Title: Untitled Hustler/Rent boy Novella
Author: Requests to remain anonymous
Pairing: JM/VK
Rating: Very very NC-17
Ed. Note: No names are used in this story, but the intent is for the first person narrator to be JM. Other characters besides JM/VK also appear, and are not based on any real people. Story takes place in England. **This fic contains too many kinks to list, some of which may not be your cuppa. Read at your own discretion.**

The first time I really noticed him was because of what he was wearing – or not wearing. He was in the middle of the dance floor, dancing to some Christmas shit that we had to play this time of year. I say dancing - it was more moving his head back and forward in time to the beat - but it somehow still looked more like proper dancing than all the people around him, throwing themselves about. Less is always more, that’s what I've learnt after countless nights staring down at too many drunk people trying too hard. He’d certainly taken the less is more thing to heart, because all he had on was jeans and a leather jacket. No shirt, no nothing. I never saw properly, but I couldn’t even swear he had shoes. Now, a broad door policy gets you the right faces in a club, a good mix of cool and people who just want to look at cool, but I’m pretty sure I never said clothes were optional. I collared my door manager, and pointed out the kid.

“Huh,” said the manager. “Must’ve slipped through, somehow. I’ll get rid of him.”

He didn’t move, though, and we both watched the kid do his head-bopping thing for a while. Some little blonde girl came up to him and reached up to whisper in his ear. He smiled down at her, and looped his arms around her waist. She started shimmying up and down. We watched a bit longer.

“He’s popular,” said the manager. The little blonde was tugging at the kid’s arm now, and he seemed happy enough to be guided off the dance floor and back into the crowd. The manager looked at me. “Do you want I go get him?”

“No… he’s ok,” I said, and went to see how the bar staff were doing.

Only I didn’t.

I zoned in on the kid, which wasn’t difficult because it’s my club and I know all the little hiding places they go to do their stuff because I’m the one who put them there. The blonde had been heading for under the main staircase, and sure enough, there they were, in amongst all the others who were trying to make the evening go with an extra whiz bang. I’m not sure why, but I felt disappointed. This was exactly what I’d been expecting from the moment I laid eyes on him. I’d just hoped, for a second, that it wasn’t going to be the same old, same old… probably all that Christmas shit filling me with hope.

The blonde had him up against the wall now, searching through the pockets in his jeans while he just grinned like it was some big joke. I stopped a few yards away and took a second to put on my don’t-fuck-with-me face, because I wasn’t being given the run around by some kid who was so out of his brains he couldn’t even get dressed. Only, when I looked back at him, something unexpected was going on. He had hold of the blonde’s wrists with one hand and was stroking her face with the other. She frowned at him and looked confused. The hand was ghosting down her neck now, and she went very still. So did I. I had the uncomfortable feeling I should do something, but I just stood there, following the path of that hand, his fingertips brushing the hollow of her neck, then further down… suddenly, he leaned in and kissed her, quite gently. I held my breath. I’m pretty sure the blonde did, too. When he let go a moment later, she kind of crumpled slightly, like everything in her body had relaxed. The kid smiled shyly, as if he was sorry he’d done it, and moved off, leaving the blonde – and me – wondering what the hell had just happened.

It was only at the end of the night I noticed the blonde asking the bar staff if anybody had handed in her wallet.

I saw him all the time after that. He’d obviously decided my club was a good place to be, and he was right. It was the best place to be if you were rich in style and penniless in all other respects, which he clearly was. I was sure after that first time that he didn’t sell anything, but I was also sure that he was a thieving little bastard. Maybe thieving isn’t the right word, because that implies he never gave anything in return. From the looks on the faces of all the girls he kissed under the stairs, it was a deal that went both ways. I even thought he had some kind of drug in his mouth that he was passing to them, the way they’d stand there all dazed and… satisfied, but I watched enough times to know there wasn’t anything.

Oh, and it wasn’t just girls. Once or twice, right at the very end of the night, when all those office boys are so drunk they can’t stand up to piss straight, there’d be one who’d find his way under the stairs, to stagger away with exactly that same look on his face and a whole lot lighter in his wallet. The kid just seemed to have a gift. God knows, I was wishing I had that gift, because things were running very dry since my girlfriend had made it her New Year’s resolution to leave me once and for all. That’s probably why I was so fascinated with this boy under the stairs – nothing going on in my own sad, sad life.

I thought about throwing him out quite a lot, but it never happened. The furthest I got was to have the door manager tell him no shirt, no getting in. He turned up in some dirty white tee after that, stained with god knows what, so I had to tell the manager to tell him to leave it off again. I never said anything to him and I was sure he didn’t even know I existed. He just took up residence in the club, standing in the middle of that dance floor, waiting for people to come up to him and get their money stolen. And get kissed. Lots of them came back other nights, to get fleeced all over again.

I probably should’ve done something, what with it being my club and my customers he was taking for a ride, but I couldn’t be bothered to work up the energy, somehow. What the hell, he was good for business – and I didn’t get this far by ignoring something that’s good for business.  When he broke into the office and tried to steal the takings, though, well that was a whole different matter.

I knew something was going to happen right from the word go. Our boy from under the stairs hadn’t shown for a few days, and when he eventually turned up he was even grubbier than usual and it was like his timing was kind of out. The girls were still all over him, but he kept shaking them off. It didn’t help that it was one of those edgy nights you get sometimes; the club was heaving and there was a stag party, drunk and angry, pushing up to every pretty girl who stumbled into their way. They must’ve felt something was off about the kid, because every chance they got they knocked him with a shoulder, pushed him back from the dance floor, breathed sourly into his face. I could see him trying to ignore it, trying to keep his timing. Turned out, he knew something was off too, because by three in the morning he had the prospective groom staring at him with dazed, grateful eyes. This time, though, as the boy began walking away, he was shoved back against the wall by someone. Best man, apparently. Brother of the bride. At least, that’s what the bouncers could make out between punches. He landed a couple of nasty ones before the bouncers managed to pull him off, but his fists were already covered in blood. By the time I got there, he was waving an empty wallet in the air like that was a good enough reason for all the gore, while the groom just stood touching his mouth and looking stupidly happy.

“Now do you want me to throw him out?” said the door manager. I nodded. The kid, however, had vanished into the crowd.

I didn’t have time to look for him because I had my hands full clearing out the stag party, and in the end I had to turn the lights on early just to break the whole mess up. Everyone drifted off, rubbing their eyes in the glare. I went down onto the floor which was tacky with spilt beer and stared around. With the lights on, it was just another seedy club with the walls painted red and cheap leather sofas shoved into corners. I tended to avoid looking too closely when the lights were on. This time, though, I was looking for something specific, and I had no problems finding it. Under the stairs, even against the red paint, I could see darker patches of sticky blood; great smears of them. The best man might have landed the punches on the boy’s face, but it was the back of his head that had taken the beating. Maybe there’d already been some kind of injury there. I placed a finger carefully onto the sticky patch. Maybe, it wasn’t so good being that kid right now.

When I say he tried to steal the takings, I’m giving him more credit than he’s due. It’s bloody difficult to get your hands on thousands of pounds when there’s procedures, all those bouncers hanging around with bored expressions and itchy knuckles until the money’s locked in the safe. There might have been some skinny boy bleeding to death in the club, but I wasn’t going to skip procedures. So I locked it all away and sent everyone home, then turned the lights off and waited downstairs on one of those lovely sofas of mine.

It didn’t take long for a shadow to pass back and forth at the window in my office. I had that feeling of disappointment again, only this time tinged with an odd excitement. I tried to dampen it down, because things tend to go awry if you’re too worked up, and I deliberately took it slow up the stairs. The shadow was bent over something now, probably working at the drawers in my desk where the petty cash was stashed. Not so stupid that he was wasting time on a safe. It was a lucky thing I’d doled out the tips early on that night – actually, no luck, just good judgement. I watched the shadow for a while and couldn’t help but be impressed: he was working very patiently with what I reckoned was a screwdriver and managing to make no noise at all. I let him work on a bit longer, aware that this was the first time we’d ever been alone, then I opened the door and switched on the light.

He looked up; his face was a mess, but there was no blood that I could see. He didn’t seem altogether surprised to find me there.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I said icily, even though it was pretty obvious he was robbing me blind. Still, you have to say something. The kid smiled – smiled! – and shrugged.

“Borrowing?”

That floored me for a second, which was all it took for him to make a run for the open door, the screwdriver still tight in his fist. I was quicker and had him face first into the wall with my arm across the back of his neck fairly easily. That’s another thing you get good at when you’re in this kind of business – being quicker. I stared at the back of his head, where his hair was matted with blood. His neck was dirty. I took hold of his wrist and twisted until he dropped the screwdriver.

“You’re not having a great night are you?”

“Not having a great week,” he said, laughing. I was beginning to think he was on something, that or he’d lost more blood than was currently decorating my paintwork. He wasn’t even trying to get away from me, just letting his head rest against the wall like he was very, very tired. It made me feel overly-dramatic, standing there behind him trying to sound scary. I took a step back and, still holding the screwdriver, I locked the door. Just as a precaution. The kid turned round and watched me with that bloody smile.

“What?” I snapped.

“Whatever you want.”

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going any of the ways I’d expected.

“I don’t know what the fuck you think’s going on, but -,”

“If you’re not going to call the cops, well – I could really do with that money.” He scratched at the nasty mess at the back of his head and his hand came back covered in blood. He stared at it ruefully. “Or a hospital.” Then he looked straight at me. “Whichever, can you hurry up and decide?”

“Fuck!” said the kid as I poured neat antiseptic onto the nasty mess and began wiping at the gunk with a paper serviette. He tried to angle his head away, but I pulled him back by his hair, which made him swear again and mutter “sadistic prick” under his breath. I took a second to open one of the beers that lived in my bottom drawer.

“I’m not poking my finger around in there until everything that’s living in your hair is well and truly dead.”

“Don’t see why you have to hurt so much.”

“And I don’t see why you’re not wearing cuffs and an orange boiler suit.”

He shut up at that one and let me get on with it. We were compromising on the hospital thing; there’d be questions, then statements, hanging around in interview rooms… who could be fucked with that? Though if I thought about it too long, I seemed to be the only one doing any compromising. I tried not to think. It wasn’t like he was about to murder me; he was having trouble just sitting up straight.

The kid chuckled to himself. He did that a lot.

“What now?”

“You’re like Santa,” he said. “Doing this.”

“Xmas was a month ago.”

“I never saw any presents.” He chuckled again. “I figure I must be due something for remembering to wash behind my ears.”

I glanced at his ears.

“A crap liar as well as a crap thief, then.” The kid just started humming Jingle Bells. No way was I going to feel sorry for him and his no presents. Besides, he didn’t look like he felt at all sorry for himself. In pain, definitely, but not sorry – about any of it. I dabbed extra hard with the serviette and he jerked forwards. I felt better. It was exactly that sort of thing that made my girlfriend an ex-girlfriend.

It took a long time to clean up his hair, and after a while I kept having to shake him to stop him from drifting off into some sort of semi-coma. One time he turned round sharply and I thought he was going to take a swing, but all he did was blink woozily and say: “There you are.” I tipped the beer over him and he woke up some after that, though I think he wished he hadn’t when I started poking around with the actual wound, which looked like it had been around for some time. There was a lot more swearing.

“There’s fucking… food.” I dug around, ignoring the yells, and came up with a bit of blood-soaked Pringle. “What prick doesn’t stick his head under a tap when he’s taken a beating?”

“I don’t have a tap.”

Oh.

“How long have you been walking around with Pringle in your brain, anyway?”

The kid stared at his feet, and seemed to doze off. I shoved him.

“Christ, leave off, won’t you? I’m trying to remember.” He rubbed his eyes. “How long since the last time I was here?”

“Six days,” I said automatically. There was a nasty pause where he stared at me and I stared at the ceiling, wondering just when I’d gone insane. Eventually he turned away.

“The next night, then. I've been laying low ever since but you know how bus stations get kind of boring.”

“And my petty cash box is the answer to all your problems?”

“It seemed like a good start.” He grinned up at me. “Great at starting things, not so hot on the follow through. But you’ve seen me down there, so you already knew that.”

Innuendo from a tramp. I suddenly felt very tired.

“Ok,” I said, unlocking the petty cash drawer. “How much to get you back in whatever pit you call home?”

For a second, the kid looked disappointed, then he leaned forward and said quietly, with an expression that I’d seen him use on a lot of little blonde girls: “That kind of depends.”

“There’s no ‘depends’. Take the money and get out, or just get out. Either way, we’re done here.” He didn’t move, just frowned, so I tried to make it clearer. “Tell me how much, and I’ll give it to you. Pay whoever off. Let me get some sleep.”

That seemed to do the trick, because I could see him working stuff out in his head.

“Five hundred.”

He never took his eyes off me as I opened the cash box and counted it out.

“There you go. Merry Christmas and piss off.”

Which he did.

When I can be bothered enough to punch a hole in someone’s head, it’s over a lot more than a poxy five hundred. I know people who spend that on a hamburger.

Five hundred meant either you were very desperate, or you just enjoyed hurting the kid –I could relate to that, seeing as I’d been itching to wipe off that dopey grin once or twice. Or more. Some people just have a way about them.

By the time I’d had another beer, staring way too long at the pile of bloody serviettes in the bin and wondering how much it would’ve been if I’d played along with the ‘it depends’ thing, it wasn’t worth going back home, so I locked up the office and went to sleep it off in the couple of shitbox rooms over the store room that I liked to pretend were an apartment. Sometimes I rented them out to staff but mostly I kept them empty and used them myself, officially so I had time for a wank and a shave in the mornings but really because I couldn’t stand being at home. Now that place terrified the crap out of me – every room was painted White. Call it shabby, but I like to chuck dinner at my walls and not be able to tell.

The ‘apartment’ hadn’t been used in a while and it was cold and musty. I threw myself onto the single bed without bothering to get my kit off and tried to sleep, but I was feeling sort of churned up, mind racing with all kinds of stuff about what had happened with the kid and what hadn’t. I gave up on the Sandman ever finding me and phoned my ex instead.

“I've got someone here,” she said. In the background I could hear a man bitching about being woken up.

“Then come to the club.”

“You can’t call me in the middle of the night and just demand - ,”

“Please,” I said. She was round in half an hour. I can be pretty persuasive when I want to.

Of course, she left me again the next morning when she tried to have ‘the conversation’ and I just rolled over to face the wall. Not easy in a single bed, I can tell you. When she’d finally gone, I banged my head against the wall a couple of times because I know I’m a bastard and she didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Then I got up and went downstairs to check the cleaners were actually vacuuming under the sofas and not just sweeping litter under them.

“This place is like a morgue when it’s empty.”

I knocked back my Scotch and allowed myself time to savour it before I looked up from the bar to answer. No bruises now, same old jeans and jacket, but with a new t-shirt emblazoned with a ‘Deep Throat’ logo. Nice to see where your money went.

“That cash was a one-time deal.” The kid stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out some notes.

“So come and help me blow the last thirty.”

“You can’t blow thirty bucks. You give it to waitresses as a tip.” The kid looked hurt, but then he didn’t know I was pissed at him for staying away for two weeks – and pissed at him for showing up. I pressed on, feeling nasty. “The club’s shut. I figure you must know all the exits by now, so why don’t you go find one?” The kid stared at me, so I looked back at the bar. After a moment, I saw thirty bucks sliding onto the bar next to me. The kid turned to go. I had the urge to bang my head against a wall again. I sighed.

“What did you have in mind for this grand sum, then?”

That got me half a smile.

“I’m going to take you to dinner.”

When you get taken to dinner, there’s expectations. Certain standards. Tables, for one. The kid dragged me half way across town to this place ‘where the plates are, like, this big’ but seeing as it had been firebombed a month before, you also had to sit on beanbags under the charred lintels hanging directly overhead.

“Wouldn’t have put my money on Health and Safety letting this place open so soon,” I said, trying to rearrange myself in a yellow beanbag. The kid was folded neatly into a purple one.

“It’s not open. Not officially anyway, but who’s going to give a shit around here?” He was watching me scan the menu – that was charred, too. “You can have anything, you know.”

“Because it’s on you.”

“I said, didn’t I?”

I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu and was impressed when he didn’t flinch, though it took him a while to work out what he could afford to eat and still be able to tip. It turned out to be salad.

The waitress disappeared and I was left alone with this… boy, at three am in a condemned diner far from home. He tapped me with his foot.

“Stop staring at the ceiling. It’s not going to collapse.”

Young people just don’t know they’re going to die.

I tore my eyes from the lintel – was that a fucking crack? – and looked at him. He had a way of staying very still that made him stand out on the club dance floor but was a bit freaky otherwise. I’d noticed it on the way over; he walked like he wasn’t moving, or like he always knew there was enough space ahead.

“How come the bouncers didn’t chuck you out after closing tonight?” He wagged his finger.

“It’s a secret.”

“Does it involve you kissing one of my staff?” He smirked. “And they hid you,” I went on. “It’s not one of the bouncers, right? It’s hard to find good ones.”

“Bar staff,” he said.

“Boy or girl?” He shrugged. Tomorrow, I was going to fire them all. The waitress brought our beers over and the kid took a greedy gulp. I watched his throat as the beer went down.

“What do you say to them,” I said, “to make people do what you want?” He looked surprised.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, sure. I've seen you lift dozens of wallets and now you’re starting on my bar staff. What’s your trick?”

“Dunno.” He took another drink. “Why don’t you ask yourself? You’re here, aren’t you?” Not much I could say to that.

“What happened to your girlfriend?” he said suddenly. “The one that looked like a model.”

“She is a model… was.”

“She’s gone, though?”

“How d’you even know I had a girlfriend?” The kid snorted like that was a really funny joke.

“Come on, it’s all they talk about in the club.”

“I've never heard them.”

“You could try walking down those fucking stairs a bit more often.” He looked over at the waitress who was backing out of the kitchen with a huge plate and a tiny one full of salad. “So why did your model finish it?”

“Not that it’s your business, but I didn’t say the right things.”

The waitress put the huge plate on the floor in front of me, along with a plastic knife and fork. I pulled a face.

“The others got melted in the fire,” she stated, and walked off. The kid grabbed his salad and began chasing lettuce around the plate with his plastic cutlery.

“She was really beautiful,” he said through a mouthful.

“D’you want an introduction? You’ll have to shower, first.” He ignored me and stuffed more lettuce in.

“You know what’s weird? Beautiful girls always end up being pissed on by some guy. It’s like they don’t know what they’re worth.”

“More than five hundred dollars,” I said. I might be the ‘some guy’, but I wasn’t about to let this little shit tell me. But the little shit wasn’t listening, he was too busy eyeing every bite of food I took. I made sure to look like I was enjoying it, even if eating after six pm gave me heartburn these days.

“How did this place burn down, anyway?”

“Some payback deal. Woman who used to own it had this boyfriend and things just, I dunno, went really badly.”

“So he torched her diner?”

“No, she torched it. He tried to ditch her, so she…” He stopped, like he’d lost his place in the story, then he smiled. “She’s gone now.”

“Silly bitch. Then again, I can talk. She sounds like everyone I've ever ended up with.” I gave up trying to eat and pushed the plate out of his reach. He tried not to watch it. The waitress came over and picked it up.

“D’you want me to bag all this up for you?”

“No thanks,” I said, smiling back at the kid. “But I’ll have some pie.” He did some mental readjustments – bang went the tip – and nodded.

“Great. I’m good, thanks.” This time, though, he couldn’t stop himself from looking as the waitress turned on her heel and carried my food away.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” This is where curiosity got you - outside the crappiest-looking squat called The Billybanks, and who knew what the fuck they were supposed to be. I should’ve never agreed to go back to ‘his place’. I should’ve left straight after the pie.

The kid stuck his hands in his pockets, a bit defensive.

“It’s not like your place is so hot.”

“Seen it, have you? Because I don’t remember asking you over.”

He looked at me like I was a complete idiot.

“Where d’you think I was hiding?”

“How the fuck –,” I gave up. It was too early in the morning to get worked up. “And anyway, that’s not my real place.”

“Might as well be, all the nights you’re there.” He started walking away down the street, calling out: “Get a move on, it’s freezing.”

“Balls to that, I’m going home.”

“Yeah, and I’m walking you back.” Which meant I either hung out for a cab and probably got stabbed to death by some of the kid’s neighbours, or I followed him. I turned the collar up on my jacket and set off.

He kept up a stream of questions about absolutely nothing on the way back to the club: did you ever notice how going home’s always quicker than getting somewhere? But how it costs more in a cab? And how walking’s way better than driving because you get to see more?

“Only if you’re broke,” I muttered. He was making my head hurt – and dawn was breaking. I’d got two hours of sleep left, tops. When we finally got to the fire escape that led to the flat, I was ready to say goodbye and wipe him from my memory. I fumbled the keys out of my jacket and was trying to work out what to say – thanks, but piss off? – when I realised he’d stopped talking and was watching me with that same amused expression that I’d seen him use in the club all those times. Like he was, I don’t know, indulging me or something. I got angry.

“What?”

“I’ll go if you want.” Great, problem solved, I didn’t even have to say thanks. Just piss off. I fumbled with my keys some more. He looked at the floor shyly. “Or I can stay.”

“No.” How come that was so easy to say? The kid carried on looking at the floor.

“So I can’t come in, but you don’t want me to go?”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out, so I shut it again. He glanced up at me, and I could see him working something out. I could practically see the moment he decided, and still I didn’t say anything. Not even when he reached out and closed his hand around my wrist, forcing me to drop the keys. Then the other hand began tracing its way down my face, rubbing gently in the hollow of my throat, placing his thumb on my pulse. His grip on my wrist got tighter, and he pushed me back just a step until I felt the wall come up behind me, and the moment I let my head fall against the brick, his mouth closed over mine.

I held my breath and waited.

Two months I’d been watching him leaving people for dead under those stairs, two months, I knew that now, I’d been waiting to find out what it felt like, and here, right now, was the end of all that fucking waiting -

The kid pulled back sharply and let go of my wrist. He stared at me, his hand touching his mouth, and said:

“I’m sorry.” Next thing I knew, he was half way down the street, and I was still leaning against a bloody wall. I stayed there for a second, then bent down and picked up my keys and started up the fire escape. I was rattled, no question. I’d have probably let him in, in the end, because that kiss had been ok. Not amazing, but good enough. But then deep down I’d never expected to feel different, not after all these years of nothing. No, it wasn’t the disappointment that had me worried. It was the expression on the kid’s face before he bolted. I knew that expression - I’d seen it on every one of his conquests in the club.

The next night I collared my door manager before we opened.

“If that weirdo kid comes back, let me know, ok?”

“Let you know as in, let him in first?”

“Yeah.”

The manager gave me a funny look.

“You’re the boss.”

“Last time I looked.” I went back into the club and locked myself in the office before I fired the whole bloody lot of them. I could be a real shit when I’d had no sleep, and a worse one when it was a crappy single bed I’d had no sleep on.

I pulled the blinds down so I didn’t have to spend all night staring at the dance floor and started on my beer collection. I didn’t give a toss if the kid showed or not, apart from the fact that I wanted the chance to wring his skinny neck. Bad enough he’d done a runner – no, wait - bad enough he’d broken into my flat then mauled me. There were guys out there who were missing fingers after trying something like that. No, the thing that really got me was that on top of all that, he’d stolen my fucking wallet. The only surprise of it was the credit cards hadn’t been touched yet, but that just proved the kid had self-restraint and that I’d already found out at five am that morning.

A few beers later and the blinds had inched up, just so I could see the floor if I wanted, because you couldn’t trust the door to remember anything if there was a big crowd.

An hour after that, I was standing at the office window with the last beer, staring down. Clever little shit had figured it out. No point trying to make the earth move for someone like me when all you had to do was leave. I’d had people falling into bed with me for so long I’d forgotten they could walk away.

I finished the beer and forced myself away from the window. There’s always a point when you’ve drunk so much you can’t kid yourself anymore, and I’d reached it. I could pretend it was the wallet that had me hiding out in my own club while he was off spending my three hundred bucks, but the real reason was a whole lot more depressing. All this time I thought I’d been watching myself – a younger, poorer version of this selfish bastard. Someone who just sucked up all the passion and the great love that was going around and never gave any back. Because that’s what the kid had been doing down there, under the stairs – he’d been taking and taking, fooling them all with a smile and a bit of charm and a lot of fake innocence, when all along he was just out for himself. Only now it turned out he wasn’t like me at all because for that one moment this morning he’d looked at me with that stupid, dazed face, like he’d do anything – anything at all - for me and I’d realised that I really was the only person on the face of the planet who was never going to feel like that. Ever.

God, it really was time to call it a night and get some fucking sleep.

Over the next four days, the credit card company got very pissed off with me, the number of times I needed reminding about what I’d last bought. Every time it was the same answer: nothing purchased, just a refund on a diamond necklace credited to the card. I knew that necklace would come back to haunt me when my ex opened it on Christmas Eve then gave it back at New Year’s. Turned out expensive and shiny wasn’t enough if it wasn’t the right sort of jewellery in the first place.

In the end, the girl on the help line said sweetly:

“I really think it would be better if you just cancelled the card, Sir.”

“I never said I’d lost it.”

“There’ll be a new one with you by tomorrow morning.”

I gave in. Which was a bloody good thing, because half an hour later they rang back and told me that someone had just bought ten thousand dollars’ worth of stereo equipment with it.

I made it to The Billybanks in fifteen minutes flat, even with a stop-off to get one of my bouncers who lived the crappy end of town. I told him to dress for work - this time I was going to scare the living shits out of the kid.

The bouncer pulled a face as we pulled up at the squat.

“I've got my best fucking shoes on.”  I stared at him and he sighed and got out of the car. In the daylight it turned out The Billybanks was a lot bigger than I’d realised, with at least three different bits of building jammed together. It looked better at night - at least then you couldn’t see the rat shit.

I went up to the main door and pulled it open – and off its hinges. Inside was a tiny lobby crammed with mail boxes that had all been ripped open. Some had graffiti names on them – Bezzo, Martyr, Sonny – but the kid’s name wasn’t there.

“Where d’you want to start?” said the bouncer, scraping the sole of his shoe against the edge of the wall. I looked at the mail boxes; there were dozens of them so the place had to be huge. The kid could be right at the top sunbathing, if he was even still here. I pushed the lobby door and it opened onto a stairwell with what looked like a hundred floors spiralling upwards. At the bottom of the stairwell was a door marked ‘basement, no unauthorized access’. There was a broken padlock hanging from the bolt.

“You know,” I said, rapping softly on the door, “if I were a rat that wanted to hide, I’d do it down here. Got a torch by any chance?”

The bouncer grinned and reached into his jacket, bringing out one of those heavy torches that all bouncers seem to have with them. He handed it to me – it weighed a ton.

“You carry this around in the day?”

“Don’t have a firearm licence.”

As we picked our way carefully down the stairs, I thought how it made sense that the kid would be down here; I’d never actually seen him in daylight. For all I knew, he might spontaneously combust in sunshine.

The bouncer elbowed me and pointed over to our right. There was a bank of massive washing machines - looked like we’d found the laundry room – and beyond them I could see the faint glow of candle light.

“Romantic,” I muttered. The bouncer made to go over, but I pulled him back. It wasn’t like there was anywhere to run to, so we could play this out for a bit, not do anything stupid. I began humming Three Blind Mice under my breath and walked nice and slow up to the machines. I made sure to knock each one with the torch as I went past, then pointed the light straight into what I hoped were a pair of very scared eyes.

He was fucking smiling. Again. Only this time, his eyes were unnaturally bright, staring out from a dark brown mask of dried blood.

“Took you long enough,” he said.

Good thing I had the bouncer there, because the kid was a sight heavier than I’d bargained. Between the two of us we managed to drag him to the car and dump him in the back seat. He was laughing all the way.

This time there was no compromising on the hospital, because everything the kid was wearing was soaked in blood. It smelt foul, like someone had pissed on him. The bouncer wound the window down and started inspecting his shoes.

“There’s blood on them.” He glanced at me. “Someone beat you to him, then.”

“Could say.”

He looked at the kid, who was giggling to himself.

“Fucking funny, you ending up as his knight in shining armour.”

The kid giggled louder. Oh yeah, it was hilarious.

The nurse in Emergency was kind of frosty with us, though it helped that once she’d dosed him up with morphine, the kid kept pointing at me and whispering “He’s my shiny knight!” every time she tried to ask him a question. I told her he was one of my bar staff and he’d rung me to come and help him. Then I offered to pay any hospital bills, and she got a whole lot friendlier.

“The police are going to have questions,” she said, taking my details. I gave her my card with the club address and she raised an eyebrow. “Cool place. Me and the other nurses go there sometimes.”

“Next time I’ll see that drinks are free.” I nodded towards the kid, who was humming to himself tunelessly. “He’s ok, right? I mean, he’s not dying or anything…”

“We’ll get him cleaned up then have a proper look.” She lowered her voice. “There might be things we can’t see.”

Behind me, the bouncer fidgeted. I took another card out, scribbled ‘Call me when you want back to work - the boss’ under my mobile number and gave that to the nurse too, with a special smile.

“Make sure he gets that, ok?”

She smiled back.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of him.”

“I knew you would.” With that, I put an arm on the bouncer’s shoulder and steered him out of the hospital.

I spent the next two hours back at the club, falsifying a staff employment record under the kid’s name. I’d just filed it away when some detective showed up wanting me to get it out again. He asked a few questions but you could tell he figured it was one big waste of time. Apparently, the victim wasn’t talking. Apparently, the victim just lay there, doing some ‘very fucking annoying’ humming.

“He does that all the time at work,” I said. “I think he’s not quite right in the head.”

The detective shrugged, pretending to read the employment card I’d handed to him.

“I don’t give a toss what the hospital say, that kid’s on something.”

“So he’s clean?”

The detective gave up pretending and gave me the card back.

“I wouldn’t use the word clean exactly…”

The nurse rang me in the evening and said the kid was all patched up and resting. She had this chirpy tone of voice that could make a dead person sound healthy.

“So your shift’s finished?” I said, watching as the first people came into the bar; underage students mostly, hoping to catch the staff off guard. They never did.

“As of seven minutes ago, I’m a free woman.”

“You could come over to the club.”

There was a pause.

“My boyfriend’s waiting for me.”

“He’s there right now?”

“Outside…”

“Take a cab,” I said. “I’ll pay.”

The nurse turned out to be very lively for someone who’d just done a twelve hour shift; lively with a faint smell of bleach. I kept a steady stream of drinks coming her way and acted like someone who owns a club instead of the club owning them. I even let her pull me onto the dance floor – when the place was so full nobody could tell it was me – and stood there while she jiggled up and down and threw her arms around my neck. All in all, she was impressed enough not to notice the fact that I only had a single bed, and drunk enough to have no problem falling asleep in it after. I lay on the floor, trying to stop my back from aching - dragging the kid around must’ve pulled something important. I stared at the nurse: her mouth was open and all the lipstick had rubbed off onto her cheek. She was snoring slightly. My mobile rang and I scrambled to get it out of my jacket before she woke up and I had to talk to her again.

“What?” I said.

“Hey, boss…” It was the kid. “I’m ready to come back to work.”

“It’s five in the fucking morning.”

“It says… you said, call when I’m ready –,”

“Jesus, I know what I said. But you’re in hospital.”

“Yeah, and I’m wearing this paper apron thing, and there’s nothing at the back. Everyone keeps looking.” There was a muffled sound, like sheets being pulled up. “It’s draughty.”

“I’ll come in the morning.”

“Come now, please… there’s this male nurse and he keeps…” he lowered his voice “like, patting me.”

The nurse stirred slightly and her hand flopped over the edge of the bed. She was wearing an engagement ring.

“I’ll meet you outside in ten minutes,” I said.

I managed to wake up the nurse and ditch her in five minutes flat – not that she realised, but then that’s part of knowing how to do it – and drove over to the hospital. The kid was bouncing up and down on the pavement, in bare feet and an oversized pair of pyjamas, clutching his bloody clothes in one hand. He got in, wincing as he sat down. I stared at him for a second then drove off.

“What happened to the paper apron?”

“They don’t let you out in those, but don’t worry,” He grinned and shook out his jacket; a crumpled paper apron fell out onto the floor. “I nicked one so we can play doctors and nurses.”

“Thanks, but I just did. With a real nurse.”

“Hang on…” He dug around in his jeans pocket and took out a bottle of pills. “I bet she didn’t have tranquilisers.” He rattled them in my face and I slapped his hand away. He went off into a laughing fit which lasted the whole drive back to the club.

Maybe those tranquilisers weren’t such a bad idea.

“Hey, you know what this is?” The kid stopped his jaunt around my kitchenette and held his arms out wide. “This is my first time round your place.”

“One, it’s not the first time -,”

“I mean when you’ve actually been here.”

“And two, it’s not my place. My real place is very big.”

The kid nodded vaguely and carried on opening cupboards and drawers. He’d already been through the square foot I liked to call a lounge, checking out the few girlie magazines the last tenant had left behind, throwing himself onto the sofa then jumping up again. I was scared he was going to bust some stitches and bleed over the furniture.

He pulled out a can of beans from under the sink and put them on the counter.

“Does your real place have real food?”

“It has take-out menus… what the hell are you doing?”

He looked up from the can, which he was stabbing with the tip of my only decent knife, then pushed it away quickly.

“Sorry. I guess the painkillers make you hungry.”

“There’s a can opener in the drawer.”

For a second he seemed confused, then just plain embarrassed.

“Yeah, course. Can opener. Sorry.”

He started searching through the drawer. I left him to it and went and sat on the chair in the bedroom. What kind of kid couldn’t use a can opener?

A few minutes later he followed me in, eating the beans straight out of the can with a spoon. He nodded at the unmade bed.

“I can see a nurse shape.”

“It’s probably still warm.” I watched him shovel beans into his mouth. “Am I forking out for those pyjamas on top of the hospital bill?”

“Suppose…”

“Then stop spilling tomato fucking sauce on them.”

“Sorry.” He looked down at the front of the pyjamas and tried to wipe the stain away with his thumb. He was clumsy now, like the tranquilisers were finally kicking in. As he wiped, more sauce slopped out of the can and onto the pyjama bottoms and the carpet. “Sorry…”

“And quit saying that. You’re not a bloody parrot.”

“Right, ok.” He stood very still for a second, just long enough to make me feel crappy for snapping at him and wonder if I should say something nice instead; then he took the pyjamas off. He went and sat down on the bed with his beans.

“It is still warm. Have you got her hiding somewhere?”

“You’re a total fucking mess.”

He glanced down at his bruises and bandages.

“Oh yeah, I forgot. They said to come back to hospital tomorrow, so they could change the dressings. That male nurse really didn’t want me to go.” He yawned and stashed the beans under the bed, then stretched out, trying to fit himself into the imprint the nurse had left. “My head hurts.”

I got up and came over to him.

“That’s because they’ve stitched you up like a patchwork quilt.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m a mess?”

“Not now.” I stood over him, counting the ribs that weren’t broken. There was bruising all down his legs and fingerprint bruises on his inner thighs. When whatever they’d given him wore off, he was going to be screaming the place down. He wriggled further into the sheets and I wondered briefly if his mouth was in full working order. He certainly wasn’t having any problems talking.

“Hey, I guess I’m not as pretty as your model girlfriend.” He was slurring now, but his eyes were fixed on me, unblinking. I ran the back of my hand down his chest, letting him wince as I touched all the bruising and what looked like tiny knife cuts.

“You’re not pretty at all.”

“Then why are you always looking – uh.”

I let his cock leak damp patterns across my knuckles; he held his breath, then the next second he came. I wiped my hand on the sheet and pulled it over him.

“Don’t go into the club before ten in the morning – all the alarms are on.”

By the time I got to the bedroom door, he was already asleep.

I woke up to the sound of two phones ringing: my mobile and the stupid fucking cordless that the interior designer had hidden in some white cupboard she called a closet. I stumbled around, swearing and knocking clothes off shelves, until the phone fell on my head.

“Wait!” I snapped into it, pulling the mobile from my jeans. I put it to my ear, and was deafened by the sound of alarm bells.

“Hey, boss…” the kid’s voice yelled down the other end. “I kind of, uh, forgot about the alarms.”

“Don’t move a bloody inch.” I went back to the cordless.

“You better get down to the club,” said my security manager. “The alarms are going off.”

“What, like this?” I said, and put the two phones together and left them in the closet while I went and made some coffee.

By the time I got to the club, the manager had fixed the alarms and was doing a quick check around, while the kid was perched on the stairs, wearing the manager’s Security bomber jacket. Just the jacket.

“Jesus, what is it with you and clothes?”

“I forgot.”

“Didn’t you think, hey – maybe I should put something on? Seeing as I’m the half-wit who set all the alarms off and, oh I don’t know, somebody might turn up?”

The kid glared at me.

“Don’t move a bloody inch. Remember?”

“You can move your butt back up the stairs now.” The kid didn’t budge. “Now, as in now.”

“I don’t think I can.” He let his head drop down towards his knees. “It kind of hurts.”

“Take some pills, then. You’re the one who broke out of the hospital.”

The head dropped a bit further towards the knees, making him look like a black ball with thin legs. I peered at him.

“Tell me you’re not fucking crying.”

No answer. I started up the stairs with a sigh. He looked up, his eyes red.

“Where are you going?”

“Pills, clothes, and a nice girlie magazine for me to read in the hospital waiting room.”

 The magazine was a total waste since I spent the entire time watching out for last night’s nurse, hoping she didn’t spot me and think I’d come for round two. It was almost a relief when the kid wanted me to come into the treatment room with him.

“I’m not holding your hand,” I hissed as the male nurse pulled a curtain around the bed. The kid just nodded. He hadn’t said much since I’d got the pyjamas back on him and dragged him into the car. None of the usual manic giggling, no humming, no answering back. It was like he was closed off, saving energy.

The male nurse came over and patted the bed next to the kid’s legs. Kid was right, then. Pat, pat, pat… The nurse leaned over.

“Ok, let’s have a look to see how we’re doing…”

I ended up holding the kid’s hand all the way through. Mopped his brow, literally. He was sick a couple of times – the drugs, apparently – and I mopped that up, too.

“You’d make a good nurse,” said the nurse afterwards. I couldn’t think of an answer to that, so I just whispered:

“Can’t you, I don’t know, make him stay or something?”

“Can’t you?”

I looked over at the kid, who was sitting in a wheelchair, hunched over and shaking slightly. He turned round, like he knew I was looking. I patted the nurse’s arm.

“Same time tomorrow?”

He patted me back.

“Bright and early, please.”

I wheeled the kid out of the hospital and back to the car.

The kid slept for hours; I had to shake him awake early evening so he could take his pills. He blinked at me as I handed them over with a glass of water.

“You’ve been looking again.” He pointed at the chair, which had empty beer bottles lying around it. I shrugged.

“You can always leave if you don’t like it.”

“Never said I didn’t like it. Just wondering what you’re looking at.”

“A shit load of money invested very unwisely.”

He dredged up a smile.

“You want me to start paying it off?”

“Oh please, don’t make me vomit. Look at you. Anyway, you owe way too much, it would take years.”

“It’s only a couple of hundred from your wallet -,”

“Three hundred and sixty.”

“What kind of anal loser knows exactly how much he has in his wallet?”

“And then there’s the ten thousand on the card.”

The kid’s eyes got very big.

“You didn’t cancel it?”

“No,” I lied. “Ten thousand on stereos.”

“I gave you three fucking days to cancel that card. I got the crap beaten out of me for waiting so long.”

“And then,” I said, “there’s the hospital bills. And rent for this place. All in all, one very expensive investment.”

The kid closed his eyes.

“Can I go back to sleep now… boss?”

“Too damn right. You’re going to be working here until the day I die, and then some.” I started for the door; I wanted to get back to my other place before rush hour. They could cope on their own in the club tonight.

“Don’t you want to look anymore?” The kid was watching me.

“I've looked enough for one day.”

“You can do other stuff.”

“I’m tired.”

The kid shuffled to the far side of the bed, flattening his back against the wall.

“Me too.”

I checked my watch - rush hour had probably started by now. I could tell them downstairs I was ill, don’t come knocking on the door with the usual crap…

I turned back towards the bed and started to take off my t-shirt.

I ended up on the floor again, trying to stretch out my back. This time, I must’ve managed to doze off because when I came round, the kid was lying next to me with the duvet pulled over the both of us. I studied him in the dim light: his eyes were shut and there were carpet patterns on his cheek; he’d used the pillows to lie on. I pulled the duvet away and climbed on top of him, hands and knees either side without touching. He cranked an eye open.

“What?”

“That night at the diner. Why do a runner?”

“I’d just lifted your wallet.”

I sat back on my heels, then grabbed his throat. He coughed, struggled for a second, then let his head drop back. He stared at the ceiling and I felt his legs fall open beneath mine. Not how it usually went when I tried to strangle someone. I squeezed harder.

“You took the wallet on the way over to that shit hole you live in. You could’ve ditched me any time. Why then?”

The kid gazed up at me.

“Kiss me.”

So I did, hard, my hand still around his neck. This time he struggled to pull me closer, his cock rubbing through those pyjamas against my bare leg. I felt like he was trying to eat me alive. I pulled away and looked down, where a damp stain was already spreading over his pyjama bottoms. He shut his eyes.

“That’s why.”

I got back under the duvet and turned my back to him; he’d had that look again, even if he’d had the sense to hide it. I was scared shitless. But then his hand snaked around my waist and I didn’t shrug it off. Now I wasn’t expecting so much, kissing him had gone straight to my dick. He bit my shoulder gently – Jesus, he really was trying to eat me alive… and the hand inched further down. I tensed up some.

“Please…” he murmured. Another bite, a lick. Could you fucking believe it, he was hard again. I rolled back over and pulled him on top of me, going back for that mouth, not caring that he was wincing in pain every time I dragged him closer. Enjoying it. I shoved a hand down the pyjamas and grabbed his ass, making him whimper.

“Going to make you hurt.”

“Don’t care, just do it…”

“You’ll do anything for me, won’t you?”

“Anything, just… please…”

I pushed him back off and stood up. He lay there, dazed, breathing hard. He started to try and get up but I knocked him back with my foot on his chest.

“You had it right first time,” I said slowly. “You run away from me or I’ll make you do things you don’t want to.”

“I said I don’t care -,”

“You should.” I grabbed my t-shirt and jeans from the chair and started putting them on. “Get some more rest, get a shower, then I’ll take you to hospital.” I pulled on my boots. “Then we’ll see about finding you something to do around here that doesn’t involve you busting your stitches.”

“So what exactly is his job title?” The door manager, who was taking five in my office, used his beer to point towards the dance floor. The kid was back in his usual place, new jeans and t-shirt, nodding his head in time to the music. Some little brunette was wiggling away in front of him.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” I said, “I have no fucking clue.”

It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried to find him a proper job. At first I reckoned he’d look good behind the bar, but although he could fix any drink you named, he’d drawn a blank with the till. He just stared at it like it was from outer space until I lost patience and slammed the till drawer so hard it bust. I took him into the office.

“You can read, can’t you?”

“Course. I’m not an idiot.”

“Then stick those employment cards in order.”

He came out two hours later, waving one in the air.

“This is about me! I've got a card!”

“Yeah, and it’s the first one on the pile. For God’s sake, tell me you’ve got past the first one.”

He hadn’t. He’d got distracted looking through the office window.

“At what?”

“You.”

That night, I stuck him in the cloakroom with a book of tickets and a couple of beers. Nobody could get the cloakroom wrong. When I checked on him, he was wearing two fake fur coats and a hat with a feather in it; there was a boy, who looked like a girl, perched on the counter, kissing him. There was also a queue twenty people long, all watching.

I kicked the girl-boy out and sent the kid back into the club while I sorted the queue. Half of them changed their minds about leaving and followed him hopefully onto the dance floor. I decided to stop fighting what was staring me in the face: people just liked to watch him, and at least they bought drinks while they were doing it.

The manager drained his beer.

“He’s stopped thieving, anyway… one of the bouncers said he lives in a squat.”

“In the basement of a squat. No ambition.”

The manager was looking at me carefully.

“You used to live in a squat.”

“Long time ago.”

“And you used to hang around all the clubs, looking for ways to make money…”

“I found them.” I finished my own beer and threw it into the bin. My signal that taking five was over. The manager straightened up, but didn’t leave.

“Have you seen what he’s like during the day?”

No, because for the last three weeks I’d been spending all my time at my real place, pretending I wasn’t hiding.

“He sits on the stairs and watches us. The cleaners, security, whoever.”

“Well, he’s weird. That’s what weird people do.” I went over to the office door and opened it; the manager shrugged and started to go.

“It’s not what I’d do. If I had the run of this place all day, I’d be having a fucking ball.”

“And that’s why you’ll never have the run of this place.” I followed him out onto the balcony and looked down; the kid and the brunette had disappeared, their space on the dance floor swallowed up by a girl with tinsel wrapped round her neck. “See that,” I said, pointing at her. “Get that out of my club. It’s not Christmas now, I don’t have to look at that.” And I started downstairs without looking back at the door manager.

I checked on the bar for a while, made sure they were only taking minimum tip, then did a circuit of the club. Finally I ended up where I’d been heading all along – under the stairs, watching the kid kiss his girl, and watch me back while he was doing it. Tonight, though, the door manager’s attempt at a friendly word was playing on my mind. This… game, it had been going on since I’d knocked him back. The kid would stand on the dance floor, let some girl or boy take him off under the stairs, then wait for me to come and look. I’d stretch it out a bit longer every time before I turned up, seeing how long I could last. From the way the brunette had her body pressed against his like it was welded for life, I’d guess this was the longest so far.

What kind of kid didn’t have a ball when some moron club manager, who was thinking with his dick, gave him the world on a fucking plate? Ok, not the world maybe, but a roof over his head and food and a job, of sorts, and that was the bloody world when three months ago he didn’t even have a tap to wash the blood from his hair. I’d have either cleaned the place out by now or been running it. I’d been known to do both in the past. Instead, the kid was sitting on the stairs, watching the cleaners, or making out under the stairs, watching me.

This game had gone on far too long.

I crooked my finger at the kid and waited long enough to see him push the brunette away gently, then I set off into the crowd. I didn’t check to see if he was following; I just went up to the flat and left the door open. A couple of minutes later, I heard it shut and he came into the bedroom, where I’d turned all the lights on and was lying on the bed. He started to take off his t-shirt – the bruising had faded to yellow shadows, and the cuts were just thin red lines. I noticed now that they were done in a neat line down both sides of his rib cage, like someone had taken care to hurt him. He took off his other stuff, jeans and boots, then cocked his head to one side. Waiting.

“Sit on the chair,” I said, putting my hands behind my head. He sat down; he had a way of arranging himself that made my cock jump every time. I got up off the bed and came over. The chair was one of those reading chairs with nice, fat arms to rest your book on. I pushed him down slightly, so his ass rested on the edge of the seat, then took one of his legs and hooked it over an arm; then did the same with the other leg, so everything he had was open to inspection. I put my hand on his chest and felt it rise and fall quicker and quicker.

“There’s a word,” he whispered, eyes bright. “For people like you, people who look…”

“Yeah, but you don’t need to know it.” I kissed him, just for a second so as not to spoil the picture, then went to lie back on the bed. “All you need to know is when I’m going to let you come over here. And that’s not going to be for a long while yet.”

It turned out to be an hour and a half before I let him slide onto the bed beside me, his skin cold but covered in a sheen of sweat. He’d come once already, just sitting there without anything touching him; then I’d made him turn round in the seat and show me a different view. I liked watching his spine dip and curve, so you could count each ridge. It was like looking at an animal. Only animals didn’t reach round behind to open themselves up, then use the things I’d put beside the chair.

He lay still for a minute, shaking slightly, his hands hovering over his cock which was purple again. His eyes were fixed to the ceiling and I realised he couldn’t look at me, not if he wanted to last.

“The thing about me,” I said finally, “is that I’m very fucking lazy.” I took a condom out of my jeans and handed it to him, and he started opening it with unsteady hands. I decided I’d waited long enough and took the packet back off him, ripping it open with my teeth. Then I handed it back. He sat up next to me, hugging his knees. I began to wonder if this was a mistake.

“Look, I’m not going to make you -,”

“Shut up.”

We stayed like that for a while, him sitting up, me lying beside him with my cock fighting for breath in my jeans. Either he was scared or the clever little shit knew how to tease it out. Or both. But in a minute or two it wasn’t going to matter because I was going to pass out from lack of blood to the right head.

Suddenly, his hand crawled over my fly and flicked open the buttons. No shaking now, just quick fingers tugging out my poor, suffocated dick. I’d kind of expected him to explode at the sight of it, but he rolled the condom on just fine - it seemed it was only my face that pushed him over the edge.

Me, on the other hand – I’d waited so long by now my vision was starting to blur. I could feel my clothes sticking to me, I could feel him climb onto my lap and rub his balls against me. Then he grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head, holding them there with one hand like it was the easiest thing in the world. He bent down and licked my bottom lip with a lazy tongue, then grinned.

“Are you looking now?” I nodded, I think. He reached behind him for my dick and rubbed it against his ass hole. “Good.” And he sank down.

I managed to stay in the bed all night, mainly because I’d lost any feeling in my body by the time he’d done with me. Apart from my mind, which was buzzing with a kind of background noise of panic. I don’t know what scared the crap out of me most: the way he’d do anything I wanted and needed nothing back; or the way I’d caught hold of his hand when he got up from the bed afterwards.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he’d said. “Go back to sleep.”

In the morning I’d woken up alone, still in my clothes, and decided to throw him out if he hadn’t already left. I sat up, then realised he was lying on the floor, dressed in those bloody pyjamas. He looked like an over-grown baby that had fallen out of its cot. I pulled the duvet off the bed and staggered down to the floor beside him, lying on my back so we weren’t really touching, if anyone was looking. He twitched slightly and at the same time somehow managed to settle most of the duvet around him. I stared at the window where the light was coming through the curtains and started to hum the national anthem. It was the only way I could drown out the noise of panic; it wasn’t a background buzz anymore – it was clashing its fucking cymbals in my head.

I stayed on the floor for another hour, watching my cock rally round and poke up through the open flies. It seemed to enjoy the sound of the kid breathing, and it definitely enjoyed the feel of his ass nudging my thigh as he turned over in his sleep. I screwed my eyes shut and thought about those employment cards that still needed sorting; then I shook him awake.

“Fuck…” He came round slowly, yawning wide. I stuck my finger inside his mouth and pulled his bottom jaw down further.

“You can keep that open for a start.” It took him a second to get it, then he licked my finger and pushed it out with his tongue. I climbed over him and replaced the finger with my dick, letting him work his tongue into the slit. I watched a trace of saliva run down his cheek.

“Keep it open.”

He narrowed his eyes, then bit down lightly and sucked in an inch. I collapsed forward on my elbows, flattened my hips against his face and shoved the rest in. I could feel the back of his throat, a slight struggle from underneath and a muffled groan, but it just meant by the next second it was all over and he was lying there, swallowing and wiping his mouth.

“Bet you’ve done that a fair few times,” I said. The kid stood up and stretched his arms, giving me a view of skinny hip bones poking out above the waist band of those pyjamas.

“Is that why your girlfriend left you?” he said, yawning again. “You fucked her stupid then called her a whore?”

“But with you I’m guessing I’m right.”

“So what if you are?” He was wandering off towards the kitchen now, pyjama bottoms hanging half way down his butt. “It’s not like you give a toss. D’you want coffee or something?”

I decided on the ‘something’, and made him strip off the pyjamas and sit on a stool at the breakfast bar, butt balanced on the edge so I could just see his ass hole peeking out. Then I made coffee and took my time drinking it, sometimes holding the hot cup to his back to make him wince. When he came, I made him lick it off the stool, then I poured the dregs of my coffee into a bowl and made him get down on the floor and lap it up, like a dog.

I was starting to realised why the alarm bells in my head were ringing so loud.

When we finally got out of the flat, it was late afternoon; I figured he needed some fresh air, because that’s what young people need, isn’t it? Fresh air to help them grow. I took him to a mall and gave him money to go and get some new pyjamas while I had more coffee and watched some normal young people doing normal things. He came back after a while with a plastic carrier. When I emptied it out on the table and six paperbacks fell out, he just said:

“I like those pyjamas.”

“How come,” I said, flicking through one of the books, “you always end up getting your own way?”

The kid reached over and took a big gulp of my coffee.

“Tell me how I’m getting my own way.”

“At the club, you’ve got everyone begging.”

He waved his hand, dismissive.

“A bunch of pissed, drugged-up partiers. You just have to stand still long enough for them to focus, and you’ve got them.”

“Me, then.”

“Oh. You.” He frowned. “That’s just cause I've got low expectations.”

I must’ve looked very pissed off, because he actually moved his chair back a pace. I put the paperback down and slid it across the table.

“Go on.”

He shrugged.

“You wanted to screw me the moment I walked into your club. The way I see it, it’s you who’s getting your own way.”

“Handing over five hundred dollar Christmas presents?”

“Never asked you to.” He leant forward, and he had that look again, the one that made me want to run. “I’ll never ask you anything.”

“Clever boy.”

“No, just… I saw you with that girlfriend. I know you’ve got nothing to give.”

Like he said, then - low expectations. The kid really was turning out to be sharp.

“Ok, tell me this,” I said, standing up and throwing a tip on the table, “what have you got to give?”

He stood up too and started putting the books back in the carrier.

“Just me.” He looked up and gave me a small smile. “And you kind of already got that, that night after the diner. You just never noticed.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” I said. “I just didn’t care much.” I set off out of the mall, letting him trail after me.

The kid didn’t keep his word; three days later he was in the office, asking away. No big surprise. What can you expect from a little thief whose only asset is in his jeans?

It was Saturday night and the club was so stuffed full it was breaking a few fire regulations. I was running around being the boss, yelling at the staff, cleaning tables because the bottle boy was too slow, breaking up fights before they started. I pitched into to the office for a break and there was the kid, sitting on my desk, eating the face off that boy-girl I’d kicked out weeks ago. He broke away for a moment, leaving the boy-girl nuzzling into his neck.

“Oh, hey – it’s ok if we go to the flat, right? Only it’s kind of crowded in here.”

See? Asking me stuff. I went round them and got a beer out of the beer drawer.

“Do what the fuck you want.”

The kid jumped off the desk and pulled his face-muncher with him. They ran out of the office, not looking back. I sat down and drank my beer for a couple of minutes, then got up and went back out into the club. The door manager was waiting for me.

“We’ve got a queue round the block. When d’you want me to start letting people in again?”

“Do what the fuck you want.”

“Seriously, there’s fights breaking out down the street, either we send them home or we let them in -,”

I shrugged and handed him my beer, then started to make my way through the crowd.

“Where are you going?” he shouted after me, but I didn’t bother answering. 

The kid had left the flat open, and was already in the bedroom. I went and stood by the inch crack he’d left in the door. His clothes were on the floor and he was leaning back on his elbows on the bed, letting his boyfriend chew away at his cock. He glanced up at me – or what he could see of me – and closed his eyes. After a while, he pushed the boy’s head away and dragged him up for a kiss. They spent a good long while doing that with no sudden accidents; it seemed the kid only lost it when he was kissing me. Eventually, he whispered something in the boy’s ear then disentangled himself, kneeling up and forward and giving me a nice clear view. The boy wriggled underneath and tickled his ass hole with his tongue – which was pierced. I grinned. My poor little slut couldn’t help it, he was a taker and that’s all there was to it. He’d even roll over for this daft piece of cock. Another minute and the boy-girl was going to be plunging in and out of him. In my head, I was starting to imagine nastier scenarios, with fatter cocks and more of them. One at each end…

The kid suddenly climbed off and flipped the boy over onto his stomach, burying his head into ass. Ok, so not quite how I thought it was going. The boy seemed ok with it, because he was kind of squealing, pushing his hips back. The next thing I knew, the kid was up again, one hand round the boy’s balls, dick pushing in deep and fast. The other hand kept the boy flat on the bed, which was a fucking good thing because the boy was thrashing around and yelling stuff like I've only ever heard from girls: take, have, love. The kid stopped moving for a second and looked at me; I could practically see his muscles vibrating. Then he snapped his hips twice and collapsed on top of the boy, kissing his neck and shoulders in time to their breathing.

I left them to it and went and sat on the sofa, listening to the thump of the music from the club. I’m quick on the uptake, and I knew what the kid was doing – everything he couldn’t do with me. Only thing was, he still needed me to be there. The sorry little whore really had it bad.

I went back to the club and down to the door, where I sent all the gangs of party boys home, swearing, and let all the pretty girls in. The nurse was there with a couple of friends, so I sat them at the bar with a free bottle of wine and took the nurse into the office and shut the blinds. She was all giggly and hopeful, and the engagement ring was on the other hand.

“Wedding off?” I said.

“That depends.”

I should’ve told her straight that she was backing a loser, but it wasn’t my business if she wanted to waste her time. I let her leave her mobile number afterwards, then told her I had to work. I was the boss, after all. Then I told the door manager to make sure she’d gone by the time we closed up for the night.

Back in the flat, the lights were still all on and the kid was asleep on the bed, his boyfriend crashed out next to him. I picked up all the clothes I didn’t recognise and pinched the boy-girl awake, covering his mouth with my hand.

“Hi,” I said. “Fuck off.”

When he’d gone, I lay down in his spot on the bed and let the kid curl around me in his sleep. Eventually he rubbed his eyes and stared up at me.

“Why aren’t you in the club?”

“It’s shut. They’ve all gone home.” I slapped his ass. “Come downstairs.”

He sat up and started to reach for his jeans, but I kicked them away.

“You’re not going to need those.”

Down in the club, I switched on the dance floor lights and made him stand there. He smiled and started moving to imaginary music, the coloured spots of light dappling his skin. Then I took him to the bar, crammed him full of ice and made him crawl along the counter. That was one hell of a way to get ice in my Scotch.

Finally, I stood him under the stairs and turned him round. He sighed when I stuck a finger inside him, so I stuck in another two to make him scream. The ice had melted by now and it was a weird mix of hot and cold, and very tight.

“I said I was going to make it hurt,” I murmured, kicking his legs apart and reaching up to grab hold of the underside of a stair for support. The kid just leant his head back on my shoulder, and I wasn’t sure, but there were tears running down his face. Oh, I was good. If I didn’t make it hurt one way, I’d always find another.

Over the next few weeks I read all the kid’s paperbacks and bought him some more; he didn’t watch TV, first because I was too tight to get one for the flat, and second because he said he had enough shit in his life without watching someone else’s. It made for nice, quiet evenings on the floor, him inching his way down my dick while I stared at the ceiling light, trying to hold on to my mind. I was fast learning that he had some favourite things, like bouncing up and down on the very tip of my cock until I lost patience, grabbed his shoulders and slammed him down, hard. Or making me sit in the chair, fully dressed, with just my dick poking out of my jeans while he rubbed his cheek against it. I either gave up and came over his face or dragged him by his hair until his mouth was in a better position. Then there was his favourite favourite thing – kissing.

I had a lot of mean fantasies about him, meaner than the stuff we were already doing, and the two cocks either end was only the beginning. I was pretty sure I could hook up a room somewhere in the club where I’d stick him on a bed, ass in the air and a gag in the mouth, and let paying punters have a go. I knew this guy – don’t ask how – who’d dress up like a headmaster and stripe the kid’s butt with a belt until he wept, then reward him with a buggering for taking his punishment so well… you know the kind of thing. But I never told him any of it. It wasn’t that the kid wouldn’t have done it all without a murmur, it was just that, well, he’d have done it all without a murmur, and I liked him chatty. Random bits of kid talk that floated in and out of his head, that he could never keep to himself. None of it meant anything, none of it wanted anything from me. So I let him screw around with whoever he took a fancy to in the club while I watched from the door, and that was sick enough for both of us.

There was the odd moment when I caught him looking at me like he’d fall at my feet and worship if I gave him the word, and those were the moments when I got real creative. When he spent two hours knelt in the corner of the living room, face to the floor and butt held open, while I tried all the empty bottles lying around the flat for size. When I made him sleep in the kitchen, on the lino by the washing machine, and go outside to piss because that’s what dogs did. Not my finest moments, but they did wipe that look off his face.

There were other moments when I liked to catch him off guard; sit him on my lap in the chair and stroke his hair until he started shaking; rub the cream that the hospital had given him onto his chest, dipping a finger past his balls and into his ass hole, then following it with my tongue. It turned out I had no problem with tasting him there, it was yet another way to mark him, let him know how totally I had him. It also made him scream.

Sometimes, none of it was enough. I’d get nasty – really nasty, slamming him into walls, ready to use fists – and I’d have to go spend a few days cooling off at ‘home’. He never said anything when I came back and I never tried to make it up to him, like I would’ve done in a half-ass way with my ex, but I didn’t make him sleep in the kitchen those times, either.

“I want you to tell me something.”

The kid gave a little ‘oomph’ sound into the mattress, like he couldn’t give a shit if I wanted him to recite the bible.

It was one in the morning and the club was still open, music thudding away. I’d been staying at my place a week, and now I was back I had him lying on the bed, pillows stuffed under his stomach to raise his hips as I took turns with finger and tongue. It was making him giggle and moan, which was making me feel better for the bruise on his forehead where I’d knocked his head against the door a week ago. Lately I’d been a real bastard, but the kid didn’t seem to care.

I crooked my finger and he gasped.

“Tell me the things you’ll never ask.”

He tried to wriggle his hips back, but I slapped his butt and told him to stay still and answer the question.

“Or there’ll be no more of this.” I slipped another finger in and twisted. He swore. We waited while he got himself together, then he said:

“I’ll never ask you for a diamond ring.”

“Very fucking funny.” I slapped him again, admiring the handprint that appeared on his butt. Maybe that headmaster thing wasn’t such a bad idea after all…

“I’ll… I’ll never ask if you’ve got any kids.”

He was no idiot, this one. I stretched my fingers slightly and got a yelp.

“I’m never going to ask to come back to your place.”

“So where the fuck d’you think you are now, then?”

“The place where you live, I mean. And I don’t need to know why you never come into the bathroom if I’m in there, why you don’t watch me shower…”

“That stuff’s private.”

“But you’ll wipe my puke off the floor when I’m sick.” He was looking back at me now, twisting round so I could see his flushed cheeks, his level gaze. I took my fingers out and bent my mouth to his ass hole, making his eyes roll.

“Why do you…” he dropped his head down, “Why do you watch me screwing other people, then want to hit me afterwards?” I pushed my tongue in deep, pulled it out, stabbed it in again. His hips were working away, however hard I tried to hold him down.

“Why do you hate me so much?” His words were muffled now, as he thrust his face into the mattress. “Why do you hate yourself? Why don’t you know I’ll never ask you to say sorry?” I sat up on my knees and pulled him onto my cock, pinching the top of his dick with my thumb and forefinger. He started shaking all over, like there was something exploding inside.

“Why don’t you… God… why don’t you…”

“Why don’t I what?” I whispered into his ear, short, sharp thrusts now that went in time with his breathing.

“Why don’t you want to know… anything… anything about… me?” He shouted something out, I think it was my name, and soaked my fingers.

“That would kind of imply that I gave a shit about you,” I said, and held my fingers to his mouth so he could lick them clean.

After, though, I sat on the edge of the bath tub while he drifted off to sleep in the cooling water. His arm dangled over the side, and when he was in dreamland I lifted it and looked at the tiny pinprick scars on the underside. Old scars, now, and there were no new ones. Still, they told me everything I needed to know about my boy from under the stairs.

It was one of those pissy, cold nights that make the club steamy with other people’s breath. The door manager was taking five again, both of us leaning on the balcony and scanning the crowd below.

“It’s a real fuck when the weather’s like this,” he said. “Queues at the cloakroom, everybody losing scarves and shit, and me with my balls turning blue – and not for a good reason.” He turned round and peered into the office, where the kid was slumped in a chair, staring at his hands. “When are you going to let him out to play?”

“When he tells me what he’s done.”

“You don’t know he’s done anything yet.”

I snorted.

“You heard the bouncers. Big guy, covered in tats, says he’s a friend of the boss’ rent boy.”

“Yeah, not exactly subtle.”

“I’d say he’s trying me on for size. Fancy’s himself.”

“Oh,” said the door manager. “That’s real fucking stupid.”

“Maybe we’ll have ourselves a good time.”

I winked at him and went into the office, and knelt down in front of the kid. He carried on staring at his hands.

“Just tell me,” I said. He shook his head. “Why not?”

“Because this is me not asking you for anything.”

I don’t know why, but I had the urge to kiss him, stupid little prick that he was. So I did. For once, he was so tense it didn’t make any difference, but that just made me keep going until I got the slightest shifting in his chair.

“I’m going to take a wild guess,” I said, massaging his dick through his over-size jeans. “He’s a bastard, but a small-time one, because a real bastard would’ve finished you off first time round. You owe him a lot more than five hundred bucks, for reasons…” I tapped the scars on his arm, “that are only too fucking obvious. But then you met me, and he took a shine to my credit card. It did the trick, even if you hung onto it for three days before giving it up. How am I doing?”

The kid shrugged. His dick was just beginning to waken up.

“Now, though, he’s coming after you for the interest, and he’s only doing that because – guess what? You met me. He figures either you’re his way in, or you can, oh I don’t know – get your hands on a weekend’s takings. Which, by the way, is close to forty grand.” I started unzipping the fly on his jeans, helping his pretty dick out through the gap. “If it all goes tits up, he’s got a master plan, which involves slicing you up into little pieces until I just hand over the money.” I bent over his lap and rested my tongue against his slit. He held his breath, like he couldn’t believe I was doing it. I looked up.

“Do you want to know why I’m so fucking invincible?”

He didn’t seem to know what the right answer was, and just bit his lip as I took another swipe around the head.

“It’s because I've got nothing real to lose. If the club burns down, I can buy another one. If I get my brains blown out by some piece of shit pusher, I’m not going to be around to care. And if you try and do something to the people I care about – there aren’t any.” I grinned and swallowed his cock, raking my teeth on his skin all the way down. His hands flailed above me, trying not to grab my head, and a second later he came. I sat up and kissed him, letting everything he’d given me leak back into his mouth.

“I've done it all,” I said, tucking his dick back into his jeans. “And I made damn sure the past never came back to bite me.” I stood up. “So when your past comes back, you better find a way to stick a knife in it. Oh, and tell him, slice away. Because I like my piece of ass a little rough round the edges. Now, go and play.”

The kid left, probably to find himself someone to screw, and I didn’t see him again until I went back to the flat after closing and he was asleep in bed, alone. I bolted the main door and sat in the chair by the bed, and when he woke up yelling some girl’s name, I took him into the lounge and fucked him on the sofa until he was yelling mine.

He got quieter after that; not so much of the random kid talk, more silences and solemn faces. It pissed me off, so I tried to cheer him up one day by letting him choose what to do. He blinked, deciding if I was for real, then reached under the bed and scrabbled around for something. When he reappeared, he was waving the crumpled paper apron from the hospital.

“I want to play doctors.”

“When I said you choose, I was thinking you might want to take a trip to the seaside or something.”

“Since when do I do the great outdoors?” He pulled me down onto the bed and started to slide his hands under my t-shirt. I grabbed his wrists.

“You’re fucking joking. I don’t do sick patient.”

“You said, I get to choose.”

“I lied.”

He put on one of his solemn faces, letting his wrists hang limp in my grip.

“Ok,” I said. “But there’s going to be none of that bedpan shit. You can mop my brow and that’s it.”

He tugged off my shirt and pushed me down onto the mattress, cold hands pressing against my forehead. It felt kind of nice.

“What’s up with me, then?”

“You’re, uh… recovering from something.”

“Something that hasn’t affected my dick, right?”

He grinned and began to undo my jeans with his teeth.

“Doctors don’t do that,” I said, and got sharp teeth digging into my cock as a warning not to spoil the mood.

I let him dress me in that stupid hospital gown, with my cock tenting it so badly you could balance a hospital tray on it. Then he tucked me under the duvet and went off to make breakfast. I closed my eyes and thought about the night before, when I’d handcuffed him so close to the bedroom radiator he had burn marks down his chest. He’d looked pretty with his hands all trussed up. Those cuffs were coming out again sometime.

When I opened my eyes, he was hovering over me with a bowl of something disgusting and healthy, insisting on feeding it to me because I was too weak to hold a spoon. It tasted as bad as it looked, but if it made the little prick smile… then he wanted to hold my dick while I peed into a bowl – the one I made him eat out of when I was feeling mean. For some reason I was too knackered to argue, so I lay there, gown bunched up around my ears, listening to the splash of piss. He washed me down with a warm cloth, then turned me over and dripped hot water into my ass hole until I was almost asleep. It was nicer than the last time I’d let some guy do the sponge bath thing; he’d turned out to be a mad bastard with a real passion for toilet training and keeping me clean inside out. He also had a nice couple of rooms above his bar where I could grab a night’s sleep before he got his toys out and started pumping away. He disappeared one day, nobody knew where, though everyone knew he had nasty friends. Still, he left me the deeds to the bar, and I made good use of them.

Maybe I did know where he’d disappeared to, if I thought about it hard enough.

I woke up, and realised it was four hours later. Four hours. The kid was sat beside me, fully dressed, staring into the distance. I dragged myself up onto my elbows, feeling like something had run over me.

“What the fuck happened?”

He dug around in his jeans pocket and pulled out the bottle of tranquilisers the hospital had sent him home with.

“You… you fed me drugs with breakfast? Jesus, what kind of a doctor are you?”

He looked at me, and the expression wasn’t one of his adoring ones.

“I thought you’d be more pissed off.”

“I will be when I can think straight. But I’m going to tear your head off if you slipped that dick of yours anywhere it shouldn’t go.”

“Don’t worry, you just talked a lot, then crashed out.”

Talked? That was never good. I tried to sit up and regain some control, but the paper apron throttled me and I had to lie down again. The kid narrowed his eyes.

“You’re a proper bastard, you know that, right?”

“What did I say?”

He started to get off the bed.

“Just stuff.”

Oh fuck. I reached for his arm, but couldn’t seem to get there quick enough. Apparently I was still moving in slow motion. He stood just out of reach, which made me pissed off and desperate all at the same time, and that made me really mad.

“Did I tell you all the really nasty stuff?” I said. “Like how I’m going to sell your skinny butt when I’m bored of you?”

“Oh yeah. The headmaster idea, too. You really don’t like me, do you?”

“When I can be bothered to think about you at all.”

The kid carried on looking at me with that un-adoring expression.

“What?” I snapped. There was something slightly calculating about his look that was really irritating me. “I’m a bloody monster, you already knew that.”

“And you know I don’t care what you do to me.”

“Then why are you staring at me like I've got two heads?”

The kid seemed to think about it.

“I just guess I’m glad I’m not you.” I’m not sure, but I think he actually shuddered. “Because it must be really fucking bleak when you hate yourself that much.” He looked away at last and went out, shutting the bedroom door behind him and leaving me to pull myself together.

It took me another hour to come round properly, even after I stuck my head under the cold tap and wondered if I could drown myself in a sink-full of water. I ripped the paper gown in half, then into tiny bits, then wandered, naked, into the lounge, letting the cold water drip down my back. The kid was lying on the couch, reading one of the books I’d bought him. I sat on the floor, next to his bare feet.

“I thought you’d pissed off.”

“I already told you once, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Even though I’m such a sadistic prick?”

He closed the book and nudged the back of my head with a foot.

“Go and get a towel.”

I did, and he sat me on the couch and rubbed my hair dry.

“We’re still playing?” I said, letting him massage circles in my scalp. “Because trust me, you don’t want to see me after another round of those pills.”

He threw the towel on the floor and pulled my head into his lap. He wasn’t even hard.

“It was just a bit of fun,” he said. “To get you to let go.”

“Stuffing things up your ass usually works for me.” My dick started to wake up at the very thought and the kid leant over and tweaked it.

“You never let go. Only now I know why.” He sat back against the sofa arm, wrapping his legs around my waist and rubbing a foot along my cock. “And I know why you’re so uptight about the bathroom.”

“Oh, that…”

“And why you’re so scared all the time.”

“I’m not scared – oh, fuck.” He stopped rubbing while I bit my fist hard enough to draw blood. I nodded to him to carry on, but he shook his head.

“Turn over.”

“Think that’s my line.”

“Shut up.”

Those pills must’ve still been working away, because I shut up and turned over, letting him arrange me over his knees until my head was buried into the sofa arm and my cock was pressing into his thigh. I was going to kill the little shit when I could get some co-ordination back. He smoothed a hand down my back, pressing down at the crease so I could feel a draught between my butt cheeks. I wanted to tense, but my muscles weren’t having it. When he buried a cold finger into my ass hole, they all relaxed like it was a holiday. Apart from my prick, of course, who was begging for someone to use him. The kid ignored it, and took his finger out.

“I think I might hate you as much as you do.”

“No you don’t.”

“No, you’re right, I don’t. But let’s pretend.” He slapped my ass hard, and I couldn’t tell if I was seeing stars or wanted to turn round and swing for him. Maybe both. He didn’t give me time to figure it out before he was burning my butt cheeks with sharp, precisely placed slaps that sometimes caught my balls, sometimes stung the top of my thighs. I struggled a bit, but I was still too doped up and there was a sneaky feeling I deserved this. After he’d patterned my whole ass with his handprint, he held one cheek apart so he could deliver nasty swipes near and over my hole, then shoved what felt like his whole fucking fist into me while I bit the sofa arm. He flexed his fingers and said:

“You’re a worthless piece of shit,” then took the fist out and carried on slapping with more and more fervour. By this time any chance I had of getting away from him had disappeared up my dick, and all I could think of was the pain that seemed to burn up my insides as well as my behind. That, and the things he was saying as he pinched and twisted my balls between smacks.

“I’m not you,” he said, his voice starting to shake. “I’m nothing like you. I’m never going to do the things you’ve done.”

He let loose some vicious hits that made my back arch, and took the chance to grab my dick from underneath with one hand. The other hand kept slapping, only now my cock was held tightly and all I could do was lie there and let the pain and the words come.

“You’re nothing but a little slut who’s made good. You should be locked up in some whorehouse sucking cock. You’re bad and pathetic and nobody is ever going to love you, I’m never going to love you because -,” he stopped as I lifted my hips off his knees and struggled to move my dick in his hot, tight fist, “because you’re completely fucking unlovable.” I came over his lap and collapsed back down. I felt him trembling, but he wasn’t excited; he put his burning palms on my back and wiped the sweat away. My ears were ringing, but I could hear him still talking.

“I’m not you,” he was saying. “I’m not you.”

This time, I let him play nurse properly; he fed me soup then ran a bath and made me sit in it while he combed my hair. Then he rubbed cream onto the welts on my ass as I lay on the bed, and I let him bury his tongue in my hole because I’d pretty much let him do everything else. I thought he was going to want to use his cock, which hadn’t seen any fun all day, and I don’t know if I’d have had the energy to refuse, or even want to; he didn’t ask, though. He seemed happy enough to let his tongue wriggle away and make me moan. Then he stripped off and lay beside me, working silently at his cock until it spurted over his belly. He reached for a tissue but I knocked his hand away.

“Leave it.”

So he lay there with a pool of come on his skin, and I drew patterns in it with my finger. Eventually, he yawned and said:

“You’re going to make me sleep in the kitchen tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“I was thinking, I need to get back home. Check the mail.”

“Yeah, course.” He smiled slightly. “You said other stuff, you know. About me. Not all scary shit.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“I know.” But he was still smiling, and I knew he didn’t believe me.

Next morning, I left the kid sleeping while I went to check on the takings.

“First time ever you’ve not put them to bed,” said the security manager. “We figured you were probably dead.”

“Not far off it.”

I spent the day at home, wandering from room to room and trying to find somewhere comfortable to collapse – the kid must’ve given me enough drugs to knock out a horse – but it didn’t matter where I slung my bones, I stayed wide-eyed awake. I ended up going through a box of stuff that my ex had left behind; hopefully all those couple photos and CDs she’d bought me would bore me to sleep. They didn’t, but they did make me feel guilty for pissing her around for so long. And horny, because she was an ex model as well as an ex girlfriend, and some of those photos were the only truly whacked out thing she’d let me do. I wanked off in my nice white bathroom, and wondered if I should take some photos of the kid before he decided to make leaving me a New Year’s resolution, too.

I didn’t see the kid when I got back to the club around opening time, and I stayed in the office, sorting those fucking employment cards until the bouncers came with the takings. As I set all the alarms before I went back home, one of the bar girls appeared at my shoulder.

“Who’s that creepy guy with the tats?” she said. “He was hanging around again, asking about…” she jerked her head towards the flat window.

“His pimp, probably.”

She laughed and headed off. I got into my car and started the engine, and got as far as putting it into reverse. Then I turned the engine off, got out and went up the fire escape to the flat. The back door was open. I bolted it behind me and went into the bedroom, where the kid was crashed out, and kicked the bed.

“Get out.”

He blinked at me, then staggered to his feet and past me, into the lounge. I threw myself on the bed and lay there for a while, thinking about the unlocked back door, then got up and went into the kitchen. The kid was already asleep on the floor by the washing machine, curled up around himself. I dragged him up by the hair.

“Take those fucking hideous pyjamas off.”

He reached an unsteady hand to the top button, and something about him doing what I wanted even when he was dead on his feet sent me right over the edge. I grabbed the pyjama top and ripped it open, sending buttons spinning onto the floor. Then I took the kitchen knife and slashed down the side of the bottoms, so they fell around his feet. He stared down at them, instead of at the knife in my hand. I grabbed the back of his neck and shoved him face first into the back door.

“Lock it, next time.”

Then I went back to bed.

Much later, I thought I heard a noise out on the fire escape, and I went into the kitchen to find some cat scratching at the door and the kid fast asleep on the floor. There were buttons pressed into his cheek and lying all around him; when I put my hand on his back, his skin was icy. I went and got the duvet and settled it over him, then crawled under it and fell asleep.

The kid didn’t want new pyjamas, he wanted those pyjamas, so I stitched the buttons back on and patched up the slashed bottoms. He wore them on the dance floor the next night and I still found him under the stairs with some footballer at closing time. The footballer didn’t want to let him go, but the kid was quicker than him and we were back in the flat, on our own, by end of play. Besides, he had something better to do than a meathead with shoulders like a suspension bridge. He was getting good at knowing when I wanted to say sorry, and he seemed to enjoy making it hurt.

Not like me, my ass.

As for me, wriggling my butt on the lap of some baby, letting him edge nearer to taking whatever it was I wasn’t ever going to give him – I didn’t give a fuck. His hands were nasty and unforgiving, and the things he said… I've been called a selfish bastard, a mean fucker, just plain evil, and most of those by my ex, but nobody had called me a whore in a very long time. One day, I was going to have to sit the kid down and get him to tell me exactly what I’d said in those missing four hours. In the meantime, I was doing a lot of things I had to say sorry for, and he was keen to accept my apologies.

“You don’t, you know, look as much anymore,” he said once, as he swirled a creamy finger in and out of my ass hole and over my balls.

“You do, though.”

“You’re nice to look at.” He slapped my reddened butt then lay his cheek against it to feel the heat. “Nice to eat.” Now his tongue crept down my crack and into the hole, and I shivered.

“I’ll look if you want. I've got plenty things left to make you do.”

He lapped back up the crack and along my spine, covering me with his body, resting his dick between my ass cheeks. He pressed down with it.

“You can make me do this if you like.”

Sometimes I wondered what I’d do if he just went ahead and did it, took the decision away. He could, if it came to it. He was strong enough, much stronger than he let on, and if I was going to give it up why not sink as low as possible and give it up to a rent boy who used to sleep in the basement of a squat?

I wasn’t that far gone, yet.

He bit the back of my neck suddenly, nudging his cock back and forth, and his hard little balls rolled over my butt. Maybe I was that far gone. But instead he pushed my legs together, then sat over my thighs and rubbed his dick between my cheeks while he squeezed them together with his hands.

“Just like a cunt,” he said, and came over my back while I tried not to imagine his cock head peeping out from my ass. I wasn’t very successful, because a second later the duvet was sticky and I was already fighting dreamland as he licked his come from my skin.

Just in case the kid was feeling neglected, I spent the next Monday, when the club was shut for the day, ticking off things from my kid list. I had some boring shit to do in the office, so I lay him face down on the desk and used his bare ass to lean on as I signed cheques for suppliers. He wriggled a lot, and after the fifth spoiled cheque I held him down by the scruff of the neck and grabbed a ruler from my stationery draw. It left twelve stripes criss-crossing his butt cheeks and thighs, and he counted out each one as I laid it down and thanked me after it. I didn’t think he was really sorry, though, so I made him get up on all fours and arch his back so I could see from his hole to his pretty balls. Then I striped him again, making sure to catch those balls with a downward stroke. This time he cried and I had to let him sit on my lap and sniffle into my shirt, until I got fed up and made him slither down under the desk and deal with my cock.

I sorted through the office a bit more while he went outside and leant over the balcony, holding himself open in case I happened to glance through the window. I managed to dig out the video camera I’d never been allowed to use with my ex, and took the kid back to the flat.

“That’s twice as fucked,” he said, kneeling on the bed and cupping his cock and balls. “You get to look at me doing it, then look at me doing it on tape.”

“And then sell it, so make it good. The right distributor, and this might wipe out that ten grand you owe me.” 

The kid licked his lips and I focused in on his face.

“I don’t owe ten grand,” he said.

“Those drugs you took must’ve really fucked up your brain.”

The kid leant forward so the frame was filled with big eyes.

“That day you got me to do the employment records?”

“And you didn’t.”

“I checked your credit card statements. You cancelled the card before he bought anything.” He blew a kiss at the camera, then collapsed back on the bed, lifting his feet onto the mattress so the frame was now filled with his soft, pink bits and his lubed fingers creeping towards them. He was right, there was something twice as fucked about watching him delve into himself on camera; watching as he screwed himself with the toys I’d left on the bed until he was shaking with the effort to hold on. I went to his face again, where those big eyes were nothing but black pupils staring at something that wasn’t me. He was biting his rosy lip and there were spots of bright pink flushing his cheeks. I reached down and twisted the end of the dildo that was crowding into his ass hole, just to catch the reaction. His head flew back into the mattress and he bit his fist. I tugged the dildo out and he focused on me finally, confused.

“I think I’m going to watch myself for once,” I said, fixing the camera to its tripod and taking my clothes off. I lay on the bed and pulled his hot body over me so our cocks were lined up. His was slippery enough for both of us and by the time I made him sit up, I was hard and soaking with him. He edged over my dick and I pulled him down for a kiss before he got to it.

“Don’t…” he said, almost going over. I let him struggle away.

“Make it good, and I’ll give you ten grand.”

“I don’t need your money.”

He squatted down and closed his hole around the top of my dick, making my brain shut down for a moment. He loved this bit, squeezing the sanity out of me. That first, crushing inch made me feel like I was ruining something fresh and new for the first time, and that made me lose it completely.

He waited, back in control of himself, and I started to babble.

“I’ll do any fucking thing you want, just move.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“Jesus, anything you prick, just tell me…”

He moved a bit further down and I yelled.

“I’m going to cram you in,” he said, “until there’s nothing left of you, and it’s just me.”

“Do it. Do whatever the bloody hell you want.”

He moved again and tensed his ass muscles so it was like sliding through the eye of a needle.

“You’ll do anything?” he said.

“Fuck, yes.”

Another inch, hot and cramped.

“Anything I need?”

“Yes…”

“You’d kill someone for me?”

“Yes.”

He sank down and stared down at me as I grabbed handfuls of sheet and teetered on the edge.

“Don’t.”

I twisted the sheet.

“I didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, you did. You already told me you were going to.” Those bloody tranquilisers. “If you do anything, I’ll leave.”

Leave? Fuck.

“Ok, no killing.”

He started moving again, nice and slow, and pulled my hand away from the sheets and onto his cock.

“See,” he said, using my hand to rub himself, “I told you. You don’t have to do anything, because there’s nothing left but me.”

I told the door manager to clue me in the second the tattoo guy showed up.

“You want me to lend a hand?” he said.

“No, I’m just going to have a word in his shell-like.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“How long have I known you?”

“Don’t give me that.”

“I’ll tell you, then. Since that fucking rat-infested squat when we were both thinner and faster on our feet.”

“And I've kept you in a job ever since.”

The door manager grinned.

“Like anyone was going to hand over the deeds of his bar to this ugly mug.” He got serious, suddenly. “You set us up nice, and I’m not ever going to forget it.”

“Yeah, a real superhero, me.”

He looked at me curiously.

“You really don’t get how people see you.”

“A bastard?”

“A boss. And a bloody good one. So don’t go and blow it now by doing something stupid.”

I told him to fuck off and do some work, then went and locked myself in the office. I hated it when he was right.

I spent the night trying not to look down and check where the kid was; recently I’d been hearing the blood rush in my ears every time I couldn’t see him. I wasn’t feeling as invincible as usual.

When I eventually gave up and looked, his usual spot on the dance floor was empty and there was no sign of him under the stairs. I swallowed down a tide of panic and went for a wander around the club. There, on one of the cheap leather sofas in a dark corner, was the kid. He was chatting away, kid-style, to my chirpy little nurse who was perched on the sofa across the way; the big male nurse was sitting next to him, an arm dangling loosely around his shoulders, like it could just be resting on the sofa. He was joining in the chat, patting the kid’s shoulder when he laughed, pouring the kid another drink when he thought he wasn’t looking. At one point, he said something and the kid yanked up his t-shirt, showing off his scars, and the male nurse prodded them with a big finger approvingly.

The nurse jumped up when she saw me and gave me a kiss.

“We were just talking about you.”

I looked at the kid as she put an arm round my waist and pulled me down to sit beside her.

“Telling funny stories?” I said. He smiled, but didn’t say anything.

“How you rescued him,” said my nurse. “From the muggers.”

The male nurse wasn’t even looking at me, he was so busy trying to work out if he had a chance with the kid. You could see his brain whirring. Slowly.

“Can you give us a minute?” I said. “I need to talk work.”

I beckoned to the kid to get up and follow me, thinking that I’d lock him in the flat until the invasion of the nurses had gone, then maybe keep him locked in there so I’d know where he was. He caught hold of my arm.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you want me to…”

“No.”

“Why not? He’s, like, all bouncy and I think he wants me to call him Daddy -,”

“No.”

I tried to walk off again, but he pulled me back.

“Then you do it.” I just stared at him until he nudged me. “With her, I mean. I don’t mind, and she’s real pretty.”

“I don’t think -,”

“And after, I’ll call you Daddy.”

The kid really was getting too good at this.

I left him with the male nurse, and a warning that if he did anything more than sit on his lap and wriggle his butt I’d rip both their dicks off, and went to the bar with the nurse. When I glanced back, the kid was busy enjoying himself, leaning this way and that over the poor guy, reaching for his drink. I downed a couple of Scotches, and tried to ignore the fact that my nurse’s engagement ring had completely disappeared.

“Let’s go to the flat,” I said, and she fucking beamed.

When we got to the bedroom, I tried to tell her that this was a waste of her time but she kept beaming and saying she didn’t care. Just a bit of fun. So I undressed her slowly, pinching her nipples through her lacy bra, sliding my hand around her ass cheeks which were soft and chilly. She moaned and kind of snuggled up to me, and I had to peel her off so I could take my clothes off. Still, the kid was right – she was pretty and the sight of her puss opening up on the bed, right where the kid had been playing for the camera, was enough to make me stand to attention.

I leant down and reached under the bed.

“Just a bit of fun, right?”

She nodded. I fetched out the dildo the kid had enjoyed so much, and she nodded again. In it went, all swallowed up in a lovely soft sound. I turned her over and slapped her butt, and she raised her hips for more. I obliged for a while longer, wondering if I could be bothered to tie her to the bed and gag her mouth, which was murmuring all sorts of ridiculous things. My ex had never said those things – she’d always been kind of quiet, expectant, and twice as beautiful. Suddenly, I desperately wanted this little nurse squirming on my bed to be my ex, and I knew the things I’d say to her to make her murmur back…

I ended up screwing her with her face down in the mattress and butt high in the air, and whoever it was I was screwing, it wasn’t her. But when I collapsed down beside her and saw her big, hopeful eyes, I realised she wasn’t much older than the kid. I pulled her into my arms and told her it was no use, there was someone else. She cried a bit, then said:

“I know, you’re still in love with your ex-girlfriend. That boy told me all about it.”

I hugged her closer, and she sniffled into my shoulder and told me about her fiancé, who was still wearing his engagement ring and just thought she needed more time to get her head round marriage. I wondered just how dumb he was, then I wondered if really he wasn’t so dumb after all because he was the one going to end up with this soft little peach of a nurse.

I stroked her hair until she fell asleep, then got dressed and went into the lounge where the kid was reading one of his paperbacks on the sofa. He was wearing his pyjamas.

“Enjoy the show?” I said.

He looked up from the book.

“Kind of.” I raised an eyebrow, and he added, “Daddy.”

“Where d’you leave your bouncy nurse?”

“Wanking off in the men’s. He wanted to check I was all healed up inside and out, but I told him I was too traumatised.”

I took the book off him and threw it onto the floor.

“Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

“Just let me get changed…”

“No.”

I carried him down the fire escape to the car because he had no boots on, and strapped the seat belt around him. He watched me with a smile.

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere that isn’t here.”

“Don’t you, like, die if you go too far from the club?”

I slapped his hand, which was fiddling around with the glove box.

“Daddy says, don’t speak unless spoken too.”

Which guaranteed a very nice, quiet drive to wherever the fuck it was I was going.

 On the way, I stopped off at the beach because it was too good a cliché to miss. The kid scampered around in the sand, building sand castles and getting the bottoms of his pyjamas wet. He looked ridiculous, so I undressed him and let him stand in the waves until he was blue with the cold. I screwed him over the car bonnet, scraping my jeans over his freezing ass and watching him shake slightly in the chill wind. Then I rubbed him down so he wouldn’t get sand in the car, and gave him my jacket.

I took him to another bedroom, somewhere, and he listened with a solemn face as I told him to stand in the corner while Daddy inspected him. He slipped off my jacket and put his forehead to the wall as I held his ass open with my thumbs and squirmed my tongue into his hole. I turned him round and shook my head sternly at the sight of his wet cock.

“Bad boy, wanting Daddy’s tongue in his butt.”

He bit a trembling lip.

“Are you going to have to tell me off, Daddy?”

It turned out I was, and he bent over and held his ankles while I got undressed for the task. I almost let him stay that way, his pucker and his balls all on show for me, but that wasn’t any kind of punishment; so I made him arrange himself over my lap, wet cock leaking against my thigh, ass cheeks round and ready before me. For some reason, I’d never had him like this, struggling to balance himself.

“I want that butt to stay put,” I said, “or I’ll start over.” He didn’t answer so I landed a smack on his left butt cheek and he squealed.

“Yes, Daddy.”

That got us started off nicely, and I let fly over his lovely bottom and he worked hard to keep it from wriggling around too much. After a while I stopped and watched his ass tensing and shifting over my knees; I laid my palm on the reddest part of it, across the bottom of his crack, and pressed down until he held his breath.

“Tell me why you need punishing.”

Cliché again, but the old ones are the good ones. And the kid didn’t seem to mind, because his cock was burying under my leg now, on its way to China.

“Because I want you to do things to me, Daddy.”

“What kind of things?”

“Just… I want…” I slipped a finger into him and he gasped. “Yes, that.”

“Just that?”

“No, you, I want you…”

I tried for a minute longer to get him to spell it out, but he was too gone to make much sense so I lifted him onto my lap and let him feel my cock under his balls.

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes…” I pinched him. “Yes, Daddy. Please.”

“Go on, then.”

He raised up and reached round behind him to grip my cock, then sank down quickly. I wrapped my arms around him and kissed his neck, and we sat there for a while, unmoving, him full of me and me surrounded by him. He let his head fall back on my shoulder, and I petted his dick, careful not to do more than feather touches.

“You were kind of scary tonight,” he whispered suddenly, into my skin.

“What d’you mean?”

“With her… you sort of left, like you weren’t there. And… and you hated her.”

“I don’t hate you, though.”

“Sometimes you do.”

I didn’t argue, because he was right.

“So you don’t like watching me?”

He shifted slightly, and I had to bite down on his neck to keep myself going. He smiled.

“I’d watch you all day and all night. You were so hot and I, you know… Why d’you think I’d changed into the pyjamas?”

“To piss me off.”

This time I thrust up and made him sigh.

“I wanted you so bad when you made her cry,” he said.

“My heartless little bastard.”

“No, not like that.”

I didn’t ask like what, because I knew. I began to thrust harder, rocking us both back and forward.

“Shall I make you cry?”

“Yes,” he said.

So I did. And after, I held him like I did the nurse, hugging him into my arms and stroking his face while he muttered some things about a girl I didn’t know. Just before dawn, he looked up at me and said:

“You don’t know the things I've done.”

I put a lazy hand to his cock.

“Plenty of time to tell you off.”

“No… worse things than you.”

“Find that hard to believe.” But the kid looked odd, like he was hollow inside, so I kissed him until he was my squirming, panting kid again. “It’s ok,” I told him.

“I know, because you tried to rescue me.”

“Oh yeah, right, from the muggers.”

He caught my hand, which was still tickling his dick, and entwined our fingers.

“Don’t need rescuing from them.”

I wanted to ask just who the bloody hell it was he needed rescuing from, but he moved our hands to my cock and helped me work it until it was streaming over our fingers and ready for him. Then he lifted his legs onto my shoulders and let me do all the work for once, while he watched me from a long way down. As I fitted my dick into him, where it was all warm and tight, I felt like somehow I was letting him down, failing him in some way. But after a few seconds my mind couldn’t think at all and even though I tried to wait for him, I gave up and collapsed onto his chest, letting him run his fingers up and down my spine until I fell asleep.

I didn’t take him back to the club the next morning; something made me want to keep as far away from the place as we could. So we spent the day in bed – a double bed – with me trying to keep that odd look off his face and sometimes managing it. I found giving him something to concentrate on worked, and lucky for me that something turned out to be my dick, which he sucked at like a baby, while I twisted his hair through my knuckles. These days his hair was always shiny, freshly showered. Since the kid had been staying with me, he was almost pathologically clean, like now he’d made acquaintance with running water, he was making up for lost time. Eventually, I hoisted him up the bed and kissed him, and I could smell the fragrance of the shampoo. My hands kept pulling at him, tugging him closer, like they had a life of their own. He broke away from the kiss before the inevitable happened and lay back.

“I’m ok, you know,” he said, biting his thumb. “You don’t have to be nice to me.”

“Good.”

I climbed on top of him and put my hand over his mouth, muffling his screams as I drove into him; when I was in, I wrapped both hands around his throat and squeezed hard enough to leave a pretty ring of faint bruises – and make him arch his neck until his eyes were black holes, staring at the wall. It took him a long time to come back down from wherever it was he’d gone, and I watched a kind of dread creep over his face when he did.

“Stop it.” I slapped him and he turned those big eyes towards me. “Whatever the fuck it is, just stop it.”

He stared at me for a second longer and then, just like in the alley by the club all those nights ago, I could practically see him trying to work something out. He nodded.

“Ok,” he said, and rolled on top of me, smiling and rubbing his sticky belly into my dick until I was hard all over again.

After that, it seemed like he was back to my happy, chatty kid and I let the day drift on with take-aways and a bottle of whisky. I wanted to say things to him, thought the whisky might help, but it just made me paw at him more. Instead, I kissed him for an hour, solid, letting him twist in my arms and come as many times as he could manage – which turned out to be five. Five. There was nothing left by the end, just his dazed eyes rolling back into his head.

If the alcohol didn’t work on me, it worked on him; he started the humming thing again, trying it around my dick with a mouthful of whisky. Then he flopped back in my arms and said:

“Why d’you think I want you so bad?”

I just grinned. He rolled off me and leant up on his elbows, examining my face.

“I mean, that’s why I came to the club. To see if you’re all that everyone says.”

“And am I?”

“You know you are.”

I did, too. I ran a finger down his spine, which always fascinated me, and over the rise of his buttock, waiting for him to carry on. He shivered.

“But the first time I saw you, you know what I thought? You were so fucking lonely.”

“Is this before or after you pranced around the dance floor with no clothes on and that little blonde?”

“Before,” he said, shifting so I could fit my finger into his warmth. “I saw you ages before you saw me. Weeks.”

He lifted his hips slightly, giving me better access, and despite all the booze my cock leaped again. I got up and knelt behind him, exploring. The kid had his eyes closed.

“Then one night, you just saw me.” He stopped talking for a moment as I slopped some whisky into his pucker and sucked it out. “And then you were there, under the stairs, and you wanted to chuck me out and I knew…”

“Knew what?” I said, swapping my tongue for my creamed dick and sliding into him as gently as I could, because even I got that now wasn’t the time to hurt him. He breathed deep, slow breaths and kept his eyes shut.

“This,” he murmured. “This is what I knew.”

Somehow, he lost the pyjamas and had to wear my jacket back to the club. I let him walk though the main door, figuring that, on past performance, the kid could be wearing a bin bag and everybody would still want to look. They did.

The door manager pulled me aside as the kid headed back up to the flat to put something half decent on.

“That tats guy is at the bar,” he said. I looked over and saw a big fucker with mean eyes and a very bad haircut. Then I saw the kid was hovering on the balcony, watching me watching the tats guy. He shook his head very slightly, and I sighed.

“Leave him for tonight,” I said to the door manager. “Just make sure he’s not around by closing, or I really will finish the ugly prick off.”

I turned to follow the kid, but the door manager put a hand on my arm.

“There’s someone else.” He pointed towards the leather sofas and I peered into the dim light. There, sitting with her legs folded on the seat, was my ex-girlfriend.

“Shit…”

“I told her I didn’t know where you were, but she said she’d wait.”

“Has she seen me yet?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Make sure she doesn’t,” I said, and went and locked myself in the office, wondering why I’d ever made the kid come back when we should’ve just kept driving.

I stared at my accounts for a couple of hours, pretending I wasn’t hiding and trying to sober up. Starting on my stash of beers in the desk didn’t help; neither did catching sight of the kid, now wearing his jeans and one of my shirts, chatting amiably to the ugly fucker at the bar. The kid didn’t look in the least bit scared of this ape who’d left him for dead a few months ago. From where I was standing, it looked like they were thick as thieves. I thought about changing the combination on the safe - the kid had to know it by now, the amount of times I’d taken all the money out, dropped it on the floor and made him pick it up note by note with his mouth. Then scattered the money over his bare back and screwed him over the desk. I knew for fucking certain that if it had been me over that desk, I’d know the combination. But I was too boozed up to think of a new set of numbers that didn’t go one, two, three, one, two, three. Maybe I should use the kid’s date of birth. Only I didn’t know it.

I watched my ex sitting on the couch, smiling vaguely at the hopefuls who came up to try their luck. In a lot of ways, she was like the kid – a stillness that made people stop and watch; big eyes that you wanted to see crying. She had that same, sorry smile that he used when he wanted to get out of something. Like she was really sad you weren’t the love of her life, but there was nothing she could do about it. She’d never used that smile on me; but then, I’d never tried to be the love of her life. I figured that’s why she’d stuck around so long, the novelty of someone who hadn’t been dopey in love with her beautiful face. She’d said I looked lonely, too. And then the more I hurt her, the more she tried to fix me. That’s where she was very different from the kid – he knew I was a lost cause.

The kid. Every thought my head managed to form somehow ended up with him. It had been like that from the first time I saw him, only back then my thoughts went along the lines of what I could do to him, make him do to himself. Now I’d done it all and more, there was nothing left but a vague panic. A flutter of something in the pit of my stomach the times he left the bed to sleep on the floor, the times he left the flat to do whatever it was he did when I wasn’t around.

All this for a broke ex-junkie who was paying his rent by opening his wet mouth and ass. You kind of had to wonder who the junkie really was.

I left the last beer unfinished – just to prove I wasn’t a total piss head – and went down to face the ex. I had no fucking clue what she wanted, or what I was going to say to her, but not being able to walk in a straight line would probably help. As I walked real slow towards the couch, careful not to bump into anyone, I realised she wasn’t alone anymore; she’d let one of those hopefuls sit down next to her and now he was pouring his pathetic little heart out, all sob story, and she was nodding.

It was only when I got a few feet away from them that I realised the hopeful was the kid.

He was sunk into the far corner of the sofa, twice as drunk as I was, but talking fast and quietly to my ex. She was listening, reaching towards him, putting a hand out to hold his. She had a look on her face that I’d only ever seen when she looked at me – like she was going to try and fix things. He let her hold his hand, bowing his head towards her. She touched his face gently then stroked his hair - and I wanted to kill her. More than the guy waiting for my kid at the bar, more than the boy-girl and all the other asses I’d watch my kid screw into the mattress in our bed, I wanted to kill her. And him. Him for letting my girlfriend touch his worthless piece of shit body that I paid for. That belonged to me.

I was so gone, I had to step back into the crowd for a second and stare at the lights. When my vision was just a blur of white, I looked back at the sofa and let my eyes focus on the darkness. They’d gone.

The door to the flat from the inside of the club was closed. Fucking closed. He never closed it when he took someone up. I went round the fire escape and slipped in through the kitchen door, which like the true idiot he was, he’d left open. The lounge was empty, but there were sounds coming from the bedroom. Again, the door was shut; I could’ve just pushed it open, but it might as well have been a brick bloody wall. I stood close to it, loathing myself, and listened to the sounds. I could hear the murmur of my girlfriend’s voice, soothing and constant, and behind it low, appalled crying. Sobbing. My kid was in there, sobbing. Telling her… telling her what? Something he never told me.

I left them, because the door was shut and he didn’t want me there, and I went and sat on the sofa and watched the people dancing in my club. Pretty people, mostly, because I had a door policy. Maybe it should’ve said, no kid ex-junkies allowed. Health fucking warning. Wet mouths and tight ass holes will give you a heart attack.

After an hour, my ex came down the stairs and saw me. She moved through the crowd easily, and perched beside me. She didn’t look like she’d just been screwed, which made me even angrier.

“Having a good time?” I said nastily.

“I’m not the one who invited me.”

“Who the fuck did?”

“Don’t.” She looked at me steadily. “I got your message and now I’m here. Say what you’ve got to say.”

I must’ve looked very fucking stupid, because she hesitated and glanced in the direction of the flat.

“I think my secretary must’ve fucked up,” I said. “Too much dope.”

“That’s what he said you’d say.” She sighed and got up. “He also said you’d call me tomorrow, so let’s just forget it until then.”

She started to get up, but I couldn’t resist. I caught hold of her hand.

“What did he tell you? When you were up there, what did he say?” I pressed her hand tighter. “What’s the matter with him?”

She gave me a look of complete contempt.

“D’you mean to tell me, all these months and you’ve never bothered to ask?”

She shook her hand free and walked away, and I couldn’t figure out if I was relieved or pissed off.

I went up to the flat – drunk and angry and feeling sick - and the door was open. Like the thing he hadn’t wanted me to know about was all over, and we were back to screwing with the light on. Fuck that. I barged in and found him in the kitchen, stabbing at a can of beans with the kitchen knife, his eyes red and swollen from crying. I grabbed the knife and shoved it in front of his face.

“Use a fucking can opener.”

He didn’t say anything, just turned the can over in his hands. I took him by the scruff of the neck and held him up against the kitchen door. And shook him.

“Have a good time? Screwing my girlfriend? Gave her some sob story that got her all wet and slipped it in -,”

The kid hit me.

I’m not sure how he did it, I think he used his knee and then punched me in the stomach, but I do know that suddenly I was on the floor, staring at the washing machine, as he pummelled away at my face with sharp, accurate fists, yelling: “Shut the fuck up.”

He stopped for breath and as I tasted the blood filling my mouth, I thought that this was why he didn’t seem scared of the guy with tattoos – because he didn’t need to be. This kid was strong. This kid was –

He hit me again, making my brain rattle.

“It’s always you, isn’t it? Everything’s you. You only screw me because you think you’re screwing yourself.” He spat on me. “And if I’m you, then guess who you are?” He put a hand round my throat and squeezed, hard, watching me struggle for breath. “The bastard who fucked you all those years ago. That’s who.”

He let go suddenly and I coughed. Spat out some blood, felt more pour in.

“Tell you what,” I croaked, trying to smile. “I’ll give you the deeds to the club.”

He grabbed my hair and slammed my head back into the floor; hit me twice more so the room was spinning.

“Kiss me,” I said. At least I think I said it. Couldn’t be sure right then. But the next moment he was kissing me, tongue mixing with all that blood, his hands pinning mine to the ground. I felt a wave of something huge creep up from deep in my brain and wash right over me. He sat back up and wiped his mouth. Hit me again.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

I blinked.

“Like what?”

“Like you fucking love me.”

I grinned.

“But I do.”

And that’s the last thing I knew, apart from his furious face and his hands scrabbling at my jeans - and the knowledge that I was about to get it, on the kitchen floor, next to the washing machine.

I came to in the bed, no clothes on, my wrists cuffed to the frame, my ass burning. The kid – not a kid any longer, I thought – sat beside me, lighting a cigarette. I’d never seen him smoke before. He looked like he’d been crying again. I tried to stretch my arms, which were aching, and said:

“I always told you I’d make you do things you didn’t want.”

The kid took a drag on the cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly. Then turned to me with a very humourless smile and held the burning tip to my thigh.

“What makes you think I've finished?”

He got a rag from the kitchen and used it as a blindfold, because he said I kept looking at him like that. I laughed, which made him slap me. Then he pulled my legs apart and buried himself inside, letting me scream as he tore back and forth. When he’d done, and my cock was still lying heavy, he bit it and made me scream again.

“Maybe you’re right,” he whispered in my ear, lying on top of me. “Maybe I am you.”

“And you rescued me.”

He took the blindfold off.

“Does this look like rescuing?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling that wave of absolute, crushing love as I saw his face again. At least this time he didn’t hit me, just rolled away in disgust.

The things he did were things I’d done to him. From screwing me on the kitchen floor to using all the toys, one by one, until I was stuffed mouth and pucker with things that weren’t him. Then he yanked them out, crouched over my mouth and watched as I opened wide for him. He took it out before my tongue could finish its job, and painted my face with sticky streaks. He seemed to like the way it looked, because after that he kissed me for longer, screwed me slower. Until it was almost gentle.

“You can undo the cuffs if you want,” I said after hours had passed. The sounds of the club had long since faded, and I reckoned it was well past closing. “I’ll do whatever you want. And I’m still too pissed to make a stab at fighting back.”

He thought about it for a moment, then undid the cuffs and rubbed my wrists.

“It’s going to be ok,” I said.

“No, it’s not.” He carried on rubbing. “You know there was never going to be a happy ending.”

“But you can tell me whatever it is, I want to know.”

“You don’t get to ask, it’s too late.”

“Then show me.”

So he told me the things that he wanted me to do, and I arched my back and played with my hole until I was leaking over the sheets. Then, after fucking myself with the dildo I’d used on him so many times, I got myself ready for him and crouched over his lovely, lovely dick. Even after the day of fucking and drinking we’d had, he was still hard. I wanted to make him wait, inch my way down like he did to me, but the sight of my beautiful kid with his face wrecked from crying and his eyes just beginning to see me… after I sank down, he reached towards me and pulled me in, and this time I was the one crying. We stopped moving, and like that, I came over his belly and he came in me.

“It’s ok,” I said into his shoulder. “We’ll start over. Clean slate. You can tell me…”

“Yeah, clean slate.”

He whispered something into my hair, I think it was about love, and we fell asleep.

In the morning, he was gone.

I got the door manager to come with me to the Billybanks this time. We stumbled through the basement, shining lights in every dark corner and calling the kid’s name. We tried asking some of the other residents if they’d seen him, or even knew him. Most of them did. The fucked-up kid, they called him, which was a fucking hilarious insult coming from that bunch of junkies.

 I found a letter stashed behind one of the washing machines in the basement. It was a woman’s handwriting, and it read: why don’t you want us? Just the same thing, over and over again. But that was the only thing I found.

On the way back in the car, I saw the diner, now refurbished, and decided to stop by. Maybe the waitress knew the places he went.

She looked at me oddly.

“Well, he used to live here, of course. Before it got burnt down.”

“I thought he lived in that shit hole squat,” said the door manager.

“That was only afterwards.” She nodded at me. “You saw him, how he was. Off the rails.”

The door manager frowned at me, like I could make sense of it all for him. But I was remembering a story I heard when I was sitting in the same diner, staring up at the cracked and burnt ceiling. The girl who’d set fire to her own diner because her boyfriend didn’t want her.

Why don’t you want us?

“Did she have kids?” I said.

“Never saw any. Too busy getting high, I reckon. That’s what they said she was doing when this place went up, why she didn’t get herself out in time.”

It suddenly made a lot of sense why the kid had let himself get beaten up so bad when he could’ve fought them off. He deserved it.

We drove back to the club. I kept thinking about him, that first time he’d kissed me and freaked out. He’d never figured there could be someone worse than him. His whole obsession with me, it was a way to punish himself, handing himself up to the nastiest fuck he could find. Oh, and I’d done a magnificent job this time. I could be truly bloody proud.

I realised my door manager was pointing wordlessly at something through the windshield. It took me a second to work out what I was looking at… fire engines, ambulances, a great cloud of black smoke billowing from what used to be my club.

“Shit.”

I ditched the car and jumped out, the door manager on my heels. There was a crowd of people gawping, some of them turned to stare at me as I fought my way through.

“Sir…” somebody tried to stop me, but I pushed them away.

“It’s my place, I own it.” But it wasn’t the club I was looking at; it was the trolley the paramedics were wheeling into the back of the ambulance. Something was strapped onto it, completely covered by a blanket.

I felt sick.

“Sir, come away.”

A policeman’s hand was on my arm. I could see the door manager, pale and wide-eyed, standing behind him with a guy I vaguely recognised. The detective who’d come round after the kid got beaten up. He looked grim. For a moment, the pavement threatened to come up and hit me, then I tore out of the policeman’s grip and made it to the ambulance, trying to grab the blanket off the thing on the trolley. Trying to see…

What I saw was an arm, covered in large, swirling, black tattoos.

I turned away and vomited, just missing the detective’s shoes. He had the grace to look unflappable.

“I realise it’s a shock,” he said, “but if you could just tell me where you’ve been this last two hours.”

I pointed at the door manager, who said something about seeing a new diner we were thinking of buying. Adding to the chain.

“And this man with all the tattoos, who we found handcuffed to the radiator in the flat…”

“Handcuffed?” the doorman echoed faintly.

“Is he known to you?”

I wiped my mouth.

“I don’t know any guy with those kind of tats. Never spoken to him.”

The detective continued to look unflappable.

“And that kid you took to hospital a while ago – did he know him?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“Do you know where we can find him?”

The door manager stepped closer, squeezed my arm in a way that told me to keep quiet.

“You’ll have a job,” he said. “I put him on the Greyhound this morning. He said something about going to see his folks.”

“And where was that?”

“Uh… Ohio? I’ll ask my wife, she was there, too. I was giving her a lift to work.”

The detective scribbled something down and gave a tight smile. In the background, the ambulance drove off with its siren blaring – a fucking waste of time when the patient’s already dead. There were more questions which the door manager answered while I stared at the blackened windows of the club; the firemen still hosing water into the smoke. 

“I’ll probably need to speak to you at the station, and we’ll also need to see your financial records,” the detective said at last. “If you’ve got any left. But this place was a goldmine, right?”

I looked up.

“No need to torch my own business.”

“Let’s hope not.”

He scribbled some more, put his pad away and turned to go. Then stopped.

“By the way, the safe was open. But whatever money was in there, it’s destroyed. Bits of paper ash everywhere.”

I didn’t say anything. When the detective had gone, though, the door manager stood beside me for another hour, and we watched the fire engines clean up. The manager suddenly shook my shoulder.

“Boss? Are you ok? You’re laughing.”

And I was, too. I clapped a hand on his back.

“You know what I’m looking at?”

“Uh…” the manager ran a finger around his collar like he was uncomfortable. Finally he said: “The club?”

I gave him another clap on the back.

“A clean slate.”

“I don’t get it…”

I grinned and got my mobile out; punched in some numbers while my manager looked at me like I was certifiable.

“Oh, it’s you,” said my ex-girlfriend on the other end.

“Yeah.”

“Well? What did you want to tell me?”

“I don’t want to tell you anything.” I turned my back on the smouldering ruins of my club. “But I think it’s time we had that conversation.”

It turned out that the guy with the tattoos had a lot of enemies, all of them nastier than me. He’d been seen arguing with some Ukranian man the night before, in the club; this Ukranian had a habit of blowing up safes. They were probably after the weekend’s takings when who knows what shit went down. Either way, the fact that I’d just lost forty grand in cash and my business made me the horse nobody wanted to back. Including the detective, who still bothered me with questions, but only in a bored kind of way. We got quite friendly, had a few drinks. He wanted to buy into the next place I opened, if I could get up off my ass and look for somewhere.

Sometimes, I dream about things, and I’m not sure if they happened. Like the night I took the kid to the beach and after, when there was nowhere left to go, I drove him to my place. My real place, which was so fucking big. Nobody but my girlfriend had ever made it beyond the front door.

The kid wandered around it, running his fingers along the walls.

“It’s very… white.”

I let him explore all the rooms, stare at the huge TV, peer into the fridge. Then I took him into the bedroom and we played Daddy for the rest of the night.

“You can live here,” I said as he bounced on my dick. “If you want.”

“Uh…” he slowed down for a second and stroked himself. “You’d keep me here, you mean?”

“Bare ass and cock. I’d look after you.”

“Screw me.”

“Every night.”

“What about the days?”

“Let you screw yourself, film it for later…”

He palmed his ass cheeks open, and I could see it in the large mirror that was on the wall behind him. I could see my dick buried inside and I almost lost it on the spot when he started moving up and down again.

“What d’you say?” I whispered. “I’ll even buy you a diamond ring. Slip it round your dick, then lead you round with a chain.”

“I’d like that,” he giggled. “Your slave boy, ass always ready, jewelled prick for your mouth only. But then,” he leant down and kissed me briefly. “I’m already your slave. And I like being at the club, where you are. I like being fucked on the kitchen floor by the washing machine. I like you.”

When I stop dreaming, I’m in the same bedroom, same white walls, only now they’ve got these big canvases with photos of flowers, and it’s my girlfriend lying beside me. Which is really ok, because as the kid said that night while he was peering into my life: “This place is kind of empty. It needs, like, a wife and kids running around.”

“You’re a kid,” I said.

He just smiled and shook his head.

When my girlfriend moved in – and she was wearing a diamond ring on the proper finger and a smile on her lovely face – she cleared out one of the bedside tables to put her creams and magazines and whatever else she collected. She held up something blue and faded that smelt of seaweed.

“What the hell are these? They were in the bottom drawer.”

I took them.

“I’ll throw them away.”

When she’d gone off to the kitchen to put all her health foods in the empty cupboards, I went into my white closet and uncovered the safe where I kept my most precious things, which was precisely nothing. And I put the kid’s blue pyjamas in and locked it.

-End

Read the sequel