Finally. I'm getting to the point here. Sport is here to coerce and groom and be awful. Iris is here and Freddy has a moment of clarify about the exact nature of her work - not graphic or even particularly descriptive but still, underage sex of dubious consent is happening offscreen.

---------------------------------------------------

Some of the rules come easy to him, the way they come easy to just about anyone who's ever had to risk sleeping rough. You keep your head down, you don't make a habit of sleeping in the same place every night and if you do you're damn quiet about it. You don't own anything, because the shit you own can be stolen right off your back. You don't make friends with anyone who's not also on the street. If you can possibly help it, you don't make friends at all. The closest thing Freddy sees to a functioning relationship out here is the pimps coming by to check on their girls.

The days are slipping away from him fast. Soon he'll have to start hanging around Central Park in the mornings, just in case he's hit the day when Larry shows up. Maybe the guy will finally let Freddy into his house. Maybe this time it will be easy.

Freddy remembers Larry's eyes, hot on him as he slurped his milkshake. He wants more of that, more conversations over dinners, more easy platitudes. More of Larry's attention.

What he would do with that attention, he doesn't know. He always smiles extra wide when a pretty girl deems him worthy of a coin or two. He figures it's worth a shot. If any of them were down to fool around with a street rat, he's about the best looking of the bunch.

"Well, well, well. What have we here?" Freddy looks up from the stoop of the squat he's perched on. You have to be in with the head of the residents' not quite cult to get in, and he's not, but they let him hang out here, off the road some evenings.

The guys coming up the path though, don't live here. There's two of them, both stick thin but bulked up with layers and layers of clothing that they don't look to have taken off in months. In the half light of the setting sun, they look like little more than vaguely green blobs with legs sticking out of the bottom.

And they're looking right at him. Freddy flinches on instinct, he doesn't want them anywhere near him, you don't have to live on the streets to know that fights can break out in the time it takes to blink in New York.

He ducks his head and tries to pretend they're not talking to him. It's not like he's got space to run, backed up towards the door of the squat.

The smell of the rain rises up hard and sharp beneath his nose. Normally, he doesn't notice it, but it hits him so hard he doesn't know how he's been missing it. Beneath the smog and the filth and whatever smell if rising off the two guys coming up the garden path, there is something clean and honest.

It rains everywhere. New York's not special.

"I said." A foot makes gentle contact with Freddy's shoulder, the threat that it could do more hanging over his head with the clouds. "What have we here?"

Freddy looks up at the two of them, trying to straighten out his spine, making himself look bigger. "Man, I'm just trying to stay out of the rain."

"What d'you gotta stay outta the rain for? Y'don't need it, not with a coat like that." One of the pair, his face hidden behind a tangle of facial hair that rises till it meets his hat, gets his fingers under the hood of Freddy's jacket, testing the material.

Not good. Not good at all. Freddy catches sight of a hand slipped into a pocket and moves without thinking.

He barrels forward, but there's no meat on his bones and no momentum behind him. Still, the second guy stumbles and he thinks he might have an opening, till the hand in the back of his hood tightens, drawing him back towards the stoop before latching onto his hair and threatening to brain him on the grimy old flagstones.

"Lemme go!" Freddy hisses, kicking out his legs and hitting nothing. He reaches up, ready to scratch or maim a face as much as necessary. Two fingers lose themselves in someone's beard and he thinks he's got a hold to work with till the sharp sting of teeth crunching down over the first knuckle has him squealing and backing up.

They've come prepared, two knives staring Freddy down once he recovers. Too rusty to shimmer in any kind of light but in many ways that's worse. If he puts his mind to it, a guy can do some damage with pretty much anything. At least when the blade is clean, so is the cut.

The first guy grins. "See, we've taken a liking to your coat."

"Right." Second nods. "We want it. Hand it over."

"How the fuck am I supposed to hand over my coat when you've got me on my back?" Freddy spits.

"Ah, a real wise guy."

"Fucking Einstein out here."

"Fuck you!" Freddy tries, somewhat feebly, to twist out of their grip and gets nowhere save five centimeters closer to having his eye pocked out with a pocket knife.

"Listen." The first guy says, holding his knife steady while the second gets to work on Freddy's zip. "We're gonna take the coat. Looks real nice, like it really keeps the water off. You can fight it if you like, but you're just gonna get cut up."

Boots nearly worn through, no coat. Freddy will freeze inside of a week. With his hood pulled back, he can feel the rain on his face, pooling in the hollows of his eyes. He needs the fucking coat, he can't get by without it.

Ten minutes later, Freddy is two blocks away, preemptively shivering with the cold he's gonna feel in the morning and nursing a gash in the palm of his left hand. He needs to clean it, probably. It stings like a bitch, and when he cups his hand the blood pools dramatically in the creases of his loose fist. Rain peppers the pavements, hard enough that he knows it's going to soak through his shirt before the cloud cover clears. Darkness is creeping up the skyline, soon to be replaced with the blistering neon of the night.

He dips into a corner store and starts browsing, mindlessly, hoping he can fool the owner into thinking he might be a real customer for long enough to catch his breath. His arms feel strange, moving freely without the trappings of his coat to hone them in. He doesn't like it. Fuck. He doesn't like it at all.

"You ok there, pal?" A short guy with dark hair, stocking up on tinned tomato soup casts Freddy a worried look, holding out a hand to catch him if he falls but unwilling to commit to laying a hand on him.

Freddy nods, way too quickly. "Yeah. Fine."

"You're shaking like a leaf."

"I'm fine."

The guy's eyes dart down and too late, Freddy follows them. The first splatters of blood have pulled themselves free and dashed themselves on the grubby linoleum floor.

Freddy doesn't wait around for the advice that he should go see a doctor or the apparition of the owner, inevitably furious that some layabout was stinking up his store. He stumbles back out on to the streets and resolves then and there that he can't go anywhere until he's stopped bleeding.

Blood, pouring off and out of him, into the drain. Scabbing over. Where it all belongs. Freddy takes a deep breath and waits for his head to stop spinning. His heart doesn't know whether its speeding up or slowing down and though he knows he knows this area, he can't place it in his head.

He does what he always does when the going gets rough in this town. He starts walking. If he goes far enough eventually he'll hit the ocean, or at least run out of stamina. Run yourself ragged enough and you might get to fall down, unconscious in the streets. Wonderfully, gloriously, asleep.

The lights fade and bubble in front of his eyes, the blood in his hand forever damp but turning tacky and thick where it pours over his fingers. Freddy looks down and sees the gooseflesh rising off his skin, the train of blood skimming down the side of his jeans like a racing stripe. When he was a kid he loved watching the Nascar races that sometimes wound their way on to his television, his dad laughing good natured at the kid who just wanted to watch the cars go round and round and round.

A sharp honk from a dark Chevvie drags him out of his head. He didn't mean to cross the road. Freddy offers up his bloody hand by way of apology and sees the driver's face twist in shocked disgust.

Shock. It's all just shock. He's in shock. And he's cold. The lights are wrong. He's not supposed to track by lights. Just another block along, and another. he's got nowhere to be.

"Freddy?"

He doesn't know that voice, or he does but he doesn't. It's been a while since he heard it. This particular run of tourist tat shops could be anywhere in the city, but the owners have collectively invested in some real awnings, and sure as shit there's a gaggle of girls waiting under here for some poor schmuck to come in and scoop them up off the street.

She takes a moment to come into focus, looking for a moment like an angel, the way her hat flares out behind her in a wonderfully unchic halo. She's been allowed to wear a long coat tonight, but it's not particularly thick. She must be freezing.

Freddy's teeth stop chattering just long enough to get her name out. "Iris...hey..."

Her face is tight with cautious worry. She's scared, he thinks, of what will happen if she spends too long talking to him rather than doing her job.

A horrifically graphic image of what it is exactly that Iris does for a living suggests itself to him and Freddy has to grab the wall to keep himself from puking.

"You know this guy?" One of the other girls asks. She's noticeably older than Iris, but her hair is the same shade of blonde, running all the way to her ass, decked out in glittering hippy finery.

Iris nods. "I'm gonna go get Sport."

"No!" Freddy hisses. "I don't...I don't need to see him...I don't want to see him."

"Yeah, well, tough shit. He's the only guy I know who can fix you up."

She's gone, ducking round the corner and Freddy tries to will his feet to move, to run. Keep walking, play it like a fucking shark, don't let the water stop flowing over your gills or you're suffocate and die. Go! Go you fucking idiot!

Sport can't have left more than thirty seconds before Freddy arrived. He swears he can hear the pimp cussing Iris out, saying some shit about how she wasn't supposed to get her outfit wet, how he paid good money for that.

They come back together, arm in arm and all smiles. Sport has ditched the hat for the evening and his long dark hair is stuck down to the sides of his head, combined with the length of rope he's wrapped around his neck he makes for a rather eerie sight.

The smile, just too wide to be genuine, softens as he approaches Freddy, before morphing into something that looks worryingly like real concern. "Oh no. Oh my sweet boy, what happened to you."

"I...I don't..." Freddy tries to pull away from him, but Sport gets a hand on the back of his neck and he's so, so warm. And sturdy. And he's looking at Freddy like he's the most important thing in the world.

"You poor baby. Look at your fucking hand." Sport curses, reaching down to tear a strip of cloth from the bottom of his shirt and wrapping it around the gash in Freddy's palm. The fabric stains red almost immediately but the pressure feels good against the open wound. "What happened? You get mugged? If you know who did it, you let me know, ok? I'll fuck them up real good for you, baby, I promise."

"I don't..." Freddy insists all over again. He can shake his head all he fucking wants, his legs aren't going to move.

The hand at his neck slips round to cradle his face, thumb clearing away the rain on his cheek and Freddy doesn't know what to do with such a bold expression of affection. His eyes prickle and he can't catch his breath for long enough to keep from crying.

And once the first sob has worked its way out of him, the rest can only follow. Freddy collapses in against Sport and warm arms come round to cradle him, a hand running up and down his back, nose buried in his hair, telling him that everything's going to be ok.

For the first time since he can remember, he almost believes it.

"We're gonna get you home, ok?" Sport mumbles into Freddy's hair. "Gonna take you home, sweet boy. Sweet, sweet Freddy. And you can eat and sleep and we'll fix up that hand. Does that sound good?"

Freddy pulls back just far enough to meet Sport's eyes, so sad and so angry for him, but so happy to see him alive. And what the fuck, honestly. He's just some kid on the street.

He tries again, deep breath and all. "I don't..."

"C'mon now." Sport wipes away a stray tear from Freddy's cheek. "C'mon. You've done enough running. Let me take care of you, please. I just wanna make this easy for you."

Freddy glances over to the girls huddled behind Sport. He can see them more clearly now, his heart rate having evened. Their clothes are clean, they smile on the job, they never look like they don't know where their next meal is coming from.

Tentatively, Freddy reaches for the parts of himself that remember how to move his skull. It's a stupid thing to do, but the smartest thing he can think to, under the circumstances. He nods, just once, and the relief that flushes through him is divine. It's over. The night and the wet and the running. He's here, he's been caught. Now comes the easy part.

Sport grins at him, squeezing all the tighter. "That's my boy." Lips pressed to Freddy's forehead, slow and lingering. "That's my good boy."