THE GENTLEMEN'S CLUB Ralph
By and copyright Lady Poetess This work is strictly fictitious and any resemblance to anyone dead or life is definitely coincidental.
ONE
Ralph Fiennes was cool and debonair. He was, after all, the third son of one of the last few true blue-blooded aristocrats of England. Problems might rain on Ralph but he never seemed ever perturbed even slightly by them. He leaned against the wall, gloriously handsome in his chiseled and aristocratic face and looking like temptation incarnate in proper black tux. He was all in black, with only a glimpse of white from his shirt under the suit to break the monotony.
Griffin Bracket stared at the photograph and heard his deep intake of breath. His heart hurt at the sight of such beauty. Ralph's red bow tie was careless slung across his broad left shoulder, giving him an air of dishevelment.
And Ralph was looking at the camera in disinterest, as if he knew a lustful audience was watching him, and he couldn't care less.
Griff perused the other photos disinterestedly. All were of friends of John, all gay men that good-naturedly agreed to lend their faces to John's latest project. Brian, in shorts and T-shirt catching a basketball, his shirt lifted to expose a brief glimpse of flat stomach; Mike grinning like a gleaming Ken doll to the camera; Ethan biting his thumb and looking out of camera's range -- all men made even more beautiful by John's stark and elegant photography. There was Seth, shy yet vivacious, in a clown suit and sitting on a box in a fun house, looking at the camera and smiling enigmatically. And of course, the two best friends Mikey and Ryan laughing and jostling each other as they walked out of a club.
John made simplicity sexy. Yet Griff's eyes kept darting back to that photo of Ralph.
He had never met Ralph. No one seemed to know him very well. Ethan, a playwright, has told Griff that Ralph was a very rich son of a British titled lord, and hence had the luxury to hide away and write as a life. Griff pushed aside a photo of Ronan sitting at a park bench, looking at Stephen who walked past, absently noting that Ronan looked indeed like a man in love, and looked at John.
"I haven't met Ralph before."
John wasn't an unobservant man. "Join the club. When I first saw Ralph I too fell madly in lust. Looking at him made my heart hurt. Still do sometimes." John smiled at Griff. "Don't tell Mikey that, okay?" he said, referring to his live-in lover. "Look at that smug bastard," he said, poking his second finger at Ralph's face. "He never gives anyone time of day, indulging people and himself at his own whim and fancy. He's a heartbreaker."
"He broke your heart," Griff murmured.
John laughed almost bitterly. "I wasn't given any time of the day by him, much less the luxury of having my heart broken by him. He loves beauty, and he has no time for a plain man like me." John said the last statement in an as-a-matter- of-fact tone. Looking at Griff's simple handsome face, he smiled. "Don't go there Griff. Don't commit emotional suicide."
"Just asking," Griffin murmured, still looking at the photo.
"Just be aware that you're not the first to look at him and feel that way. I doubt you'll be the last." John hesitated -- that photo was the best of the series he had done on Ralph. He also knew the pain of doomed lust. "Keep this photo Griff," he said gently.
Griff smiled then, a brilliant flash of white teeth and genuine gratitude. That was the magic that was Griffin -- he was classically handsome yet he was so earnest and transparent in his desires and wishes. He was a simple, linear man who lived no further than today. "Thanks John," he said, pocketing the photo.
John watched Griffin walked out of the studio, another good-looking man who had forgotten him after he had given the man what the man wanted. He told himself that he was immune to beauty. But his heart hurt each time he saw beautiful men and women around him, always aware that he was too plain to even warrant a second glance from them. Or a thought after they were done with him.
Until Mikey. Old habits, however, died a slow death. Maybe in a hundred years he would finally stop feeling the hurt.
He saw the young man walked in, casually unzipping his leather jacket. His heart, hurting before, now broke. "Mikey, tell me again why you stay this long with me?" he asked softly, taking Mikey's left hand in his right.
"Because you're cool," Mikey said, falling into John's arms. "And because I love you."
"I'll keep you a little longer," John said, the pain in his heart forgotten. He had Mikey -- nothing else mattered.
He hoped Griff would learn fast that Ralph couldn't feel anything for anyone but himself. He hated to see beauty broken into pieces. Besides, he liked that man a lot.
TWO
The man bent over his keyboards, barely looking at the monitor as his fingers flew, forming words in barely coherent speed. Ralph Fiennes had lost his writer's block. He was inspired, and he couldn't stop the words from pouring out of him.
I'm lonely, he typed. Saved me before I lose myself.
Today I saw a man who taught me the meaning of desire. A man of tall stature and a smile that could melt the sun in its warmth. I am, upon laying eyes on him, exceedingly jealous of the very space he occupied. I want to be the very air he breathes, and I want to be one he breathes upon, he continued.
He heard Griffin stir in the bed behind him and felt a delicious shiver surge up his naked spine, feeling the goose bumps of anticipation on his skin. Then Griffin was behind him -- so close, the man's body heat burned Ralph. When Griff's large, rough hands touched his shoulders, naked flesh searing white heat on naked flesh, Ralph threw his head back and moaned, eyes closed.
He spread his legs, feeling Griffin's touch warming every inch of his body. His balls filled the juncture of his thighs even as his cock filled, standing strong and proud in abject worship of the man touching him.
They had met each other ten minutes into the party last night, and Ethan had barely introduced Griffin to Ralph when Ralph had excused himself. He was shaken, in truth, at the way his heart burst into flames of desire when he first saw Griffin. The shorter man -- six feet, Ralph guessed, to his six feet three -- was handsome in a pretty model way, but it was the man's brilliant smile that blinded Ralph. That, and the sheer predatory gleam in Griffin's eyes when the man looked at him.
Unnerved, Ralph had fled for the safety of Brendan's library. He knew Griffin was pursuing, for he was somehow aware of every bristling of hair on his skin, the way heat flushed his face the moment Griffin was near. Ridiculous -- it was as if they were both animals in heat, which was impossible.
Griffin climbed the stairs, ten steps behind Ralph. Ralph felt foolish running away from this man, who couldn't be older than twenty-six at most to his thirty- four, but he quickened his pace. Thrill, terror, fear, arousal... he couldn't distinguish his own feelings anymore.
"No," he said to himself when he found himself on a deserted corridor. Fuck Brendan, why couldn't he have a smaller mansion? He couldn't hear the guests anymore. He could hear the steady footsteps; however, the tap of sturdy leather soles on polished marble floor.
Griffin walked slowly, step by step, grinning almost demonically as he calmly loosened his tie with his right hand. The slow tug and unloosening of the elegantly knotted fabric terrified Ralph, who saw the promise in the graceful sweep of that hand.
He began to run, not caring where he was going. He only knew he had to seek safety to think and reconsider this mad lust.
And he heard Griffin giving chase.
"Stay away," he cried in genuine fear.
He never felt the impact of falling when Griffin crashed onto him.
He was aware, however, of Griffin's chest and groin pressing on the length of his back. He breathed softly, letting the scent of Griffin's cologne overwhelm him like a drugged haze. "No," he started again, trying to shake Griffin off. He hated this helplessness and loss of his control.
"No?" Griffin murmured, a soft tenor of promise in his voice.
Both of them were aware of Griffin's throbbing erection pressing into the juncture of Ralph's thighs.
"Please, don't do this," Ralph pleaded.
Griffin snarled and hooked his fingers into Ralph's collar. And ripped.
Ralph leapt up then, throwing Griffin off. There was a loud tear as his shirt and coat gave way. He couldn't make more than three paces however when Griffin's hands grabbed his feet, tripping him. Ralph fell heavily on his back even as Griffin pounced.
Rough hands mauled his cock through his trousers, then Ralph screamed, his cries choked by a rough hand closing over his mouth. That thick, very thick shaft that plunged hard up his anus, tearing him painfully, drove him to arch his body up in agony. This allowed Griffin to push him up against the wall, lifting Ralph's legs to circle his waist. Then he withdrew an inch, then rammed up another four. Ralph clawed at his back, pleading, screaming, begging for mercy, but Griffin only rammed his mouth over Ralph's in a bruising kiss.
His hips never stopped its brutal pumping, not even when thin warm trails of blood began seeping from Ralph's anus down his shaft to pool at his pubic hair and seep down his balls. He was aware, however, that Ralph had stopped fighting, and those hands were now biting into his tight rounded buttocks painfully, urging him on even as their tongues now entwined and writhe in sinuous mating dance. The hall echoed with the sound of their flesh slapping flesh.
Then Ralph gave a keening cry, throwing his head into Griffin's right shoulder. Griffin felt the man's teeth sinking into his flesh, the pain, and the blood. Ralph was shuddering in jerky spasms, his throbbing cock ejaculating its thick juices to splash on their chests, at Griffin's stomach. The pain and the contraction of Ralph's anus on his rapidly swelling cock drove him over the edge.
He shouted, maybe screamed, pressing Ralph heavily against the wall in one hard thrust. His semen erupted in powerful geysers, pouring heavily up Ralph's anus in his climax. His buttocks clenched tight as his hips bucked in short brief thrust with each ejaculation.
Ralph shivered in excitement at the recall of last night's furious rape at Griffin's hands. And Griffin had taken him again and again, painfully brutal each time, later when they escaped the party through a window to return to Ralph's place.
Now, however, Griffin was gentle, slowly kissing the bruises on Ralph's shoulders and arms.
Then he was pushed up from his chair, and up the table. Ralph found himself on his arms and knees. He looked down, at the sight of his cock sticking out towards him, and almost ejaculated right then at the sight of Griffin sitting on the chair, eyes looking right at Ralph's semen-stained anus.
Then -- oh yes -- Griffin's tongue slowly lapped at the circular pucker of Ralph's anus. The sensitive skin protested and reveled at the rough texture of Griffin's tongue running and prodding at it and Ralph bit back a cry of delicious pleasure. He spread his legs further, lowering his buttocks so that he was more at level with Griffin's slurping mouth. Oh God, now that mouth was sucking and lapping at Ralph's asshole, licking and slurping at Griffin's own semen mingled with Ralph's own anal juices. He looked down, at the arousing sight of Griffin's lightly bearded chin moving hungrily. He was moaning now, and he knew Griffin was equally frenzied. The latter now was squeezing Ralph's hips with his hands as he stood up, pressing his face deeper between Ralph's buttocks, licking and sucking and eating at Ralph.
The slick, shiny cock crown of Griffin stood towards the man's navel; and Ralph looked at it hungrily. He could still see the shiny coat of semen and ass juices along the shaft and coating that beautiful glan. But first -- "Oh God have mercy!" Ralph gasped when that clever tongue hit a sensitive spot that send hot flames of pleasure up his spine -- first, oh hell, what was the first thing?
No matter. Griffin now was straddling the table, and now he was slowly pushing that beautiful and thick fuck stick up Ralph's welcoming asshole. Ralph shut his eyes and placed his forehead at the table, in ecstasy even as they began thrusting towards ecstasy.
THREE
"I don't even know who you are," Ralph murmured, turning his head to look at the head buried in his neck. He stretched his body on the sweat-stained sheets, letting out a sigh of pleasure as his muscles rippled under Griffin's hands that were now roaming every inch of bared skin. Every slow slick of Griffin's callused finger on his pale skin sent flickers of awareness through every sizzling inch of his soul, making him never more aware of their sex and the anticipated climax at the moment.
When Griffin's right hang slipped between Ralph's thighs, Ralph surrendered, biting back a sigh when Griffin's two fingers penetrated his now sore and ravaged anus. When that hand touched Ralph's lips, Ralph snaked his tongue out, licking those fingers of the slippery moisture coating them.
"I can be who you want me to be," Griffin murmured.
"Fine, remain a mystery," Ralph said, closing his eyes when Griffin slowly licked and bit into his shoulder blade. "Just touch me." Hold me, tight, he wanted to say. Drive away the loneliness.
People tended to say I was a fool. I was beautiful, they said, Ralph continued typing, and I didn't deserve this beauty if I was lonely. Since when was beauty intimate with loneliness?
I am lonely, I really am. I have had many lovers when I was younger, taking and discarding them in my vain search for perfection. I trampled on hearts, breaking them because I can. Perhaps now I am paying penance for these broken hearts, Ralph continued typing. Not a day passes without me feeling this cavernous hollow in my soul.
I want color. I want magic. I want to stand at the rooftop of the Empire State Building and scatter leaves in the wind. And God help me, I want to jump. But not when I am now in his arms. I know not why, but I feel safe. He is my anchor, my soul.
"Hey!" Ralph said, startled, when Griffin snatched the pile of printed papers by his side.
"I made you feel this way?" he asked.
Embarrassed, Ralph gave a vehement denial.
Griffin shrugged and tossed the papers carelessly up in the air. An act of blasphemy to Ralph, who held the written word sacred, and he started to utter a sharp retort. But he paused, lost, as he saw, in slow entranced enthrallment, the papers danced in the air, falling like autumn leaves around the very naked, very aroused Griffin.
"At least you're writing again. I guess I'm good for your writer's block. I don't think how you can sell this though," Griffin said, sitting at the table beside Ralph. "Then again, I don't read much, so what the fuck do I know?"
"Reading does not imply intelligence and vice versa," Ralph murmured. "A reader is merely a man who knows how to seek color where it is absent in his life. A man of imagination and of joy in living."
"You love writing and reading," Griffin stated.
"I do." These activities never hurt, they gave him far more happiness than any other thing in this world. "Of course, I'm lucky. I'm fucking rich enough so I can devote my life writing."
"Unlike me who dropped out of high school," Griffin murmured.
"Don't feel bad," Ralph murmured back.
"I always have a crush on the pretty nerds in my school, did I tell you that?" Griffin said, rubbing his freshly shaved chin. "And you are the type of guys that I wanted to fuck all my days in high school. Funny huh, Ralph? Others wanted to fuck the jock, I was the jock who wanted to fuck the nerds."
"I bet the nerds loved you," Ralph said.
"Oh yes they did. And their teachers," Griffin said, smiling as he pulled Ralph into his arms. "But I love them all, because they are intelligent. I love an intelligent man."
"You would love me then," Ralph said before he could stop himself.
Silence. Then Griffin gave a clear, merry laugh. "Maybe," he said in between laughter. "If you're lucky, maybe."
Griffin loved to be around intelligence. Ralph realized later how much that was true -- Griffin was never happier when Ralph brought him to his critique circle. Griffin sat in the corner, listening in a rapturous expression at Ralph and his writing circle exchanged and debated plot lines and characterizations. He read the books in Ralph's untidy pile, although he confessed that he didn't understand half of anything he'd read.
Griffin craved knowledge but for some reason, he couldn't absorb it.
And Ralph found his presence gratifying. He didn't care if Griffin disappeared from ten in the morning to six in the evening. Griff always turned up at seven in fresh clothes and scent, and by eight Ralph would be at his knees, legs wide upon for Griffin's butt fucking. And when they were temporarily sated, Ralph would write. He would write stories he would never publish, personal reminiscences, as well as a tight crime thriller that he knew without vanity that would be another bestseller.
It was at chapter fifteen, three weeks after Griff walked into his life, that he realized that he hadn't felt any melancholic loneliness and meaninglessness of this whole life of his.
He might be falling in love with this man whom he knew not a thing about. And it terrified him.
FOUR
"You better not come here tomorrow," Ralph told him the next night.
Griff paused in the act of unbuckling his belt. He was about to strip for a shower before his nightly fucking of Ralph. "Why?" he asked.
"My lover Victor would be returning from his trip to London," Ralph said honestly. "I'm sorry, I never knew how I would tell you until now."
"Victor? Your lover?" Griff asked, looking as if he had just been stabbed.
"He and I have been together for six years. We are planning to get married this September," Ralph said quietly.
"Well. Okay," Griff said nonchalantly. "A goodbye fuck then?"
Ralph wasn't fooled -- not when Griff's voice now lacked the good cheer always present, not when the man's hands trembled when he slowly, tenderly touched and kissed Ralph's skin, not when his tears fell slowly on Ralph's back like the purest of emotions even as the man boned him.
Ralph felt his own tears running down his cheeks, but fuck if he knew why.
"Mr Victor Garber?" the smiling young man said. "I'm Griffin Brackett. I'm your driver."
Victor took in the man's well-honed physique underneath the simple sports shirt and jeans and smiled. "Thanks."
Griffin grinned wider, opening the door for the man.
I know he loves me. I do not know why, Ralph typed. But I am blessed, I feel, because he loves me. Poor fool. I will break his heart. I always do.
"I fucked Ralph," Griffin said. "I fucked him six ways to Sunday and you really don't mind?"
"Ralph and I have an understanding," Victor said. "When we are away, we are free to date and see anyone we choose. Why don't you fuck him and let me watch?"
Griffin stopped the car. He turned around and looked at Victor, his pleasant eyes now cold with ice. "I love him, you know. When he told me about you, I felt as if my heart was ripped out of my chest and squeezed dry. He threw me out for you. Do you know how that make me feel?"
Victor was now slowly panicking, especially when he realized the passenger doors had locks that could only be opened by the driver.
Griffin reached for the Swiss knife in his pocket.
Victor gave a whimper of fear, but there was no place to run.
He said he would do anything for me, Ralph typed. I believed him.
"Flowers for Mr Fiennes," Griffin said, flashing pearly white teeth in a grin of pure roguishness.
"Griff, please, not today," Ralph said through the door.
"Victor's trip was delayed. Why can't we just keep fucking a few days more?" Griff asked, knocking on the door again. "Ralph, come on, let me in. I can make you forget the loneliness."
Ralph cursed himself for letting slip of his feelings. Or maybe Griff deduced it. He could still hear John tell him, "Griffin? I don't really know him. He was a model that I photographed a few times, and I heard he retired a few months ago. Came up to me a few weeks ago for some chitchat, and I gave him a photo of you. He was really taken with you. God, Ralph, you're fucking him?"
But Griffin knew a lot about Ralph. Ralph shut his eyes, remembering the late night talks when Griffin would quote from Ralph's books. The man had read everything Ralph wrote. Small things now pieced in Ralph's minds, things that he'd thought odd briefly but soon forgotten, like Griffin knowing the location of the bathroom, bedroom, and many rooms in this penthouse apartment without being told. Griffin knowing the nature of the Church landscape in the study without Ralph telling him. So many small inconsequential things that Ralph might not have noticed if he wasn't a study of inconsequential details.
"Oh God," he said in horror.
"Ralph," he said the man's low voice outside his door. "Let me in."
"Please, go away," he said back. "Please."
He heard the man's low curse. Then silence, except for shoes walking away from his door.
Griffin left messages on his machine, every fifteen minutes for the first day. Ralph ignored the knockings at his door, or the way Griffin shouted his name until his voice was hoarse.
Let it stop, he typed, barely seeing what he was typing through the tears blurring his eyes. I should call the cops. I should. But I can't.
Ralph heard the phone ring, and the answering machine coming to life.
"Why won't you see me, Ralph?" came Griffin's broken voice. "I know you're listening. Please, talk to me." Silence. "Talk to me," Griffin said now, calmly and steely. "Talk to me, Ralph. I love you."
Ralph sobbed into his fist, biting the knuckles until they bled.
"Talk to me!" Griffin screamed now. "Talk to me! TALK TO ME!!!"
With a shaking hand, Ralph tugged at the machine, and ripped it out of its socket and flung it across the room with a crash.
Life has no meaning, he wrote. Not now, not when the man I love is nothing but an illusion. What am I living for now? I am melancholy. I am bitterness. I am doomed.
Victor's body was found the next day, and the official cause of death was by stabbing.
Ralph read the news, answered the cops' questions calmly, and told them about Griffin.
"You okay?" John said, sitting beside Ralph and pushing a mug of hot coffee in the man's shaky hands.
"I may never be," Ralph said. "Maybe I never was okay."
"You're never this screwed up before. Are you on drugs?" John asked in concern.
"No." Yes, and that drug was Griffin. Even now, Ralph craved the man, wanting the man's touch deep in every inch of his being. "Please, I need to be alone."
John whispered before he left to the cop on watch to make sure Ralph didn't have any easy access to potential suicide instruments.
Ralph wasn't surprised to find Griff in his bedroom when he awoke at one in the morning.
"Tell me, shall I shoot him?" Griff said, one muscular arm around the cop's neck, another pointing a gun at the man's head.
"No." Ralph tried to control his rising fear and excitement.
"Too bad." Griff pulled the trigger.
Ralph cried, averting his ears, opening them only when Griffin laughed. The man threw the still alive but unconscious cop aside, having shot at the roof.
"You think I will disobey you?" Griff asked, his voice reflecting genuine puzzlement. "I love you. I will do anything you say."
"You killed Victor," Ralph said. He was surprised at how calm he felt.
"He tried to take you away from me," Griffin said simply.
"You lied to me."
"I never told you anything to even lie to you in the first place," Griffin said crossly. "Fine, I'm a stalker, I admit it. I am in love with you ever since I read your book Incideterata. You described my madness and torment so well that I thought you were my soul mate."
Griffin climbed onto the bed, on all four, moving towards Ralph. "My therapist said I was deluding myself. And I thought he was right, so I decided to see you for myself. Lucky me, John knew you. And lucky me too, you were so hot for me the moment we saw each other that I knew I was right. You and I are soul mates."
He leaned forward until he was an inch away from Ralph's face. That pleasant, charming face was now terrifying in its gentle calmness despite the horrifying things he was saying.
"I have killed for you, and say the word and I will do it again. I will lie, cheat, do time, and die for you, Ralph." Griff smiled crookedly. "Yes, you have so much power over me. Doesn't that excite you?"
"You're mad,"
"As are you."
Ralph's eyes widened at that.
"How many times have you wanted to die? How many times did you feel as if you're losing control? That's how I feel without you in my life," Griffin continued. "And I know you feel the same way."
"Yes," Ralph whispered, looking away.
"Are you mad at me for killing Victor?" Griffin asked.
"Too late for that question, isn't it, since Victor is already dead?" Ralph said with a short bitter laugh.
"Next time I will try to rein in on my impulsive actions," Griffin said seriously. Then he smiled. "Admit it, Ralph, you're aroused at the thought of me killing for you. I will even kill for us, love." He placed the gun's nozzle at Ralph's forehead. "See? You're shivering in excitement."
"I'm terrified," Ralph answered, breathing hard.
"And aroused," Griffin murmured, looking down at the steely erection of Ralph pressing against his stomach. He bent down and lowered his mouth to Ralph's. As they kissed, he felt Ralph's hand slowly prying the gun from his hand. He didn't care. He deepened the kiss, tasting Ralph's very essence, and not all caring when he felt Ralph pushing the pistol at his chest.
A shot rang through the night.
FIVE
"The moral of the story is, I guess, never pick up strangers, no matter how appealing they can be," Ralph told his friends.
He was back to his old self, witty, self-effacing, and debonair. The same crazy writer who was pathetic in poker.
"Welcome back, old friend," John said.
"Hear, hear," Ben Affleck chorused to the agreement of those at the poker table.
"Too bad about the cop who died after shooting that lunatic stalker," Stephen murmured. "You can still stay at my old place, Ralph. It'll be impossible to find a decent pad at this time of the year."
"No, I've found a new place." Ralph smiled. "I'm leaving New York." He looked at his stunned friends. "Of course, I'll be seeing you guys as I'll be coming down often to rendezvous with my editor and such, but you're right, John. I need new scenery. I think I will love New Mexico."
Griffin was waiting with the car. Ralph smiled, picking his luggage.
"I love you," Griffin said.
He killed, he lied, and he burned Ralph's pad.
Ralph climbed onto the car. Fuck all that, really. "Let's go to New Mexico," he said.