Kink fiction. Kuhn goes to Kasovitz’ home to be tied up.
Rated E. Cis M/M. Set in 1950s London.
An ex-soldier, Arthur “Kuhn” Conrad, now a debt collector of sorts for a corrupt company, can’t sleep one night, and as he’s walking the streets, sees a coworker — on a whim, he follows, and ends up in an underground club. The older man, Ignatius Kasovitz, likes to tie people up, it seems, and Kuhn finds he wants to try being tied up, if it’s Kasovitz doing the tying.
CWs in this part for some references to sexual trauma and sensory overwhelm, death, violence, but nothing extensive. This is part II of III.
New note I’ve been thinking of including — media I’m engaging with at the moment that have added to the themes and flavour of this short are Grantchester, Disco Elysium, and the_ragnarok’s Person of Interest fanfiction, out of the darkness we reach.
Part I / / Part II / / Part III
Kuhn’s boarding house is an alright place. It’s clean and pretty well-kept, all-told — no mould, no damp, no rats or other vermin. It’s not a hoity-toity place by any means, but he knows it’s a lot better than a lot of places around the city, and it’s honestly not too expensive. It’s not like Kuhn spends much money — most of what he makes goes into his savings.
He bought a few nice suits when he took the job, went to the shop Doctor Lark recommended with the old man telling him which fabrics were appropriate to the office — not too formal, not plain black and navy suits like a lot of the real office workers wore, but still darker colours. Nice shoes as well. His knives.
He never used to wear a wristwatch — Doctor Lark had bought that for him as a new start gift, bought it for him second-hand at a pawnshop, and Kuhn had laughed because he liked the inscription on the back that said, For my Nanny. Whoever’s nan she’d been — or maybe an employed nanny, he doesn’t know — it wasn’t too feminine a thing, and he’d actually had to replace the strap with a smaller one so it wouldn’t slide down his hand.
After that…
He buys his own pints, doesn’t take part in rounds. He eats at the boarding house at meal times — Mrs G is a war widow, and she’s a lacklustre cook, but she’s a funny lady, and Kuhn never minds sitting at the table and watching her nip at and fight with half the lodgers.
She never butts heads with Kuhn, never bites at him in the same way. He looks like her son, he thinks — she didn’t even ask for his references when he first asked about the room, and he’d been moved in by the time he reminded her, and then she’d just waved him off. He’s not even dead, like her husband — just lost, disappeared, gone in a puff of smoke. No closure, for cases like that.
He reminds her to go to bed some nights when he comes into the building and she’s sitting in the kitchen staring out of the window, her eyes glassy, and sometimes she slips up and calls him Richie instead of Arthur, but that’s okay. He draws the line at letting her give him Richie’s old clothes or other stuff of his, tells her to keep them in a trunk just in case.
The ”just in case” he’s thinking of is for her daughter’s kids rather than in case he comes back — Doctor Lark’s idea, he’s better at this kind of shit than Kuhn is — but it had made her give a little smile, and seemed to give her a little peace.
“Going out tonight, Mrs G,” Kuhn says as he stacks up dry plates in the cupboard. He has to stand on the same stepladder she uses to reach the high shelves — doesn’t understand why the fuck she doesn’t just change what cupboards she uses — although at least he wouldn’t have to stand on a crate like she’s doing right now to reach the sink. “Might be out all night, not sure.”
“Just don’t get blood on that shirt,” Mrs G says idly. “It’s your last white one left, and those two you gave me have been right tough, scrubbing it out of the sleeves.”
Mr G had been the foreman in an abattoir before he’d been called up. It makes Mrs G surprisingly casual about the stains Kuhn comes home with in his line of work.
“It’s not for work, but I’ll do my best.”
Mrs G turns and looks at him over her shoulder, staying perched on top of the milk crate, her hands frozen on the pan she’s halfway through scrubbing. “A woman?” she asks suspiciously.
“No.”
Mrs G’s furrowed brow unfurrows, some of the lines smoothing out of her forehead, and she opens her mouth, closes it, opens her mouth again, closes it. “A… gentleman friend?” she hazards.
“He’s a man,” says Kuhn, intrigued by how outright she is about asking the question, almost no hesitation at all. “But it’s not like that. He’s a clown.”
“Beg pardon? As in, he’s foolish?”
“Real life clown. Used to be in the circus and everything.”
Mrs G frowns at him, the furrow returning to her forehead, and then she lets out a derisive noise and turns back to her scrubbing. “It’s not right to make fun of an old woman, Arthur.”
“You’re not old, and I’m not making fun,” says Kuhn. “He’s a real-life clown.”
“Mmm hmm,” Mrs G hums, unconvinced, and Kuhn doesn’t know why it bothers him that she doesn’t believe him, but if was her, he’s not sure he would believe him either, so he doesn’t bother trying to convince her.
He crosses back across the river, holding the piece of paper Kasovitz had written out for him earlier. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, exactly, but the address basically leads him to a bunch of allotments, and behind them is a bungalow before the park on the other side. He can see the lines and edges of the allotment block where the whole section of street probably used to be houses before they got bombed out during the Blitz — even the bungalow, it’s a funny shape and a pretty new build.
“Did they use the brick from the bombed-out houses to build this?” Kuhn asks when Kasovitz opens the door.
“I didn’t ask,” Kasovitz says, looking around the doorway he’s standing in, his eyebrows slightly raised. “Potentially. It was… affordable. Come in.”
Kuhn crosses the threshold, shrugging off his coat, and Kasovitz takes it from him, hanging it up on the wall. It’s a nice bungalow. The air isn’t so uncomfortably hot outside as it was the other night, and in here it’s comfortably warm, feels cosy. Kasovitz leads him past the kitchen, which has a serving hatch through to the living room, past the small bathroom, and to the bedroom, that takes up most of the house.
The heavy curtains are closed, almost entirely blocking out the light from the street outside — the nearest street lamp is on the far end of the block, on the other side of the allotment squares, so the light from it isn’t too bright up close. To one side of the room is a large double bed, and against the perpendicular wall is a long, narrow desk with bookshelves underneath and overtop, alongside the large window on each side. He has another typewriter here on the desk, some file boxes, some notebooks and diaries. He has quite a few books, many of them fiction in colourful dustjackets — romances, detective novels, science fiction — and then various other accoutrements on display — a stack of juggling balls, some stacked boxes of playing cards, a top hat, two wood-and-leather boxes. They look like the sort of boxes one has for chess or backgammon, but they’re on the smaller side, and they’re not jewellery boxes.
“My make-up,” Kasovitz supplies when Kuhn looks at him askance, and Kasovitz follows his gaze.
Mostly, on display are a great many photographs. The one he has on his desk at work is of his mother on the trapeze, lowdown in the high-top and tossing a ball back and forth with some of the clowns — Kasovitz is one of the clowns in the background, standing out because he’s so tall.
There are more photographs of his mother in dazzling dresses and suits, much of the time in the arms of a gargantuanly large, muscular strongman who Kuhn guesses is Kasovitz’ father. He has similar round features to him, the same big, round eyes, although he’s bald — Kasovitz’ curly hair is from his mother, Kuhn supposes. In the different photographs, he seems to have as many different styles of facial hair as Kasovitz’ mother has different outfits — a huge, walrus-like moustache; big mutton chops and a smaller beard; a puffy moustache with a triangular goatee; a huge beard with braids through it, like some sort of Viking.
There are other photographs of the circus — one of Kasovitz bending over nearly at the middle as he pulls a dove out of a top hat, and a group of children laughing, clapping, and looking up at him with wonder and delight; Kasovitz juggling and ducking amongst a half-dozen other clowns; Kasovitz standing up straight and looking casual as two dwarves stand on his shoulders and balance a tea set between them on his head, one pouring from the teapot as the other takes a delicate sip from her own cup; more clowns doing gymnastics with each other, tumbling and bowling through hoops; the same dwarf couple tending to and combing the fur of a huge, shaggy dog, or maybe some kind of wolf.
“None of these pictures has you tying people up,” Kuhn observes.
“We don’t usually do bondage tutorials in the big top,” Kasovitz says. “If you don’t mind me making a comment, I’ve noticed your attitude toward me has changed somewhat, since you met me the other night. You’ve calmed somewhat. What changed, in your perception of me, precisely? When did you cease to see me as, what, competition? Prey? And begin to see me as an authority?”
Kuhn is quiet, standing with his hands in front of his belly, and he stares into the middle distance before he tilts his head and looks up at Kasovitz’ face. He imagines it, the make-up that he has on in the photographs, superimposed over the man he’s looking at now — white paint over his face, the black triangles along the underside of each eye, red crescents emphasising his cheeks, blue lines over his eyebrows. He mostly wears similar tunics in most of the photographs, bejewelled, heavy in the chest, with puffy sleeves that make him look even bigger than he is, and a white ruff collar.
“I don’t know,” Kuhn says. “I’d never seen someone get tied up before.”
“Is that true?” Kasovitz asks.
Suddenly, a hundred images flicker in front of his eyes like someone’s actually shining a film projector into them — being a child on the playground, watching with polite interest as two of the girls wrap a skipping rope around and around Luc Hines’ chest and upper arms; being thirteen or fourteen, half-asleep in bed and watching Have and Wesley argue with one another as they practice knots on Silas Headley’s wrists, a Biggles book open as they try to figure out how someone was tied up; watching a magician once on a stage in London, chains wound around and around his body, padlocks, ropes, for him to escape out of; faceless bodies in Germany, in Poland, bound in chains or rope or barbed wire.
Kuhn says, “No.”
He doesn’t explain, doesn’t add details. He feels as though he should, wants to, but the words don’t come, and his tongue feels caged behind his teeth again. Kasovitz inclines his head, and then asks, “Would you like to sit down on the bed?”
Kuhn sits.
Kasovitz kneels on the floor, and Kuhn watches him, too stiff even to blink his eyes, as Kasovitz very slowly leans forward, hovering his hands over Kuhn’s feet as if waiting for him to say no, to protest, to kick Kasovitz hard in the nose or maybe the side of his throat.
Kuhn doesn’t do any of that.
He jolts slightly as Kasovitz’ big hands actually touch his foot, and Kasovitz freezes, but when Kuhn doesn’t tug away or twist free, he pulls on the tail of one of his shoelaces and undoes the knot, then eases the shoe from his heel, sets it aside, then reaches for the next shoe and takes the one off as well. He uses slow, gentle movements, setting Kuhn’s shoes aside.
“Have you ever had sex before, Kuhn?” Kasovitz asks.
“No,” says Kuhn.
“The concept frightens you? You mentioned a priest had attempted to touch you, when you were a boy — was that just once, or multiple times?”
“Just once, but I’d heard other boys talking about it. That it didn’t hurt, but that it was strange, that there were benefits — his favour, sweets, communion wine. It scared me, that they were comfortable with it, that they thought it was worth it when it seemed…” The words run out again, but Kasovitz doesn’t seem displeased.
He was never that good with words. When he was a boy, at school, alongside boys who were richer than him, more important than him, better bred than him, it was alright, that he was quiet, that he observed, that he went along with whatever the other boys chose. It was never nasty, never unkind — they generally understood that he didn’t like to be touched, and he wasn’t made a whipping boy or a chew toy. Have, Wesley, Silas, Luc — they were his friends, genuinely, invited him to parties or to sleep over, bought him gifts on his birthday, smiled when they saw him, told him jokes.
After school, he’d taken a job with Luc Hines’ father, who owned a publishing house, and the majority of his job had involved sorting post. Occasionally, he’d attend to other odd jobs around the office, sorting new inventory or moving and carrying boxes or stationery.
The war had broken out when he was walking along with Mr Hines out back of the building and some bloke had tried to mug them. Kuhn had acted automatically, had wrenched the guy, underweight, twitchy, in retrospect probably only attempting the robbery out of desperation, by his collar and smashed the front of his face into the wall of the delivery bay steps. His nose had made a sublime cracking sound, muffled only a little by the sudden gush of thick, dark blood, and the noise of pain that had come out of him was thin and bubbling, his knife clattering to the ground.
At first, Mr Hines had thanked him, but then he’d seen how calm Kuhn was, how unshaken he was.
“Have you done that before, Arthur?” he’d asked whilst driving him home. “Hurt a man like that?”
“No, sir,” Kuhn had answered, honestly.
Hines hadn’t believed him. He’d been able to see that, but hadn’t been able to do anything to change it. He hadn’t known how to explain, that it was just blood and cartilage — not even bone — that he’d grown up in a medical household, that it wasn’t violence for violence’s sake.
But it had affected his standing in the office. Changed how Mr Hines looked at him, talked to him, and then how everyone else looked at him, talked to him. People often found it quaint, that he was so quiet, and they stopped finding it quaint, started finding it threatening, unnerving. Stopped inviting him to things, stopped smiling at him.
It was actually almost a relief, when he got called up, and taken out of it. He’d been assigned to a medical unit, which was how he’d met Doctor Lark, and later… It all blurred together, now. He remembered being cornered, separated from his unit, two Krauts laughing at him, calling him verängstigtes Kaninchen — there was a gunshot, maybe two. There was the crack of the shorter one’s hyoid bone, the sound strangely loud, because Kuhn was hearing it break inside his own mouth, tasting blood, hearing them both screaming, screaming like children, like little girls.
“Where are you?” Kasovitz asks him, and Kuhn slowly looks back at his face.
“Don’t remember,” Kuhn says. “Behind enemy lines.”
“That happen to you a lot? You go there?”
“No.”
“When does it happen?”
“Night time, usually. When I’m about to go to sleep.”
“Feeling tired?”
“No.”
“How’s your heartbeat?”
“Even. Regular.”
“You’re breathing evenly too. Feeling calm?”
“I suppose.”
“Good,” says Kasovitz. “Take your jumper off for me. Do you want your trousers on or off?”
Kuhn doesn’t say anything.
“Let’s keep them on then,” says Kasovitz as Kuhn takes off his jumper and puts it aside. “How about your socks?”
Kasovitz is watching closely as Kuhn folds in the arms of his jumper, folds them in, creates a tight square, and puts the jumper on the desk, then puts his hand up to the buttons of his shirt, hesitates.
“The shirt then,” Kasovitz decides. “Belt too.” He watches as Kuhn removes his shirt, folds it, removes his belt, coils it and sets it on top of his shirt and jumper, stacked on top of one another.
Once Kuhn is in just his vest and socks and trousers, Kasovitz pulls out a drawer from under his wardrobe and pulls out three coils of black rope, holding two in his palm and holding out the other. When Kuhn just looks at it, he says, “Touch.”
Kuhn touches the rope, is surprised by how soft it is. It isn’t like sailor’s rope, has a less tightly coiled weave, he thinks, and is made of a much more even fibre, some sort of cotton, maybe, or even silk. He strokes his fingers over the weave before drawing his fingers back, and Kasovitz smiles at him.
“Do you want to fuck me?”
“Not tonight, certainly. I just want to tie you up.”
“Why?”
“You asked me to.”
“But why do you want to?”
“I think you’ll be good as I tie you,” Kasovitz answers simply, and Kuhn blinks at the sudden rush in his head, the way he feels his mouth go slack, his lips automatically shifting into a slight smile. “I think you’ll look good, when I have you tied — you look good already. Hands out, wrists together, palms up. Good man.”
Kuhn stares down as the rope is spread outward over Kasovitz’ big hands, and then is looped neatly around his wrists. Kasovitz had mentioned before that some people enjoy following the lines and cross over of the ropes, enjoying how the bondage is put together, and he vaguely thinks he might do that, but then he forgets.
It’s like the watch, pendulum swinging — it’s Kasovitz’ hands crossing one way and then the other, the right and then the left, the left and then the right; it’s the feel of the rope sliding against his bare arms, the slight tension against his skin, the cool fabric of the rope; it’s Kasovitz’ breathing, even, slow, in, out, in, out, in, out.
“You awake?” Kasovitz asks, and Kuhn realises he’s closed his eyes.
“Yeah,” says Kuhn, opening them. “Sorry. I — ”
“You can close your eyes,” says Kasovitz. “You don’t need them open for this.”
And then Kasovitz pulls on the rope, pulling Kuhn’s arms flush together, and his eyes widen for a moment. He stares down at the rope cording his forearms together, shifting his hands slightly, tensing his muscles and feeling the slight resistance — and then he tries to pull his forearms apart, and they don’t move. His wrists are bound fast to one another, tightly harnessed, and he can’t get them free.
He feels like he’s floating.
“This loop here,” says Kasovitz. “I pull this loop here, and I can undo this, let you free, do you want me to — ”
“Please don’t,” Kuhn breathes out. “Please, it’s… It’s nice.”
“Good,” says Kasovitz, and he smiles, and Kuhn likes the shape of his smile, likes the way his big eyes seem to change very slightly at their ankle, sees the slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes where the skin folds together. “What next? Tie your legs together? Harness your chest?”
“Yeah…” Kuhn hears himself say, his eyes closing again, and Kasovitz softly laughs.
“Yes, I thought so,” he says. “Very good. Good man.”
It’s not as good through the fabric of his trousers, but it’s still good, when Kasovitz begins to tie his legs together. Kuhn feels the pressure of each line of rope against his ankles, his calves, his knees, his thighs. His eyes flutter open when Kasovitz asks him to raise his feet, and he does so, watches Kasovitz string one of the lines right down between his feet… and then tightens.
A noise comes out of him, unbidden and throaty, as the harness presses his thighs and calves together, his legs flush, the same way his forearms are. Kasovitz has been touching him to tie him up, but each touch has been businesslike — a little on the light side, but with the rope in addition to the movements and brushes of his fingers, it’s not overwhelming, itchy, burning, in the way a lot of light touches often are.
“You want me to harness your chest?” Kasovitz asks.
Kuhn slowly nods his head.
He keeps his eyes open as Kasovitz comes closer to him, passing the rope slowly around his body — in a casual banner, he keeps lifting up Kuhn’s tied forearms by one of the loops of the harness to move them out of his way, and Kuhn doesn’t look at the ropes as they’re crossed around his chest and belly, over and over one another, but instead up at Kasovitz’ face, at his neck.
Being such a big man, he’s got a fairly big head, and his neck is made to support it on his shoulders, thick and strong, corded with subtle muscle at its base and where it adjoins his jaw. As Kasovitz’ posture changes, leaning forward or back to accommodate the rope he’s passing around him, Kuhn can see the shift and movement of the tendons in his throat, the muscles up the shaft of it; he can see the minute movements of Kasovitz’ facial expression, the flicker of his eyes as he traces the position of the ropes, the slight shift in pupil dilation as he tilts his face one way or the other and more or less light enters his eyes, the slight press together of his lips as he concentrates on a knot.
“You smell sweet,” Kuhn hears himself say as Kasovitz leans over him to pull a line taut, making a four-pointed harness tighten around his chest. His nose is almost touching Kasovitz’ breast, and he can smell the scent of the man himself, sweat and faint musk, the scent of whatever soap he uses for his clothes, and the scent of ink that clings to his fingers, where there are small stains from where he must have changed a ribbon earlier.
“I put cologne on,” Kasovitz says.
“You didn’t have cologne on at work.”
“I don’t wear cologne at work. I wear it on special occasions.”
“You didn’t wear it on Friday.”
“Those nights are routine for me, they’re not too special. You’re special, though. A handsome man wants to spend time with me, trusts me to tie him like so? Be up close with him? I want to smell nice for him.”
“It does smell nice,” Kuhn says, and Kasovitz laughs again.
“May I kiss you?” he asks.
Kuhn doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know what the right answer is. Girls have kissed him before, caught him by the cheeks and crushed their lips together, and he doesn’t know that he wants that. He nods anyway, because Kasovitz is looking at him, and he needs to give an answer, and he doesn’t want this to stop, doesn’t want any of this to stop.
Kasovitz leans in, and his lips brush against Kuhn’s cheek — they’re very warm, and he can feel the slight ghost of Kasovitz’ five o’clock shadow against Kuhn’s own clean-shaven skin. It’s nice pressure, not too light, but not too hard or too wet against his mouth either.
Kasovitz draws back, and Kuhn breathes in, missing the scent of him.
“How long can I stay like this?” Kuhn asks. “Seventeen minutes?”
“Seventeen minutes is a good place to start,” says Kasovitz, and checks his watch.
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