and wiping her hand on the sheets in a mild panic.

Fucking Zanderz . He’d been unmistakable. The vague man in her mind had that same strong nose, affable smile, dark eyebrows. Nothing of Caesar’s noble diffidence. This was Zanderz’ desperate plea. She doesn’t even know if he’d want to fuck; but he certainly wanted to fuck her.

But she doesn’t want to fuck him. Unless she does. Unless she’s horny enough to, or curious enough to know if he would. Maybe that was it. An insane gamble in self-aggrandisement: can I be hot enough to make the eunuch fuck?

She leaves a trail on the bed where her fingers are cleaned, the sticky evidence of her arousal now making her feel mildly ill. Maybe it’s something else: can the eunuch be hot enough to make me want to fuck him?

Surely not. He’s not. But she’s never fucked a eunuch before (and she’s fucked a lot) so it’s natural that she’s curious. It’s a little shining trophy. A memory for the cabinet. When she’s old and maybe even grey and definitely rich, she’ll be able to look back at her life and know that she fucked a eunuch, and that’ll have all been worthwhile.

He’s reticent, though. He wouldn’t say a word at the ball. Wouldn’t give her an inch let alone a mile. It’d take something drastic. Something he couldn’t ignore. Something he wouldn’t ignore. There’s no living like this.

Wow tells the network that they need to go harder on the balls story, and she has just the way to do it. They tell her that a break-in at the bank last night should take priority. She tells them to fuck the bank, she’s on a mission here.

Something he can’t ignore.

The next morning – 9am – Wow can be seen on screens across the nation. Zanderz watches the report from his office chair.

“Good morning New Rome, Wow Platinum here saying ‘Wow!’ with the latest in the Zanderz balls scandal. Our sources speculate that mayoral aide Jason Zanderz is a little less of a man than the first appears. In fact, this reporter ran into Zanderz last night who, when asked whether he’d make love to a woman, denied comment. Which begs the question: gay or sterile?”

The ensuing graphic: GAY OR STERILE?, was perhaps overkill. But it was gaudiness he couldn’t ignore.

Chapter Text

He thinks it over, and discovers it really is rather stupid.   

It could very easily be neither. To suggest that his lack of response when he was so suddenly and so rudely asked to comment on something so – ahem – personal, well it was shoddy journalism. And that’s putting it kindly. A less kind person would call it a hatchet job. A smear campaign should at least be evidenced, not built upon silence and inferrals! It’s laughable, really. He should feel sorry for the whole shoddy network, and Ms Platinum as its helm whose shine is beginning to tarnish.

Then why does he feel so hot?

Zanderz is sat in his office with the television on the wall playing the report, now paused on the incriminating graphic: GAY OR STERILE? Two hours have passed since it aired, and he is yet to do anything else other than watch it.

Neither gay nor sterile are insults, unless we’re all twelve years old and this is recess. Which it is not. And we are all adults here, or so he thought. They’re adults and he shall deal with this like an adult. A cease and desist would do the trick.

Not that they’d listen to it. They’d probably take it as more evidence, blow it up on the front page and make all sorts of claims about his signature being typical of an adult male with no balls. No. They’d laugh at any litigation. Any attempt to save his name is a waste.

Then don’t bother. Why must his name need saving? He’s hardly a very public figure, until a few days ago people may have known his face but it was a conscious effort that they not know his name. He was but a limb of Mayor Cicero; nothing more. It would be vain to think anyone really cared about him outside a little titillating gossip. He’d be forgotten about as soon as the next big story broke. So leave it to fade from the collective imagination. Wait until his balls were tucked back safely where they belonged.

This would be the sensible thing to do. To do nothing. To keep sitting safely behind the dark wood of his varnished desk.

Zanderz’ office is quickly becoming a refuge for him during working hours, and he is growing loath to leave it for fear of someone raising the issue of his recent media coverage and embarrassing him. But they, too, shall forget soon enough, and he’ll be safe again.

He turns the television off, and in the black expanse of the empty screen, he still sees a set of sharp white teeth framed by pretty red lips.

It seemed more and more like a personal vendetta. He cannot think of the story without thinking of her, the authoress: Wow. What had he done to inspire in her such vitriol? He couldn’t imagine. They had never really spoken to one another before the Gala, unless he’s forgetting and he doesn’t often forget. Perhaps he had accidentally cut in front of her at a carpet event and not realised it and from that moment on she had sworn to destroy the man in green. Maybe she was just beginning with him and she would graduate to Mayor Cicero who would have – three – nipples? Or maybe she was just interested in destroying him for reasons even she was oblivious to. 

Zanderz can remember being at school and encountering pubescent boys who, when confronted by a girl deemed worthy of note, would find the best course of action to be as vile to her as possible. It never made much sense to him. He would rather offer to sharpen their pencil or let them copy his algebra homework. But, time and time again, the nasty boys, who heckled the pretty girls after class or laughed in their faces, would come out the victors.

Perhaps she has designs.

Don’t be absurd, Zanderz! Don’t flatter yourself to think Miss Platinum’s slur campaign against you is some form of public, elongated seduction technique!

And yet it’s working.

He can’t recall ever having been seduced. He presses his knee into the edge of his desk. He wouldn’t know what seduction feels like. Couldn’t guess either beyond what he might glean from the pages of some favourite romance novels. Perhaps this it is: the slicing of a wooden panel into his kneecap and the shooting pain in his shin and the fog in his head that refuses to let go of the idea of her.

He’d long since burrowed, like a small furry animal, into the innermost chambers of his heart, and he quite liked it there. It’s not that Zanderz has never been in love before. It’s just been a long time, is all. Long enough to hope he was safe from all that.

Love! Nonsense! This can’t be called love. This humiliation. This cruelty. This bird-in-a-cage panic. Unless it’s all either of them have known of it; now that’s possible.

Maybe that’s why he’s hard. Yes. It is becoming harder to ignore that the crotch of his nicely-tailored trousers has been growing tighter with each passing moment. Inconvenient timing, yet he eyes the door with a serious intent. He passes across the window; no chance of anyone in the park seeing anything that would strike them as unusual. Just a man. The mayor’s man. Sitting at his desk. Bringing a hand down. Casually. Without much mind. Letting his fingers brush curiously across the fabric. Sighing. Eyes fluttering shut. Thinking of her.

“Mr Zanderz?”

“Huh?” he blurts, smacking his hands into the desk, placing them atop it, before clearing his throat and answering with a little more decorum, “Uh, yes? Helen?”

“I… you have a visitor…”

“A… visitor…?”

“Oh, fuck this. This is a waste of time.” And such is enough to herald her entrance. A fanfare of profanity and then the woman herself, armoured in bronze, a short skirt and a silk shirt. She wears her hair in coils around her head, studded with metal laurels. “Mr Zanderz. You left quite abruptly last night. You didn’t say goodbye.”

Helen, poor Helen, shifts where she stands, glaring alarmed at Mr Zanderz, who bids her stand down with a small wave of his hand and a high-pitched, “Thank you, Helen.”

The temperature in the room quivers once the door clicks shut. He’s hot and cold all at once as she stalks the perimeter like a tigress in a pen. “Helen, huh? First-name basis? How familiar. Never wanted to fuck her over this desk of yours?” She starts making a beeline for him. He shifts, enough for her to see.

Zanderz is appalled to discover that the tightness in his pants hasn’t abated and, if anything, is getting worse.

“That’s Helen… she’s lovely… she’s a very nice woman, I wouldn’t… I don’t…”

“Shame.” Wow bends over the desk towards her sweet little victim, letting the silken collar gape at the bust, and she watches as he squirms at the flash of her milky-white chest. “It’s such a nice desk…” She draws a curve on the leather with her fingernail, scoring a line from her elbow to his wrist.

He pulls his wrist away. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s been hours. I’m disappointed. I thought I would’ve heard from you. After yesterday. After this morning. It’s bad manners to leave a lady waiting.”

He scoffs. “It was pretty… immature. What you said this morning. And offensive.” If he weren’t – uh – standing to attention, then would rise from his seat in an attempt to feel a fraction less powerless. But unfortunately for him, he must stay seated.

“I had to get your attention somehow.”

“My… attention?” She sits on the far end of his desk. The material of her skirt creases and lifts to reveal a little more of her thigh. That’s got his attention all right. “Well, you’ve certainly made your point, storming into my office after your broadcast. And… well… getting changed.” He wants to bite his own tongue off. He’s giving away too much. She mustn’t know he’s looking quite so much at her skirt; as if his boggling eyes aren’t already giving the game away.

“What?”

“You’ve changed…” He remembers quite clearly from the broadcast that she was wearing – of all colours – green.

This thrills her somewhat; the discovery that he’d paid attention to what she was wearing, and committed it to memory. Whatever for? She yearns to discover.

“Do you prefer this outfit? Or the one from this morning?”

She stands up so he might see her better. Turns around. Holds herself in her trained way.

“I believe you’ve made your point, Ms Platinum.”

“And what point is that?”

“You can see yourself out.”

“So soon?”

“I don’t think you can say anything to me that’s going to be of any use!” he cries, growing confident now. “You’ve humiliated me, made me a laughingstock in my own place of work, jeopardised my position in the mayoral house and in the eye of the public, all in the pursuit of some grade-school joke. And I have racked my brains but I can’t for the life of me discover why you would’ve done such a thing! What you mean to gain by… insinuating that… I have… no… yes, you’ve done quite enough. I’ve had my fill. Expect to hear from my lawyers. I have nothing more to say to you and I doubt you have anything to say to me that isn’t smutty or crass or rude, so there!”

Zanderz might have resigned feeling rather proud of himself for standing his ground. But unfortunately for him, Wow had taken a position on his side of the desk that gave her quite the view of his… manhood.

“Oh, sweetheart… what’s this?”

He has no time to feel pride, but plenty to feel shame. Zanderz closes his eyes, mortified, twisting backwards into his seat, when those wide eyes of hers narrow in on his – ahem – situation.

“Please…” It is a last attempt at concealing some of himself, keeping those last vestages unearthed by her. Alas, she moves like smoke to his side.

“So you have some of the apparatus, if not all. And…” She runs a hand along his thigh, experimentally, and sees him twitch through his clothing. “Not gay…” He gives a hysterical burst of laughter. “Or not for Ms Platinum, at least. Not many men can resist me, regardless of what they like the rest of the time. What about you? Can you resist me?”

“Is this… ah… investigative journalism?” he sighs. Anything to put this situation back on track. It’s looking less and less likely now she’s tracing her fingers along the buttons at his waistband. “The big scoop?” he pries. She hooks her forefinger into the material and pulls the button free. “An exclusive?” Her hand grasps him through the fabric of his pants and he squeals.

“Oh, no, no… this is personal curiosity…” Her lips curl around the shell of his ear as she whispers there. He feels her teeth and shudders. “I’d just love to know what you are.”

Her hand then moves in a way he can only describe as a knead. His hips give an involuntary start upwards and she clicks her tongue and eases him back down with a swift up-down-up and he’s left breathless. His chest swells with a hundred embarrassing requests, a litany of desperate pleases and yeses and more, more, more. She obliges before he asks, giving him a squeeze that’s as close to tender as she’s capable of.

“Good boy…” she croons, using the pad of her forefinger on the head, which she feels out through his trousers, and runs circles around it until he’s half out of his mind. He looks so pretty like this, mouth agape and cheeks flushed red. She must be his first. Must be his only. She wonders how far it’ll go. She’s never given anyone a dry orgasm before; it’s one for the bucket list. “That’s it, puppy.”

Zanderz hand flies to her wrist. He wants – needs – more. His thumb runs across bone and it tickles.

“What do you want from me?” he whines. Almost broken. She’s almost broken him. The feeling that fills her is a brush of heaven.

“I want you to come for me, stupid.”

“Ah, woOOw!”

It’s a comical sound, like a man juggling plates losing them all in a moment. But his body wrenches and spasms and Wow guides him through it like an angel. She feels a heat beneath her palm blooming. At first, she bites a smile, triumphant, and then she freezes.

Did he?

She pulls her hand away and, left behind, a dark spot, growing in irregular bursts, as he strains with the force of his unsatisfying release.

He did exactly as she asked, exactly when she asked. He’s the sweetest little lapdog she could ask for. She just didn’t know this was a trick he was capable of.

The realisation makes her falter.

Balls or no balls? She got her answer.

Her hand leaves him and he writhes at the loss of contact. He still has that dumb, blissful look that men get when she runs her hand across the curtains and makes an excuse and bolts out of the room. Like a coward. Like a fool.

She must be out of the building before Zanderz can collect a single thought. The first is that he’s made a mistake. The second is that he didn’t in fact do anything, she did all the doing, he just sat there. The third is, what a remarkable mistake.

Then the embarrassment seeps cold into the fabric of him, along with his unfortunate emission, and he prickles with the discomfort of it.

Zanderz’ day – his job – dawns on him with a sudden and violent reality as the haze of his orgasm slips away. The clock shows 12.48. He has a meeting with Cicero at 1. And there’s a cumstain on the front of his trousers that doesn’t bear hiding.

He undresses himself in a cubicle of the public bathroom and stands in just his underpants, wetting toilet roll with his spit and rubbing away at the crotch of his trousers. It is perhaps Zanderz’ lowest ebb.

Then why does he feel so hot?