Episode 7 - Cock Fu Fighting

Cosmo Farfetch was drinking gin from a teacup that said World’s Best Auntie and staring at his own reflection in a spoon.

The apartment curtains were half-drawn — not for privacy, but to accentuate the lighting. Natural light was too honest. Cosmo preferred something with plausible deniability that he was ageing disgracefully.

Carrie Fisher snored softly from the velvet armchair, paws twitching in dreamland. The television played a muted daytime talk show in which people with ordinary problems cried under unflattering lighting. Cosmo watched them with anthropological fascination.

“Amateurs,” he muttered, swirling his drink. “No contouring. Poor back lighting. Oh, sweeheart, those tears….I have cried far more convincingly slicing into an onion.”

On the coffee table:

• Three unpaid bills fanned like tarot cards

• A half-burnt incense stick labelled Prosperity Mist

• A headshot from 2004 where Cosmo still had “mysterious heterosexual jaw tension”

He picked up the photo, “You had range,” he told it. “You had mystery. You had plausible deniability and an agent who expected nothing less.”

His phone buzzed. Cosmo stared at it the way one looks at a bathroom scale — suspicious of the truth it might deliver.

His agent, Patti Marscopone, flashed on the screen. He didn’t answer.

She was most likely calling to berate him once more about the ibis incident. Someone had videotaped the whole attack. He was once more reviled by animal groups, condemned by commentators and branded a bin chicken menace. Yet it was he who had been attacked. He was the victim.

Cosmo had tried to get justice for himself by standing in Witless Park, on a stone bench, with a placard in hand, as if he were at a MeToo protest. He went all Norma Rae until he slipped and fell into the fountain and just became an online meme. People were laughing.

Not with him but at him. Wherever he went. He couldn’t even get a decent back room hand job at The Wild Endeavour without someone giggling. And not because they were being tickled.

Miles, his only cheer squad, had abandoned him. The man recently discovered a higher calling, shattering his buttoned-up, too-tight personality. A clown or all things! So, Cosmo would think of him.

Unfortunately, for Cosmo, the clown was in fact the massively well-built Cirque du Soleil artist called Stardust, known on the streets as Nathan Barstow, who had very big feet to go with his torso. And we all know Miles loves big feet. The bigger the feet, the more inches somewhere else. Miles was such a size queen.

Nathan was on a sabbatical from Cirque du Soleil. He was being a boring old fart reading Socrates for enlightenment, playing Sudoku for ego balancing and the Hula hoop for sexuality stimulation, in between twirling like an aerial ballerina in a silk sash bash, and not much else.

Cosmo could understand why the clown was such a turn-on for Miles. When not having his tonsils tickled by the thumper in his tutu, Miles and Nathan could indulge in intellectual conversations and meaningful diatribes while drinking mint tea and listening to Enya on repeat. They were a perfect match!

Cosmo, of course, hated the clown. Stardust was everything that Cosmo wasn’t. A star! A bright shining performer with a big dick.

The phone stopped. Then immediately began again.

“Persistent, sweetheart! Must be important,” he sighed, accepting the call and placing it on speaker while he adjusted his robe for decency.

Patti didn’t wait for hello, “Cosmo, if you are dead, press one. If you’re hungover, press two.” Her voice was gravel and cigarette smoke wrapped in maternal disappointment. “If you're duct-taped to the bed with a Dalek wedge up your backside. Again! Press three.”

“Sweetheart! Never fear! I’m vertical,” Cosmo replied. “And my anus is secure.”

“Well, thank the stars for small mercies,” she said. “Listen carefully because I am only saying this once.” Cosmo sat up straighter. Good news was usually followed by good posture. His ritual. “I got you an audition. I know…I’m as stunned as you must be right now.” He gasped softly, like a widow in a wind tunnel, “Supporting role. Multi-episode arc. Crime drama. Serious network. Real money. Need I say any more?”

Cosmo clutched his chest, “Sweethheart… don’t tease me! I thought the bin chicken had ruined everything.”

“They were on a silent retreat…no tech. They weren’t even allowed to speak. Saw nothing,” Patti was bristling with excitement. Or was that the line of coke that she inhaled a moment ago that had just kicked in? “You’re auditioning to play a therapist.” Silence from Cosmo. She waited for a pause for dramatic effect. “The lead is a police detective who shot a suspect who turned out to be innocent. Trauma arc. Guilt. Brooding. Now she is trying to track down the real killer. You’re the therapist trying to get her to confront herself instead of punching vending machines.”

Cosmo stood up, suddenly began pacing, “A healer,” he whispered. “A guide. A vessel of emotional truth with excellent knitwear. Yes! I can see it!”

“A man with lines and a paycheck,” Patti corrected.

He paused, “I can do layered,” he insisted. “I have suffered. I once dated a DJ who had a split personality. One moment, he was DJ Hufflepuff, and next, he was Dorathy Lamour. And one other time, he was Earth Kitt. I got claw marks on my back and a fake tail vibrator up my anus.”

“Perfect! That is the intensity they are going for.” Patti ignored that, “But, kid, I’ll say this just once, they want to see depth. Restraint. Humanity.”

Cosmo froze, “…I can rent that for a while.” Where was Miles when he needed someone to mirror!

“You’d better, because this is the kind of role that changes how people see you. Less glitter cannon, more inner life.” He looked at the bills on the table. “Emotionally literate. Grounded. Safe.” Cosmo glanced at Carrie Fisher, who farted gently in her sleep. “You can do this, kid.”

They had met when Cosmo was seventeen, performing in a kids show at a shopping centre, Three Little Pigs, and he was the big bad wolf, bare-chested, with a taunt body and barely there costume that was so inappropriate for the little kids, but those tots loved him.

He played to the audience, got them into a wild frenzy, before he blew the piggy houses down; by the end, the children were clapping for the end of the pigs. The kids weren’t the only ones in a frenzy. The mothers were frothing over their cappuccinos while a couple of the fathers questioned their sexuality.

Later, she told him, “You’re either going to be famous for performing in Cats or stabbed to death by a vengeful wife…I’d prefer not to see you in the morgue, so let’s make you a star instead.”

Of course, he accepted. This was his dream out of his hellhole of an existence.

She taught him everything:

• How to hit a mark

• How to lie in interviews

• How to shake hands like he meant it

And, for a while, how to pass as straight. Neutral clothes. Lower voice. No wrist.

It worked — until it didn’t. The tabloids had torn through that illusion like moths in chiffon. And when the pretending burned down, Cosmo rose from the ashes in sequins and vengeance.

Patti never left. Just sighed more, invested in Whiskey shares and developed an ulcer for his many public embarrassments. She almost choked, with astonishment, on her Cluster Fuck cocktail when he got the soap opera. That deal had paid for a condo in Ibiza and a houseboy called Pedro.

“You need to start preparing,” she said now. “Immerse yourself. Talk to therapists. Read something without pictures. Learn to listen without waiting to speak.” Patti sighed, “This could put you back on top. You have five days to get ready.”

Five Days!

He felt a flicker of something familiar. Hope. Resurgence. A comeback! Followed immediately by dread wearing hope’s coat. Could he pull it off!

“Patti,” he said, softer, “thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Just book the job.”

She hung up. Cosmo stood very still. A therapist. A man who helps people untangle their minds, while his own looked like a jewellery box after an earthquake.

Cosmo dialled Melody Blaze, his therapist. He stared at her contact photo — a neutral headshot that radiated boundaries. He so wanted to be her at Wigstock.

Her voice was clipped as usual, “Cosmo,” Melody answered, already tired of the conversation. “This better be a mental health emergency or a genuine apology.”

“Hello, sweetheart, luminous shepherd of the human psyche,” Cosmo purred, switching to his soft, velvety I respect authority figures voice. “I have an artistic opportunity that requires emotional authenticity, and I could think of no one more muse-like than yourself.”

He heard that familiar thump of her hand hitting a table, “NO!”

Cosmo blinked. “No… you’re busy? No, your spirit animal objects. What of this no you speak of?”

“We spoke about this last time when you tried to convince yourself, my secretary and me, that drugging a man and stealing his sex tape was all justified. And let’s not get started on animal cruelty.”

“I was a victim. That ibis assaulted me! No one has tarred and feathered that ugly mottled atrocity.” He paused. Waited. Heard the woman’s disdainful exhale before trying to get his way one last time, “I just need texture,” Cosmo insisted. “Language. Posture. The way you nod like you’re forgiving someone in advance.”

“That’s called listening,” she replied.

He waved a hand, though she couldn’t see it, “Exactly. I can do that. I once listened to Miles explain crypto.”

“Cosmo! Enough!” That tone. The one that stripped sequins off sentences. “You are a deeply charming man who has survived by turning every situation into a performance. But therapy is the opposite of performance. It is showing up without an audience.”

“There’s always an audience,” he said softly.

“Yes,” Melody replied. “And that’s your problem.” Oof. Somewhere in the apartment, a houseplant leaned away from him emotionally. “Let me make this clinically clear, Cosmo. I am your therapist, not your emotional concierge. I am here to help you become a healthier version of yourself, not a better-lit one. That arrangement comes with boundaries — actual, real-world, legally-supported boundaries.” She paused to equalize her frustrations before saying, “We meet once a week. That’s it. Not twice because Mercury is in retrograde. Not ‘just quickly’ because you’ve had a negative appraisal near a mirror.”

Cosmo listened intently feeling his personality shrink inwards where that scared little boy lives. The one that he tries so hard to avoid through fluff and mirrors.

“You do not call me for a Lobster Thermidor recipe when you still owe me three sessions and tried to pay for one of them in drink vouchers. You do not text me coordinates to an underground sweat lodge that serves ayahuasca shooters and calls it ‘trauma tapas.’ And you most certainly do NOT send me unsolicited photography of your genitals accompanied by the message, ‘Is this serious?’ I am a psychotherapist, Cosmo. Not your doctor, a dermatologist, certainly not a shaman, and absolutely no way am I your crisis helpline for mysterious rashes you get at a Wet and Whistle party.”

Cosmo dared to blink. He desperately needed a refill.

“Boundaries are not suggestions. They are the fence that keeps me from changing my name and moving clinics.”

“I’ve learned my lesson,” Cosmo said, radiating the confidence of a man who absolutely hadn’t. “And one of those texts was meant for Miles — I was hoping those ayahuasca shooters would rid him of this clown fetish.”

“Mr Farfetch! It is getting quite late, and I would like to go home on time…and let’s put a pause on your obsession with your friend’s dating life until next week.”

Melody ended the call. Now Cosmo would have to think of someone else to study for this audition. But who?

Cosmo arrived at Andromeda Fusion’s wellness centre with cautious optimism. He had been turned down twice already. The last attempt was trying to charm a local radio sex talk host, Candy Bender, who cut him off halfway through his monologue. How rude!

Wind chimes clinked, seeming to announce his arrival to both the living and the energetically nosy. There was the scent of eucalyptus, turmeric, and financial instability in the air.

“Andromeda?” he called, stepping around a basket of ethically sourced gourds. “Sweetheart! It is I…your husband…well, fictional at least!”

Andromeda Fusion emerged from a back room in a swirl of linen and unfinished grief. She had once been rhinestones and rum at 3 a.m. Now the woman looked like she could identify your trauma by scent. Her luscious hair was braided with twine and what might have been rosemary. A rescued pigeon perched on her shoulder like a feathery epaulette of judgment.

“Cosmo, dear heart,” she said warmly, pulling him into a hug that smelled like sage and unresolved anger. “I sense a hurricane of habitual misconduct within your soul. Your aura is bleeding from the turmoil. You need peace… tranquillity…a couple of weeks at a retreat.” She removed a flyer from the pockets of her hessian sack of a kaftan, “I do retreats for humans now…you can bring Carrie Fisher too.”

“One thousand dollars! Is that in eggplants?”

“Think it over, dear heart,” She pushed him down into a bean bag. “But I detract from the reason for your visit. What brings you here?”

“I have an audition,” he announced, sticking the flyer under the bean bag, finding it rather difficult to find his most stunning posture, “I’m playing…a therapist.”

She froze, “To humans?”

“Yes.”

“On purpose?”

“Growth, sweetheart!” he said, gently fingering a dancing dreamcatcher. “I’m expanding my emotional range from ‘devastating’ to ‘dependable.’”

She studied him with the long-suffering gaze of someone who once shared a dressing room with him in a regional RSL, “Well,” she sighed, ceasing his fingering of her dreamcatcher before dragging him to the floor, “Sit. Breathe.” Cosmo was feeling queasy; that last Martini was bubbling back up. “Try not to flirt with your ego.”

They sat cross-legged on floor cushions that had seen things. For a moment, the space was calm. A fountain trickled. Somewhere, the jingle of a beaded curtain.

“Oh, Cosmo! I cannot do this with you today! My energies are dissipating as we go on.” Andromeda closed her eyes, “I am so troubled!” Cosmo shifted slightly. “I’ve been exposed to broken wings. Battered souls. Horrific injuries. Roosters! Creatures used for entertainment, discarded when they fail.” Cosmo gave a solemn nod, mentally bookmarking lower voice, slower blink. The pigeon on her shoulder fluttered uneasily. “There’s a place,” she continued, serenity cracking. “An underground ring. They call it Cock Fu Fighting.”

Cosmo blinked, “Sweetheart! You had me at cock. Tell me more.”

“It is an illegal cockfighting den. They make them fight until one of them dies, and the crowd cheers like it’s theatre. And those who bet on the victor go home with pockets of cash.”

“Cash, you say!” Another way to finance his tea and crumpets. Well, less tea, and a lot more gin.

“No, Cosmo! Think of the poor roosters! Their bodies ripped to shreds, their beaks torn asunder, and their limp bodies just dumped in a skip. We must help them! I need your help. You're their last hope.” She leaned in closer, “And I’ll tell you everything I know about being a therapist.”

Cosmo felt something unfamiliar and deeply inconvenient stir in his chest, “And who runs this… Spiegeltent of foul and feathers?”

Andromeda’s expression darkened, “They call him Kenji Sato. People say he’s connected. Yakuza-adjacent. He runs the ring like a private club. High rollers. Underground bets. Designer suits. No fingerprints.” She removed an expensively curated invitation, “And I just happened to come across an invitation.”

Cosmo blinked, “Sweetheart…but is he hot? That is all we’re dying to know.”

She stared at him, “Dangerously so.” She shook her head with disdain, “He has built an empire on blood sport,” she said. “And misery.”

Cosmo leaned back, mind already dressing this information in narrative potential, “So what you’re saying,” he said slowly, “is that there’s a secret, glamorous crime venue filled with rich people, moral bankruptcy, and dramatic lighting.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And you’re angry about the roosters.”

“Yes!”

“And you want to do something.”

Her eyes flashed, “I want to rescue them.”

The wind chime above the door clinked ominously, though no one had entered. Cosmo felt the familiar pull of a terrible decision assembling itself like flat-pack destiny.

He smiled, “Well,” he said, straightening his coat with purpose, “as a future therapist, I believe in interventions.”

Andromeda narrowed her eyes, “Cosmo…”

But it was too late. He was already imagining the entrance. Cosmo was already pacing, which is what his body did when his brain scented drama, “Cock Fu Fighting,” he muttered. “Honestly, the branding alone is…vintage…almost disco.”

Andromeda watched him, eyes narrowing not in suspicion… but in calculation. A slow idea was forming behind her incense-scented serenity. “Cosmo,” she said carefully, the way people address fireworks they’re thinking of lighting indoors, “What if,” she said slowly, “you came with me?” Cosmo paced back and forth, workshopping mannerisms and traits for his possible character. “You could think of this as immersive theatre…you love being immersed.”

“Immersive, you say! Sweetheart, why did you not say that at the beginning? I will be there.”

Somewhere in the city, Kenji Sato adjusted his cufflinks, unaware that a linen-clad animal healer and a gin-scented chaos magnet had just aligned against his business model. And fate, who had been hoping for a quiet week, poured itself a drink.

Kenji Sato believed in three things: presentation, discipline, and never appearing rushed. The room reflected all three.

Black marble floors gleamed like still water under low golden lighting. A chandelier shaped like falling petals hung overhead, delicate and expensive. Every surface was immaculate, every line intentional. Even the air felt curated. This was his office.

Kenji sat at the centre of it all on a cream silk sofa, one leg crossed over the other with the ease of a man who had never needed to fidget. His suit was charcoal, cut with surgical precision. No tie. Collar open just enough to imply power rather than effort. Silver traced the edges of his dark hair at the temples, not ageing him but refining him. A faint scar peeked out from the V of the shirt — not disfigurement, but punctuation.

He held a slim black cane that he did not require, which made it an accessory rather than a support. His hands rested lightly on its handle, elegant, still, the hands of someone who never needed to raise them.

Across the room, violence unfolded with the quiet rhythm of routine maintenance. A debtor knelt on the marble, hands shaking, face already swollen. A goon in muscles and tattoos brought his fist down again — efficient, measured, not emotional. Blood marked the floor in bright red commas that someone else would later erase.

Kenji did not look up immediately. His attention remained on the digital ledger in his hand, where losses, profits, and human mistakes were reduced to numbers. When he finally lifted his gaze, it was not to witness suffering, but to assess damage. His expression did not change. Anger was for amateurs. Disappointment was unnecessary.

The man sighed. Wang Lee had been coercing the man for some time with no resolution. This was taking longer than he felt necessary. And the rug was being destroyed with his blood. This would not do.

Kenji pushed down on the handle of the cane, and a blade emerged from the bottom of it. The man reached forward, placing the blade directly before one of the man’s now bloody and bulbous but still working eyeballs, “I will take this eye…if you don’t give me what I want.” Kenji placed the tablet before the man, “I want the details of your accounts…every digit. If you refuse...I will not stop at your eyeballs.”

The debtors’ shaking hands reach for the tablet.

Kenji didn’t believe in sob stories. He was not a fan of mercy. He knew when someone was holding back from paying him. They would rather pay for whores and whiskey than their debts.

In the far corner of the room stood Big Merv. He was built like a demolition plan with feelings. Massive shoulders. Thick hands. The posture of a man who could break a door but preferred not to. Violence clung to him the way cologne clings to other men — noticeable, but not his whole identity.

In those enormous hands was a small pink notepad. He wrote slowly; tongue pressed to the corner of his mouth in concentration. The letters were careful, rounded, almost shy. Now and then, he paused, frowned, scratched out a word, and tried again. It was not the posture of a thug. It was the posture of a man trying very hard not to embarrass himself emotionally.

He did not work exclusively for Kenji. He was a debt collector for hire. He had found said debtor holed up in the back room of a Thirsty Camel liquor store, with a BB gun and a bottle of Dom. Big Merv had brought him in for Kenji to personally persuade compliance.

Big Merv wanted to impress with his own original song, Pistol Whipped Heart. Surely, this would win Cosmo Farfetch over.

Kenji’s gaze shifted once toward Merv, not curious, not suspicious — simply aware. He noted the notepad. The stillness. The divided attention. Then he returned to the sorry sack of human indignity before him.

The entrance to Cock Fu Fighting did not look illegal. A discreet black door at the back of a luxury warehouse complex. No signage. Just a single gold lantern and a man in an impeccable suit whose job description definitely included “removing problems.” And collecting expensively curated invitations.

Inside, the world shifted. Velvet. Gold. Low amber lighting designed to make sin look expensive. The air smelled like cigar smoke, whiskey, and moral compromise with a citrus top note.

But at the centre of the room, sunk slightly below floor level like a gladiator pit for people with investment portfolios, was the ring. Circular. Polished wood rim. Soft sand floor.

And inside it, two roosters circled each other under a spotlight that was far too flattering for what was about to happen.

The crowd leaned in with the focused hunger of people who had paid to feel powerful.

Cosmo stopped walking, “…Oh,” he said softly.

This wasn’t a metaphor. This wasn’t camp exaggeration. This was blood sport dressed in couture.

The birds lunged. Feathers flashed. The crowd reacted in sharp, electric bursts — cheers, groans, the sound of money shifting hands faster than empathy ever could.

Beside him, Andromeda went very still. Her earlier earth-mother softness hardened into something older and far less forgiving, “Tragic,” she murmured. “Not one ounce of compassion.”

Cosmo swallowed, gaze flicking between the ring and the room — the luxury, the laughter, the casual cruelty of it all, “I’ve never been great with gruesome depictions of violence.

And then the temperature in the room changed. Not because of the fight. Because of whom had entered. The crowd parted subtly, instinctively — like birds sensing a larger predator nearby.

Kenji Sato moved through the space with unhurried precision, charcoal suit immaculate, open collar relaxed but deliberate. Silver at his temples caught the amber light, sharpening rather than softening him. He didn’t scan the room. The room adjusted itself to him.

Cosmo felt the pull immediately. Attraction, yes. But threaded with danger, “Oh no! Sweetheart!” Cosmo breathed, spritzing himself with cologne, “He’s devastating! I just hope my Sauvage speaks to him.”

Andromeda didn’t look away from the ring, “That’s the cold-blooded fiend.” Of course it was. “You keep him busy while I snoop around.”

Andromeda slipped away into the crowd.

Kenji paused near the edge of the pit just as one rooster struck the other hard enough to send a spray of feathers and blood into the spotlight. The crowd roared approval. Kenji did not. His expression remained composed, analytical — not bloodthirsty, not gleeful. Just invested.

Like a man reviewing quarterly performance, Kenji’s gaze lifted from the ring. It landed on Cosmo. Held. There was a flicker there — curiosity, maybe amusement. Recognition. Cosmo, in Armani and eleganza, did not belong to the usual clientele. Did he just catch a whiff of something woody with just the hint of spice?

Cosmo met his gaze without flinching. He could hate a man and still sleep with him if he was devastatingly handsome. How else does one sleep with their brother-in-law?

On the soap and off. Cosmo blamed their drop-down, dragged-out, dirty fight sequences. Brushing against his bulge was enough to signal green for go. Many, many times, he would go home to his starlet wife with a new spring in his step and a questionable series of marks on his inner thigh that looked like teeth. She never did find out, but that story is for another time.

Cosmo’s smile was small, deliberate — not invitation, not challenge, but acknowledgment. I see the villain. The villain sees me.

Kenji’s eyes moved over him once, unhurried. Taking inventory. Assessing risk, value, and entertainment potential.

In the ring, the fight escalated. The crowd surged forward. Someone shouted numbers.

Cosmo leaned slightly closer to the pit rail, close enough that Kenji, just a few steps away, would hear him without being addressed directly, “I’ve always had complicated feelings about competitive theatre.” Kenji’s gaze shifted back to him, interest sharpening just a fraction. Cosmo didn’t look at him yet. He kept his eyes on the ring, voice light, dry. “All that posturing,” he continued. “All that noise. And in the end, everyone’s just betting on damage…not quality of the performance.”

A beat. Then he turned his head. Their eyes met fully for the first time. The chemistry wasn’t explosive. It was measured. Appraising.

Kenji extended his hand, which Cosmo promptly grasped. “I am Kenji Sato.” The man wasn’t in a hurry to let go of him. “I expect one such as you to have experience within…your own kind of arena.” He ever so subtly began to caress the inside of Cosmo’s palm, causing goose bumps to erupt, “One befitting your performative talents.”

“I’m Cosmo Farfetch,” Cosmo was grateful when his hand was finally freed. He was close to popping a woodie, and in those tight pants, it would be visible from space. “Oh, the theatre! So intimate and immersive. It is not unlike having sex with multiple people at once. ”

Behind them, the crowd erupted as the match reached its brutal conclusion. Handlers rushed in. Money exchanged hands. The spotlight dimmed slightly, already preparing for the next round.

“I am aware of your previous work,” Kenji replied, a slight rise to the corner of his mouth, “My mother indulges in soap operas to escape…she sees a life that she would have dreamed to have…but didn’t get.” His eyes never wavered as he took in all of Cosmo, as if it were a work of art. “Your work has… significance. You give people hope.”

“Oh, sweetheart! I feel that I should be signing something…perhaps a napkin for your mother?” Cosmo was bristling with excitable energy. He was being complimented for his work. “Or even on that perfectly sculpted chest?”

Cosmo had signed his name in far more inappropriate places than that before—the shaft of an erect penis comes to mind. And he was only getting coffee.

“I do not believe in my mother’s delusions. I am a grown man in control of my own dreams.” Kenji Sato rested his arm against Cosmo’s as he turned back to the ring, “My mother gave up. She allowed others to dominate her. Treat her like a slave.” Cosmo felt the heat radiating from his arm. “The only place I will allow myself to be dominated…is in bed.” His gaze swung back to face Cosmo. “Would you like to be that dominatrix?”

“Oh, sweetheart! Buy me dinner first! I am a lady after all,” Cosmo smirked.

Kenji turned back to face him, a business card in his hands as if plucked out of thin air, “Mr Farfetch! We wouldn’t be having this conversation right now if I thought you had morals.” He pressed the business card into Cosmo’s chest. “But dinner I can do. Call my office, and we’ll set it up.” His face chilled slightly, “Don’t be too late or I may have to come and find you….and that would just make me so…upset.”

Kenji wandered away without another word. Cosmo was both turned on and a little spooked. He didn’t know whether to jiss in his undies or piss in his pants.

Suddenly, Andromeda was back by his side, “Oh dear heart! It is worse than I anticipated. I will need to do some tapping and some mild birch tree scrubbing to purge the sights I have seen.” Her face looked distressed, “Cages of the poor creatures stuffed in like soft toys in an overcrowded claw machine.” She grabbed his shirt sleeve, fiercely, “But there is a chance to free them. I just need a key.”

“And where would we find this mythical key. Narnia?”

Andromeda turned her gaze to Kenji Sato, “That bastard will have it. He wouldn’t trust it with anyone else.”

Well, a good thing that Cosmo would be dining with the bastard in question. Perhaps the perfect opportunity to search for this key?

Kenji’s mansion didn’t try to impress. It simply existed at the end of a long private drive like wealth had grown there naturally, the way old trees do — slow, deliberate, impossible to move. Clean architecture. Walls of glass. Soft exterior lights that whispered instead of shouted.

Cosmo stepped out of the car and adjusted his jacket like he regularly visited crime-adjacent architectural digest spreads.

Inside, the quiet was curated. No clutter. No wasted space. Art lined the walls — bold pieces, metal twisted into tension, canvases that looked like feelings rich people paid to understand.

Cosmo paused in front of a sculpture made of jagged steel frozen mid-collapse, “Oh sweetheart! That is emotional abuse,” he murmured, “but minimalist.”

Kenji watched him with quiet amusement, “You see it.”

“I’ve dated it,” Cosmo replied.

Dinner was elegant without theatrics. No gold leaf. No edible smoke. Just precise, beautiful food served at a table built for twelve but occupied by two men and the unspoken awareness between them.

Cosmo expected questions. Instead, Kenji offered history. A one-bedroom flat above a fish market. The smell of brine and rot clinging to school uniforms. A father whose temper was louder than traffic. A mother who left one night with a suitcase and a child and never went back.

Australia hadn’t been a refuge, just survival with different street names. His mother cleaned houses like this one — moving through rooms filled with objects worth more than her yearly pay. Kenji had waited in kitchens, learning early how invisible poverty made you.

“I hated how small she had to be,” he said quietly. “So I decided I wouldn’t be.”

Gangs were not a rebellion. They were infrastructure. Fighting came first — the only currency no one could steal. Leadership followed because fear recognised someone who had already survived it.

Cosmo listened, unusually still.

“I’ve seen all your work,” Kenji said. “It took most of the day…But I managed to watch everything you’ve done.”

“A day! Sweeheart! My work should entertain for at least a week.”

“Mr Farfetch! I asked for the highlights. I have an empire to run.”

Cosmo blinked. “I appreciate that my contribution to society has been noted.”

Kenji produced a dossier, slapping it onto the table, “We have similar backgrounds. The desire to escape, to be better than what we’ve had.” He flicked through the document that could have been the big red book for Cosmo’s This is Your Life segment. “With nothing but your face for collateral.”

“Yours isn’t exactly fugly.”

“Ahh! But my way out was my fists, not my visage.”

Later, they stepped outside. The pool stretched behind the house, black and glassy under moonlight. No city noise. Just night air soft enough to make decisions you’d have to explain later.

Kenji removed his jacket, then his shirt, movements unselfconscious. Moonlight traced the line of his clavicle, the quiet strength in his chest, the body of a man built by discipline rather than vanity. And that scar! The kiss from a blade.

Cosmo swallowed. His body was prime beef. And he was ready to devour it. Cosmo followed him into the water. Naked.

It was cool, then perfect. They floated near each other, not touching at first, the space between them humming with something quieter than lust and more dangerous than charm.

When Kenji reached for him, it wasn’t possession. It was permission. And that’s when Cosmo realised something deeply unsettling as the man wrapped himself about his torso.

Kenji wasn’t leading. He was yielding. Subtly. Intentionally. He gave himself over to Cosmo.

Oh shit! Cosmo was usually the submissive one. Let’s be honest here. He was a raging bottom, but now he would have to be the dominant one. The topper. How verse of him!

Cosmo found himself in a situation that was unnerving to him. It was about letting someone so indomitable finally be soft with permission. And without shame. Which was, frankly, terrifying.

He adjusted. Awkwardly. A nervous joke that dissolved into breathless laughter as he swung Kenji around to brace him up against the edge of the pool. A moment of hesitation. Then something steadier. Less show. More presence. He began to devour the man. Tongues lashing, body simmering, water lapping.

Kenji relaxed in increments, like armour being set down piece by piece. The sharp edges softened. The constant calculation went quiet.

And Cosmo discovered, to his own shock, that taking the lead was empowering. He suddenly felt like Burt Lancaster to Kenji’s Deborah Kerr.

Cosmo picked the man up in his arms and carried him from poolside moonlight to the quiet of the house, to a bedroom untouched by the empire outside its walls. No ledgers. No weapons. No performance. Just two naked bodies thrashing about on expensive Indian silk sheets.

Just warmth, closeness, and the rare intimacy of two people choosing not to be what the world required of them.

Later, much later, Kenji slept deeply beside him — the stillness of someone who rarely truly rested. Cosmo lay awake, staring at the ceiling, emotions doing unscheduled renovations, “Well,” he whispered to the dark, “that was unexpectedly character-building.”

Outside, moonlight stretched across the water. Inside, the most dangerous thing in the room wasn’t a weapon or a criminal empire. It was a dick.

It was the fact that Cosmo Farfetch had just connected with a man he was absolutely planning to betray before breakfast. He had to do this for the abused cocks! Sorry Roosters! I couldn’t resist!

He slipped carefully out of bed. Every movement was exaggeratedly slow. He paused when Kenji shifted, heart thudding, but the breathing stayed deep. Safe.

Across the room, on a low table near the wall, sat a leather valet tray. Watch. Cufflinks. Phone. And a ring of keys.

They were heavier than he expected — solid, practical, unapologetic. Thankfully, each key was labelled. Of course, someone as conscientious as Kenji would label his keys.

From his jacket pocket draped over a chair, Cosmo retrieved a small tin. He flipped it open, revealing the soft wax inside.

He pressed the correct key for the ‘Rooster Enclosures’ firmly into the surface of the wax. Held it. Counted to five in his head. When he lifted the key, the impression was clean — grooves, teeth, every tiny rise and fall captured in soft wax. He did the other side just to be sure he captured a proper mould of the key.

Cosmo stared at it, both proud and slightly nauseous. He wiped the key clean on the inside hem of his shirt and then placed the key ring back exactly as he had found it. Cosmo’s memory for details was a skill. All those stage directions had to be memorised. One foot wrong, a missed dot on the studio floor, and you could end up being cut out of the movie.

The tin snapped shut. He put it back in the pocket of his coat. He returned to the bed slowly.

For a moment, he just stood there looking at Kenji. The man who ran an empire built on fear. The man who had let himself be held like he didn’t have to be made of steel all the time.

“This is going to ruin my week,” Cosmo whispered, regretfully.

Kenji shifted in his sleep, hand brushing Cosmo’s wrist instinctively, pulling him back toward the warmth.

The outfits were, technically, tactical. If your definition of tactical included stretch black turtlenecks, utility belts from a discount costume shop, and two full-head character masks that made peripheral vision a distant memory.

Andromeda wore Donald Duck. Cosmo wore Goofy.

They moved along the back wall of the Cock Fu Fighting complex under the cover of darkness, pressed flat against the brick like two extremely confused decals. Overhead, security cameras blinked their little red lights of judgment. Time to redecorate. Cosmo’s last can of Lush Lavender.

One lens went black. Well, more so a vibrant purple. Another died mid-surveillance, last image forever archived as a blurry cartoon dog nose.

Andromeda had hit the remote simultaneously, and now an automotive distress signal filled the night. Lights flashed. Horn screamed. Nothing says crime in progress like a 2012 Corolla having a panic attack.

They slipped through the service entrance while security shifted their attention toward the parking lot.

Cosmo and Andromeda hurried down the fluorescent corridors, past the doors into the ring that Cosmo now knew too well.

At the rooster enclosures, Andromeda pulled out the forged key. For a moment, they both just looked at it. A tiny piece of metal. A big moral problem. But would it work?

Andromeda slid it into the lock. Turned. A click. She sighed as the door opened.

They moved fast after that, unlocking cage after cage, whispers of “Born free, free as the wind blows…” filling the air as confused, ruffled birds shuffled into the corridor like feathery patrons leaving a very bad nightclub.

Then the alarms inside the building triggered. Because of course they did. Red lights pulsed. Footsteps thundered. Security rounded the corner just as the final latch swung open.

They froze. Goofy. Donald. Forty increasingly agitated roosters.

They were tackled almost immediately. Cosmo went down in an undignified sprawl of limbs and honking plastic snout.

Andromeda fought like an outraged forest spirit. The same fighting spirit she had used when manhandled on a stripper pole, defending herself against Mexican drug fiends, and anyone stupid enough to use her dead name. But even these goons were too much for her.

Donald and Goofy thought they were done for. They would end up with a bullet to the brain, sinking into a watery grave come morning’s light.

Then the cocks chose violence. A rooster launched itself at a guard’s face with the fury of a tiny, feathered revolutionary. Wings beat. Talons flailed. Another bird latched onto a pant leg and refused to release it like an avian protester.

The enclosure erupted into flapping, squawking, and deeply undignified screaming from men who had not anticipated poultry-based resistance.

“THEY’RE ORGANISING!” Cosmo yelled, crawling free as a guard who was trying to fend off a rooster giving him a beat down to the groin.

Andromeda broke loose, grabbing Cosmo’s hand.

They ran. Through feathers. Past fallen guards. They burst through the exit into the night, alarms still wailing, roosters scattering into the darkness like angry confetti.

They didn’t stop until reaching the 2012 Corolla. Bent over, gasping, one mask askew, the other missing entirely, Cosmo started laughing — hysterical, breathless.

“I’m neither poor nor innocent,” he wheezed, “Worthy of Tippi Hedren?”

Andromeda pulled off her mask, eyes shining, “Alfred Hitchcock would be foaming at the mouth.”

Back inside the complex, the chaos slowly settled. Feathers drifted through fluorescent light. A single mask lay on the floor. Goofy’s wide, vacant grin stared up at the ceiling.

Sometime later, Kenji Sato stepped into the corridor, silent as ever, surveying the wreckage. Guards nursed scratches and wounded pride. Cages hung open. Sandaled footprints of escape marked the dust.

He bent, picking up the mask. Turned it over in his hands. Then paused. Brought it closer. Inhaled. Woody with the hint of spice. Faint though familiar.

His expression materialised into one of amusement. Respect instead of betrayal. A slight smirk appeared on his face. This would be an exciting new chapter. Cosmo Farfetch was even more intriguing to the man. He must have him.

Oh, and Cosmo did land the part, though he used a different muse. Kenji Sato. This meant being away from home for a couple of weeks, enough time to distance himself from the raid. And Kenji Sato. Yet, how will Big Merv take this opposition to his potential new love affair?

Stay tuned to find out what happens next in Cosmo Farfetch and this explosive new love triangle….coming soon.

Daz James

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