Sarahribu

My time with Raffles has left me a far fitter man than before I started as a cracksman’s accomplice. Not a sporting man by any measure before, I was still a little breathless and rather dispirited after our sprightly and emotional jaunt to the train. My guilt from my reckless endangering of Raffles’ life weighed heavily on my thoughts despite his endless reassurances and backhanded compliments, and I was still mealy-mouthed with sullen pride once we settled into silence on the train and allowed relief to roll through our muscles. Raffles sat opposite me, smiling his most genuine smile at me whilst gently bleeding on the pristine seats of the first class compartment, his eyes another story, burning with the embers of intent, of want, take, and have, the dangerous edge to his eyes he gets when he sees the quarry.

Adrenaline is an odd thing. Of all the hormones and chemicals that rush around the body when one is escaping from the scene of a crime it’s the one most transmutable, turning from lead to gold in your blood with alchemic delight. Raffles and I shared a mutual moment where it rolling-boiled its way through our blood; sitting opposite and well apart but sharing the same breath, a delicate prickle of sweat despite the cold edge of the July morn, the compartment heated by the lamps and the infernal edge. My collar tight and damp from exertion, and there was heat radiating from my close quarters companion, a localised sultry smog I could sense and taste on the edge of my senses.

When it takes hold, this adrenalised lust and relief, the world is sharp and for a bare few moments I sensed, rather than saw, Raffles, radiating intent and sensual heat as he reached out and took the two ends of his Zingari scarf that served as my hasty disguise between his fist and pulled my face round to his, and if I hadn’t already been breathless I would have been undone when, eyes half-lidded with seductive conviction, he slid his nose softly along the line of mine and followed through down to kiss my willing and waiting mouth.

Without adrenaline as my drug I am not this man, the one who is so adept at peeling another out of wrinkled clothes, whether unpicking the knot of a tie and detaching a collar from the delicate flesh of the neck to expose the soft skin underneath or peeling whites and mouldering disguises from weary arms, trailing their path with my mouth until Raffles is the one whimpering. I can be glad that my hands do not shake anymore as I parted Raffles from his cracksman’s threads; I can’t have been anyone but myself as I pressed my nose to his skin, the early morning scrape of beard a grounding touch against my lips and the taste of his skin intoxicating; rich with the deep smog and salt of a man who had earlier scored a match-saving 62 (not out! I could not doubt that he would go on to improve that score later), dodged through London’s soup to assist in a robbery, and still had the energy to take me apart, pressed tight against the seat, himself flush against my hips, his strong thighs vicelike against the outside of mine, my scalp tender from the hands that grasped my hair during long, deep kisses. That is the man I have resigned myself to be, but what kind of man am I to be minutes later sprawled undone on another gentleman’s cloak, with the same said gentleman’s scarf clutched against my wet, bitten lips, the upper hand long lost with the touch of his. He admonishes me harshly to ‘be quiet Bunny’ between lavishing bites and the low litany of cruel perversion against my ear as his hands are in my trousers in a first class carriage rapidly drawing into Waterloo.

Raffles as a lover is perfunctory, laconic and an utter bastard, he is all the words from all sides of the spectrum of my education, he is all too brief, too focused to get to the point and out again, so to speak. He loves like he thieves, my lover and friend, and the combination is barely more than I can take. As the train slows he peels himself away from me with a groan, standing and smoothing himself back to acceptable levels. I am left sprawled across the cushions like the rest of his pretty things, undone, stolen and forever his.

He leans down to kiss me to seal his promises, the promise that he holds me in regard, that I am useful to him, the promise implicit that despite the head wound he still has the energy to pull me, bright eyed in dim light, across London into his bed at the Albany for a snatched hour before heading off and saving the Ashes. It’s a heady combination, a little something to keep me his, to quell my doubts and seal my guilt in his hand.

You might ask, is the adrenaline response always like this? All I can say is that occasionally we fight, landing punches where they won’t be seen, secret batteries of release in places covered by clothes. Sometimes we just drink silently, decompressing in each other’s company with nary a touch and I return to my Mount Street flat alone. Sometimes the telephone is already ringing when I walk through the door; sometimes it never rings at all.

And sometimes, sometimes I am against the wall, sometimes I am the heavy glass for the whisky as the decanter drips amber into the hollows of hipbones and stomach. Sometimes there are bruises on edges of acceptance, sometimes I am dolled up like a lady in our loot and christened like a child.

We should be above all these earthly, sinful things, above unspoken inversion and amateur cracksmenship, above all of this because we are British and we are gentlemen, loyal to queen and country. Perhaps that is why we do never speak of them. Instead, we merely act.