Debts - 5. Chapter 5

- V -

To Raven’s greatest frustration and his dick’s greatest joy, Salamander started showing up at thief’s apartment four days a week with envious dedication. At first, Raven gritted his teeth and decided to deal with it patiently, figuring that Julian would grow tired of this arrangement rather soon. Well, now it was almost two months later, and the damn blond kept coming back the same four days a week without missing a single day. Raven would hate himself every time after yet another mind-blowing encounter with the hateful blond, especially when he would actually scream out, “Oh, God, yes!” Salamander’s twisted imagination and envious flexibility provided a new angle, position, or game every bloody time, making Raven go crazy with desire. The fact that blond’s blood indeed tasted divine, and Raven had unlimited access to it, didn’t help a single bit. He hated the entire thing and loved it at the same time.

By the end of October, Magda contacted him again, and informed him that the same rock-obsessed individuals were asking whether he was available for another job.

“It has nothing to do with Salamander,” Magda said quickly, and Raven just sighed into the phone. “They want you to get a medallion from the museum.”

“Which one?” Raven asked with slight interest.

“Medallion or museum?” there was an obvious frown in Magda’s voice.

“Both, I guess,” Raven shrugged, looking out of the window at the newborn rain.

“Museum of Ancient Arts,” Magda said, and Raven’s mouth twitched appreciatively. That museum was rather big, and it was well protected. This could be fun. “There is a medallion in the Talismans’ section,” Magda continued. “It’s in one of the glass cases... It’s sort of large, made out of malachite, and it has an image of the sun in the middle of it... The sun is golden,” she added after a few seconds.

“How much?” Raven asked with more interest.

“Same as before...” Magda paused. “Say ‘yes,’ will you?” she asked finally, and he grinned.

“Fine,” he said. “You will get your bonus this time...”

“Oh...” she said in a small voice. “Hold on... Is that a ‘yes’?”

“Yes,” Raven said patiently. “Museums I don’t mind.”

“Oh my God...” Magda said in a low voice, and Raven let out small laughter. “Oh, God, Raven...”

“You are welcome,” he sighed. “Take your vacation... When do they need the medallion?”

“By next Wednesday,” she said, and he frowned slightly. Today was Saturday. “Not the upcoming Wednesday,” she said quickly. “The one after that...”

Raven’s frown smoothed out. That left him with ten days; that was plenty.

“Fine,” he said, and Magda let out a relieved sigh. “I’ll call you when I have it.”

“Okay,” she said somewhat giddy. “Later, Raven!”

“Uh huh,” he said and hung up the phone.

...He started scouting out the museum on Monday morning, wrapping himself into the shroud of nonexistence, so nobody would be curious why the hell he was showing up in the same place every bloody day. Thanks to his eyes, he was very easy to remember. By Thursday evening, he had a decent plan in his head, and he decided to go for it tomorrow (Friday) night. Salamander would be getting his usual ‘fix’ until Monday, so Raven would be able to work in peace. After he got back home, he wasn’t a single bit surprised to find the blond waiting for him inside his apartment as usual.

...Three or four hours later, Julian took Raven’s legs off his shoulders and removed his own legs from somewhere behind Raven’s neck. Raven had no idea how the blond was even able to move in that position, let alone to change the pace or switch between long and short strokes without any warning. However, that was exactly what Julian was doing for the last several hours (blond’s stamina was out of this world, even though he would never last longer than a minute after Raven would fly over the edge). They lay in bed for twenty or so minutes, equally breathless and glowing. Finally, Salamander got up and started getting dressed with Raven watching him through his eyelashes.

“See you tomorrow,” the blond said, and that made Raven open his eyes all the way.

“Tomorrow is Friday,” he said slowly.

“I know,” Julian nodded, wiping the spot of blood off his chest before buttoning up his shirt.

“That’s when your weekend starts,” Raven frowned.

“I know,” Julian nodded again, and sighed when another spot of blood he failed to notice, made its way onto his shirt.

“You are getting your fix on weekends,” Raven said with patience he didn’t think he had.

“Not on Fridays,” Salamander said lightly, as if simply noting that it was raining outside.

Raven was mute for a minute or so.

“Since when?” he finally asked incredulously.

Julian thought about it for several seconds.

“Tonight,” he nodded finally, and zipped up his pants.

Raven just stared at him.

“There is something I have to do tomorrow night,” he said finally in defeat, knowing that arguing with the blond would be futile. He would listen to Raven (maybe), smile his usual way, and say the inevitable, “See you tomorrow.” Then he would probably add equally inevitable, “Sweet dreams, Raven.”

“What’s that?” Julian ran his fingers through his messed up long hair several times, and somehow, managed to make it look almost perfect.

“A job,” Raven said gloomily. “I need to do it tomorrow, since the museum is closed on Saturday and Sunday, and there won’t be enough people there in the beginning of the next week. I need to finish it before Wednesday.”

“Since when the museum is closed on a weekend?” Julian frowned slightly, and Raven sighed.

“They have some repair crap going on there,” he said. “And I don’t want to risk it.”

“I see,” the blond nodded. “I’ll wait for you,” he shrugged. “See you tomorrow.”

“Look...” Raven started saying, but the blond gave him his usual, corner-of-the-mouth smile, and said:

“Sweet dreams, Raven,” before walking to the door.

Raven let out a frustrated sigh and dropped on the pillows. The damn blond always got what he wanted; he didn’t give a damn about anything. If he wanted something, he would get it. Now Raven apparently had only two days all to himself. He scowled at his suddenly excited groin and pulled up a blanket. “Screw the shower,” he thought gloomily. “I’ll take it in the morning...” He was too exhausted right now.

...It was Friday night, and it was seven in the evening – perfect time. Most of the museumgoers were off work by now, it was the beginning of the weekend, the museum would be closed for the next two days (which was quite unusual for a weekend), therefore, the place was as close to packed as it could possibly get, just as Raven hoped it would. He made his way (completely and utterly unseen) to the correct glass display and intently looked at the medallion for a minute or two. Then he slightly nodded to himself, and went towards the least obvious smoke detector.

Of course, he knew that the smoke-detector-trick was quite old, but it would work, he was sure of that, therefore, he didn’t care about originality right now. The easiest way was much more important. He waited until he was the only one underneath the smoke detector, and when he was sure he was safe, he lit a cigarette, and stuck it right underneath the small box with highly sensitive sensors. The alarm went off nice and proper, just like Raven anticipated. It was shrill and quite unpleasant. He grinned to himself when everyone in his vicinity immediately had that ‘Oh-my-God!’ look on their faces.

He dropped the cigarette on the floor and immediately stepped on it with the heel of his boot, glancing around and making sure that nobody saw a mysterious cigarette appearing out of thin air (literally). Everything seemed nice and panicky; the alarm kept shrieking bloody murder, people were rushing towards the exit, ignoring the security staff. Raven smiled and shoved his hand into his pocket, looking for the copy of the medallion he purchased from the souvenir store back on Tuesday. It only cost him seventy-five florins (less than a talon), therefore, he couldn't care less about stealing this one.

He headed towards the glass case, making sure he yanked out a couple of cords from the nearby security cameras (everyone would blame it on the smoke alarm malfunction later on, figuring that someone from the panicking crowd ripped the cords out without noticing it, he was sure of that), and patiently waited until chaos bloomed into full growth. Finally, when he was satisfied with his surroundings, he lifted the case just enough to be able to make a quick swap of two medallions (one fake and one original), and after he finished, he made his way towards the exit, ignoring panic and mayhem, the original resting safely in his pocket.

It was only 7:20 in the evening, and he was more than satisfied. The entire thing was so ridiculously easy that he just kept smirking to himself until he was far enough from the museum. He thought about keeping the invisibility on until he got home, but then, he figured that he would be safe enough without an extra effort (not like that extra effort would cause him anything; as long as he was only covering himself, he would be fine. If he covered someone else along, that would be a different matter, but it wasn’t the case right now). Therefore, he dropped the invisibility, and was beyond shocked and surprised to hear:

“Well, what do you know... Gimme your wallet, dipshit!”

Raven blinked at that and made yet another mistake of not disappearing completely. Instead of doing that (he would kick himself for that later), he turned around and said:

“Huh...?”

The guy who just startled him, started to laugh, and then someone behind him pressed a knife against his throat. That was when Raven started kicking himself for not staying invisible until he got home.

“Gimme your wallet,” the man repeated, and Raven (who was not as lousy of a fighter as Julian believed) managed to place a neat back-head-whiplash on whomever was holding a knife to his throat, planning on throwing his nonexistence-cloak right after he did that. However, right after the person’s face made some very satisfactory crunching noise behind his back, Raven felt another blade, against his groin this time. Now, that was not a part of his body he would like to get damaged, therefore, he froze in his spot.

“If you don’t wanna be one nut short...” the guy behind him breathed. “...then give me your goddamn wallet...!”

“Goddammit!” Raven cursed silently. He knew that there was a chance of him getting away if he used his ability right now; but he also knew that there was even a better chance of the asswipe with the knife against his groin to make a very quick movement thus making Raven pretty much useless to particular joys of life until he died. Therefore, he didn’t risk to... Well, risk it. His groin was rather precious to him.

“Fine...” he said in somewhat calm voice. “Fine... Just bloody take whatever you want...” He silently prayed for the asswipes not to find the medallion, but of course, that would be too easy.

“I got that from the souvenir’s shop,” he said quickly when asswipe number one found the damn medallion. “For my girlfriend... She digs the damn thing... It’s only costs seventy-five florins, okay...?”

“Cheapskate...” the asswipe number one muttered, almost making Raven lightheaded with relief.

“Hold on...” the asswipe number two said, making Raven to grit his teeth silently. “I don’t give a shit if it’s five thousand talons or seventy-five florins, okay? Take the damn thing...! This fuckhead here is better have some nice prayers to say right now...” The asswipe number two looked at Raven darkly. "You gonna need it..." he said with a scowl. “...because I am going to hurt you like nobody had before...”

Raven had doubts about that, immediately remembering his Aunt and Rufus, but he kept silent nevertheless.

“Well,” the asswipe number two said with a menacing scowl. “You’d better enjoy this, bitch...! ‘Cause it’s gonna last a while...!”

Raven closed his eyes, kicking himself silently, and then the asswipe number two proved himself to be correct. It did hurt, a lot... When Raven somewhat came about, the asswipe number two said in a satisfactory voice:

“Later, bitch...!” then he looked at Raven’s wristband and hemmed. “Nice one,” he muttered and ripped it off Raven’s wrist.

Both asswipes took off, leaving the dark-haired thief lying in the puddle of his own blood. They didn’t fuck him; they just beat all hell out of him. Raven knew that at least two of his ribs were broken. He lay there for probably forty-five minutes before finally being able to get up. He started walking slowly, unable to curse at himself for dropping the invisibility. He hurt too much even for silent cursing.

When he finally made it to his apartment, the first thing he heard when he walked inside was low and purring:

“Took you a while...”

Then there was a slight pause.

“What happened?” came next.

Raven limped towards the couch and collapsed on it, wincing from growling pain all over his abused body. He looked at the standing by now blond.

“I got mugged,” he said with a grimace. “Go ahead and laugh at the irony...”

“I don’t find it particularly funny,” the blond said seriously.

“Don’t even start on me being a lousy fighter,” Raven grimaced again. “I am not as bad as you think I am... There were two of them,” he added, and closed his eyes after finally kicking off his boots.

“Did they do anything else to you?” the blond’s voice sounded curious and dark at the same time. Raven opened one eye.

“Like beating all shit out of me is not enough...?” he asked. “Oh, wait, never mind...” he muttered a few seconds later. “That’s what you would do...”

“I would,” Julian agreed with a slight nod. “That’s why I asked.”

“No,” Raven tried to sigh, and immediately realized that was a very bad idea. He let out a groan. “They just beat me into pulp, that’s all... You want to know the worst part...?”

“Go ahead,” Julian said in the same dark voice.

“They took the goddamn medallion,” Raven said through his clenched teeth.

“Medallion,” the blond repeated. “Your job...” he said a minute later with understanding intonation.

“Yeah,” Raven closed his eyes again. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “I have no idea what I am going to do now... Dammit...!”

“You have until Wednesday,” Julian said, and Raven opened one eye again and threw him an incredulous look.

“Yeah,” he said in a low voice. “It will appear out of thin air...!”

The blond shrugged without saying anything.

“They also took my wristband,” Raven said darkly. “It might sound ridiculous, considering the circumstances, but I had the damn thing for the last ten years, call me sentimental...”

“It doesn’t sound ridiculous,” Julian said calmly. “It belongs to you.”

“Right,” Raven muttered and glanced at the blond again. “Sorry,” he said. “I am not in a fuckable mode tonight... I probably will be by Monday, but not until then... It’ll take several days for my ribs to get back to normal.”

“I know that,” Julian nodded as calmly as before. “See you tomorrow.”

Raven blinked at that.

“Which part led you to believe that tomorrow is Monday?” he asked.

“I said ‘see,’ not ‘fuck,’ ” the blond smiled his usual way. “Sweet dreams, Raven...” He glanced at the smaller man. “Well,” he shrugged. “To the point, I suppose... How badly does it hurt?” now there was genuine interest in his voice.

“Like hell,” Raven said gloomily and rolled his eyes at Julian’s almost hungry expression. “I am not breaking your ribs,” he said firmly. “Not because I wouldn’t enjoy that...” he managed to hem. “On the contrary... However, it might affect your flexibility, and I am not risking that.”

“I see,” the blond sighed. “See you tomorrow,” he said once more and left the apartment, turning off the lights as he went.