resdog_kink | Reservoir Dogs Prompt Post: ROUND 1

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Reservoir Dogs Prompt Post: ROUND 1

Here it is! The very first prompt post of the Reservoir Dogs kink meme!

Write a prompt in the comment section (either anon or under your username), labelled with pairing or character(s) and a vague summary (with any applicable warning). Hopefully, someone will see it, be inspired, and reply with a fill. Anyone can write/illustrate/etc any prompt they find the inspiration for. It's like the fandom circle of life.

Before you begin, PLEASE read the RULES POST.

ASK A MOD ::: REQUIRED WARNINGS ::: COMPLETED/WIP FILL POST

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"Right?" Sport replies, voice all quiet like they're the only two people in the room.

"Right." Freddy's tongue wets his lips, searching for the next line. "So she's got most of the same powers as Superman, only she's a girl. Like a teenager. She saves the world and tries to stay hopeful."

Sport's smile is so small and private. Freddy wishes he would ratchet up his bravado again, stop the shop from shrinking around them until he has nowhere to go but down. "That sounds pretty good to me. You got another copy kicking around?"

"I can check." Brown cuts in.

"Wow now!" Sport steadies him with a hand on an arm. "He's the stock guy, right? Ain't he supposed to check the stock?"

Freddy doesn't wait for permission. He sets the boxes down at his feet and walks over to the boxes just opposite from the counter. He flips through for ten seconds before he finds an issue from the start of a two year old run that he remembers being pretty good. "Here, start with this one."

When Sport reaches out to take it from him, his fingers slip over the top of Freddy's and he grips tight for all the time it takes to blink before taking the comic to the counter.

Freddy's hand feels like it's been dipped in hot wax.

Letting out a low whistle, Sport reaches for his wallet. "This one must be popular. She's sexy."

"She's a kid." Vega says, flatly.

Sport shrugs. "Age is just a number, my friend."

"I ain't your friend."

"Sure you're not." Sport grins at him. "How much?"

"A dollar." Brown takes the cash, and all the while Freddy is standing there, his hand clutched against his stomach and the stock box waiting to head into the backroom.

On his way out the door, Sport turns back to them all to doff the air where his hat should be. His eyes linger on Freddy, warm and deep and Freddy could swear the affection in his face is real. "Y'know, if this guy ain't paying you enough, I got ways to fix that."

"Stop trying to poach my staff!" Brown sneers. Sport slips out the door without another word.

The long beat of silence between the three of them is deeply uncomfortable. Freddy is the one to break it, rushing over to his box and trying to get the door open to vanish into the backroom.

"What a creep." Brown hisses, under his breath.

Vega nods. "Orange, stay away from him."

"I'll try." Freddy replies, meekly. It's the first time he's spoken to the guy directly since the afternoon he came in when Brown wasn't around.

The backroom is even colder than the main floor, but there's no one around to see Freddy sink to the floor, clutching the box to his chest and trying to slow his heartbeat down.

The Cabots, Sport. Fucking New York City. He can't breathe. He has to get out. There's nowhere else to go.

Distantly, the sound of Brown and Vega's continued negotiations permeate the thin wooden door. They go back and forth and back and forth and it doesn't do Brown any good. He still gets saddled with the same proportion of the agreed sum he has to launder as any other week. Like they're gonna get a single legit customer when the place stinks and the street stinks and everything stinks.

Freddy stays in the backroom till he moves past shivering and decides he needs to move before he gets frozen in place. As he rises to his feet, the faint static building at the back of his mind becomes a real world sound, peppering the windows as the rain comes down, ready to flood the drains.

Freddy starts to hover two feet to the right of wherever Blue is looking. He finds excuses to keep Pink talking, trying to unstick his own tongue.

"You okay, kid?" Blue asks, vaguely amused.

Mouth flapping like a fish, Freddy reaches blindly for the right ideas, the right thing to say. He no longer notices the smell of shit creeping through the walls from the street outside and the cold is a minor concern in the long run, even when he's Californian born and supposed to be adapting.

The front door clicks open and Brown starts swearing up a storm as he scrapes his shoes on the doormat.

Freddy closes his mouth and shakes his head.

-----------

Of course it all comes crashing down. No story of a down and our kid making his own way in the Big Apple would be complete without the part where everything goes wrong. In the after school specials, this is the part where everyone realises how wrong they were to deviate from the path set down for them and they proceed to move back home or take up a new sort of pastime that doesn't require them to risk their liberty in any given cross with the police.

In real life, everything just goes to shit. Freddy lets his feet track him through New York without thought once he's done for the day, the crisp sun of January morphing into freezing showers as February gears them up for Spring. He has a raincoat now, a proper anorak thick enough to make bending his arms difficult and when he puts up puddles in his boots he barely notices the streaks of water they leave up his jeans. Away from sixty fourth street, he can breathe a little easier. The air in the rest of the city has started to smell clean, even when the smog has settled thick overhead.

But he has to come back round to his shit soaked street, which bubbles with sewage when the rain gets too heavy and which the city council have been sending workers to deal with only sporadically. Brown has screamed and cried to the landlord half a dozen times and it changes nothing. Why would it? The guy has no control over where the money goes, and who gets paid.

The first thing Freddy notices is that the water is high enough that he's going to have to skip around full blown turds in the street to get back home. The second thing he notices is the smoke. Fire is common enough here, the smell sometimes trickling down from the Bronx when the folk trying to wash away their homes and start fresh with the insurance money get particularly overzealous. He assumes it's a restaurant, going up in flames at the behest of the ovens out back, but the closer he gets the more he feels lead tightening in his veins.

Freddy takes the last corner at a run, rounding onto sixty forth street and feeling the heat prickle at his skin immediately.

There are fire engines and police cars, practically the whole neighbourhood standing out on the street to watch or leaning out of their windows in morbid fascination. The people standing directly in front of the building, huddled up next to the emergency services like it might morph into a giant umbrella and save them from the rain, have come running from their homes, screaming for their lives, their things, their grandparents to be saved.

He thinks he catches the stocky outline of Blue, and the thin, reedy distress of Pink in the crowds. Freddy doesn't have to work hard to stop Brown though, screaming bloody murder about legitimate business practices and how that's his fucking livelihood going up in flames so why the fuck is he being arrested? Why the fuck is he being arrested when he knows the guy who came by to burn the place down. Vic fucking Vega. They're looking for Vic Vega.

And an officer snaps back that no one involved in the running of Wacko Comics wants to cross their path, that they know what tricks Brown's types use to try and escape custody and they ain't buying it.

This is what happens when you run to the police. Freddy takes one last look at the gutted corpse of Wacko Comics, wrapped in the fire with the windows popped out from the heat. He looks up to the third floor window where all his spare clothes and the money he'd been saving and the comics he'd collected and the unsent letter to his parents will be getting smoked out, soon to add themselves to the bonfire. He has no idea if Brown left his name, or some version of his name, on any official documents but he doesn't want to wait around to find out. There are twenty dollars in his pocket and at least the clothes he's wearing are warm.

Freddy turns tail, leaves the stinking wreck of sixty fourth street behind him and sets out, all alone. He's started over once before, he can pull himself up again.

The rain cascades off the lip of his anorak. His feet are dry, but Freddy is suddenly very much aware of how much of his body is resolutely sodden.

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

He can't stay out in the rain for long, this shit is ridiculous. Freddy bundles himself into a diner a few blocks down and works his way through a burger and a coke before deciding that he's not far enough away from the scene of the crime. Maybe the cops are looking for him. Him, specifically, Freddy Newandyke. His father's digging a grave as he thinks it, just too start rolling. He pays up, careful not to think too hard about the percentage of his funds he's just sunk into something that cannot hold his weight.

If he were looking for him, the last place he'd expect to see himself is downtown. Freddy doesn't have the cash to go hopping in cabs, so he walks fast, with his head retracted, turtlelike and anxious, to avoid being recognised whenever a cop car rolls by.

There are a lot of cop cars rolling by. With their sirens blaring, lighting up the streets in a confusing mismatch of blue and red that makes it hard to see where one person ends and the next begins. Freddy hugs the wall of buildings as far as he can, trying to keep the rain off his back. It doesn't really work, but it's better than doing nothing.

Even in the rain, girls gather on street corners to flag down passing Johns. It suits some of them, Freddy thinks, the bleeding makeup and straggly hair giving the best looking of the bunch an air of tragic debauchery that he can understand wanting to take to bed. He's thought about it, thought real long and hard, but somewhere between ninety eighth street and here he gets stuck.

He needs to talk to girls, he needs to talk to people his own age. He needs some fucking friends. His heart is positively howling in his ears and every time he asks himself the all important question of where the fuck he's supposed to sleep tonight he feels the rain turn to ice around him.

It's still early enough on the year that the rain could turn to ice around him if he doesn't play things carefully. New York City never sleeps, but few places are truly twenty four hours. He needs somewhere warm and dry where they won't bother him.

The back of a bar - too young. Diners and restaurants only let you stay as long as you're paying. The cinemas. dirty or otherwise, kick you out at the end of the feature.

He could go to Ruddy's, and hope the guy remembers him and doesn't have any kind of inclination to hand him over to the cops. That's a pretty big if though.

Or Larry. If he could go to Larry, this shit might be easy. But he doesn't have a phone number or an address, he's just gotten lucky running into him so many times in this big old city.

Freddy's got the door to a diner on forty second street open when he starts kicking himself for being an idiot. He doesn't need Larry's address or his number, he knows where the guy works.

The sky has been thick with winter dark for so long, Freddy has no concept of what time it is. His bones say its late but they've been walking in the rain since he quit work that afternoon, so whaddathey know? He takes the fifteen blocks between him and the cab company at a half run, dodging the flocks of people moving in the opposite direction and the slow gaggles of tourists who always seem to know exactly how to space themselves to block the sidewalk. With his luck, he half expects the place to have shut down, moved on and vanished without a trace in the months since he's last been by, but it's there, a faint glow coming from the open garage door.

Freddy barrels through the door and down the ramp to reception. Joe looks up, confused and concerned, reaching for the knife he keeps in his boot. He's not recognised, not like this.

"Joe!" Freddy calls out to him, waving his arms to show he's coming empty handed and pulling down his hood. "Joe, it's me!"

It takes a second, but he gets there. "Freddy?" Joe frowns, slowly settling back from his knife. "Jeez, what are you doing here?"

"I've had a...it's complicated." Freddy runs a hand over his face and gets met with a shock of cold water. His blood is still high, but from the run and the excitement of having figured his shit out. "Is Larry on tonight?"

"Sure. Why?"

"I gotta talk to him. You know where he is?"

"Ain't got a fucking clue. He's been real quiet tonight, but you know how it is in the rain." Joe replies.

Freddy does know. In the rain, journeys that could be taken on foot require taxis, and they never stop coming. Very little reason for a driver to call in on a night like tonight.

"When's he due back in?"

Joe checks his watch. "About three hours."

"You mind if I hang around till then?"

"In here?" Joe twists his mouth.

"C'mon, man." Freddy gestures to his sodden coat. "God's pissing it down out there."

Joe hesitates, then sits forward and starts up in a conspiratorial tone. "What's going on, Freddy? Forreal? Don't you got a home to go to."

There's nothing he can say to that that's gonna have him coming off as the good guy. Freddy sidesteps the question and sets his jaw. "Please, Joe. I just really gotta talk to Larry."

I reiterate - Freddy's age is not going to be locked down in the text of this fic at any point. It's safe to assume he's between sixteen and twenty but exactly where he falls within that rage is kind of unimportant and kind of up to you. What you need to remember is that most people peg him as being a minor. Point being - this section contains a sliver of Freddy taking control of his own sexuality a character who is definitely a much older adult likes it, and if that sounds at all uncomfortable to you then you might wanna skip this chunk.

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The clock on the back wall says it's two thirty in the morning and that Larry is late. Freddy's hands won't stay still, jumping through his hair and skipping rhythms out on his knees. He wants to sleep, but even silk sheets couldn't get him under tonight. The garage is nowhere near as frigid as the streets but it's a far sight off war, and his rain soaked jeans have him shivering, wondering when the hell they're supposed to dry off.

At least his feet are dry. He'll take wet legs over wet feet any day of the week. every now and then he thinks he catches a whiff of smoke and has to remind himself that he never got within a hundred metres of the fire, and the rain will have washed any trace of it down the street with the rest of the sewage.

Every second thought starts with him envisioning what he's going to say when he gets back to the apartment. Blue shaking his head, letting them all know that much as he doesn't like how it turned out, Brown sealed his own fate. Pink whinging about the smell of smoke now baked into the walls along with everything else. Brown shrugging and insisting that he meant for everything to go down the way it is, that he doesn't have anything resembling regrets. It's a physical effort to remind himself that none of that exists anymore, it can't. He stood up off that awful fucking sofa that morning and he will never sit back down.

A car comes rumbling into the garage, windscreen wipers still working a mile a minute. Freddy sits up, blinking fast to clear his head and get a read on who's driving as it pulls into an empty spot and the engine cuts.

"Fucking traffic." Larry hisses, slamming the door as he steps out of the car. "Whole city's backed up worse than a smackhead sailor."

Joe holds out a hand for the tin of cash that every cabbie carries with them. "That the rain?"

"Nah, it ain't the fucking rain. I know what rain traffic looks like. There's cop cars everywhere and you got crooks running scared up and down the island. I was having to play it real careful with who I picked up. Looks like some kinda bust."

"Who'd they bust? The blacks?"

"Nah, if it was Harlem it wouldn't have been a problem for me. Everyone I saw looking to head on the lamb was white."

Joe nods. "You reckon you picked up any crooks?"

Larry shakes his head. "Once I saw what was happening, I stayed away from white guys. Easy." His eyes flicker around the room, clocking which cars are in and out, the time, the girl on the switchboard, before finally settling on Freddy. "What the fuck?"

"Kid's been here for hours." Joe tells him. "Said he needs to speak to you."

Larry approaches cautiously, hunching over slightly even as Freddy rises to his feet to greet him. It's weird, seeing him compromise his posture like that. Not that Freddy knows him well enough to tell ass from elbow about how this guy looks on most of his days off.

"Hey, Freddy." Larry's brow is furrowed, the sweeping bow of his lips as flat as it ever gets. "What's up?"

This is possibly a very bad idea. Freddy smiles and can see by the apprehension that crosses Larry's face that it's weak at best. "Hey, Larry. Um...can we talk somewhere?"

"Uh..." Larry looks round at the clock again. It's late, he doesn't wanna be here. He never asked to have Freddy show up and demand some kind of mercy, but he's one of the few pieces of this city that seems capable of granting it. "Sure. Lemme get my coat."

The two of them scurry through the rain to a late night diner where Larry buys Freddy a milkshake and hustles him off to a far table at the back. They sit, and Freddy is uncomfortably aware of the dark circles under Larry's eyes and the slump of his shoulders. He's exhausted, he should be at home.

"Wish I could say it was good to see you, kid." Larry smiles a wry smile. "But I got this feeling that you ain't got no good news for me."

Freddy tries to laugh and a strangled sort of sound comes out of his mouth instead. He takes a gulp of milkshake and tries to focus on the sweet thud of milk against his tongue. "You know how you said that the cops were busting a whole lotta folk tonight?"

The fear that crosses Larry's face is momentary but it's profound. "You caught up in that?"

"I..." Freddy stops, clears his throat, breathes in deep and tries not to let the warmth of the diner have him thinking that he could start napping. "I think they went after the Cabots. And like...everyone who worked for them."

A long, slow exhale and Larry collapses back in his chair. "Yeah, I was kinda thinking the same thing."

"You know about the Cabots?"

"Know about the Cabots...sheesh, listen you yourself, kid. If you're below a certain pay grade in this town, you've heard of the Cabots, that's just how it is. They're always hiring, number one employers of the white working class in New York city. How were you involved?"

"I was working for this guy, and sleeping on his couch. He ran a comic shop. Thought it was all pretty normal but one time he left me in there alone and I found the log books out back and-"

"And those log books didn't have shit to do with the amount of product actually shifted." Larry finishes. "Fuck. You know who the main point of contact was, between your boss and the Cabots I mean."

"A guy called Vic Vega. Big, kinda quiet. He-" Freddy stops talking. Larry's mouth has gone very tight and his face very pale. He knows exactly who Vic Vega is.

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"So what happened?"

"So, the place this guy lived, where I was living with Blue, was right over this comic shop. I went out to get some stuff done before heading home this evening. When I left the shop everything was fine but when I got back..."

"Fire?" Larry raises an eyebrow. Freddy nods. "Yeah, that's how they work. The raids started sometime this afternoon, best as I can tell. So they send round guys scorching as much earth as possible before the cops arrive. Gives them an easier day in court."

Freddy takes a deep breath and hates how it shudders against his lungs. He tries another sip of his milkshake but it comes out tacky and gross. "I...um...I got there when they were arresting the guy I was working for. And everything was on fire. I figured...I don't know if my name was on anything official. I just..."

"You got out of there." Larry says, quietly. He leans in over the table, folding his arms in front of him and it feels so fucking kind. He's not yelling, not angry, not a bone of judgement in his body. Freddy once handed in a piece of homework late and his parents didn't speak to him for the rest of the day when he got back from detention. "That's smart. You don't wanna go to jail for that shit. Bet you didn't even realise what you were getting into when you took the job."

Freddy shakes his head. "I just...I really needed the money."

"Hey, I've been there. You know what they say, don't look a gift horse in the mouth." Larry's voice drops even lower, and the care he's taking makes Freddy's stomach start flip flopping. "So, why'd you come to see me?"

And there's the kicker. There should be friends, contacts, other places he could go. But there's something about the guy you first meet when you come to the big city, how he keeps cropping up in your life through no effort of your own. Freddy could have tried any number of different people, he could have tried to track down Travis fucking Bickle if the mood had taken him, and it would have felt like he was dragging the universe out of wack.

Freddy wants to tell Larry that he feels safe and stable in a way no one else in this city does to him, not even Blue. Instead he shrugs with one shoulder. "I don't got many friends here."

Larry hums. "I dunno why you decided to come to New York, Freddy, but I'm not sure if it's the right place for you."

It's the right place for anyone, it has to be. Freddy's eyes sting and air doesn't seem to be making it to his lungs properly. On the first sob, he panics, cramming his fist into his mouth for fear of doing it again.

It's not the reaction Larry was expecting. "Wow, kid. Slow down, it's alright, it's alright." He reaches over to lay a hand on Freddy's wrist, slowly prying his hand away from his face. Larry's hand are so big and so warm. Freddy wishes he wouldn't let go.

"I got...I lost all my shit, all my money." Freddy gasps. "I don't got no place to go. I...I can't go back to California."

Larry watches him, lips slightly parted as he breathes deep. He just looks solid, safe. He holds out his arms and beckons Freddy over. "C'mere, kid."

Freddy practically launches himself over the table, falling into Larry's arms and burying his face in the older man's shoulder. The terror of the night smacks him hard over the head and before he can reach for a handhold he's over the cliff and crying for things lost to the fire, for whatever shit he's going to have to do tomorrow to pull himself back into shape.

Larry doesn't tell him to stop, a kindness he's not used to. He pulls Freddy down to sit in his lap and doesn't complain when handfuls of his shirt start to stretch around the fists balled up in them. "It's alright. I got you. It's all gonna be alright."

The last person who properly hugged Freddy was his grandmother, some two weeks before he got the hell out of Bakersfield. He hadn't even realised he'd been missing human contact, but it rushes up at him so fast as to knock the wind out of him, as if he wasn't having enough trouble working out how to breathe.

He calms down in increments, and when he finally finds it in himself to stop his efforts to burrow into Larry's chest, he becomes uncomfortably aware that the attention of the diner is largely directed at the two of them. He tries to pull away from himself, imagining what the picture must look like, and he has too admit that it's close to damning.

"There, that better?" Larry fishes a handkerchief out of a pocket and starts wiping tears off Freddy's face. He's still got one arm looped loosely around Freddy's middle, and regardless of what anyone else might think is going on between the two of them, it feels nice.

Freddy nods. "I'm so fucked."

"We're gonna work this out." Larry's all business, deadly serious. No room for meaningless platitudes here. "I'm guessing you came to me to find out if I could put you up."

"Yeah."

"Well, you gotta let me level with you, alright?" Larry finishes up with the handkerchief and Freddy takes it as the signal to stand himself up and return to his own chair. "I got a history with the Cabot's myself, and it's a little stickier than yours."

Freddy's eyes widen. Larry's so straight edge it hurts, he can't imagine him putting a toe out of line without good cause. "No shit? Why?"

"I needed money, and I needed friends." Larry's mouth quirks, not quite a smile. "Sound familiar at all?"

"Yeah."

"Well, there you go. That's how I met your pal Blue, which is how I wound up living in that shitty apartment that you're running from. Honestly, if the two of youse weren't still trying to live out of that litter tray, I'd say it was a good riddance."

"Wait, Blue worked for the Cabots?" Freddy frowns.

"Oh yeah." Larry's eyes go wide and Freddy's almost sorry he asked. "Yeah...Blue's worked for all sorts of folks. He's good people, but he's done some shit, y'know?"

Freddy has no idea. "Sure."

"Anyway, me and him did a couple of jobs together, nothing I'm proud of. He snuck me out of the organisation through a back door and I've been home free since."

"That's pretty good luck."

"Eh, you can only use guy's so many times before the police learn to recognise you. I had maybe one good run left in me and the Cabots had enough people to not waste too much time on me. I paid my dues."

"You didn't ever think about getting out of town?" Freddy's learned a lot these past few months. Most importantly, what New York folk sound like. Larry's not from round these parts, he has something he could go back to, or something to keep running from.

Larry levels a stare at Freddy. "You thinking about getting out of town just now?"

That's all there is to it. Once you've got to New York, everything else feels like a downgrade. Freddy could go anywhere, but his mind was made up before he so much as saw the burning effigy of Wacko Comics. He's staying, he's gonna keep trying to swim no matter how many times he sinks.

"No." He replies in a quiet voice. He sucks on the straw of his milkshake and the thick gloop mixes with the seemingly endless quantities of snot that a good cry always gets out of him. His dad always said that was because his nose was too big.

Larry's eyes zero in on him, and that stupid uncomfortable giddiness that Freddy doesn't know what to do with strikes once again. He pretends he doesn't notice as he makes a big show of swallowing, wiping up a spare drop from his lips and sucking hard on the finger he uses for it.

"What I'm getting at here." Larry says, slowly. "Is that I'm not the best person for you to be staying with just now. I don't know how deep the cops have broken in with the Cabots and I don't know if my name would be on any pieces of paper. Right now you wanna stay away from anyone with any link to the Cabots. Vic Vega's got a reputation for not squealing, but if the whole organisation has gone down then all bets are off. Brown might have kept you off the books but Vega still knows who you are."

The calm that had started to settle over Freddy vanishes in an instant. He looks up sharply at Larry and anger starts to colour the hazy, mismatched fog of his brain. What the fuck are they doing here of Larry can't help him?

"What the fuck am I supposed to do?" Freddy snaps

Larry flips to a frown in an instant. "You know, I don't gotta talk this shit through with you at all if I don't want to. I should be at home, asleep right now."

"Ah yeah, that home you're not gonna let me in to."

Squaring his shoulders and setting his jaw, Larry's wide enough to blot out the fucking sun if he wanted to. He keeps his voice light, but for the first time Freddy can see how he might have made a decent criminal. "You wanna try that again?"

Chewing on his tongue, Freddy casts his eyes sideways. "Sorry, man."

"S'alright. You're in a tight spot. A guy can say shit he don't mean in the moment, but you gotta remember who's on your side here, kid."

He's right. The number of people Freddy has on his side are pretty minimal. even if Larry was a Grade A scumbag, he's not in a position to turn down his help, let alone sniff at it. Assuming Pink and Blue are out for the count for the time being, Joe will tolerate him and not much more, Travis is a fucking psycho who probably doesn't know how to help someone if he tried, Yolanda only helped him when he paid her and Iris is powerless to do shit, the bottom of his barrel of friends is starting to look pretty clear.

A voice in his head suggests that he might have other options. It sounds like Sport, it sounds like Shaundra. He doesn't want it.

"So, who else have you got apart from me?" Larry asks. "And I want you to be really sure that these folk don't have shit to do with the Cabots."

From the way Larry's been talking, that's ruling out half of New York City. Even the girls who work for Sport who might recognise him are caught up in Cabot shit, because Sport evidently had beef with them before they got taken down. He lets out a huff of laughter.

"What?" Larry asks.

"Just...this guy I know. He'd been telling me the Cabots were going down for months. I didn't listen to him."

"How the hell did he know a thing like that?"

"Dunno. He's just the kind of guy who knows things."

Larry's eyes narrow. "Generally speaking, guys who know things aren't the kind of guys you wanna be running to at a time like this."

Freddy could start crying again, and maybe it shows in the laugh he tries to pass off as a neutral reaction because there's pity in Larry's face that he never tried to put there. "Don't worry about it. I wouldn't go near that guy."

"Ok." Larry relaxes, and Freddy realises he'd been reaching for his handkerchief again. "Ok. So who else?"

No one. No one at all. He'll have to go back to scraping together the money for a room day after day, eating at the same couple of places and trying not to think about what happens to him when the money runs out. Maybe Holdaway will be able to help him find some work.

He stops. He kicks himself. He rolls his eyes at his own idiocy. Holdaway. Of course. He's been a shitty customer since he moved south of ninety sixth street but he's sure he could make a good case for being allowed back into his good graces.

"I know a guy up on ninety eight street."

"Ninety eighth street?" Larry asks, somewhat surprised. "You wanna head back up to Harlem?"

"Don't look like I've got much choice. But it's kinda perfect, really. This guy's not white, so that means he's probably not in with the Cabots, right?"

"Right." Larry nods slowly, catching on to the idea. "Right, yeah. So you can keep your head down up there then reassess when the heat's cooled off."

They check the time on the clock behind the counter. It's just shy of four in the morning and the rain has let up rather dramatically, all at once. Larry suggests they give it another hour or so before Freddy moves on anywhere, given that normal people aren't likely to be awake much before six, even for the breakfast rush.

"Speaking of." Larry beckons the waitress over. "You want some pancakes or something? They make 'em real good here."

Freddy's not really hungry in the tangible sense, but his body responds with great enthusiasm at the mention of real food, mouth watering and stomach opening up like a hole in the floor. "Wouldn't say no."

"Here, miss. Can we get two stacks of pancakes with bacon and syrup. Eggs on the side and has browns. Keep the coffee coming."

"You got it." The waitress drawls. This must be a really shitty shift to have to work.

Freddy turns to Larry as she walks away. "Uhh, I don't got much money for this sorta thing."

"Don't worry about it." Larry winks. "I got you."

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Six in the morning and Freddy has been walking for all of ten minutes. His feet remember the way back to ninety eighth street better than his head, which is good when he's so goddamn tired he can barely think. Breakfast had been exactly what he needed, but the lack of sleep combined with the post adrenaline crash and a full belly have him gagging for some rest. He'd have curled up right there on the floor of the diner if they'd have let him.

Larry had made noises like he might be up to go pick up his cab and drive Freddy to Harlem himself, but Freddy had shut him down with a halfhearted joke about how no taxi driver should be caught dead in Harlem, but plenty are. He'd have loved to have access to a full chauffeur service, but he can't imagine Joe would let the car go off hours without kicking up a huge fuss and demanding that someone pay for the ride. Freddy wasn't about to ask Larry to pay another cent more on him, after being lavished with real fucking food.

"Lemme make this very clear, you and I shouldn't be seen together again until this whole thing has calmed down. Understand?" Larry had asked, just before they parted. Freddy had nodded, dejected and grumpy that he was losing yet another friend, even if only for a little while. They had set a date, two months down the line, for them to meet at the south end of Central Park and work shit out from there.

Freddy's still trying to process the fact that Larry gives an honest shit what happens to him. Without ulterior motive. It seems to good to be true.

Strong winds have blown the cloud cover clean away, leaving behind a biting chill that's icing up the puddles as Freddy goes. The bums on the streets last night will be waking up covered in frost, if they're waking up at all.

Freddy doesn't think to start dodging around the parts of ninety second street that aren't for him till he's two blocks away. The sidestepping he does is comically incompetent, and he catches sight of the row of tenements that house Sport's star girls before he manages to turn off down the best alternative route.

If Sport or Iris are up at this time of day, he doesn't see them. With a sinking stomach, Freddy realises that he's going to have to start giving this place a wide berth all over again, if he's going to stay up in Harlem.

The same nudey theatres are still open, still advertising their grimy, blurry films. The hot dog stand is still in place opposite the hotel he stayed at when he first arrived. Everything seems pretty normal, complete with the ever present puddles still clogging up the sidewalk, right up until he comes to the corner where Holdaway's restaurant sits.

Where it sat. At first, Freddy thinks he must just be here early, but then he sees the boards filling up the inside of the windows, and the empty floors just visible through the cracks. There's graffiti scrawled across the front door, and a series of nail holes mark down where the sign advertising the best burgers in Harlem has been torn down.

It's gone. It's all gone. Freddy circles the block just to come back and check again, disbelief and lack of sleep making hi stupid as he presses himself to the glass again and again, knocks on the door, wonders where the hell they could be.

Holdaway told him to come by, to stay in contact. If Freddy had given a shit, he might know what happened to the guy.

The wind blusters past, picking up Freddy's hair and dragging it into his face. He needs to cut it all off, probably. He needs to do something.

The sound of sirens is far off and persistent. The Cabots' empire is burning, and Manhattan with it. Freddy sits himself down on the stoop of what had once been Holdaway's place, and waits for the ground to swallow him whole

I'm conscious that I have completely hecked up the Taxi Driver timeline across this fic. This is all very raw though and I fully intend to tidy it all up when it comes time to edit. This whole story is likely to look VERY different once properly edited tbh.....

Homelessness in this part. Nothing overly grim but plenty of sleeping on the streets.

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The film of frost covering the cardboard cracks as Freddy stretches himself out, muscles stiff from the cold. You can wrap yourself up as tight as you please but you've still gotta sleep on the ground. If you're smart, you get yourself some time in one of the bigger bins that are properly covered over by their lids and get yourself some proper shuteye. The trouble is, that in addition to being smart, you have to be strong enough to stand your ground.

He lies there, savouring the dark for as long as he can stand. The scarf, fished out from under a seat at the bus station, holds in his breath, warming his nose but forcing him to smell the stink of the past two weeks without a toothbrush.

It's supposed to start getting warmer soon. This is all going to be easier when it's warmer. Freddy pushes aside the disassembled boxes he's been sleeping under and meets the day.

The sky is a dim shade of violet, fading towards white in the distance, heralding the sun. He looks around the alley and, seeing that he's still alone, goes to take a leak against the far wall. He's not gonna get lucky like this for much longer, it's been two days since the last crop of rain came down and there's only so long they can go before it comes again. The trash has been piling up this past week, and while that's great news for anyone trying to find a spot to sleep it leaves behind the stains and filth that bring disease. It could all do with washing away, even if the cardboard disintegrates with the rain.

He can't for the life of him remember which part of town he's in. There's nothing to do with his time but walk, wander, people watch. Sometimes he stops in somewhere and asks for a job, but after a few days he started to stink too bad to make a good go of it. Soon he'll know this place better than any taxi driver, and all without trying.

Maybe he should get his license. Freddy laughs and stumbles out of the alley, his legs taking time to warm up, leaden and useless underneath his jeans. At least they've mostly dried out. The second morning he woke up with them frozen solid, had to use an old plywood board to smash them free before he could go anywhere.

It's early, early enough that the bus routes are the only stream of traffic that's properly occupied, but the campaign men are already out and about. A gaggle of them, down the street, putting up posters for Palantine. It's a thankless task without end. Essential to have the city wallpapered with the choice candidate's face but hard to keep up when opponents and stupid kids will tear it all down as soon as look at them. Freddy watches them creep up the road, smiling and handing out campaign badges to anyone who will listen.

"Good morning, sir! Can I ask how you'll be voting?" An overly perky young man comes bounding up to Freddy, pre-prepared speech on the tip of his tongue.

Freddy takes his time eyeing him up, trying to set his teeth on edge. "That ain't till November, man."

"It's never too early to start thinking about how to cast your vote!" The guy continues. His smile is too wide, his skin too smooth. His glasses make his eyes bug and bulge, far too eager for this cursory little win.

One of the others comes up behind him, flinching ever so slightly when she gets a good look at Freddy. "C'mon, Dan. He's not old enough to vote."

The party continues on down the road, and Freddy keeps watching till he can no longer hear the gentle lilt of their conversation over the crowds and the cars. New York wakes up around him, earlier than most towns, but anyone who thinks this place doesn't sleep is fooling themselves.

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

Breakfast is pilfered from the bins outback of a Chinese place. Tepid noodles congealing in a soy sauce concoction that's salty enough to leave him craving water for the rest of the day. The sun burns through the frost by mid-morning but standing at the Battery Freddy can see the clouds rolling in off the Atlantic, thick and dark. Lady Liberty's flame catches the sun real nice for now though, and Freddy returns to fantasies of what he'd do if he had the money and the time to go see her.

He had the money and the time and he wasted it all dicking around mid Manhattan. He wasted it not talking to Holdaway and not making any fucking friends outside of the four walls he was living in. Stupid. He's made more friends in two weeks on the streets than he did in three months of living with a roof over his head. Cursory, passing friendships, but friendships nonetheless.

A quarter rattles into his cup, thrown down by a guy in a sharp suit who spares Freddy the same bewildered look of pity he's starting get used to from anyone with real money. The people who know what it's like to be poor, they tend to drop off what they can and move on, just trying to do what they can for the little guy.

What this country needs is a candidate for the little guy. And maybe that's Palantine but how the fuck is Freddy supposed to know? The posters bearing his face that litter the town don't have a single thing to say about his policies. Freddy's slept under the guy on more than one occasion and couldn't tell you shit about his political leanings if you stuck his feet in the fire.

Money trickles into his cup, slowly slowly but enough that he can probably afford something hot for dinner. He's hungry now, he's hungry almost permanently from the work his body has to put in to keep him warm, but he'll wait. He needs to start investing in cigarettes, they're supposed to dampen your appetite.

So's smack. He's a little way off that yet.

The best spots for begging are supposed to be up near Central Park. Everyone knows this, so everyone heads over there and the place is overcrowded as shit, enough to bring the cops down semi-regularly. Local legend says there was once a tent city in the park, big enough for all the down and outs in New York. But whatever collective spirit infected the homeless in the thirties is gone now, or it's weakened to the point where it's useless. People know each other, sure, but that's not gonna stop anyone from wailing on you if they've got something you want.

The meeting date he agreed with Larry is still three weeks off. In all likelihood, Freddy won't make his way to Central Park before then. He had been past the cab company three days after Larry bought him breakfast and let him cry himself out, but he was gone. Joe, shrugging apologetically, had made it clear that his contract was terminated, that he had said something about having to get out of town and bolted.

The police are still out on the prowl, picking up the tail ends of the Cabot operation. Freddy knows that the big guy - Joe Cabot - is under lock and key and is likely gonna die there. There ain't no lawyers good enough to get him out of the bed he made himself to lie in. His son, Eddie, is still out and about though. The guys on the street talk about it with excitement, like one lone gangster with most of his contacts down the drain is gonna do shit for them.

"Hey, employment's employment." Shaq had grinned. Shaq is kinda old, and his name probably isn't Shaq. He makes the most of the Time Square pickings and he never recognises Freddy when they run into each other but he pretends to as soon as Freddy makes it clear that he's seen him before.

The cold is supposed to start fading soon. Soon. It has to. Its unfair that it hasn't yet. Freddy can't even sit too long in one spot without his legs seizing up.

The girls outside the cinemas, and on the street corners, no longer bother him. Guys are only useful to them as long as they have money, and Freddy doesn't have any of that shit. Freddy has coins in a paper cup and fuck all else to show for himself. He has a thick, effective rain coat and a jumper underneath that's nice enough folk have tried to jump him for it three times. He has a mental block on ninety second and sixty fourth street. He's fucking useless.

A gaggle of kids start to creep across from the other side of the battery, their eyes on Freddy. Kids, it turns out, are fucking psychopaths. All of them. Nine times out of ten, when you hear of a guy getting beat up for sleeping in the streets, it's kids that are to blame. The other one time is police.

Freddy lets them get around half way round to him before he moves, carefully and calmly tucking his cup into the inside of his jacket and walking on. Walking anywhere. He spends so much of his time in this town just walking.

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

And sometimes he thinks he sees a mustache that could only belong to Blue, here's a high whining voice that reminds him of Pink, sees a guy towering over the crowds and imagines that it's brown. Sometimes he sees the top of a grey trimmed Afro and goes running after it, just in case it turns out to be Holdaway, and he's always wrong.

He doesn't really remember where Ruddy lives, and after a morning spent knocking on doors and getting nowhere he gives up the ghost. What would he really expect Ruddy to do for him anyway? For all he knows, the guy was as wrapped up with the Cabots as Larry or Blue. For all he knows he was higher up. For all he knows the guy got taken away.

All he's got is there here and now, in front of him. The rain comes down and Freddy wonders, dully, where he's going to sleep that night. The streets stink with the mounting weight of all that trash, crammed together too tight. He would work as a trash man, if the union didn't have the city in a choke hold someone would probably wanna hire him for that shit. No one leaves out the kind of thing that a guy like him might be able to sleep under though. Not unless you're really lucky. Anyone who finds a sheet of tarpaulin grabs hold of that shit and doesn't let go till he's beaten bloody and it's forcibly removed from his hands.

Freddy imagines that he wouldn't let go even then. He's always been scrawny, and even a propensity towards being a scrappy little shit has never saved him from a good beating. Standing up to his father was an act of inevitable self sabotage.

So Freddy keeps walking, as the night turns dark and the puddles soak the bottoms of his jeans. He's wearing his boots too hard, they won't be waterproof much longer. He keeps going till exhaustion is too much to manage, and he curls himself up at the foot of a building and sleeps despite the wet and the cold and the hopelessness of everything.

In the wake of the Cabots' passing, a power vacuum opens up in New York, wide enough that squares and streetwalkers alike can spot it. Freddy first starts to notice by the selection of girls available outside his local cinema, dwindling down to the last couple brave enough to face whatever action might be scheduled to rain down on them from some good for nothing pimp coming over from the other side of town.

Pimps, made guys, second in commands who are willing to take the plunge and carve up a little piece of territory for themselves. "The only girls still working are the ones up on ninety second street." Candice tells him. She's young, but still older than Freddy, and tall in her high heels. She has an Adam's apple and her voice is kinda weird for a lady but she seems nice enough "Iris will walk these streets come rain or shine."

"You know Iris?" Freddy asks, leaning up against the wall, just outside the penumbra of light coming down from the street light she's using to make this corner her stage.

Iris snorts, rolls her eyes. "Everybody knows Iris. Prettiest little filly in Sport's whole stable."

Freddy winces at the mention of Sport and Candice notices. She eyes him up, carefully. "I mean, you're kinda gross right now, no offence. But I can see why he would have tried to headhunt you."

"I'm not gonna work for that guy." Freddy mumbles.

"I hope you're right." Candice's voice softens ever so slightly and he hates it. "Really. You deserve a spot of good luck."

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

The Palantine campaign headquarters are down town and to the left a bit. Freddy knows this because it's the one place in the city where the posters are unchanging, blown up large to span the length of the building. He knows the guy's face inside out despite never having seen him, or giving an honest shit about his face. But here he is.

People are always coming and going round here, so at first Freddy doesn't think much of the parking spot across the street, semi permanently occupied by a cab. He assumes it's a popular spot, always held on standby, but then he clocks that the same company always takes it, and then he clocks that the same guy is always driving.

And then, fuck him sideways why dontcha? He clocks that the guy in the driver's seat is Travis.

He looks gaunt and ghostly compared to when they last saw each other. The dark circles under his eyes pick put the lines of his skull with eerie clarity. The shag of his hair and the clean lines of his shoulders leave him looking handsome in a way he never had when he and Freddy worked together but there's something missing behind his eyes, moreso than usual. He doesn't look entirely human.

Freddy keeps coming by, just to see if he'll be recognised. Travis only has eyes for something inside the building though. He doesn't notice the skinny little down and out wrapped up in an anorak twice the size of himself, huddled on the corner. Forever cold.

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."

Some loosely hinted at family troubles in this chunk - and a couple of lines that could or could not be read as Freddy's dad beating him when he got angry, depending on how you want to interpret that.

Beyond that we are now into the part of the story where Freddy is with Sport. Nothing sexual happens just yet, but as I've said before, Sport is a very predatory character and all his niceness towards Freddy should absolutely be read as a grooming tactic. Please stay back if that's at all uncomfortable for you.

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Ochre walls and paintings that his grandfather made some forty years ago are still barely visible through the tangle of comic book posters and movie stars, hacked out from the pages of what few magazines Freddy's ever cared enough to buy. He hates this place, growing smaller by the year though he can't seem to grow up. The carpet is hidden beneath the remains of homework never done and candy wrappers that he doesn't have the motivation to pick up.

He stands, swaying in the doorway, listening for the sound of movement coming down the hall. The bitter taste of beer still fills his mouth, slipping over his tongue for the first time in his life and he doesn't know what to do with the wooziness that accompanies it. Being drunk is nothing at all like what he expected. It's fun, with other people, but as he tries to put himself back together for long enough to crawl into bed he resents how hard it is to think straight.

The clock says it's just after three am. That's not so bad. He'll need to wake up in seven hours tops, splitting headache or not. Or maybe there is no headache, or maybe he has to puke to get it all out of his system. Freddy thinks about bacon and his stomach practically roars in response.

He checks over his shoulder, to be sure no one's snuck up on him. There's no one there, he's as alone as ever. He could slip down to the kitchen and cook himself up something nice.

He wouldn't do that, not to his mom, but he could. Parents can be thick as pig shit sometimes, but they can also possess an almost superhuman knack for keeping you on your toes. Freddy's still trying to decide if they're going to know where he's been, or if he's going to slip by unnoticed. Alcohol has a stink but he'd be fucked if he can tell if it's anywhere on him right now. If it is, he's acclimatised and is well and truly fucked.

With a trip and a stumble, he braves the mess of his floor. Crashing down on top of the covers, he sheds outdoor clothing as gracelessly as can be expected, stripping back to a tshirt and his boxers. He checks under the bed and sees his packed bag staring back at him, ready to go when he is, if the day ever comes.

If his dad knows that he snuck out...

If he knew he would have been sat up, waiting, bursting into fury as Freddy walked through the door. In principal it's only because he cares but he never bothers to specify exactly what he cares about. Some bullshit about how he doesn't want Freddy hanging out with Mikey Farrow. What the fuck does he know?

Mikey's nice, and if he's a bad influence it's nothing more serious than the rest of Freddy's classmates. The baking heat of California in the summer, soon to resolve into the gentle comfort of autumn, closes in around him as Freddy falls back onto his billow. The alcohol has him feeling giddy and sloppy all at once, a smile on his face as he slips into unconsciousness without any indication that there is a dividing line between this world and the next.

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

Freddy awakes in a room with enough colour to knock an elephant unconscious. Light filters in through tactfully sheer curtains, holding him in half light while outside, the grey gloom of high noon overtakes the city.

It's midday exactly, according to the clock on the opposite wall. everything appeared to be hoot pink, bright green of turquoise, including the magenta bedspread that Freddy is cocooned under. The weight of the duvet keeps him strapped to the mattress, groggily trying to remember where the fuck he is and if he should be at all concerned that he hasn't woken up in a dumpster. He swears he hasn't been this perfectly warm in his entire life.

Tentatively, he stretches himself out, trying to get his blood moving and so spurn his brain into action. He's stiff all over, right down to the way his rib cage aches as he draws in a deep breath, but what stands out to him is the fierce sting of his right hand, loudly protesting balling itself up into a fist.

Freddy holds the hand up to his face and wonders who the hell stocks pink bandages. Deep pink, dark, almost black.

His hand is wrapped up because he hurt it. Or someone hurt it for him. And someone else said they were going to make it all better.

The memories Freddy has of the night before feel like they belong to someone else, murky and incomplete, like a reinterpretation of a story someone told him. There was a mugging, there was running, he was so fucking cold and then he wasn't.

The door nudges open ever so slightly. "Morning, sugar. How are you feeling?"

Freddy hoists himself up onto his elbows and blinks at the door. A familiar face, all dark hair and rounded lines peers round, smiling at him without judgement or intent. Sport. Freddy's heart slams into his throat, urging him to get the fuck up and go, and it must show in his face.

"Hey, hey now." Sport coos. He slips into the room,closing the door behind him and crosses the distance to the bed Freddy's in. Today's choker is made of childish plastic beads, picked up in a horrendous mess of mismatched colours, set over a pair of shorts, a long blue dressing gown and a pair of slippers. "Easy, Freddy. Stay with me. I got you."

Freddy lurches away from him as he settles on the edge of the bed. "Where the fuck am I?"

"You don't remember?" Sport scratches at the back of his head. "Were you high last night or somethin'? You were real fucked up but I figured it was just shock."

"I'm not, I don't-"

"Aw, don't start up with that shit again." Sport huffs out a laugh and resettles his shoulders. "C'mon, Freddy. I told you, I'm gonna keep you safe, I'm gonna protect you. That's what I do, that's what I like." His hand finds Freddy's ankle from over the top of the duvet, smoothing down the covers to stroke along the outline of his calf.

The phantom memory of a hand running down his back, soothing away the night and the cold, suggests itself to Freddy. He doesn't relax, but he doesn't pull away or tell Sport to stop. "Where am I?"

"We're at my place. Easiest spot to take you to. I called up a doctor, he's gonna come round and take a look at your hand later." Sport's eyes travel up from Freddy's feet to his face, where they rest with casual scrutiny.

Freddy can feel himself starting to blush, but catches himself before he ducks his head. He holds up the hand in question. "Did you wrap this up last night?"

"Shit." Sport vaults forward, clearing the perimeter of the double bed in an instant. "Goddamn it. I was hoping the bleeding would have stopped by now."

Freddy stares dumbly at his hand, cradled in Sport's and looking so pathetically small. The dark pink of the bandages iss just blood, it's not by design.

He lost his coat, the night before. The rain coat. All the shit he's been through and the thing that caught him out was loosing a fucking coat. But you can't stay dry without it, so really the choice was between letting the rain wash him away, increment by increment, or winding up here.

He coughs, not taking his eyes off Sports hands, gently unwinding the bloody bandages, clicking his tongue like he's disappointed in them for not holding Freddy together the way he designed. "We didn't...um...I don't think we did...did we?"

Sport pauses, eyes flicking up to Freddy's and letting the silence settle around them before he shakes his head. "No, sweet boy. I'm not trying to take advantage here, you understand? I just wanna fix you up, make sure that you're doing ok." A hand cradles Freddy's chin, thumb brushing just under his bottom lip.

"Take care of me?" Freddy ventures. He can feel goosebumps rising on his skin, despite the overwhelming heat of the duvet.

The smile Sport breaks out into is honest and delighted. It was him, Freddy thinks. The warm thing he can remember from last night, it was Sport. Every part of him seems to exude heat, from the gentle forcefulness with which he carries himself to the deep brown of his eyes, like melted chocolate. "Right. Yeah, right." He laughs just a little bordering on self conscious. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph you really are something, aren't you?"

Freddy shrugs, unable to hold Sport's gaze any longer. He can feel himself smiling, despite every bad thing he's ever thought about the guy. There's still a hand on his chin, moving slowly, trying to calm him down like you would an erratic animal.

Sport shuffles in closer, dipping his head towards Freddy. "You know, this is my bed. I slept on the couch last night."

"You didn't have to do that." Freddy mumbles, like that's gonna change the past.

"Sure I didn't. But I didn't want you waking up thinking I was just using your shit as an excuse to get you into bed."

The implication tightens Freddy's throat. His eyes dart back towards his hand, the wound looks terrifyingly deep in the dim light, but he can still see where fresh blood glistens in the cut.

Sport extricates himself from Freddy very carefully, crossing the room to a little table where he scoops up a fresh roll of bandages. "So, whaddaya say, Freddy? You gonna let me help you out, or was last night a one time thing?"

Freddy looks from the bandages to his hand, from the raised flesh of his arm poking out over the covers to the wide expanse of the duvet. Like a beggar, desperate for the handful of coppers coming his way, he holds out his hand and Sport takes it.

His first day at Sport's, Freddy doesn't get out of bed at all. On the second day, he wakes, still alone, to find the bandage wrapped round his hand still white and clean. He breathes deep, smells the deep green funk of spliff worming it's way under the door, and decides that he needs to get up.

He's wearing a white tshirt several sizes too big that must be Sport's, and his own underwear in serious need of washing. He's filthy, tracks of grime that he couldn't put a name to spiraling down across his arms and legs. Stupidly, he thinks that the sheets he's been sleeping in must be in serious need of a clean, and then he wonders if he would be expected to pay for it.

Or maybe Sport is rich, maybe he has his own washer and dryer. Freddy must have seen the rest of the apartment, there's no way he could have made it to the bed otherwise, but he can't remember what it looks like for love nor money and every time he tries to envision what might lie beyond the door his brain supplies a hybrid image of his parents' house and the place he was living with Brown, Blue and Pink.

To get him into bed, Sport must have had to get his clothes off. Freddy's stomach tightens and for a moment he thinks he's about to land back on the bed, ass first. Sooner or later, Sport is going to want something in return, and he better be good and ready to run when that day hits.

There's a pair of silk kimono's hanging on a stand next to an ornate, dark wood wardrobe. Freddy has to make a quick decision between pastel pink and orange and decides that he would rather uphold his dead nickname. It can't have been more than three weeks since someone called him Orange and it already feels like a distant part of himself, burned up in the fire along with everything else.

A fuckload of comics became kindling that night, and sometimes that's the saddest thing about the whole affair as far as Freddy's concerned. He's already missed at least one big order, falling behind on runs that he was just getting used to having in his grasp at all time.

Tying the kimono in place, Freddy eases the door open. It opens out onto a corridor painted deep green, with a mustard carpet, the walls covered with art and paintings that form a blaze of unrelated colour palettes on first glance and are all pornographic on second. The smell of marijuana is stronger out here, but it's undercut with the soft homeliness of something baking in the oven. Voices drift through from an open door, one unfamiliar and low, punctuated by the more lively jabber of Sport.

Heel to toe, letting the spine of his feet role him forward, Indian style, Freddy creeps along the corridor. The carpet is plush beneath him, and everything is clean in a way entirely unbefitting of New York. The image of Sport in an apron and marigolds, scrubbing away at a filthy oven, suggests itself to Freddy, and he's so knocked back by the idea that he has to stifle a snort in the back of his hand.

The conversation stops, dead air hanging overhead for a long second. "Freddy?" Sport calls. "That you out of bed?"

Freddy stops shitting around, he picks up the pace and sticks his head around the open door. "Yeah."

Sport's living room is deep terracotta with velvet brown furniture, a red and cream Persian carpet and enough plants to start up a garden centre. Freddy's eye is immediately drawn to the bright blue tarpaulin wrap in the far corner, surrounding a cluster of plants overseen by a large, over-bright lamp, but letting his gaze linger feels invasive for reasons he can't quite put his finger on. Sport is decked out in yellow hareem pants and a black kimono, stretched out on an armchair big enough for two with a joint hanging out of his mouth. On the couch, a black guy in a sharp suit, dripping in gold jewelry smokes his own bowl.

Sport smiles at Freddy and slowly starts rearranging himself to clamber to his feet. "Well look at you, sweetheart. You sleep good?"

Freddy nods, shuffling himself over the threshold. He feels markedly self conscious, a damn site off naked but exposed and strange in the presence of people with their shit together. Sport floats over to him, setting down his joint at the edge of an ashtray on the coffee table in the middle of the room. He puts his hands on Freddy's shoulders and starts rubbing up and down, oh so slowly. "How you feeling?"

"Fine."

"Yeah? How's that hand?"

Freddy holds up the unstained bandages as proof of his improvement. It still hurts when he tries to curl his hand up, but as the doctor in the joke said, that's probably just a sign that he should stop fucking doing that shit.

Sport takes the injured hand in both of his, stroking slowly across the bandages, smiling to himself. "That's good. That's real good. Listen, baby, I'm so happy to see you, you know that, right? But I got some business I gotta take care of and I don't wanna bother you with any of this shit."

It's the most polite 'fuck off' Freddy's ever received. He nods briefly in understanding and takes a step back, heading for the door. He can go twiddle his thumbs in Sport's bedroom again, have a snoop around his stuff, see if he can find out what the hell happened to his clothes.

He's barely completed the motion before Sport's dragging him forward into a full force hug. "Nah, c'mon, not like that. As soon as this guy's gone, you're gonna have all my attention for the rest of the day, ok? Gonna spoil you rotten."

Freddy doesn't ask why, he doesn't need to hear the answer to know he's not gonna like it. So he nods again and lets himself be held. "Ok."

"Kitchen's down the hall, second on your left. Why don't you go make yourself a cup of coffee? There's some eggs and bread if you're hungry."

The sound Freddy's stomach lets out at the thought of food has Sport giggling like a little kid. "Let's take that as a yes. C'mon, get outta here. You don't wanna bother with the shit I'm working on today."

He's probably right, and yet Freddy is immediately dying to know exactly what Sport is discussing that he's so keen to keep him away from. He doesn't have shit he could do with the information, but if he knew, then he would know.

Fucking stellar thinking right there, Newandyke.

Freddy closes the door behind him as he leaves the living room. Let Sport trust him, let the guy think that Freddy's going to prioritise his privacy. It can only help in the long run.

Unsure of how well sound travels from room to room, Freddy heads straight for the kitchen. He's somewhat disappointed to find it decked out in neutral blues with a positively conservative dining set pushed up against the back wall. It's big, this whole fucking apartment is big. Sport is either rolling in it or someone is pulling serious strings for him to stay here. He opens up a cupboard and is relieved to find that the crockery at least is a suitably mismatched riot of colours and designs that look like they've been brought together over a matter of decades.

Coffee's in a pot over the kettle, eggs are in the fridge. Freddy sets to work making himself some kind of breakfast, completely oblivious to the time of day. He barely notices the window set over the sink, casting the room in glorious natural grey light, till he's looking down two stories at a corner he thinks he recognises, littered with girls he doesn't. It's a marker, an indicator of what part of town he might be in.

Freddy doesn't recognise shit unless he's viewing it from ground level. He settles back with something that would never pass for am omelette in polite society and a cup of coffee and waits for Sport to come collect him.

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

"I gotta take a leak." Freddy whines, as soon as Sport comes through the kitchen door.

Sport blinks at him, then laughs loud and long. "Shit, Freddy, you don't gotta wait for me to give you a hall pass. Go piss."

"I don't know where the bathroom is!"

"You coulda gone looking."

"I don't...I didn't...I got no idea if you got shit in here that you don't want me to see."

"Aww, baby." Sport's laugh resolves into a pensive smile, one finger hooking under Freddy's chin till they're looking eye to eye. "I ain't got shit to hide from you. Bathroom's just across the hall."

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

Half an hour later and Freddy is tucked up on the coach, still in his kimono and filthy under clothes, watching Sport blow smoke rings from his latest spliff. "This is a real nice apartment."

Sport looks over at him with a sloppy grin. "Why thank you. Jeez, you're such a good boy. Don't wanna snoop, got nice things to say about my place. Your momma raised you right."

Freddy doesn't mean to flinch at the mention of his parents, but he must show something, because Sport is on him in a second, gentle hands on his back, cooing under his breath, urging him to keep cool. "It's ok, baby. We all got something we're running from."

Freddy nods, opens his mouth and-

He's not going to talk about his parents with Sport. Not after he's managed so well at not talking to anyone else about them. He shuts his mouth and tries to relax back into Sport's hands, but his mind is still on the letter he never sent to his mother, another few drops of ash in the wreckage of sixty fourth street. If there's even any wreckage left to sort through. It can take the city months to fix a burst pipe but they'll start throwing up new real estate just as soon as the insurance checks have cleared for whatever was there before.

"What do you need?" Sport hums into Freddy's ear, close and confident.

Freddy breathes carefully, trying to ignore the fire running down his spine. "I'm fucking filthy."

"You wanna take a bath?"

"Sure."

"Ok, you stay here, I'll go run you one."

Freddy holds his breath till he hears the rushing of water hitting ceramic, slightly muted by the distance between the living room and the walls. He looks down at the plush velvet of the couch and tries to imagine Sport sleeping here, his hair providing perfect camouflage, but the picture feels all wrong. He can't even see a spare duvet in here.

He fucking hates the lingering guilt he has over kicking Sport out of his own bed. The guy doesn't deserve it, and it was his choice to let Freddy sleep there. And yet. And fucking yet.

The water turns off and Sport calls Freddy through. The bathroom is thick with steam, laid heavy with smells Freddy doesn't much associate with bath time.

He breathes deep, loving the way the air clings to the inside of his lungs, dragging his brain down a level to a point where not enough shit matters to bother worrying about it. "What is that."

Sport stands up from where he's testing the temperature of the water with the back of his hand. The bath is dark blue and claw footed, Victorian style, though the rest of the room is picked out in neat black and white tiling. The towels hanging by the door match the bath perfectly and Freddy thinks of Sport wandering down the isles of Home Depot, considering every colour until he finds the right one. "Just a few essential oils. Helps open the mind, ya know? Helps you relax, I want you to relax while you're here with me, I want you to feel safe."

Freddy doesn't know how to respond to that, not when Sport is converging on him, looking at him with uncomfortable tenderness. It's all fucking wrong. He has to start reaching for his own dreamt up version of Iris at work to keep himself grounded, disguising the lurch it sets in his stomac by leaning up against the wall.

With a turn of his head and a hand at Freddy's waist, Sport's close enough to kiss him. "You need anything else, baby boy? I can get you a joint, can get you something to drink."

"This, ah-" Freddy clears his throat. "This is good. Great. Thanks."

"Ok." Sport strokes Freddy's hair. "Ok. There's shampoo and soap and all that shit down the far end. You just shout if you need me."

He pulls back and starts towards the door. Freddy could dance a jig with the adrenaline hit from their proximity. "Oh, uh. Sport?"

"Yes, Freddy?"

"You might wanna... um... I think, I mean, I didn't mean to but I'm kinda gross and I've just spent the past two days in your bed..."

"I got spare sheets." Sport smirks. His eyes pass over Freddy all at once, almost too fast to spot. "Now don't you go locking this door, you understand? I wanna be able to help you if you need anything and I can't do that if you're locking me out, right?"

"Right." Freddy answers, mouth very dry.

"Don't worry about it. I'm not gonna come in unless you call." Sport winks, just the once, then leaves Freddy be, letting the door fall softly closed behind him.

It would be very easy to lock the door, if that's what he wanted to do. Freddy has no intention of calling on him for anything, after all.

His hand settles over the lock, but doesn't move. Freddy pulls back, eyeing the door handle suspiciously like it might start turning any second. Without turning his back to the door, he strips off the kimono and hangs it on a free hook before dumping the shirt and his underwear by the toilet. As he crawls into the bath, slowly letting the water engulf him, inch by inch, the smell of the oils seems to rise around him, pulling him down into the deep warmth. As hot as he can stand it, and how did Sport know a thing like that.

The back of Freddy's head hits the slope of the bath down towards the water, his face the only part of him not submerged save for his toes peaking out near the tap. Heat subsumes him, his limbs unsticking as the filth of the past few weeks starts to lift away and time stops mattering.

He should probably have not let his injured hand lie in the water with him, but by the time he thinks of it, the water has already wormed its way through the bandages and is starting to sting the edges of his cut and he knows the worst of the damage is already done.

If this chunk shows up in the wrong place then I apologise - I had to switch things up because soon the text was gonna get too narrow to read

I feel like this whole story is probably not what OP had in mind but also OP is probably long gone and I'm having fun so....no takebacks

Warnings for this chunk: nothing explicit but things start to get sexual and there's some daddy kink and foot fetish stuff undercutting it. As ever, Sport is coercive and is taking advantage and Freddy may well be underage

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

Freddy comes out of his stupor in a lukewarm bath. He runs off some of the water and puts the hot tap back on blast, yelping s the first spray comes cold enough to chill his toes. The smell of the oils recirculates through the room as he reaches for the shampoo, which comes in a small dark bottle that looks way more expensive than the supermarket own brand soap he's been using for all his life up till now. It feels like silk, gliding through his hair, and when his hands come away there's barely a lather to them. He reaches for soap and scrubbing brushes and some weird thick gloop that calls itself conditioner and by the time he's done, the water is a cryptic shade of browning gray. Freddy hoists himself out and sits on the toilet, scrubbing at his feet with a pumice stone until his skin is red raw. His mom always had one of these things sat by the bath and he never understood why anyone would bother. But her stone was grimy, caked in mildew. Sport's is fresh.

Standing on the cool tiles, naked and still slightly damp despite his valiant attempts to dry himself off with the towel. He pulls the plug on the bath then stares down the clothes he came in wearing. The tshirt might still be good but he's loathe to slip back into his filthy boxers. He settles for wrapping the kimono round himself twice as tight, tying the sash with a double knot just to be safe.

The door cracks open and cool air sends goosebumps up his spine. Freddy's toes curl into the carpet. Not even his grammy had anything as thick as this. He would roll naked down the hall if he could get away with it.

"You done?" Sport calls from the living room.

"Yeah. What happened to my clothes?"

"Aww shit." Sport arrives in the doorway, now dressed in a red corduroy button down with tight fitting black jeans and a strip of velvet to match his couch round his neck. His smile is sheepish, his bottom lip getting stuck in his mouth when he looks Freddy up and down. "Meant to put them in the wash yesterday. Haven't gotten round to it."

He leaves the conversation hanging, like Freddy's supposed to do something with that. "Uh... do you have anything else I could wear?"

"What, that kimono no good for you?" Sport holds out his arms like he expects Freddy to come to him and like an idiot, Freddy follows the queue. "You look real fucking nice in it, I promise."

Freddy pauses just outside of arm's reach. When he was wearing something underneath it, the kimono was fine, but without that extra shielding he feels exposed and awkward, like any wrong move will shift the fabric at the wrong angle and expose him.

They pause, holding court like that for a beat too long. Sport shakes his head, smiling like it's no big deal. "C'mon, you're not even properly dry yet. Let's go get you sorted out."

'Sorted out' turns out to be code for a whole lotta bells and whistles that Freddy's never taken much of an interest in. Girly shit, making yourself look presentable. Sport sits him down on the edge of the bed and comes at him with an honest to God hairbrush, muttering about how he needs a haircut.

"You sound like my dad." Freddy roles his eyes.

"Yeah?" Sport's mouth quirks ever upwards at that. "How is your old man? You see him much?"

Shake of the head. No more details. No one deserves any more fucking detail than that.

"Well, as long as he ain't around, I want you to think of me as your daddy, ok?"

The way he says it makes Freddy want to crawl out of his skin. There's nothing fucking wrong with that word. Hell, he knows guys his age and older who still call their fathers daddy and it's no big deal. It's nothing.

Sport sets the brush down and cards his hand through the damp, overlong locks of Freddy's hair. "Say it."

Freddy swallows, trying to straighten out his back as he meets Sport's gaze, swallowing him up in those deep warm eyes.

"C'mon." Sport urges. "Say it."

"Daddy." Freddy's voice comes out a whisper, strangled and alien to him. His skin burns and his eyes prickle like he wants to cry about it. Sport's pupils blow wide, his mouth hanging open ever so slightly.

"Yeah I am, baby. Gonna take such good care of you. Gonna treat you like a fucking princess, if you let me. You gonna let me?"

The big fucking bed, special bath, sitting here wearing silk of all the fucking things in the world. Freddy nods his head. "Yeah."

"Yes what?"

"Yes, daddy."

Sport's smile flickers back to life, he sits back and all the air rushes back into the room. "Good boy."

There's still work to do on him, though. Weird smelling shit and hair tonics get shoved into Freddy's hands, Sport carefully instructing him on how to use them. There's moisturiser and perfume and shit and apparently there's specific rules about what order you're supposed to put them on, and which one can go where. Cream for your face is bad for your face and all that. Freddy tries to keep up, to pretend that he cares, but the only thing he really understands is that Sport wants to take him to a barbers sometime to get his hair cut.

Sport talks about this arrangement like it's long term. every time Freddy thinks he might have the guts to challenge that assumption his words fail him and he falls back to meekly accepting the products being shoved in his face. He's expected to apply them now, in all their sweet scented, slightly greasy glory.

"There, that feel good?" Sport asks, watching Freddy rub something that's supposed to make his hands smooth and pliant into his palms.

It doesn't. It feels greasy and awkward and like he shouldn't touch anything until it's finished soaking into his skin. "Sure."

Plucking a final item from his dresser - which is huge, messy, painted pink and with a complete vanity mirror splayed out across the back - Sport urges Freddy to shuffle up the bed, till he's leant up against the headboard with pillows at his back to keep him upright. "Just gonna take a look at your feet."

There had been a nail file in the bathroom and Freddy had made use of it to scoop the fraying strands of his socks from underneath his toenails. They're still in good need of a cut though. Sport hauls Freddy's feet into his lap and holds each one up, scrutinising.

Freddy clenches his legs tight. He doesn't know if anything would be visible from this angle, but he doesn't want to get upskirted.

Clucking, Sport picks up a generous scoop of White Gloop For Feet. "You use the pumice stone?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, I can tell. It's gonna take a few more passes to get them right but you'll get there. You gotta work a little harder on your feet than everything else, it's way easy to let them slip."

The first brush of the weird greasy shit that brushes over Freddy's feet is unpleasantly cold, but it warms fast under Sport's hands. The aim seems to be to push the stuff forcefully into his skin, Sport's thumbs working hard, pressing down on the balls of his feet and humming happily at something Freddy can't see.

It takes time, way more time than smoothing stuff into his hands. Freddy's mind starts to wander as he relaxes into it, focusing on the pressure points that large, warm hands keep finding and then on nothing at all. His body feels light and airy, the greasy sensation that all those creams and ointments left behind now making him feel like he could slip unbidden into the air if he wanted to.

He keeps his eyes on the ceiling, defiantly not on Sport. The sound of cars, of people shouting, of distant emergency services, remind him that he's still in the city. And this house can smell of essential oils and marijuana smoke as much as it wants but the rest of New York isn't like that. This place is a sanctuary.

The groan that bubbles out of Freddy's throat is unbidden and alarming. he snaps back to himself, eyes sweeping downwards to check himself and when he sees the lump rising around the crotch of his kimono he wants to fall through the fucking floor. His face flushes hot and angry with himself, muscles tightening as he retrieves his feet from Sport's grasp.

"Hey, hey now." Sport coos, shuffling further up the bed and setting a hand on one of Freddy's drawn up knees. "Hey, c'mon, Freddy. I don't mind. It's a normal thing, you know? A natural thing."

He's not wrong, probably. Not that Freddy has much to go on. He can count the times he's been openly aroused around someone on one hand and as soon as he starts thinking about it, his mind takes him back to the leaking ceiling and cold, filthy floors of ninety eighth street. Takes him back to waking up sore all over, to the wad of money shoved into his hand to underwrite his insignificant sacrifice.

He shakes his head, closes his eyes, promises himself he isn't going to cry.

"Oh baby." Sport sounds so sad, laying a hand on the back of Freddy's head. "Sweet boy. It's no bother. I love that you and I can be like that together. I want you to feel comfortable with me, no matter what."

Freddy lets his eyes fall open slowly, catching up to Sport's. He looks so fucking sincere, like Freddy's discomfort is causing him physical pain, but it's hard to believe him, and even if he did. Freddy's not sure he would want to open himself up like that.

Is this how he went and caught Iris? Slowly telling her how comfortable she was supposed to be until she became comfortable everywhere, with everyone. Too fucking young. Does Sport even know what he's doing?

Very slowly, and softly, Sport lets the words pass through his lips. "You want me to take care of it for you?"

What arousal Freddy felt has more or less vanished in the wake of his shame. Stiffly, he uncurls ever so slightly, trying to duck out of Sport's grasp. "No thanks."

"What was that now?"

"No thank you, daddy."

Sport smiles and lets him go. The room is thick with the smell of this fucking product and that fucking product. Freddy wipes his hands down the front of the kimono, trying to bring them back to normal, back under his control. He has no idea if this shit can even wash out of silk but he figures Sport can reprimand him later if he has a problem with it. "Can I get some clothes?"

"Sure thing." Standing up off the bed, Sport goes over to his dresser and starts picking out shirts and pants in neutral colours that Freddy can't imagine him ever wearing. Everything's too big, but he doesn't mind so much looking like a rag doll, so long as he can get hhimself covered up.

Back to sport, Freddy hitches up a loaned pair of briefs under the kimono. Once they're in place, everything else feels much easier. He can still feel the eyes, raking over his back and his ass, but it's easier when he's in control of how much of his body is on display.

"We'll have to get you some new threads." Sport says, offhand. "Don't reckon I've seen you wearing more than about three shirts since you first crossed my path. That's no good. A pretty boy like you needs to look the part."

Freddy nods and doesn't say a word. He can't imagine how Sport's going to buy him new clothes without getting him out of the apartment, and he can't imagine stepping foot outside the apartment without running just as fast as his well massaged, soft, smooth feet will carry him.

Further discussion of Iris's sexuality and sexual activity she has engaged in here, long with a lot more in the way of detail as to Sport's operational methods with potential new assets he's trying to recruit. Warnings for mention of battery and rape. Also some non consensual sexual touching by an underage person of a possibly underage person. It's weird.
--------------------------------------------

"Gonna have a little party this weekend, that sound fun?"

"Yes, daddy."

Sport grins, sidling up behind Freddy and rocking a hand into his hair. "Gotta get you all sorted out before then, though. Gotta get you looking nice. Want everyone to see how beautiful you are baby boy."

Freddy nods and doesn't look up. His hair falls forward, obscuring the dishes he's trying to wash after their dinner. Sport cooks, he cleans. Nice and simple, like back in the old days.

Back when his mother kept her mouth shut and his father ate first. The resentment has yet to build, but the sentiment is there. He spent years wondering how she didn't blow up at him, just the once, convinced that would be all it took.

The clothes Freddy wears were bought for him by someone who isn't Sport and who isn't allowed into the apartment, hidden behind the front door like a filthy secret. People come and go, business associates and Freddy's never supposed to be in the room when they get here. Or rather, it's always suggested that he shouldn't be in the room, that he doesn't want to worry his pretty little head about it.

Freddy has no fucking idea what happened to his boots or to the clothes he arrived here in. His hand is healing nicely and he's fed and watered and he doesn't know why he hasn't leapt for the door yet while Sport's back is turned. The bed is no longer his sole domain, but Sport tends to take it during the day, citing business commitments as reason for him to be out at night.

Warm lips press to the top of Freddy's spine. The tension, the expectation that he will snap, is obvious. He would kick his own ass if he could, for the way his body springs and sings at the threat of human contact. He hates it, the sinking realisation that this attraction isn't going away. Sport is older than him, and his clothes are weird, and in many ways he's the worst person Freddy's ever had the misfortune to get wrapped up in a proper conversation with.

But his arms are strong and the clean bow of his mouth has Freddy dreaming up sweet nothings like he doesn't get them on the hour without asking. The raw, immediate urge he's used to picking up off the girls on street corners is absent and the horror of it all the more apparent for it. Careful hands rubbing tension out of his body, chopping vegetables, bringing him coffee, turning down the bedsheets when neither of them are sleeping, spreading khol on the lower lids of his eyes. Threatening to dip beneath the waistband of Freddy's jeans (slim cut, hugging his ass so tight that for the first time in his life, he actually has an ass. And how did he know without stopping to take measurements?) but they won't. Not without him saying, explicitly.

And once it's out in the open, it's all his fault.

"Gonna have Iris come by tomorrow." Sport murmurs, dragging Freddy's hands out of the water and slipping an arm around his waist, moving the two of them to an imaginary beat that only he can hear. "Would you like that?"

Freddy nods, keeping his eyes turned down like it's nothing. He hasn't spoken to anyone who wasn't Sport in more than a week now, he's gagging for something, anything. He'd settle for one of Brown's rants on the sexuality of comic books if that's all he could get. Hell, he'd call the guy up himself if he had any idea which of New York's litany of prisons he's locked up in.

The phone book lists at least twenty, and they only take you through to the front desk. Freddy can't remember the name Brown gave him when he first moved in, he's nothing more than a colour. All the boxes that came to the store were marked for Wacko Comics, not for him.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, baby?"

"What's the date?"

Sport turns Freddy to face him, smiling like you smile at a child that's asked a question they're not yet old enough to understand. "Doesn't matter. None of that shit matters, so long as you're here with me."

Somewhere in Central Park, a strip of sidewalk has gotta be getting mighty cold.

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

Perched on the sofa, head in one of the comics that Sport had picked up for him - all wrong but sometimes you just gotta appreciate the gesture and move on with your life - Freddy's ears prick when the door clicks open. He's given up trying to run up behind it, to catch a glimpse of something, anything that might give him a clue as to where the fuck he is. The postman doesn't even stop here.

"Hey, baby." Sport coos. Freddy's stomach lurches and rolls at the wet smack of what sounds like lips on lips. "Sorry I haven't had so much time for you recently. I've had some stuff to take care of."

"It's cool." Iris bursts into the living room, wearing a long pink skirt that manages to highlight every twitch of her legs underneath and a cropped yellow jumper. She's hidden up in a beanie today, which gets pulled off her head without ceremony and dumped on the coffee table. "Hey, Freddy. How ya been?"

"Fine." Freddy smiles weakly at her. In anticipation of her arrival he had been biting back butterflies but now she's here she's just Iris. Always and never out of place.

Sport hangs off the door, surveying the pair of them as a farmer surveys his crops. "You kids play nice now. I gotta go out for a couple of hours, so I figure you can keep each other company."

"Sure thing, Sport." Iris winks at him.

Freddy can't imagine ever calling the guy by his name.

Sport lets his attention drift over to Freddy with indulgent over affection. "See you later, baby."

"Bye, dadddy." Freddy replies, before he can even remember to feel self conscious about it. By the time the door closes behind Sport, Iris is already laughing about it.

"Daddy?" She folds in on herself, making an ugly honk that is entirely out of place with her image and perfectly in step with her age. "What the fuck, man?"

Freddy shuffles his feet, deciding that he likes the image he gives off better when he's not tucked up small on the sofa. "He wants me to call him that."

"Yeah, no shit. That doesn't mean you have to just sit there and take it. I never did." Iris kicks off her shoes, which are chunky and blocky and look like they should leave her feet filthy by the end of the day but when she pulls herself up into the big chair, her red painted nails are perfectly clear.

Freddy blinks. "He asked you to call him daddy?"

"Yeah, and I told him to get fucked."

"Huh."

"So he's got you wrapped around his little finger. Figures." Iris reaches for the trio of rolled spliffs lying on the table and lights one up. "I've been trying to work out why he likes you so much."

It would be easy enough too Freddy to say the same, except he hasn't. He hasn't wondered at all. He has taken it as a given since the first time he met Sport on ninety second street that he was interested in one thing and one thing only. The idea that Sport's affections might be dependent on his behaviour sets his head spinning. "Yeah."

The muggy green stink of the weed permeates through the room in a heartbeat, pushing out the stale smoke that seems to be a permanent feature of the apartment. Despite not having taken a single puff, Freddy's probably been on a contact high since he got here.

"So." Iris starts around a neat little smoke ring. "How many times a day is he having you?"

Freddy blinks, confused. "What?"

"How often is he fucking you?"

The heat frothing forward into Freddy's cheeks belays the vaguely disgusted sneer he tries to pull off. "He isn't. He hasn't."

"Bullshit."

"I'm serious." Freddy laughs, lightly hysterical. "I mean, he's tried. Or he's made a move or two but I've never let him get anywhere with it."

He's expecting mild irritation, perhaps a dig at him for being a prude. He's not expecting the fear that crosses her face, smudging the smoke pouring from her mouth.

He frowns. "What?"

Iris shakes her head slightly, like she's not gonna talk.

"Fucking what?" Freddy can feel the impetus to rise to his feet clawing up his spine, like she's not tall enough to knock him back down on his ass as soon as he makes a move.

"Why ain't you let him fuck you yet?" Iris asks quietly.

"Because I don't want to."

"No one fucking wants to. That's some bullshit. Why ain't you let him fuck you?"

Freddy pauses, bites his tongue. He could lie, and get absolutely nowhere. No idea if Iris is his ally. She's certainly not on his side as long as she's got herself to look out for, but that doesn't mean she can't have his best interests at heart. "He keeps like...waiting for me to say yes. But if I say yes it's because he wants me to. Like I wouldn't have walked up to him on the street like 'hey man, wanna fuck?' ya know? I just...don't want him too win."

The look Iris gives him is enough to melt glass. Freddy has to prop himself up internally, reminding himself that she's younger than him by a good few years, before she launches into a tirade.

"You stupid, fucking, idiot! Of course he wins, that's how the game works. You really think that he's gonna treat you nice, put you up in his apartment and then just let you go? Fuck's sake! You naive little shit. You're trying to get yourself killed."

"I could go." Freddy counters. "I could walk out that door right fucking now."

"So go!" Iris holds up her hands, scoffing out something that might have been intended to sound like a laugh. "Fucking hell, man. It's your fucking funeral. You think him and his people aren't gonna find you. They've picked up most of the big players still on the streets from the Cabot crew - either brought them on or killed them. Where the fuck are you gonna go, Freddy?"

"I don't gotta go anywhere! I can stay here, he's nice to me." Freddy spits, and hates himself. Fucking God he fucking hates himself.

Eyes too old, face too young, Iris is practically fucking parental with him when she next opens her mouth. "Freddy. You seem nice, but you're real dumb. You know what the longest anyone held out on Sport was? Ten days. Now tell me how long you've been here."

"Just over a week." Freddy shrugs.

Iris opens up her free hand, laying bare his cards for his own benefit. "Right. So you gotta move fast."

"Or what?"

"Or it won't be on your terms."

"You mean..."

No digs, no rolled eyes, no disbelief. Iris's voice comes thin and needy and every inch the twelve year old girl. "He'll fuck you up. Forreal. I've seen it. Right now you're cute and shit, he'll treat you good if you work with him but you'll end up giving cheap blowjobs in public bathrooms if you don't. You just...you gotta just do it Freddy. Get it done. On your own terms."

She's seen some shit, of that much he's sure. It roles off her back most of the time but that doesn't mean none of it gets caught in her feathers.

"Don't see how it can be on my own terms with that kind of choice."

"Oh my God." Iris hisses, rubbing hard at the back of her neck and looking skyward for a saviour that isn't coming. "You gotta stop overthinking this, here." She shoves the still lit spliff into his mouth.

Coughing, Freddy pulls it away. "What the fuck? I don't smoke this shit."

"You do tonight." Iris hauls herself onto the sofa, right up close in Freddy's personal space. "C'mon, deep breaths." She holds up the spliff and the acrid smoke has him gagging. "C'mon! Take it down."

"Alright, alright, Jesus!" Freddy takes the thing in his hands and tries again. One breath, a second breath to chase it down. And hold. He hasn't done this since California.

Iris watches him like a hawk, eyes tracking his face. "Good, that's real good."

The nib burns right and red and Freddy keeps his eyes on that to distract from how close Iris is sitting. Her wide eyes are perfectly highlighted in thick rims of mascara, making her look like a cartoon idea of the perfect woman. Her arm resettles, close behind Freddy's ass and he tries to scoot up the sofa to get away from her but she stops him with a hand on his arm.

He holds still, spliff two centimetres from his mouth. "Iris..."

"You got too many morals for your own fucking good, you know that?" Her voice is scathing. He gets two seconds of roaring silence in his ears then her mouth is on his neck, sucking hard at his pulse point and her hand has slipped between his legs.

He could fucking scream.

"What the hell?" He tries to push her away but crammed down the end of the sofa there's nowhere else to go. She dives back in, and it's just a fucking hand but she knows what she's doing with it, and Freddy's every attempt to get her off him feels more feeble than the last.

"We gotta get you horny. Like, real fucking horny. Like, you'll throw yourself at him when he comes through the door horny." Iris explains, her voice low, ghosting over his ear and followed by her teeth. "You jacked off since you got here?"

"I ain't telling you-"

"When did you last jack off?"

Another toke of the spliff, it's making everything easier. Things are still clear but they don't matter quite so much, leaving him weightless and ever so slightly ineffectual. "I dunno. Weeks ago."

"Shit." Her hand vanishes and Freddy could choke. Reaching down the arm of the sofa, she brings up an unlabeled bottle of something brown and alcoholic. "Here, have a glug of that."

"I don't-"

"Don't give me that shit! You don't wanna fuck. So we're gonna get you horny and we're gonna get you fucked up till you don't care anymore." Iris waits for him to finish off the blunt before shoving the bottle into his hands. "Drink!"

"I don't fucking wanna get drunk!"

"You ever fucked before, Freddy?"

His lips lock. He has stood in a room that was his for the taking till someone took it from him. He has slept on the floorboards. He has wondered why he asked for so little in return. That's gotta be something.

With one hand on the butt of the bottle and one hand on the back of his head, Iris guides him. "That's what I thought. Now drink."

It's whiskey or rum or brandy or some other brown spirit that Freddy doesn't know the name of and doesn't have the experience to distinguish on taste alone. It burns and he splutters and it hits him so fast he doesn't know which way is up.

"That's good." Iris coos into his ear. "Good boy. In ten minutes or so I'll get you hard again, and then we just keep going, alright?"

Freddy slides his eyes over to her, unsure if he wants to kick her in the teeth or kiss her. She's straight back, sure boned and so much better at this than him. Their hands lock together, knuckles sliding against knuckles. They've got each other. If nothing fucking else counts for anything, she knows what to do to keep them both afloat.

Warnings for: sexual activity between a confirmed adult and possible minor, the end result of coercion and grooming, sex under the influence, daddy kink. I'm trying to go light on the specifics with a lot of this, but they're still either in there or happening offscreen

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

The light isn't quite bright enough, it's bite muzzled by the weird orange shade Sport has on over it. Can't be good for the plants, Freddy thinks, then laughs because everything's very fucking funny right now. He's about to have his ass torn open, he's gonna sell his fucking soul when he could have been walking out the front door. That's funny.

Iris laughs like the little girl who lived next door to his grandparents back in SoCal, all at once, no control over him. "You're fucked up, man."

"Fuck you." Freddy slurs, grinning at her over the top of the empty bottle. The booze is better than the spliff, he's decided, even if the spliff makes everything that much funnier, all it does is strap him down. The booze can hold him still or let him float to the top of the Chrysler building as he chooses, more flexible. He likes that.

He doesn't register the click of the front door falling open at first, just another canon ball in the barrage of noise that New York generates. There's a bar down the street, and when traffic's low you can hear the patrons chattering and arguing. Someone's always arguing. Even Iris argues with him. Not Sport though, he lets everything slide, lets Freddy choose.

Freddy's fucking choice.

"You two sound like you're having fun." He swaggers into the room with lionine grace, looking at the two of them like they're his whole fucking kingdom. Hips jutted out, a permanent habit of the street seller who has to keep themselves at the top of the deck for fear of losing their livelihood. His blue jeans are puled up high, his shirt is black and open collared, showing off the tight strung chain with a single yellow bauble hanging perilously around his Adam's apple.

Freddy's gut lurches and he has to catch his breath, checking that he's not about to puke. He's made of stern stuff, and Iris has been funneling him as much water as he'll take to keep him from hurling, which just means he has to piss real damn bad all the time.

"Freddy's wasted." Iris pokes at Freddy with her foot, catching the edge of his thigh.

Wound tight as a spring and crashed out and boneless all at once. She kept reaching down, getting him hard then leaving him to wallow in it. She wasn't wrong about it helping. He doesn't know how long he's gonna hold out once his own little problem is taken care of but he's definitely a whole lot less fussed about who might take care of it than he was waking up that morning.

Sport's tongue flicks out, tasting the air. His eyes are dark and hooded when they lock with Freddy's, before running up and down his splayed out figure. Everything feels hot and sticky and close, and over the stink of weed, Freddy can smell Sport's aftershave, clean and sweet.

Hand brushing lightly over Iris's hair, then dropping to her shoulder, she and Sport smile at each other. "That's so much for keeping him company while I was gone, precious girl."

"No problem, Matthew."

Freddy frowns, the name not working with any image he has saved up of Sport. He'd think it was a nickname, but who names their kid fucking Sport.

As she stands to leave, slipping on her ridiculous shoes and pulling her hair back into place, Iris winks at him. "See you round, Orange."

The fuck.

"What? Whaddid you jus' call me?" Freddy slurs. He hates that, he wants his words back, full faculties at the ready.

"Yeah." Sport counters, hands on his hips. "What's fuckin' orange about him."

Iris throws a hand gesture Freddy's way that's maybe supposed to point to all of him. "His face. In the light. I know he's all pink but the brown makes him look all orange."

So of course, Freddy blushes deeper. And Sport laughs like it's a good joke. "Orange, I like that. Very on brand. C'mon, sweetheart, lemme show you out."

Out of sight and never out of mind, Freddy hears the same wet pop and has to imagine what it must look like when Sport kisses Iris. Then he has to unimagine it, willing the idea back into the dark place that he keeps his own inclination to maybe, possibly, sometimes...

The one time his parents caught him with half a drink in him, he had been grounded for weeks and reprimanded for months. Maybe that's why Freddy freezes up when Sport swans back into the room, face perfectly neutral. His shirt is cut just right that you can see every bulge and every movement of his muscles below, advertising what he could do to you if the mood took him.

What he could do, what he has done. There are consequences to getting in trouble and in New York City, they start later and come down harder.

"Look at you." Sport purrs. "All fucked up and pretty in pink. You gonna party all night, Princess?"

"Maybe." Freddy replies, his voice coming louder than he meant. He wants to lay out, star fish style, get every part of him as far away from every other part of him as possible.

"It's only five in the afternoon and you're already all ready for action. I figure you about ready to go all night, or you wanna turn in early."

Sport practically floats over, dropping to his knees in front of Freddy with Catholic reverence, his knees tucked in close and his hands folded demurely in his lap. "You have fun with Iria?"

"Yeah."

"She suck your cock?"

"No." Freddy winces, crushing the idea of the thing before it can take hold. "No. It ain't like that."

"Hey, I don't mind." Sport holds up empty hands, but Freddy knows he keeps a gun in his sock when he goes out. "I get it. She's a good looking girl, you're a good looking guy. Sometimes you gotta blow off a little steam in your own time."

"I don't-" Freddy catches himself before he starts off down that road again. "We didn't do nothin' like that. We smoked, we drank." Apologetic nod to the empty liquor bottle. "We mighta cleaned you out."

"Don't worry about it." The hand that slides up to stroke Freddy's cheek practically feels cool against his burning skin. He doesn't like that part of alcohol either.

The apartment is big for New York but the living room's not huge, and neither is the space between them, but Sport's eyes catch on his and suddenly it's hard to breathe. Everything zeroes in on the steady in and out action of his diaphragm, like he might forget what to do if he can't keep himself on a tight enough leash.

Sport leans in incrementally, and it's nothing but Freddy notices. "What do you want?"

The sticky syrup of language is trapped where Freddy can't find it.

Craning upwards, forehead to forehead and everything is in those deep brown eyes. When Sport speaks his lips barely move, able to express himself as loudly or as softly as he chooses. "What do you want, sweet boy. Tell me, tell daddy what you need."

"I-" And that's all Freddy's got. He doesn't know, he doesn't have a fucking clue anymore. All he knows is that he's got to do something. Something has to give, and he might as well make the first move.

Clumsy makeout sessions with a handful of classmates back in highschool and fumbled handjobs when parents were out of town haven't prepares him for shit. Freddy sets a shaking hand on Sport's waist, tips his head and waits for everything to fall into line.

"What do you want?" Sport asks, so close that their lips are practically moving against one another.

He wants out. Freddy kisses him, the graceless slide of his lips trying to find purchase making his gasp out a curse but by then it's out of his hands. He gave it all to Sport. He gave it. He fucking handed it over.

He gave, lest someone else should take. There's a religion in that somewhere. The hand on his cheek curls forward, seeking the edge of his ear as Sport lets out a muffled sigh and opens his mouth to swallow Freddy whole.

Kissing is rough and hard and Freddy has forgotten where his hands should go. Sport molds him into position, rearranging limbs and coaxing his mouth open, sliding his tongue past the gateway of Freddy's teeth and Freddy doesn't bite down. Nowhere left to fucking run. His body relaxes into it easy under the fine tutelage of alcohol, kicking moans up from deep within him that he didn't think he had access to. Kissing isn't supposed to feel this good, it's not supposed to leave him feeling like a wet blanket waiting for an almighty hand to ring him out.

"Oh baby." Sport kisses, in between plucking desperately at his mouth. "God, I've wanted that too. I woulda let you, I would always let you."

I know. The words die somewhere in Freddy's chest, so he surges forward, getting his hand into the collar of Sport's shirt in an attempt to regain control of the situation. Another hand in his hair, soft as shit from all that product he puts in it, it's worth it. Freddy has to pause just to stick his nose in it, breathing in deep. How the fuck does he do that.

Sport's smile couldn't be brighter. "Look at you, baby. Having fun."

"Yes." Freddy hisses. "Yes, daddy." Sport tenses like he's been shocked, and maybe that's all the control anyone gets to have of this situation.

The fumble each other into a standing position, and Sport whispers something about how he wants to take Freddy to bed. Freddy doesn't say no, and then Freddy doesn't not say yes. It all happens so fast that by the time he's falling back on the covers he can't remember the walk back down the corridor.

But his feet remember what the carpet feels like underneath them, they remember it with a clear immediacy that can't be faked.

"Gonna make you feel so good." Sport growls, helping Freddy wriggle out of his stupidly tight jeans. "Oh baby. You want that? You want me to make you feel good?"

Freddy nods, trying to ignore how much attention his crotch is getting, all freshly prepared by Iris for her favourite Manhattan predator.

"You want daddy to make everything better?"

Clothes are torn from his body, and his nakedness is shameful and exhilarating. Freddy pushes back, testing the boundaries of how far Sport will let him take the upper hand. He's pushed back on the pillow, told to role over, and from there everything comes crashing down.

Aftermath and worsening. All the warnings from the last chunk apply here, in addition to non consensual, uninformed drug taking, rape of a possible minor and physical abuse. As ever, trying to go light on the details of the actual awfulness.

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

His mouth tastes like someone took a shit in it, his head has got to be visibly throbbing with the muggy leftovers of the night before. Freddy blinks wake slowly, then rushes to the finish line as his nerves light up with sensation he's sure he wasn't built to feel. Light too bright, body too hot, stomach rolling too quickly to keep up with. Oh shit.

Pushing aside the duvet, Freddy tries to scramble to his feet but finds himself stuck in the loose locked grip of Sport's arms. He shoves them away, whimpering in panic and get to his feet in time for a wave of nausea to have him shoving a fist in his mouth. He barely registers the bone deep ache clawing its way up his lower spine till he reaches the door, when it hits him like a freight train and he doesn't know if he can walk any more.

"Baby?" Sport's voice is way too loud, the fucking traffic in the street is way too loud. "You ok?"

The noise that makes it past Freddy's lips must say everything because three seconds later, Sport is on his feet, holding out a plastic bag as he gets the door.

"It's ok. It's all gonna be ok."

Despite all the odds, Freddy makes it to the bathroom before he really starts puking, stomach clenching hard enough to make his eyes water. Sport holds his hair back from his face, kissing along his neck and telling him to get it all out, that everything's going to be fine.

Freddy falls back from the toilet bowl, head pressed back against the side of the bath and the cool sting of the metal is just what he needs. He breathes deep and rushed, blindly reaching for the glass of water that he just knows is coming his way and not even bothering to rinse before he swallows it down.

It feels like it's going to come straight back up again, but he holds his breath and wills it to stay still.

"Poor thing." Sport mumbles, dropping down beside Freddy to stroke his hair. "You were pretty drunk last night, hey?"

Freddy nods, he doesn't want to know how loud his voice sounds in his ears. He wants desperately to be unconscious, not asleep so much as in a protracted coma of his own making.

"It's ok." Sport's voice is muffled by Freddy's hair. "I don't mind. You were so good to me last night, so fucking good. You remember?"

Fingers in places fingers weren't supposed to be, funny smelling oil, everything going bright and tight and explosive all at once. He doesn't fucking want to remember. Freddy nods his head anyway, because it's what Sport wants.

He can feel the smile forming against the shell of his ear. "So good, baby. So fucking good for me."

They're both naked, and it's not as weird as it should be. Maybe because Freddy feels about as far away from sexual as it's possible for him to get, maybe he's just gotten used to having Sport in his personal space, one way or another. They sit, Freddy saying nothing and Sport saying nothing at all, until the light slipping through the single, narrow window hung over the toilet starts to change.

Sport slings a hand round Freddy's waist, pulling him in closer. "It's early, real early. We can't have gotten to sleep much after nine last night. Plenty of day left to work with."

Freddy doesn't want a fucking day. The nausea appears to be creeping away from him now it doesn't have anything to latch on to but his head feels the worse for it. And his bones. Everything hurts. He could cry but the point feels somewhat moot under the circumstances.

"Got that party tonight." Sport reminds him. "Don't worry, you got all day to get right again. You want some coffee?"

Yeah. Fuck yeah. He's never wanted anything more. Freddy nods fractionally.

"Ok. I'll go make a pot. How about you run yourself a bath, it'll be good for you, help you feel better."

He's probably right. Sport helps Freddy to his feet and vanishes off to the kitchen. When he comes back, coffee in hand, they're both still naked and the steam rising off the bath is starting to clear Freddy's head.

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

The day fumbles and trips it's way through to the end, so by the time Freddy looks up he can't believe that any time has passed at all. The bath that loosened up his joints feels like a lifetime ago, as does the haircut that one of Sport's friends gave him in the kitchen not long after. The roast beef sandwich he managed mid afternoon is still fresh in his mind though, and though his body is very sure he never wants to eat again, his tongue is desperate that he should reconsider that stance.

He's been slathered up with more grease and product than he knows what to do with, his shortened hair pushed back off his face and his nose thick with some cologne that he's not entirely sure he likes. Rather than the usual fair of tight fitting jeans and tshirts so bland they feel like they were torn out of a pad of the damn things, tonight Sport produces a suit and lays it out on the bed for him to put on.

Freddy frowns. "What's this?"

"Think of it as a little present." Sport smiles. "Besides, you wanna look good tonight, don't you?"

Who'd have thought this guy of all people would be so fussed about some house party. House proud but he barely lives here, and all his friends exist as passing mentions in conversations that he one sidedly tries to have with Freddy.

Freddy nods, unconvinced that he's telling anything close to the truth.

"That's a good boy. C'mon, lets get you dressed."

Twice in his life, Freddy has worn a suit. Once for his grandfather's funeral and once for a school dance. Both experiences had been thoroughly underwhelming, and he had hated the way the collar tugged against his windpipe.

Still, not like he has much choice. Freddy strips down dutifully, unable to concern himself with how little shame he has left. He moves to pull the suit on himself, but Sports all over him, slipping the tails of the shirt into the waistband of the pants and copping a pretty spectacular feel of his ass in the process, helping him tie his tie.

Looking in the full length mirror that Sport has tucked inside the door of his wardrobe, Freddy would be hard pressed to say he doesn't recognise himself but he doesn't much like what he sees either. everything is too trim, too neat. His mom always used to be on his case about accidental injury, the things he would knock off any given surface for not paying attention to what his overexcited hands were doing in the middle of conversation. The sleek black lines of the suit look poised to hold him in check, pinching his waist and tying down his legs.

Sport lets out a hushes gasp. "Baby boy, you look so good."

"Thanks." Freddy responds, on instinct.

"Look so good, in that suit I bought you. I knew you were gonna fill it out real nice but damn baby boy your ass." He creeps into the frame of the mirror, one hand aiming straight for said ass and the other wrapping tight around Freddy's middle. He nuzzles his nose against Freddy's neck, letting out a growl that echoes through the limited space between them.

Sport in a deep red tunic over the top of something midnight blue and weightless that could as easily be a skirt as trousers and carnival beads wrapped tight around his neck. Bordering on the feminine, with his long hair, except Freddy can feel the hard line of his cock pressing forward towards his ass. He'd duck out of the way, but he's already caught by the waist.

"C'mon." Sport spins him round, and their faces are close enough to kiss. "Lets get a drink in you before the guys arrive." He pulls out a silver flash from somewhere in the depths of his clothes and flicks the cap off.

Freddy shakes his head. "I'm alright."

"It ain't gonna hurt you."

"I'm fine, really. Still kinda coming down from last night."

"Well, you know what they say. Hair of the dog that bit you."

"I'm good."

The friendly smile that exists in various shades as a permanent fixture of Sport's face almost flashes its death mask. It returns along with a hand under Freddy's chin, holding his jaw steady.

"Freddy." Sport coos. "Freddy, Freddy, Freddy. Sweet little orange. I really think you oughta have a drink."

Though the tunic hides most of his arm, the lines of muscle vanishing into the hem are clear. Freddy looks down, and tries ever so slightly to shift himself. The hand around his jaw tightens and the shock hits him hard enough to wind.

This is not a fucking game.

"Freddy." Sport is unyielding, steel.

"You're hurting me!"

"I really think you should have a drink."

"Ok!" The hand falls away and Freddy reaches for the flash with a shaking hand. He takes a minuscule sip and it burns all the way down, only to have the bottom pushed up by Sport, leaving him spluttering, struggling not to spill any of it.

He takes a shuddering breath, hating how the alcohol stings his still sore stomach. The flask vanishes and Sport melts back into him, pulling him into a hug that Freddy is of no mind to return. "Sorry, baby. You know I don't wanna hurt you."

Fuck of all fuckers, Freddy actually kinda believes that. He's just gotta stop being stupid enough to think that Sport won't do something just because he doesn't want to.

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

Cranked up loud enough to have the police on top of them in ten minutes flat if the neighbours gave half a shit, the base winding it's way through the speakers plays accompaniment to Freddy's heartbeat. It makes him shuffle and sway, it makes him want to dance. There are people surrounding him, who he was introduced to when they arrived but he doesn't remember any of their names. Save for the tall, older guy in a button down and waistcoat that Sport had pushed him towards with more enthusiasm than the rest. His name is Simon, or so he says, and he and Freddy are the most overdressed people here.

"You need another drink, darling." Someone hands Freddy a glass filled with bright pink liquid. It would look perfect in Sport's bedroom, but in the living room it clashes horribly with the walls. Freddy starts to laugh, can't stop himself, he has a job not dropping his drink. When he straightens up, the person who handed it to him is genderless and beautiful, swimming in a sea of seaquins that make him wish he knew how to swim.

He used to swim all the time. At the local pool, on the beach when they headed out there over the summer. There was a lake at the place they lived when he was very small, but he was never allowed to go in for fear of gators and giant catfish. His dad used to say that his mom worried too much.

Freddy downs his drink all in one go, the alcohol brushes up against something else, strong enough to brush off any worries he has about how awful he's going to feel in the morning.

"Heya, baby." Sport's voice is muggy and insubstantial under the roar of the music. Freddy groans and turns away from him, trying to get back into the heat of it all before he's dragged out into the corridor for a proper chat. He doesn't want to talk, he's not sure he can remember how.

I don't. I fucking don't. He never will, but here he is.

Simon hovers at the edge of Freddy's vision, trying very hard not to look straight at him and being real fucking obvious about it. Sport leans in, whispering something in Freddy's ear that doesn't make a lick of sense but sounds comforting. He arches up into him and thinks maybe that they could go to bed again, the muscle memory of something wonderful coming back to him that his sober self would never admit was real.

But when he leans in to kiss Sport, Sport pulls away, setting a hand on his shoulder and pushing him back with a gentle laugh. "Steady there, Orange. You must have me confused with someone else."

Freddy frowns. "No. I-"

"Here, drink some water." Sport holds up a fresh glass, complete with shimmering clear liquid inside. Freddy doesn't hesitate to neck in, sure that he's going to need to take a leak soon.

The water tastes kind of funny. Smacking his lips, he hands the glass back to Sport and tries to sink into the groove again, but the easy warmth of the alcohol and whatever the fuck else he took has started to bleed out, replaced instead by a creeping dread that doesn't feel like it's coming from him at all.

"Easy, easy." Sport murmurs, getting an arm around Freddy as his vision starts to turn black. "I got you."

"What the fuck?" Freddy slurs, reaching up to get an arm around Sport's neck. It barely feels enough to keep him steady.

"Easy, easy. I got you."

Rooms change, along with colours and lights. Freddy is aware that he's not in the living room anymore but beyond that, it's anyone's guess. He breathes, tenses, moves against the thing moving over him. It doesn't smell like Sport and it doesn't sound like Sport. It doesn't whisper sweet nothings, but it calls him a whore like it wants him to be one and when he tries to scream not a single sound makes it out of his mouth.

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

Once he's moved past the shock of waking up alone, and the horror of the ache in his legs and his spine, and the shame of the bruises at his hips, and the fucking mystery ride fucking confusion of the bite marks all over his upper body, and the desperate need to puke his guts up, Freddy finds Sport reading a book, toked up on the couch with nowhere to be.

"What the fuck?"

"Morning, sunshine." Sport smiles. "Or should I say, afternoon."

Freddy barely hears him, stood in the doorway, shivering in his kimono and a pair of y-fronts. "What the fuck?"

"You want some coffee?" Sport rubs out the flame and sets the spliff against the ash tray for him to come back to. He's been cleaning, not so much as a dirty glass in sight. He looks bright and refreshed and Freddy can't remember if he were drinking the night before.

Yes, he wants some fucking coffee. No, he doesn't want any fucking coffee. Freddy watches, appalled as Sport moves past him without so much as a twitch in his smile, leaning down to plant a kiss on his forehead.

"What the fuck happened last night?"

Sport pauses, shrugs. There's none of his usual spiel about how Freddy is a precious flower in need of protection. This is just some shit that happened. "All sorts, it was a party."

"What did you put in my drink?" Freddy's voice wavers on a knife edge between boundless rage and tears.

Rolling his eyes, Sport walks back too him, just long enough to tip a finger under Freddy's chin that is swiftly thrown away. "Freddy, baby. You're being paranoid. You had a little too much to drink and you and Simon decided to have a good time together. It's no big deal."

"The fuck does that mean?"

"The fuck does what mean?" The corners of Sport's mouth twist down, his patience being tested. "Y'know, I don't much appreciate the kind of language you're using with me today."

"I want to know." Freddy says from between gritted teeth. "What I did last night."

"You danced, you had a good time, you got laid. It's all good. C'mon, coffee." Sport turns on his heel and Freddy has no choice but to follow like the dog he is if he wants answers.

"I don't fucking know Simon. I don't- I would never-"

"Never say never, Freddy."

"I would never!" Freddy bellows, loud enough to feel real.

Sport pauses, hand just off the kettle set to boil. He turns around slowly, face fiercely blank. When he's not smiling, when he lets his brow settle and his mouth fall into that easy droop, there's nothing particularly warm or welcoming about his face at all.

When he speaks, his voice is low and dangerous. "That's how you talk to me? In my own home? After everything I've done for you? How's that fucking hand, Freddy? How's the roof over your head?"

Re: Sport/Orange - shady skeevey stuff - 22b/?

(Anonymous) - 2018-11-14 18:50 (UTC) - Expand

Big old prostitution warning for this chunk - resting on the laurels of everything that's happened so far.

This is getting very long and has entirely gotten away from me...

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

Too early by half, but Iris doesn't exactly operating on a normal human timescale. The thudding on his front door is loud enough to wake the dead, the first time she did it he thought it was the cops.

"The hell took you so long, Orange?" She laughs as the door falls open, pushing past him with a bag full of fresh pastries from the French bakery down the street.

Freddy glowers after her. "It's eleven in the fucking morning!"

"Practically afternoon!"

"I didn't hit the hay till six."

"Jeez." Iris winces in sympathy, making a beeline for the coffee pot and snatching a couple of plates from the woefully inadequate draining board. Not that it matters, Freddy is the worst at doing his own washing. He probably wouldn't get it done at all most days if he didn't know she was gonna come over a bust his balls about it, it's not like the customers pay a blind bit of attention to what the apartment looks like.

It's a studio with just enough of an attempt made to pinch the kitchen off from everything else that you can trick yourself into believing it has two rooms. The toilet and shower are stuffed together like an over-compressed sleeping bag and he's only got a hob to cook on but the bed is big and comfortable. Rent's taken care of, so all he has to do is keep the place clean and keep himself fed. The decor is all reds and yellows, all the furniture perfectly muted to stop it becoming too much. There's a blind over his window that barely ever gets drawn and the bedspread is in a rich brown. He's been allowed to put up a few personal touches, a couple of framed comics that he particularly liked the cover art of and the Iron Man toy Sport had bought him as a treat after he lured his first customer in off the street.

"You been working hard, then?" Iris asks, tucking into something sweet and layers, oozing jam out of the side.

Freddy drops into the second chair - the only other chair that will fit around this pathetically tiny table - and snatches up the pain au chocolat she bought him. This is the third day in a row she's gotten breakfast. He's gotta get ahead of her or she'll be breathing down his neck for the rest of the month.

April. It's fucking April. He's been in this apartment for just shy of three weeks, it's starting to grow on him.

"Sure have." He nods towards the bed, but they both know he's really nodding to the locked box underneath. "Haven't seen Sport in more than a week though. You know when he might be by to pick up his money?"

Iris shrugs. "Who knows? He's been all over the place this past week."

"You been going with him?"

"Sometimes."

Freddy nods, slowly. The coffee passes over their shared minimum brewing requirements and they sit in silence, throwing it down. Iris pours enough sugar into hers to satisfy an ants' nest.

He clicks his tongue. "How long did you have to wait before he let you out?"

"Let me out." Iris snorts. "You talk about it like he's got you trapped."

"Doesn't he?"

"Sure he doesn't. You can go anytime you like, you'll just get your ass kicked for it."

"He ever kicked your ass?"

"Nah."

Freddy doesn't know how long Iris has been with Sport but from the way she talks about it, it's been a while. Sometimes he tries to trick himself into believing that she approaches the matter with a degree of relativism that he's not privy to, so that the six months, the year, the however fucking long it's been are represented as a proportion of her life rather than a finite span of time. Then he looks at the difference in age between the two of them and decides that that can't possibly be what's going on here.

He hasn't told her that he left Sport's apartment with a deep dark bruise blooming just above his naval, that it had allowed Sport to charge less for his services for a full week till it started to go down.

"He'll ask you to head out soon." Iris assures him.

Freddy doesn't believe her. Sometime around midday, they hear the rumble of feet coming up the stairs and Iris goes dashing back to her own room just down the hall, ready for whatever gets sent their way.

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

Not being allowed to walk the streets isn't the same thing as being cooped up in doors all day. Freddy takes the handful of customers that make it up to him of their own accord, either familiar faces or guys that have come recommended directly by Sport. He's supposed to be an attraction of some kind but he doesn't have the guts to ask why. He's sure that at the core of it, he doesn't want to know.

The rain still comes down in irregular showers, washing them all half way down the street. It's more of an issue for the girls than it is for him, seeing as he's not expected to wear makeup or shirts so thin they dissolve in the rain.

He's the only one of them who's not a girl. Apparently Sport has a couple of other guys dotted around town, but this comes to him as heresay.

Gemima is twenty three years old, pretty as a peach and foulmouthed as a sailor. Her long raven hair is always done up in some complex knot that has the other girls asking how the hell she does it. Her lipstick is a fierce shade of purple and the cigarette dangling from her left hand never seems to go out.

"So I says, honey, you put that thing anywhere near me you're gonna lose it. And he thinks that I'm kidding right up until I hit the buzzer and Matthew shows up behind me. All macho like, you know how he is."

This prompts a round of giggles. It seems most of the girls like Sport, a lot. Every time he tries to ask about it he get a spiel about job security, the tenacity of the housing market and a strange look like he should consider himself lucky to be here.

Lucky. Standing on a street corner in the pouring rain, keeping his eyes down whenever a cab crawls past because he can't stand to accidentally recognise someone.

"What about you, Orange?" Gemima calls over the heads of the giggling girls. The nickname was passed around by Iris before he showed up and has more or less stuck against his will. He hates it, the way he keeps expecting to see Brown looking down at him from over the back of the couch, demanding that he get off his ass and get to work.

Freddy shrugs. He hasn't learned the art of turning bad customers into funny stories just yet. "Not much to report. Guy wound up crying on me for so long the other night he had to pay double to get what he came for but what else is new?"

Everyone cackles. It's a good story, something they can all relate to. Despite himself, Freddy smiles and takes the cigarette that Margo offers him.

None of them go by their real names, even if they all more or less know what each others real names are. It causes less fuss, less paperwork. And it makes it harder for the police to find them.

Over the course of the next half hour, they all get picked off by guys heading up to ninety second street to see their needs met. Iris first, because it's always Iris first, but the others fall in soon enough. Some days, Freddy is snapped up first thing, but today he's left to linger, till it's just him and Gemima. She's attractive as all hell but Sport keeps telling her she's too assertive to make real money. She reads like a girl you gotta take out on a date.

Sometimes the girls get to go on dates. It costs a whole bunch extra and is considered a special privilege born of trust. Like walking the streets, it takes time to get there.

"Hey." Gemima digs Freddy in the ribs and nods towards the shiny black Audi pulling up outside the tenement block. "You reckon he's come to the right place?"

A door swings open and a short, chubby guy with over wide eyes, curly blonde hair and a hideous blue tracksuit pops out. His shoulders are hunched, and he looks back over his shoulder as soon as he's taken a step, trying not to be seen. He's definitely trying not to be seen.

Upon seeing the street more or less empty, he approaches Freddy and Gemima cautiously. "Yo, psst! How much?"

"Depends." Gemima drawls around a long toke of her cigarette. "Which one of us do you want?"

He hesitates, so it's real fucking obvious what he's after. When he manages to stutter out that he's interested in Freddy, his face blushes bright pink.

Freddy is a long way from picking up enough grace to comfort a guy who's just now realising that he wants to stick his dick in something that doesn't have tits. Sport hasn't been by all day, so Gemima plays pimp and runs through the rules while Freddy sits back and doesn't say a word. Why should he? He's a rarity out here.

Carl at the bottom of the stairs runs his usual scam, asking ten dollars for the room like the rent ain't paid. The building echoes with the slap of their feet heading up the stairs.

"In here." Freddy directs the guy before he can wander off.

The guy pauses, arms folded over his chest, then follows. He stands in the middle of Freddy's room, at odds with the colour scheme and clearly trying to decide if this place is worth ten dollars for half an hour. "So, uh, how does this work?"

"However you want it to." Freddy moves towards him, pulling his arms open without ceremony. "You gotta pay up front though."

Twenty five dollars is pushed into his hands. No more undercharging, though once Sport has taken his cut you'd be forgiven for thinking that Freddy wasn't putting enough effort into selling his ass.

"What do I call you?" The guy asks, brusquely. "How old are you?"

"You can call me Orange." Freddy says slowly, fiddling with the draw string at the front of his trousers to try to get them down. "And I'm as old as you want me to be."

A wince, not what the guy wanted to hear. "That young, huh?"

He sure as shit didn't hear Sport's sales pitch.

"What do I call you?" Freddy counters, so he doesn't have to answer.

"Ed- I mean, call me Nice Guy." Hands come up to steady Freddy's, urging him to stop. "You know what, I don't think-"

"Just relax." Freddy urges him, steering him back towards the bed. The words sound flat, even to him. He doesn't have the energy to make a show of flirtation. Why the fuck does it matter when he's already got their money.

A hand below the belt, if you know what you're doing you can shut them up in a matter of seconds.

Nice Guy's eyes blow wide, arching up off the bed. "Oh shit."

There you go.

"I don't- God, Orange, keep doing that right there- I don't normally do this but-"

"It's fine." Freddy assures him, not trying to get his life story. "This ok? You want something else?"

"This is fucking great." Nice Guy hisses between his teeth. "God. I don't normally do this shit but my boyfriend got taken in my the cops a couple of months back and I'm getting real tired of my right hand."

"That's rough." Freddy nods. He's decided that he would like to keep this exact level of intimacy up for the next half an hour. Far be it for him to complain but he doesn't think he has it in him to let Nice Guy fuck him.

Nice Guy bites back a laugh that tapers to a grown. "Nah, he didn't get taken in...get taken in for queer shit. He never woulda let them catch him at that..."

Freddy tunes it out. This job is as much about how you let people treat you like a comfort blanket as anything else.

Nice Guy tenses and grunts. Easy as pie. He's still got shit to say, but at least he ain't fucking crying.

Sport's presence on ninety second street is unwritten and taken for granted. People talk about him like he's the fucking president, managing expectations up and down the island. Freddy listens carefully, trying to work out how high up the ladder Sport technically sits. He can't be the king pin, too hands on, but he might just be a top lieutenant.

Late April and the sun starts to kick into overdrive, a strike from the waste disposal union plastering itself to the front of every newspaper now clogging up the sidewalks. Sport pays for a couple of guys to come by each weekend and move the refuse on ninety second street someplace else but that hardly means you can escape the stink. Everyone starts wearing progressively more cologne, like they might be able to mask it all if they find a collective mixture abhorrent enough.

Freddy watches out of the corner of his eye as a skinny, cop looking guy peals away from whatever conversation he was having with Iris and starts up with Sport. He's too far off to hear what they're saying but he's sure Sport is giving him the run around, trying to work out if he's serious.

Beyond brief stops to pick up the money he's owed, Freddy's barely seen Sport since he moved to ninety second street. At first that had been a good thing, but after the guy spent all that effort trying to bring him in in the first place it feels kinda like hes been tossed aside. It leaves him nervous, worried that the particular position he's managed to get himself into might be more precarious than he let himself believe going in.

He's been into Gemima's room, and the room of a girl called Bee who he doesn't really talk to but she's nice enough to share her weed. Neither place had been half as nice as the rooms he and Iris get. If the girls on the lower floors weren't allowed to walk the streets they'd fucking starve.

Freddy has still not been sent across town on any errands. He hasn't even been allowed out to any parties, which crop up most weekends and require a random delegation of girls. Nice Guy has been to see him a couple of times since he first cropped up and he's even asked directly, but when Freddy passed him on to Sport he was turned down.

"Soon." Iris tells him, like he's supposed to believe her.

Soon, he tells himself, like he wants any of that shit. You best believe Sport made sure to have him outside, scanning the area for potential customers, when one of the older girls got brought back having been seen in the company of some guy who was apparently planning on skipping town. To listen to her wail she'd had no intention of going with him, but you could tell she was lying, Freddy's got a real sixth sense for that. She protested too much or not enough, the light in her eyes was too freshly snuffed out, smoke still rising as she fumbled her way through excuses.

Anyway, Sport had dealt with her and she ain't pretty enough to work on ninety second street no more.

He just wants something more to do with himself than fucking work. In the swing of things, the job is just another job and no amount of cold rationalisation that it's dehumanising and vile can talk him out of that any more. To think he once thought an easy fuck in a shitty hotel room was a raw deal. The only thing that had really sucked about Shaundra was how bad she stiffed him.

There haven't been any women by since Freddy started. To hear the others talk about it, the women in need of this sort of service don't tend to come by this end of town for it. There are brothels, real fancy places, downtown where women can get what they need. Apparently it doesn't matter whether you're working for him or not, Sport is enough of a deterrent to keep all women inside the lines he's drawn for them.

No one ever talks about whether or not they've fucked him, no one except Iris who is so brilliantly frank despite the fact that she never names her profession out loud. It doesn't feel so bad knowing that he's done it with Iris.

It doesn't feel so fucking bad, she's just a kid, what fucking difference does it make.

The guy talking to Sport has dark hair and dark glasses. As he gets closer, Freddy watches his features fall into line, shaping something familiar and unexpected. He looks gaunt, like he ain't been eating properly since Freddy caught him gawping at the Palantine headquarters. But it's Travis.

Travis, following Iris up into the building, not sparing a second glance for the other girls milling around and certainly not having shit to say to Freddy. If he sees him at all.

Freddy doesn't bother ducking down, trying to hide his identity. Let Travis see him if he wants. But Travis doesn't want, there can be little fucking doubt what Travis wants.

"He was kinda cute." Gemima remarks. "Iris is lucky, she gets all the less skanky guys."

Never having thought about it before, Freddy tries to imagine if he could ever be attracted to Travis. The question changes shape when he tries to imagine if he could ever do some work on Travis, if he could see Travis handing over a wad of bills and telling him to get on the bed. His skin itches for the full half hour, till Travis comes skipping down the steps, happy as anything, and wanders back to wherever he's parked up without noticing Freddy at all.

Warning for Freddy having vaguely sexual thoughts about Iris, some purposefully vague sex scenes involving Iris (VAGUE!!! VERY VAGUE!!!), depersonalisation, and non consensual sexual violence.

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

Sport's rushing down the hallway to Iris's door before he's got a good hold of the money Freddy presses into his hand. "Sorry, baby boy. Can't talk, places to be."

Freddy nods and keeps his mouth shut. It's been three hours since he talked anyone upstairs and he's starting to get mighty bored. All the comics in his room he's read ten times or more and he's not allowed to slip out to the cinema. He'd ask about getting a TV installed in his room but the way the others talk about it, that's a luxury that has to be offered rather than begged for.

He could beg. Some of the customers like it when he begs. A couple have tried to bypass that speech Sport gives about how no one's supposed to mess up anyone's faces but they changed their tune fast when reminded who they would be dealing with if Freddy showed up with a shiner.

Sport's star is rising fast. Freddy wouldn't sorry so much about the speed with which he whips round to collect cash every few mornings except that his eyes never settle anywhere for too long. The over indulgent, lingering gazes that he's come to expect have vanished, replaced with brief appraisals to be sure he's keeping well before heading back out of the door. It's stupid and he knows it, but it leaves Freddy feeling jilted and sullen.

He sincerely hopes that this moody shit is just a biproduct of how fucking bored he is.

It's not like Iris is fairing much better in Sport's attentions, but she doesn't seem to care so much. A handful of words is exchanged between the two, voices rumbling low and even though Freddy's still leaning up against the door frame, staring at Sport's back, he can't really make out what they're saying.

Money changes hands, Sport makes to leave but pauses on the top stair, looking back over his shoulder at the two of them but never settling long enough to say that either of them has his attention. "You kids busy today?"

"Nope. Slow as shit." Iris bounces out of her room, leaning up against the banister. "Right, Freddy?"

"Right." Freddy agrees. He wonders if he could ask for someone to run out and grab the past four Batman issues he's missed. He's still trying to come up with a concrete argument for why Brown is so fucking wrong about the guy being a sexually submissive, bestiality riven pervert.

Sport clicks his tongue. "That's a real shame. Tell you what, why don't you pop over to Danny's and see if he's done fixing up my suit yet. Who knows, you might meet some nice fellas on the way." He winks at the two of them, fishing a handful of bills back out of his hand and passing them back as 'pocket money'.

Freddy waits until he hears the front door slam closed, three floors below before he lets himself try to understand what the fuck just happened. "Wait, is he letting me out?"

"I told you." Iris grins, counting back the money like five dollars is a generous tip. "You just gotta be patient. He treats us all alright in the end."

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

Danny turns out to be a second rate tailor who all the girls hate but who Sport has made a habit of employing over the past couple of years. His shop is just five blocks away, but Freddy could smell that the air smells better once they're away from the tenement. It's still ninety second street, but there's a lot to be said for street corners that don't feel like they've been burned into the back of your eyelids.

"I don't wanna go back." Freddy whines as the shop door falls closed behind them. Iris is carrying the suit that Sport's had tailored, wrapped in an opaque green bag but they're absolutely going to take a peak before they return.

Iris looks at him like he's stupid. "Why the fuck would we go straight back? C'mon, we got pocket money."

"There ain't no curfew or nothin'?"

"We're s'posed to be old enough to look after ourselves." Iris digs him in the ribs. She's in the middle of a growth spurt and in her ever present platforms she's officially taller than him. It's all going into her legs, stretching her out till she looks like a barbie doll.

And maybe sometimes Freddy wonders if she wouldn't like to show him what she can do. Maybe he catches himself trying to flirt every now and then. He's bad at it, but he figures she doesn't really have any other guys that she's close with, he's gotta be in with a chance.

She's twelve. His head snarks back at him. He tries very hard to care.

They head a little further afield, till they hit a Greek place that does weird little pastries that Iris insists he's going to want to try. They buy up a few pieces of something called baklava which looks like little more than a loose collection of nuts and head out to the stoop to eat.

Iris shoves the first piece into her mouth so fast that she's left with greasy sugar smeared over her lips. She groans low in her throat and the weird juxtaposition of her childish excitement and the sound that Freddy knows she learned under Sport's tutelage has Freddy seeing double.

"C'mon!" She urges, when she swallows and he's still staring at the bag, not sure where to start. She reaches down and breaks off a piece, laughing when he stumbles his way to opening his mouth.

His lips just catch the tips of her fingers and then it's gone, replaced by the sickly sweet mess of filo pastry, nuts and syrup.

She wasn't lying, it's delicious. Freddy's eyes go wide, chewing hard to clear his mouth fast enough to say as much. "Fuckin' hell."

"I know." Iris grins, taking another piece for herself.

"Well what do we got here?" It's a sunny day, warm without clinging too hard to the inside of Freddy's lungs. The light streaming down onto the sidewalk is interrupted by a dark shadow looming in over them.

Freddy blinks up and sees a guy in this thirties, reasonably good looking. The beginnings of a beer belly but his arms are well toned and his jaw is strong below a dark crop of hair plus stubble. "Can we help you?"

The guy flicks his eyes between Freddy and Iris. "I'll say you can."

Iris nudges him, and Freddy already knows what she's trying to say. Too fucking easy, man. Two easy by half.

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

Sport, on the other hand, is somewhat resistant to the idea. "You want what now?"

"I wanna show these two kids of yours a good time." The guy leans in. "So how about you tell me how much?"

Definitely not convinced. Sport glances over to Freddy and Iris. "You two head up, I'll sort things down here. Orange's room."

He's considering it then. Freddy slips back into the building after Iris, already kicking himself for not having stalled for longer back at the deli. Back in the same four walls all over again, this isn't what he had in mind when he imagined what it would be like to be allowed outside. In his head, any errand that he got would see him out and about for most of the day.

And now Sport doesn't like the John he rustled up. Fucking great.

It's not till they're shut up in his room that Freddy really starts to think about what's on offer here. Iris throws aside her sunhat and kicks off her shoes the same as ever, but if all goes well downstairs it's not going to be long before she's shedding a lot more than that. His mouth goes dry and a wave of dizziness washes over him. He doesn't want that, not really. The hypothetical he has let himself entertain is extremely limited and entirely between the two of them.

He doesn't. I don't.

They sit in silence, which Freddy suspects is more comfortable for Iris than it is for him as she flops down on the bed and blows raspberries to amuse herself. Her shorts are too short, he shirt doesn't cover enough.

A soft knock on the door. For a second, Freddy expects Iris to answer, till he remembers that this is his place. He lets it fall open a crack and sees the warm, welcoming eyes of Sport staring him down.

Looking at him, really looking. Freddy could cry in relief.

"Hey, baby." Sport coos, reaching out to run a finger down Freddy's cheek. "You feeling ok?"

"Yeah."

"You're shaking like a leaf."

"I'm fine."

"Just excited?" Sport raises an eyebrow. "I bet, I bet. Such a good boy. I got that customer you picked up, we've managed to work something out. I just wanted to make sure you and Iris knew the rules before you got started.

Freddy pushes the door all the way open and calls Iris over to stand at his shoulder. Behind Sport, the John shuffles his feet, not quite sure where to look though he keeps coming back to the space between Freddy and Iris's heads.

"So this is how it's gonna work." Sport starts. "It's gonna be quite a party you two are getting in two, so I need you to be open minded, ok? He's got you for the full hour and that's what he's paying for, even if he backs out early. Might get a little rough with you but he's gonna leave your faces alone."

Iris shrugs. "Cool."

Freddy has never wanted to die quite so perfectly cleanly as he does in the moment. The urge to fall down and let his heart stop beating is real and profound but his body won't catch up to his brain on the matter and he stands aside gormless and terrified as the guy comes through.

"Stay safe now." Sport whispers, just for Freddy, as the door swings closed. "I'm right downstairs if you need me."

Inside, with the curtains drawn to create the illusion of privacy, everything feels way too dark. Iris is arranging the money with enviable candor but the words don't sound right in Freddy's ears. He stumbles forward, dropping down onto the bed because that's where he's sure he's wanted.

Time breaks down and fragments around him, and he could swear he can feel floorboards pressed up against his cheek. Clothes are shed and words are said and the sharp sting of something harder than a hand hitting his buttocks is the only thing that rings true.

"Freddy!"

It sounds like Iris but he can't look at her. If he looks at her then it's real and the last fucking thing he needs right now is to know what she looks like naked.

"Freddy! Fuck I-" Her voice is choked and insubstantial. Someone is calling her a bitch and telling her to shut up but he's never met them before in his life.

"Freddy!" A final wheeze and his vision comes back to him, in horrible high quality. There, on the other side of the bed, with fingers wrapped around her neck, Iris is turning blue.

It all clicks into place. "Get the fuck off her!" Freddy surges forward, trying to dislodge the guy but he's all skin and bones and at best, all he does is make him angrier. Dashing for the window, he throws aside the curtain to get it open, shouting a meaningless plea for help down to where Sport should be standing on the pavement.

And that's not good enough, there's not enough time. Iris's fists are starting to lose their potency, turning from a volley against the John's shoulders to ineffectual taps. Freddy has no idea how long it takes to strangle a twelve year old girl, and he doesn't want to find out.

There's a lamp on the bedside table, the base shaped out of porcelain because that's supposed to be fancy or some shit. Freddy scoops it up and staggers back to the bed, raising it high with two hands and bringing it down on the back of the John's head.

And again, and again, till the funky metal rods that hold the whole contraption in place have left a bloody mess at the nape of his neck. He's still breathing, collapsed on the bed, but he's not conscious any more.

With shaking arms, Freddy casts aside the remnants of the lamp and hauls the John off the bed. Iris bolts into a sitting position, hacking and gasping for air, a hand coming up to trace the outlines of the bruises blushing dark and deep at her neck.

"I...I got you." Freddy sobs, putting am arm around her and pulling her in close. He doesn't look at anything but her face, he doesn't want to know.

Sport doesn't knock, just barges straight in, tearing the lock clean off Freddy's front door. "What the fuck is goin' on?"

Eyes dart from the unconscious, bloody lowlife on the floor to the two kids huddled up together on the bed.

"He tried to." Iris tries to speak but her voice comes hoarse. Freddy shushes her before he can think better of it and gets a scowl in return.

Sport's face is drawn and blank. He's furious. Freddy doesn't have to have seen it before to know. Tension zaps into him like a bad batch of smack, straightening him out and putting fire in those deep brown eyes. "What the fuck happened?"

"He was choking her." Freddy explains. "Like, really choking her, look."

Sport approaches to get a look at Iris's neck, winding when he sees the extent of the damage done. "The cocksucker. The fucking cunt piss cocksucker. Oh baby girl what the fuck did he do to you?"

Maybe Freddy's just a little upset by how quickly Iris pulls herself away from him to fall into Sport's arms, but not by much. His heard is hitting way too fast, adrenaline working overtime to keep him alert.

Sport nods to the guy on the floor. "What did you do."

"Brained him with the lamp on the desk." Freddy mumbles. He wishes he knew where his clothes are.

The next half hour passes by in a hyper focused daze. They all get dressed, Iris tucked up in her room with the promise of a doctor on his way and a couple of other girls to keep her company. A car pulls up outside and a collection of the guys that Sport's been hanging with recently tumble out, ready and waiting for the vaguely conscious John who's ferried in to join them, no doubt in for some kind of horrible fate that Freddy doesn't really want to know about.

He watches the car leave, trying to decide if that kind of shit is worth it to get to go outside.

"You did good today, sweetheart." Freddy's not even alarmed to find Sport creeping up behind him, slipping an arm round his waist. "Real good. It coulda all gone south if you hadn't been here."

"Yeah." Freddy says, unable to think of anything else to say. Playing humble feels wrong, not playing humble feels wrong. He's all messed up.

"I hadda real bad feeling about that guy." Sport continues, his tongue reaching out to trace the shell of Freddy's ear. "I think maybe you did too, you just didn't know it yet."

"I don't know." Freddy tells him the whole fucking truth. Sport is solid and real behind him, supportive and unyielding. He leans back and is rewarded with a second hand coming up too stroke through his hair as a mouth searches for his pulse point.

"Missed you, baby."

"Missed you too, daddy."

"I know you have. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I gotta treat you better. I wanna treat you better, sweet boy."

It's not everything Freddy ever dreamed of, but it's not exactly awful. There, on the filthy sheets, with the window still open.

Let the neighbours hear them. If they were going to take offence, they would have been out of here years ago.

Warnings for: drugs

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

A swirling mess of strings dances over the steady beat of the bass drum, the beat you're supposed to feel in your hips and feet. Freddy doesn't dance much, unless he's high as a kite, and he's only high when the guys he's out with decide that he's worth a little something extra. At that stage the choice is already out of his hands, he dances or wilts at the whims of whoever's paying him.

The good news - he's allowed out and about as much as he wants, but no more three ways and anyone he does bring back gets vetted thoroughly. Sport prefers to pass him on to more high paying customers in need of arm candy as much as anything else and lets him pull in the big bucks.

The bad news - Iris is under closer watch than ever. Not that she gives a fuck, but sooner or later Sport's gonna lose patience with her running off every three hours for want of something to do.

She's athletic, not a nerdy bone in her body. The last thing she wants to do is borrow Freddy's comics and shack up inside all day. Sometimes he worries that she doesn't really know how to read.

Tonight, Freddy's out at a disco club up in the Bronx with a well dressed black guy who's bought his company till around nine the next morning. The Bronx clubs are notorious for being more than a little out of control, the real hotbeds of sin in a city that just can't get enough of that sweet, sweet depravity and he had let his objections be known to a Sport who had already decided his fate.

No need to worry, this guy just wants to dance. And Freddy can't remember how to move his damn feet, so he's tucked up tight near the bar, nursing a drink he's still too young to have but which has been bought for him so he's gonna drink it. He's catching looks, party because he's one of about five white folks in here and partly because disco attracts that kind of crowd.

The lights twist with the dancers, unable to sit still. Everything's dredged in red, filtering out the care with which people have put their outfits together until they meld into one ever shifting unit that knows all the steps and all the moves.

Disco dancing ain't nothing like the meek shuffle Freddy has in his back pocket for house parties and nights spent cramped up in Gemima's room for lack of anything better to do. It has choreography, it has style. It has such a strong sense of personality that Freddy can't quite bare to look at it.

This guy, his guy, Winston, he loves it. Spinning girls around so fast it's a wonder they don't fall. He flashes a smile back to Freddy and he's kind of old but he's handsome all the same. And Freddy's had older.

"Sweet child." Winston purrs, twirling off the dance floor to snatch Freddy up from his bar stool. "Dance with me."

Oh but men do like to think that they're worldly, they do like to teach. Maybe Freddy's one of them or maybe he's lost but he knows the rules of the game, spelled out to him as if he were playing for the women's team the entire time. The slight blush comes naturally to him, even if it's meaningless under the red lights, then all he's got to do is laugh like he's self conscious, dip his eyes so he can peer up through his eyelashes. "I can't dance."

Winston smiles, wide and deep. He leads Freddy to the dance floor and they barely make a splash, the faintest ripple in everyone's evenings. The number of people really paying attention to the two man saddled up together like they intend to make a night of it really doesn't mean that much.

Freddy has never imagined a world so kind.

He definitely can't dance, but the large hands guiding him, trying to persuade his body that he can, are a comfort. Winston moves him to the music and nothing else matters. Then he holds out a neat white pill for Freddy to take, and nothing matters at all.

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

Nine fifteen the next morning and Freddy is in a cab, over a bridge he doesn't know the name of, looking out to sea and pinching himself every time he remembers that Manhattan is an island.

Manhattan is an island he hasn't left since last October. More than six months, way more. He catches his reflection in the rear view mirror and winces. The dark circles under his eyes are to be expected but the damn things are bloodshot, his hair's a mess, not to mention that he danced hard enough to leave his shirt and jeans stinking of sweat and other things.

The money in his pocket hangs heavy. Sport's going to be pleased with him for this, might even let him keep the tip.

The car rolls off the bridge and Freddy wonders if he's being stupid, if he shouldn't have caught a cab heading in the opposite direction. The Bronx has easier access to the rest of America than pretty much any other part of New York, and he has money. He could have made a real break for it, if he were thinking properly.

His mother always did say he had his head in the clouds, but she said it worried like, as if enjoying comic books was some grave concern that would corrupt her child.

Freddy tells the cab driver to pull in a few blocks away from the tenement, not trying to push his luck but in need of the walk. If he thought the early April heat burst was a problem then the current weather is a goddamn crisis. Him and the girls keep begging Sport to let them pop the fire hydrant out front but apparently that would damage their clothes.

Fucking irony, in the winter no one wants to get their hair wet, so they huddle together under umbrellas not big enough for one and come summer they're all gagging for it.

The smell of frying food rising from a diner across the road gets Freddy's attention, and though his stomach is a little woozy from whatever he took the night before, the thought of getting something salty and greasy down his throat is fucking divine.

He goes to cross the street, and a pair of familiar figures stride out of the diner. Freddy pauses in place, one foot slightly raised to take off across the tarmac, as Iris and Travis leave together, her still wiping jam from around her mouth and him hiding behind a thick pair of sunglasses.

The fucking worst. Freddy watches Iris turn her back without seeing him and start off home, while Travis practically heads right towards him.

"Hey!" Freddy snaps, reaching out to get a grip on Travis's arm.

Travis pauses and backs up, face blank. He could be staring at Freddy or he could be eyeing up the girls on the far left corner for all he knows but it seems pretty obvious that whatever's going on, he doesn't recognise him.

He's reedy and thin, but beneath the thin fabric of his tshirt Freddy feels enough hard muscle to land a decent punch, and the guy's gotta be a good four inches taller than him. Gotta play smart.

"Hey." Travis breaks into a dopey grin. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"The fuck are you doing with her, man?" Freddy skips the question and starts thinking about Iris's retreating back.

Travis's face tightens ever so slightly as he reaches up to pry Freddy's hand away. "It's not what you think. She's in a real bad situation, though she don't know it. I just took her out for breakfast."

If it were anyone else, Freddy would think they were bullshitting him. As things stand, he's only pretty sure Travis is feeding him chum, because really. But it's not like the guy has ever been much of a liar as long as Freddy known him.

"See you round." Travis raises a cautious finger gun at Freddy as he departs, which Freddy returns without thinking.

He loiters in the middle of the road till the guy has gone, trying to decide if he's still hungry.

Some bloody violence in here

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

His sleep schedule is completely fucked, Freddy realises, sat up at two in the morning with no customers and nothing to do except keep himself awake. There's a magazine open on the table, hell, he's been thinking about giving real books another try, but he's not really reading it. The cigarette hanging loose from his lip is just a cigarette. A bad habit that he was bound to pick up sooner or later. He blinks, trying to feel the burn of exhaustion behind his eyes.

Iris is back taking customers at all hours of the day. Someone went in with her about an hour ago and they must have paid for some pretty exclusive treatment because it's been dead quiet since then. Away from his bed, not pressed up against the wall, Freddy doesn't have to listen to the sounds of sex peeling away the layers of their mutual privacy.

He'll ask her about it in the morning, and he'll ask Sport if she's supposed to be up working so late so soon after having to take a full day off.

Perhaps sound echoes through these old buildings, but there's so much going on in New York that you only ever notice it when it's right under your nose. Freddy's daydreaming about the woods he used to be able to reach from his front door if he was determined enough and if he patched up his bike. Dark and shady, damp enough to dissipate the worst of the summer heat. And sometimes, in the early autumn, you'd hear the farmer's shotgun go off, hunting for wild grouse in the fields beyond.

Despite the national reports of gun violence and mayhem, Freddy's always escaped having to deal with any of that shit. When the sound of a bullet breaking free of a shotgun barrel ricochets up from the ground floor though, he knows what it means.

Bang, bang. Motherfucker. Here they come. Freddy tenses, head whipped up towards the door as if that's going to reveal anything. Why would someone shoot? What could they possibly be trying to get from ninety second street that they couldn't get anywhere else?

Freddy knows exactly what. He gulps down air in a rush like that's going to make it any easier to keep breathing when he has to make a call on what to do. As quiet as he can, avoiding the creaking boards left in the floor, a death trap for mice caught out in just such a situation as this, he scurries over to the door, letting it fall open just a crack and dropping himself to the ground.

People expect you to be at eye level. If you go in low, they don't know what to make of it.

A hulking dark figure strides up the stairs, hidden in a bomber jacket with his hair carved in two in the classic identifier of the Mohawk nation. One hand in his pocket, the other dropped down by his side, the gun just visible in the fractured light that makes its way through to the stairwell. There's something familiar in the cut of his jaw, the line of his body as he walks, but Freddy can't put his finger on it.

The guy ignores him completely, and Freddy forgets to move till the splutter of gunshot through wood tears down Iris's bedroom door.

Forgets to move, then forgets to breathe. Time turns to soup around him, impossible to move through as he staggers to his feet, throwing open the door and bursting out into the corridor. He looks towards Iris's room and is met by the prone figures of two Johns with their brains blown out, blood seeping into the pastel pink carpet. The shooter is collapsed against the back wall, holding up a hand to the cut clipped from his neck, blood spooling out from between the fingers of one hand.

And the other hand raised to his temple, pried out in the image of a hand gun. Travis looks at Freddy and smiles.

"Freddy! Freddy we gotta fuckin' go!" Gemima screams from the floor below. But Freddy's not going, he's moving forward, determined to assure himself that Iris is ok. He reaches the broken door and gets his hand on it firm enough to give himself splinters and he thinks he catches sight of something moving, something that looks like her.

Then hands are on him, pulling him back. Gemima and Katie and Larissa and he's not strong enough to fight off all of them. He's not even really fighting, just striding forward and letting them drag him back. Past his open bedroom door, down the stairs, all the way to the dismal little foyer where Harry shorts Johns out of a few extra bucks before they take their paid for prizes to bed.

There's blood on the floor, his bare feet slipping in it.

"We have to go." Someone mumbles, someone else cries.

They have nothing. They have to go.

Piled up by the front door in a long, rainbow kimono, with a glow-stick wrapped around his neck, the blood clashes horribly with Sport's skin tone. His eyes are open and glassy in death, all the heat sucked out of them by the bullet. The others aren't really looking, but Freddy feels the guy's blood between his toes, his hand on his hip, his mouth on his mouth. He doesn't break eye contact til the door falls closed behind them and the ninety second street tenements are lost for good.

Warnings for underage drug use and some French patisserie propaganda

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

Freddy goes by Iris's next morning with breakfast. He woke up late and they were all out of pastries, so he's setting them both up with religieuse thick with chocolate cream. So named, if the rather eccentric old French dude who runs the place is to be believed, because the're good enough to have you believing in God.

Whereas Freddy's room is done up bold but homely, Iris gets something a little more dreamy and assertive. It's all in pink, like Sport did that just for her, as a special treat. Freddy knows her favourite colour's blue.

The trace elements of the bruises she sustained bringing back the bad client are still imprinted on the underside of her jaw, just below her right ear if you know where to look. Freddy passes her the bakery bag and catches her chin, tipping her head up to get a better look. "You're healing up real nice."

Iris scowls and swats his hand away. "Jeez, you sound like Sport."

Which maybe stings more than it should. Iris is still in the boy shorts and oversized tshirt she wears to bed when she doesn't have overnight company, her eyes prickly red as she comes down from whatever she took last night.

Something to keep her prancing around the damn room long past sociable hours. Freddy wouldn't mind so much if he didn't have his bed pressed up against their shared wall. He can't remember who's stationed right down stairs but they can't be Iris's biggest fan either.

There's plenty of whores in this town that hate Iris, but most of them don't work for Sport, as far as Freddy's aware.

She's slow and foggy, the way she always is on a comedown, the way they all are' So he makes the coffee and separates her religieuse into its component parts to try to trick her into getting it down in small bites.

A mouthful in and he can see what the baker was on about, it's awesome. The whole thing slips away from him before he can breathe. Fuck a pain au chocolat.

He keeps meaning to ask her about Travis, and every time he phrases the question in his head it sounds more and more like he's prying into shit that ain't his business. She doesn't grill him about the customers that he spends time with.

Then again, Freddy doesn't wind up in cheap diners with his clients for breakfast. He winds up in Iris's room, watching the bruises clearing from her skin and trying to decide if he should feel guilty about it at all.

"I been meaning to ask you-" He chances.

"Save it." Iris waves him down. She picks at her breakfast in silence, looking for all the world like a malformed zombie unsure what to do with the heads cracked open in her honour.

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

"I think it's real nice that you're looking out for her like that." Sport murmurs into Freddy's hair. It's late, but there's a street light outside that hasn't packed it in yet and his room is cast in a dim red light. The planes of their bodies melt into one another, even before they slip below the sheets, done for the night. Now comes the small talk, the closeness. It's becoming routine. Two more days and that makes a solid week of this.

Freddy shrugs around the arm Sport has draped across his chest. "I mean, she's my friend. And she's a kid. What am I supposed to do?"

"Oh, ho, ho." Sport chuckles. "She may be young but she ain't no kid."

Disgusting. If Freddy put his mind to it he could kill this guy real easy, let him finish up then slide a knife between his ribs. Knives are easy enough to get hold of, and it's not like the place ever gets checked over for that sort of shit. For all Sport knows, Freddy's been gifted a pistol by one of his regulars and he's just waiting for an opportunity to use it.

Sport talks about his superiors in abstract terms that create an ever shifting picture of an organisation so used to having to hide itself that it doesn't know how to come into the foreground. He has a boss, somewhere, but Freddy wouldn't know where to find the guy. If Sport showed up dead one morning, or just didn't show up, he has no idea how long he would expect to wait before someone came along to pick up the pieces of his old job.

Maybe it would set Freddy free, maybe he has nothing left to do with that freedom. He could go sit at the south end of Central Park and pray that Larry kept looking for him after he so imperfectly blew him off the first time round, or he could go back to sixty fourth street and think about how nice it would be if he could afford the new apartments that will have inevitably sprung up in the wake of the fire.

"Don't make no plane for this weekend, alright?" Sport tells him. His voice is gentle and familiar and Freddy leans into it without thinking.

"Why not?"

"S'Iris's birthday."

Freddy frowns. "You were telling that guy the other day that she was twelve and a half."

"And I'm gonna keep telling guys she's twelve and a half till they don't believe me no more." Sport prods Freddy's side and laughs when he jumps. "How long have you been with me? Huh? How long have you known her? Everyone grows up sometime."

Part of the deal is that they're not supposed to be there when Sport negotiates the deal. It makes guys feel like they're trusted, even if they do all mostly know the rates they're supposed to be making. Freddy has no idea how old he is when Sport pitches his ass to potential investors.

"Where's the party?" Freddy asks.

"Giulio's, downtown. Nice place." Sport leans up on one arm and starts brushing hair out of Freddy's face that's never been within an inch of his eyes.

Freddy knows Giulio's. He's never been in but he's seen it, tucked away off Broadway, away from the shining lights and nudey cinemas. It's still all done up nice though, that's how you know it's really high end.

He raises his eyebrows. "Fancy."

"Yeah, well. Our girl deserves the best." Sport smiles at him, like it's a secret, like he's thinking about Iris but he's looking at Freddy so who's he really talking about here. "Plus, there's a few guys getting out of the slammer on Friday, so I figure we can show them a good time."

Freddy nods. "They get put away when the cops raided the Cabots?"

Sport tenses up ever so slightly, imperceptible, unless you really know what to look for. "Freddy, baby, what would a pretty little thing like you know about the Cabots?"

It's a test. Whores are generally pretty street smart, they have to be if they don't wanna get eaten up and spat straight back out again, but no one likes a smart whore. You gotta play dumb, and in the end, if you play it long enough, it becomes you. Freddy shakes his head. "Nothin'. Just...something a friend said."

"A friend?" That piques Sport's interest. "You ain't told me about any friends."

"This was before I came to you. I don't...I ain't seem him in a while."

"Hey, hey. Nothing to worry about, sweetheart." Sport purrs. "You're allowed to have friends, I'd just like to meet 'em so I can know you're not being taken advantage of."

Freddy shrugs. "Like I said, it was a while back. He probably don't wanna see me no more."

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

Giulio's is more than nice, it's fucking decadent. Sport brings in his best people from around the city and they arrive to champagne laid out just for them when they're setting up.

Freddy shuffles awkwardly through to the front of the crowd when they're being directed. He's one of the shorter people here, next to the statuesque blondes and transvestites that make up so much of the ensemble of the 'street team' as they're called. Sport has links to a whole lot more than the tenements on ninety second street if this stock is to be believed. Freddy recognises some of them the way you recognise old movie starts years after you've stopped wasting your time with midday re-runs of classic films over the school holidays. He forgets, sometimes, that he slept in a dumpster and counted himself lucky. After the sweltering heat of the summer and the luxuriant pliability of his mattress, he can no longer imagine what it must have been like to be that cold.

Aside from the whores, a handful of dumb muscle bulks out the ranks. They're here to help shift the heavy stuff, they don't have any kind of performance to worry about.

"Hey! All eyes on me!" Sport claps his hands and silences the twittering cloud. "We've got very big weekend ahead of us, and I want everyone to cut loose and have a little fun. But first we gotta set a few ground rules."

He holds up a finger. "One, this is a working holiday. Youse are expected to pull your weight the same as ever, and we're also gonna have to serving up some drinks and other treats to the guests, ok? Now, I know not a word of this is gonna leave this room, so I don't mind telling you that we're gonna have a few substances on offer. A little weed, some blow. The barstaff are gonna handle the stock." And here he winks at Freddy. "But otherwise you're gonna be serving."

"We gotta be serving and scouting for Johns all at once?" A thickset red head with the kind of curves an hourglass would kill for sneers. "I don't wait tables, Matthew!"

"Hey, hey, c'mon now!" Sport smiles, opening his hands wide and offering exactly nothing to placate her. "You'll be able to get yourself some drinks too. And you can always just stick to scouting for a while if it's wearing you down. I just don't want our distinguished guests on their feet all night having to fight to get a drink, y'know? Everyone's gonna get paid extra for this weekend, I'm not trying to stiff you here, honey."

Getting paid extra is enough to calm everyone down a notch. Freddy skipped right over the part of his life where he could have gotten a Saturday job waiting tables and jumped straight to begging his folks for money every few weeks. He doesn't see how he's got the experience to pull this all off, but he figures he can smile his way out of it if necessary.

"Ok, rule number two." Sport barks, sending up a second finger. "You are getting paid out of my pocket, no one has to pay up front. You meet a guy who wants to take you home with him, or wants to book in a date to see you some other time, you send him to me and I'll get it sorted. Ok?"

Nodding, silence.

The third finger comes up. "Third, I know my market well, I'm sure you lovely ladies know that." Sport smirks. He's probably fucked every last one of them half a dozen times or more. He probably tells them all he misses them. he probably calls them all 'baby'. "And I reckon I got the perfect demographics right here to make sure everyone's pleasures are taken care of. Some of you may have noticed that Freddy's the only guy here, and that's why. Now, I'm paying outta pocket, you understand, I'm trying not to overdo things, but there's a slight chance I may have miscalculated how many guys like a girl with a dick and how many just like a boy. So if you see my dear sweet Freddy getting overwhelmed at all I need you to go over and help him."

Sport blows Freddy a kiss, and maybe he doesn't say shit to any other hooker in all of Manhattan. The forth finger rises. "Fourth, and this is most important, Iris ain't to be taken out back by anyone. We're trying to impress but it's her birthday, she's off the cards."

"What if she wants it?" Someone barks from the back.

Everyone laughs, and Freddy tries to play along like he gets the joke.

Sport likes that shit a whole lot. "You know what? Stop her anyway. Tell her it's a gift from me, I'm teaching her some self restraint."

That's the joke of the evening. The shit that brings the fucking roof down. They move off to get changed, to get beautiful, to help hang banners and streamers around the tables ringing an old school dance floor with a raised stage. There's supposed to be a real live band coming, and a troop of bartenders who can make you any cocktail you ask for.

It's supposed to be a huge night. Hell, it's gonna stretch on till Sunday afternoon if it's gonna last an hour. Freddy stares down his reflection, applying kohl to his eyes and gloss to his lips in a vague attempt to tidy himself up. He's gonna be fine, he's sure of it. He's got the stamina, the looks, and the ability to slip into the background when the shit hits the fan. He's mister fucking cool.

Big load of drugs and alcohol warnings for this 'en

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

He's a nervous wreck on the bathroom floor, wondering how long he's going to have to wait before the people outside finish doing whatever the fuck it is that they're doing. He thought it was sex, at first, but the grunts and groans hadn't lasted all that long and they've been at whatever the fuck it is they're at for a good twenty minutes since. At least four pairs of feet are visible under the door, the noises out of their mouths rarely dissolving into anything that could be called words but the blabber an insistent part of the furniture. Drugs, perhaps. Probably. Everyone likes drugs.

The floor tips dangerously underneath him and Freddy tries to remember if he's taken anything tonight. Today. Fuck, he has no idea what time it is. There's a graze on his knee pressing up underneath his jeans and it hurts when his leg moves, but he's not making his leg move.

There had been a guy. Tall, good looking in a bland sort of way. He had taken Freddy aside and tried to kiss him, which is weird because they almost never want to kiss him. Hadn't known what to do with it, gone missing.

Gone missing is run away, if you think about it. Someone bangs on the door to the stall. "You ok in there?"

"Yeah!" Freddy replies, and it comes out as three drawn out syllables. He's totally fucking fucked.

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

"You alright there, baby?"

Freddy blinks, back on the main floor and sat up at the same table as Sport, who has a hand on his knee but it's discrete, tucked away under the table where no one else can see.

No hands on the stock, don't get high on your own supply. Only they don't deal.

But Sport does. Freddy thinks, with a bracing clarity that he wishes he could posses when he's sober. Sex and drugs, the guy just needs to get into music and then he's got the rock and roll covered.

The band plays on behind them, veering wildly between the more danceable psychadelica and disco tunes. He sort of wants to dance.

"So, tell us about yourself." Someone prompts Freddy. He can barely see their faces over the expanse of the table.

Sport leans in, to give him a hint. He's not supposed to talk about himself at all. "Tell 'em the commode story"

Aside from 'I got trapped in a bathroom by a bunch of people fucking and they may not actually have been people and they probably weren't fucking' Freddy doesn't have a commode story to tell.

Aside from 'me and some guys went to a porn theatre together and I followed one of them out to listen to him jack it from the other side of the bathroom door' Freddy doesn't have a commode story.

Aside from 'the streets ran brown with shit' Freddy doesn't have a commode story.

So he opens his mouth and he tells the commode story.

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

"Panic hits me like a bucket of water."

Good line

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

Iris's hand feels small and fragile in his as she drags him to the dance floor, laughing. "Let's give them a show."

Freddy shakes his head, trying to pull away. "Sport says you're not supposed to."

"Fuck Sport." And she's close, and it's awful, her hands guiding his to her waist. The music is irrelevant, their bodies moving to a tempo of their own devising, of whatever substance is keeping them both awake. Could have been days, or hours, he doesn't know. People cheer at them, crowing like they are the jesters in the town square.

He leans in, to tell her how easy it would be for them to leave, how no one would notice they were gone for at least half an hour. By that point they could be across town at the bus station, picking out someplace new to start a life. Somewhere different from this, better than here.

She reads him wrong. Iris matches him, leaning forward to press her lips to his. It's awful and amazing and Freddy wants to die.

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

Nice Guy is here with a real big smile on his face that wavers whenever Freddy gets too close. He's new to this operation, some of the older guys are peering down their nose at him like he don't deserve too be here. Freddy doesn't understand the politics of it all, he just knows that he's causing some sort of problem.

And his brain won't shut up about it, once he latches on. So he goes over to sort shit out.

"Hey, Nice Guy." Does it sound like he's flirting? It definitely sounds like he's flirting. He's grinning like he's flirting too. All wrong.

Nice Guy jumps when he sees him. He looks wrong, dressed up for the night with an open necked shirt and a pair of trousers that look like they came off a suit. He's still got his medallion, the rings on his thick fingers shining in the modulated light. Strange fucking thing, that Freddy knows what he looks like naked.

"What are you doing here?" Nice Guy hisses.

Freddy shrugs. "It's a party. I'm invited."

"What, you know the birthday girl or somethin'?"

"I'm her best friend." Freddy smiles and doesn't mean it. It's true and he hates it.

Nice Guy doesn't let up his squinting, distrustful and worm like. "Yeah, I bet you are. That was you all up on her on the dance floor, right?"

Silence is all he can give. He doesn't have to answer these questions.

"Eddie, Sammy wants a word with you." A huge figure of a man hustles into Freddy's view. Big, broad shoulders enough to leave him weak at the knees, if he were that kind of boy, and he absolutely is.

Tall, dark and handsome turns to face Freddy and he's sharply familiar. The sad pinch of his brow, the slight hunch to his shoulders. They each take a second to place the other and it's fucking painful watching the panic crossing Nice Guys face.

He'd said his boyfriend was locked up, Freddy dimly remembers. And Sport said some guys were getting out tonight. It all comes together.

"Orange?" Vic Vega's mouth quirks in amusement. "I didn't know you worked for the Poles."

"How the fuck do you know him?" Nice Guy snarls. "You only been out since Friday."

So it ain't Friday anymore. Good to know.

Vic Vega cocks and eyebrow. "Used to work at that comic shop on sixty fourth. You remember Brown?"

Nice Guy does remember Brown. Interesting. He's a hang over from the Cabots.

Which ain't none of Freddy's business, and yet...

"Thought you guys were working for other employers." He says, casually.

"Maybe I was. Maybe I saw an opportunity not to spend the rest of my life behind bars." Vic replies before Nice Guy can aduquately elbow his gut into silence.

"Leave it, Vic. He's just a fucking whore."

At this point all the attention should be on Freddy, but Vic turns to Nice Guy, all his edges sharpening in silhouette. "How would you know a thing like that?"

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

"Daddy, daddy...please!"

"I know baby, I know. I'm sorry, not tonight."

"But I wanna...I wanna..."

They're in a back room and Freddy is shoving his jeans down his legs. He's got a rager burrowed into his skull like a bullet. Sex. Now. The only option.

Sport takes a step back, looking him over apologetically. "You gotta go find some other guy out there to help you out. You're here to work, Freddy."

"They're all fucking cowards." Freddy spits. "Don't wanna look like fags in front of their friends."

Hands steady themselves on his shoulders and then they steady him. "I know, baby. I know. You just gotta be better, you gotta work for it. You gotta make 'em forget what pussy tastes like. Think about how good that's gonna feel, when you've got some chump who don't even think he's a faggot giving it to you."

Freddy's dick jerks and he tries to grind forward against Sport. That sounds incredible. He wants-

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

Someone pushes a glass of water in his hands and he thinks he might puke it straight back up again but instinct takes over and has him glugging the whole thing before he can breathe. He needs more, so much more.

Things take shape in front of his eyes, like the bucket and the nice girl who's sorting him out, helping him see straight. She keeps asking if he needs to go to the doctor, like he's never whited out before.

"Water." He rasps. More comes.

More and more. Freddy keeps drinking till he can feel the pricking in his fingers and the banging in his head. He keeps drinking till he can smell the combined force of all that sex and sweat and booze and vomit and human excess. He gags and nothing comes up.

He needs to go home.

Sport waves him out with casual indifference and Freddy makes for the front door alone. The dreamy blue of just before sunset is dripping through the streets. Four in the morning on a Sunday, way past any curfew his parents ever set for him. He is gloriously, wondrously alone and he could go fucking anywhere. Walk the streets, head to the bus station, the Bronx. Hit up the sea front and wait for the first ferry out to Ellis Island or the Statue of Liberty.

It's hard to see either from ninety second street.

He fumbles his way out onto the main drag and by force of habit more than choice, straight into a nudey cinema. The film that's showing is too good for the kind of clientele these places attract, all in black and white and with meditation on the human condition thrown in amongst shots of a guy threatening to nail his girlfriend and never quite making it due to misplaced Catholic guilt. When the sex hits, it's not shot to be erotic so much as raw, real. Freddy's never seen anything that looks so much like his experience of sex.

Then he stays for the next feature and the screen goes blurry and mottled and all he has to work with are the vague shape of some tits and a poor imitation of what it sounds like when a woman gets fucked.

Not that Freddy has a fucking clue what a woman sounds like when she gets fucked. It's no longer horrifying, exciting or boring. The pictures just show him some small part of life, and if his body doesn't engage today then it'll engage some other time.

Outside the streets are bright and bustling with people on their way to work, even on a Sunday. That happens in a place with so many Jews, they don't keep the same sabbath.

Freddy stumbles up to the nearest taxi rank, thinking about how bad he needs to piss and how little he cares if he wets himself all over the back of some schmucks car. He doesn't bother checking if they head up North, any pussy who won't go to ninety second's too chicken to be driving in this city anyway.

He's about to bark out an address when the driver draws in a gasp like he's been stung. "Freddy?"

Of course it's fucking Larry. Freddy falls back against the seat, laughing. "Hey man, how you been?"

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

Oh man…the consent issues involved in this…

You’ve got a grown adult being coerced into sex with a possible minor that they both ultimately want to happen

————————————————————–

“The fuck…” Larry whispers, eyebrows pinching like he doesn’t know whether to be hurt or angry. “Where the fuck have you been?”

It kicks at the back of Freddy’s heart, makes him feel almost bad about whatever it was that he did or didn’t do. He blinks, rubbing his eyes, trying to trace his way back through the past few months to his original sin. He was supposed to meet a guy, and he didn’t.

“Shit, Larry. I’m so-”

“You fucking up and vanish on me like that? What the fuck am I supposed to think?” Larry’s voice hikes up the decibels on every word, fist coming up to slam the wheel an inch away from tugging on the horn. “You don’t show up on the first day at the right time and what, I wait an hour because maybe you got the time mixed up. Then I think maybe you got the date wrong so I come back every day for a week. Then I goo up to Harlem and try to see if I can catch you on the street, even went and asked about you at the hotel I dropped you off at your first night in town. Then I think to myself ‘hey, he seemed like a good kid. He wouldn’t blow me off like that, he probably got the month wrong’. So I go and start the whole process over.”

“Larry-”

“I thought you were a good kid! I thought you fucking died or somethin’.” Larry jabs at the air with his finger and won’t even meet Freddy’s eyes through the rear view mirror.

Fucking died. Freddy could have fucking died, if he wanted to. He blinks rapidly and it feels like sleep could sock him in the jaw right then and there.

The bitter kick he always felt at the back of his throat when his parents scolded him for staying out late or spending his lunch money on shit that wasn't lunch prickles him, insidious. The reflexive need to kick back against it is almost strong enough to overcome his fatigue. Hey Larry, I lived on the street for a minute there and then I got scooped up by the meat market, I'm a fucking prostitute because you thought I shouldn't come back to your apartment that night. How about that?

Hey Larry, my second night here I fucked someone I wasn't attracted to for money so I didn't have to sleep on the street. I'm a fucking whore.

He pulls himself vaguely upright, letting his head loll back. "Listen, man. I'm fucking sorry, but I'm kinda fucked up right now and I reckon I owe it to you to go over this shit when I got my wits about me."

"You don't got your wits about you if you thought getting into a cab with me after the shit you just pulled was a good idea." Larry growls.

Freddy feels the threat distantly, his body tensing up of its own accord. "Please, if you gotta beat my ass can you do it another day?"

"I'm not...wasn't gonna...fuck it!" This time Larry's fist does hit the horn.

Freddy winces, completely unprepared for loud noises or the disgruntled yells of New Yorkers demanding to know what a taxi cab at a dead standstill needs to be honking at. "You know what, I'll find another cab."

"Sit down."

"You don't want me in here."

"I said sit down!" Larry snaps as Freddy kicks the door open. "I'm pissed as shit at you but I didn't spend all that time tryin' to find you because I didn't wanna see you."

"Yeah, well. Coulda fooled me." Freddy lets the door fall closed again with a shade more force than necessary and taking no small amount of pleasure in the flicker of a sneer Larry's reflection gives him in return.

"Aw go fuck yourself." Larry mutters under his breath, firing up the engine. "Where to?"

"Ninety second and third."

"You got money for the trip?"

That's pretty fucking rich. Freddy laughs, despite himself. "Yeah. Yeah man. I'm good for it."

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

It's a long drive, long enough for Freddy to doze off while Larry flicks between radio stations and grunts curses at the other drivers filling up the road. It's slow going, morning traffic just about ready to hit it's stride, and every time his eyes blink open it feels like a mistake.

They don't say shit to each other the whole way. Larry's resentment strong enough to set the metal frame of the car groaning on its axles. Freddy wishes this shit could be fucking easy.

He wishes his parents wouldn't yell at him for every damn thing and he wishes he could do something about the insistent nag he's put upon himself that he could get away from Sport if he really tried and he wishes Larry wouldn't be angry with him. If their roles had been reversed, he wouldn't want to be angry at Larry.

Larry left town for a month and has been back for at least two. Freddy's got room to maneuver in his schedule and he didn't do jack shit to try and find him. A few late nights staring at the wall, wondering what happened to the guy. Big fucking whoop.

He pulls himself together just as they're pulling up to the tenements, announcing himself wake with an overlarge yawn. He feels worse and better for dozing off. He needs a long drink of water and eight hours of solid sleep and he'll be right as rain.

"So." Larry pulls in to the corner just across the road from the tenements. "Which of these is yours?"

Freddy raises an eyebrow that Larry won't see because Larry won't fucking look at him. "Don't see how that's any business of yours."

"Gimme a fuckin' break. Can't I have an address to take away with me so I know I can come check up on you every now and then?"

"And what if I don't want you checking up on me?"

"Then you can move! Jeez, kid. This is a rough area. I just wanna... I ain't gonna bother you or nothin', I just wanna know where you are."

In a flash Freddy's thinking about Larry coming through his front door. Larry spread out naked on his bed, awkward and trying for bravado, the same as every other John who comes his way. Negotiating with Sport.

God. Maybe Freddy doesn't really know the guy and doesn't have a right to talk, but he reckons Larry would hate Sport.

Freddy points towards his bedroom window, letting it linger until he's sure Larry's following his line of sight properly. "That's me."

The silence is deafening, and for the first time Freddy understands what that metaphor means. The thrum of cars passing them by, the babble of the streets, the busker half a block over who's started up way too early even if it is a week day morning. Freddy's stomach sinks and in the split second before Larry turns to look at him, he knows the guy knows what happens here.

Freddy never really wanted Larry to look at him anyway. Certainly not with those, shocked, sad eyes. Asking for pity when your house has burned down and your friends taken in by the police is one thing, getting it now is quite another.

"Oh Freddy." Larry's hand jerks off the steering wheel like he wants to clap Freddy on the shoulder or stroke his cheek or something. "Shit, kid. No."

Freddy shrugs and decides he's not gonna play dumb. "It ain't so bad."

Larry has to bring a hand up too steady his head from shaking. "How the fuck did you end up here?"

"It's a long ass story."

"Tell me."

"I wanna tell you but like I said, I'm kinda fucked up. I wanna tell you man but-"

"Freddy." Larry twists round and in an instant he's on the back seat with Freddy, strong hands reaching up to cup his face and hold his gaze. His arms are strong, exposed in a polo beck that reveals the Marines tattoo he has on his left bicep and the panther crawling down his right forearm, but his voice is so soft, his eyes so kind. "I know about the guy that runs this place. You don't wanna be messing with him."

He's not so bad, Freddy thinks, in amongst the sharp edges that he hides so well beneath a cheery smile and a gentle touch. He's not so bad, he can't be that fucking bad.

Instead he shrugs, his hands coming up to hook themselves over Larry's wrists, trying to anchor himself before this all gets away from him. "I already am."

"Tell me." Larry urges, and doesn't move to swat Freddy away.

So Freddy talks. Because fuck it. The story's the same damn story if he's high, sober, drunk or dead. He starts slow, with the first night in New York, with Iris, with Sport meeting him on the street. With the slow, painful climb. When he starts talking about Shaundra he thinks it's a miracle he doesn't scatter into a thousand tiny pieces under Larry's ever widening eyes.

"And then what?"

"Oh, you know." Freddy giggles out his nerves. "There was this guy at this party he threw. I don't really remember what happened, reckon someone put something in my drink. Anyway, I was pissed at him in the morning, so I let him know, and then he said that it was time for me to move out and...here I am."

"Shit." Larry falls back, his hands peeling away from Freddy's face. The loss of physical contact hits hard and immediate and Freddy wants to follow him over to the other side of the car.

So he does. Fuck it. What's the guy gonna do, hit him? Can't be worse than any of this other shit. He crawls into Larry's lap, pleased at the jump of shock that winds its way through the guy's arms as he straddles his knees, wraps his arms around his neck and buries his head in his chest.

Just like in the diner. Only this time Freddy's not crying, he just kind of wishes he was.

"Kid, you ok there?" There's a slight strain in Larry's voice, his breath disturbing the hair at Freddy's crown.

Freddy nods. "Larry?"

"Yeah."

"Will you please hold me?"

Cautiously, arms come up on Freddy's back, encircling him loosely. Not sure if they should touch, not sure if permission is enough.

It's more than enough, but you can only ask for so much. Freddy readjusts himself, slotting himself tighter against Larry, wriggling more than he needs to as he pushes their chests together and buries his face in the guy's neck, letting his mouth hang open just enough that his lips are almost pressing against the skin there.

Larry sucks in air sharply and tightens his arms around Freddy without leaving room to think about it. Freddy likes that.

"I'm so fuckin' sorry, kid." Larry murmurs into his each.

"What do you gotta be sorry about?"

"Shouldn't'a left you. Shoulda taken you up to Harlem myself, got you all sorted out when it turned out your friend had gone."

"You couldn't have known." Freddy tells him. A small, angry, tucked away part of him rages, because it fucking is Larry's fault and he deserves to have that shit thrown right in his face.

"I'm gonna kill that shit stain."

"What, Sport?" Freddy pulls back, and him and Larry are real close so he knows the guy can see he's frowning.

"Fuck yes. I'm taking you back with me today, right the fuck now in fact. And then I'm gonna-"

"No!" Freddy hisses, and now its his turn to get his hands on Larry's face, feel the slight softness in the skin that only comes in middle age, feel the prickle of stubble inadequately shaved and how the fuck could he ever have thought that Sport's eyes were warm when this was available to him. "No. He deserves it, but this is bigger than him. Someone will come for you and I ain't about to have that on my conscience."

"You sayin' you ain't worth it?" Larry's voice is hard, full of purpose. Freddy feels his eyes try to flicker closed as he realises with a bracing clarity that he wants to kiss the guy.

God fucking damn it he really wants to kiss this guy.

"You can't take me away, either." Freddy tells him, oh so carefully. He watches Larry's eyes sink to trace the outline of his mouth when his tongue flicks out to wet lips that are a long way off dry.

"I can do any fuckin' thing-"

"They will come for you." Freddy leans in ever so slightly, unable to keep from smiling when Larry has to think twice to keep from matching him. He reshuffles himself, carefully letting his hips slide over Larry's lap and watching the breath that falls from his lips in response. "I don't want that. Please, I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself."

"You sure about that?" Larry tries to keep his voice stony but it dissolves into a rough little laugh that Freddy wants to chase to its origin. And fuck. Isn't he supposed to be bawling his eyes out all over this guy?

Everyone's either at Iris's party or using it as an excuse not to have to set up shop first thing. Most of the girls probably didn't get to bed until a few hours ago anyway, so it's not like anyone should be able to eavesdrop. The engine is still chugging away, rocking the car ever so slightly but you'd only notice if you really let yourself fall into it.

He skips the rest of the flirtation, the back and forth, the stupid fucking argument over whether or not Larry can save him. He can't. Freddy's no longer asking to be saved.

He leans in and kisses Larry, leaving him not a hair's breadth to back out of it. Tongue pushing up against his parted lips, trying to slide into his mouth. Freddy lets his fingers tighten over the guy's cheeks, trying to pull him closer still.

It works, right up until he gets a hand on his chest, pushing him back. "Wow, Freddy. I think you maybe got the wrong idea."

Freddy shakes his head. "No. You wanted me to do that." He dips his head to go back in and could scream in frustration when it doesn't work.

Everyone wants him, everyone wants his tight little ass and sad, soulful eyes.

"Freddy, I-" Larry pauses, catches his breath, clears his throat. Freddy grinds down on him, ever so slightly, and when he gets a stern glare in response all he does is grin. "Stop that. Please."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want you to."

"Liar." Freddy moves back to Larry's neck, sucking at the skin just below his jawline instead, scraping his teeth over the raised capillaries.

There are still two hands wrapped around him, one sneaks up to make it's way into his hair. "Freddy, stop."

"Make me."

"You're just a kid."

With something of a flourish, tossing his hair as much as its middling length will let him, Freddy sits back up. He sets a hand on Larry's shoulder and this time when he grinds down, there's nothing subtle about it. He can feel the hard line of Larry's dick snaking down his trouser leg and he wants that, he wants all of it. He doesn't get to be this excited when he's on a job.

"Larry." He raises an eyebrow, lets his smile turn shit eating. Was he fucking tired ten minutes ago? Pussy. "I do this shit for a living. I ain't a fucking kid."

"Kid." Larry echoes, helplessly. He doesn't push Freddy away on the next kiss, or the one after. By the third, he's giving as good as he gets.

The sun is up and the streets are starting too fill with their usual array of customers. The early birds who don't really understand that Sport's girls have sleep to be catching up on first thing on a Sunday morning and the people who only live here so they can march themselves to work somewhere else.

There, in sight of God and everyone, if that's how you wanna look at it, Freddy loses his virginity in the back of a beaten up yellow cab. He looks up after their done to find the windows steamed, his clothes torn and the meter still running.

The end of this hideously long thing is in sight - I promise

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

"What now?"

"I gotta go to bed, man. I'm dead on my feet here."

"You ain't on your feet."

"Yeah, well, you ain't as comfy as my mattress."

"Jesus..."

"Forreal, Larry, I gotta go."

"Ok. Ok. Shit."

"What's wrong?"

"Nuthin'. I just...I'm just thinkin' maybe I shouldn't have done that."

"Done what?"

"You know."

"Hey, cut that shit out. If the cops wanna ask you about it you can tell 'em it was all my idea."

"That's not fuckin' funny."

"It's kinda funny. C'mon, I gotta go."

"Let me walk you up."

"I ain't a teenage girl, I can get myself home."

"No, you're a teenage boy."

"Allegedly. Anyway, you can't come up unless you pay."

"I got money."

"For fuck's sake, Larry. You ain't one of my Johns."

"Jesus."

"Aw, man, please don't start freaking out on me."

"I'm not! I'm not. Jus'...you sure you won't come back with me?"

"Larry, if I don't get to bed in the next ten minutes I'm gonna expire on you. C'mon, let me go."

"I'm still gonna kill that bastard."

"Larry..."

"I fuckin' mean it."

"Just don't. Ok? Please?"

"I'm not about to make a promise like that."

"God fucking dammit. Alright, I'm going. Here's the money for the ride."

"You don't gotta-"

"Yes I do gotta fucking pay. Take my money."

"Shit. Ok. When can I see you again?"

"Whatchu doin' Wednesday morning?"

"What time?"

"Like, ten."

"I could do ten."

"Meet me for breakfast at the place just round the corner. Jeannie's."

"Sure, kid. It's a date."

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

By the time Freddy wakes, the sun is setting and the dull glow of recently ignited street lamps casts his room in eerie shadows. He stretches out, yawning, trying not to open his eyes any more than necessary. He could sleep for another hour or two, he's sure of it, just so long as he doesn't let himself wake up.

The floorboards outside creak under the weight of warm bodies, someone carrying Iris back to bed. It's gotta be seven or later, they really went all out on that fucking party.

Through the walls, Freddy can just about catch the steady rumble of Sport's voice, coaxing her to drink some water and crawl into bed. If there's anything left to crawl. Poor kid, she's gonna feel all kinds of rough in the morning.

It doesn't take long after Sport finishes up down the hall for a soft knock to come through Freddy's door.

He could lie, and pretend to be asleep, and Sport would probably come in anyway just to check up on him. "Come in."

The door slides open almost soundlessly and Sport comes in after it. His shirt is stained with spilled drinks and sweat, and something that may or may not be puke. Freddy wrinkles his nose and Sport laughs.

"How ta doing, princess?"

"Better." Freddy leans up on his elbows. "Could use some coffee."

"I got it."

Sport hustles through to the kitchen and mercifully doesn't turn any lights on. He returns with two cups of coffee, passing one to Freddy and perching on the end of the bed. "You been awake long?"

Freddy shakes his head. "Slept all day."

"Poor baby. You musta really needed it."

"I guess."

The choker Sport wore to the party is lined with shark's teeth. In the muddles light it looks like a lace ruff, carefully separating his head from the rest of him. He reaches out and sets a hand on Freddy's knee through the duvet, rubbing his thumb gently over the bottom of Freddy's thigh.

He smiles, and Freddy can see how dog tired he is. "You mind if I stay here tonight?"

"No." With Sport here, Freddy won't have to work. He can't imagine anything worse than having to work right now. Here, in bed, the precise repercussions of his debauchery feel far off, but he knows as soon as he tries to move, to do anything, it's all going to come crashing down. The headache he doesn't have just yet is a disaster waiting to happen.

He takes a sip of his coffee and both loves and hates how much more alive it makes him feel. He has a stack of new comics he picked up the week before that he hasn't had time to work through just yet, and taking the rest of the evening, for however long he feels like being awake, to just read through those sounds amazing.

So he gets the comics, and Sport strips down and crawls into the other side of the bed. Table lamp on and the guy's asleep in five minutes, an arm slung loosely over Freddy's waist. Dead weight, pinning him down. It's not like he has anywhere else to be.

The deep red walls of Freddy's room echo the light from the streetlamps and the light from Freddy's bedside. The deep mat red of Daredevil, of Superman's cape. Sport's hair fans out on the pillow, his mouth hanging open and his face perfectly relaxed. To his credit, he's a graceful sleeper.

All painted red. Freddy blinks and sees his corpse on the inside of his eyelids. Put there by Larry, he can only imagine, and oh what a picture that would make.

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

To no one's surprise, Iris is off the books on Monday. Freddy wakes up early and eats his breakfast sat on the stoop. Over-rested and underfed, everything looks hyper real, the sharp edges of a pavement he's spent hours staring at suddenly unfamiliar and in need of remapping.

The work comes and goes steadily throughout the day. Sometime between Freddy waking up and his first customer, Sport vanishes into Iris's room and he hears not a peep out of them for the rest of the day. Just how it's supposed to be.

"You have a good time this weekend?" Gemima asks. It's closing in on lunch time and the two of them are scanning for a good opening to duck out and find themselves something to eat. They've been playing pimp for each other for most of the morning, trying their luck and trying to wrack up each other's prices to ridiculous heights.

She's jealous, clearly. Even if she would have fucking hated the party, and Freddy doubts she would have, it's a nice change of scenery. And most of the people coming back from it have gotten a day off, which is something of a luxury in their profession.

Freddy shrugs. "Yeah. Don't remember most of it though."

"Musta been pretty epic."

The day draws on and on, slow to finish, but ain't that always the way with Mondays? Freddy keeps catching himself staring up at Iris's bedroom window, dark and lifeless, and he wishes she were down here with them. The desperation catches him off guard, like they're on a timer here and she needs to get down here before the rest of their lives run out.

The rest of their fucking lives.

"What did you wanna be when you grew up?" Dolores needles Gemima.

Gemima wrinkles her nose. "When I was real little I wanted to be a mom. Can you imagine?"

Everyone laughs, even Freddy. He can't imagine that shit, he never once wanted to be a dad.

Some of the girls wanted to be nurses, or teachers. Once sincerely wanted to be President till she hit high school and worked out she was thick as a plank of wood.

"And you, Orange?"

He had wanted to get out of Bakersfield. So full marks to him, right? Or he had wanted to be a Superhero. He had wanted shit to be easy.

"I wanted to be a cop."

Everyone laughs, loud enough to earn them funny looks from the guys walking by on the other side of the road. Cops ain't good for shit. Who the hell would want to be a cop?

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

Tuesday morning and Iris comes down but she's not awake enough to eat breakfast with Freddy. She hides behind her thickest pair of sunglasses and says nothing for more or less the whole day. Freddy leaves her to it and pretends he ain't a little pissy that she doesn't want to talk to him. Fuck it, they all do this job feeling rough sometimes.

She's thirteen years old, he reminds himself. Officially. Sport still sells her like she's twelve though, but her sullen attitude and messy skin tone don't make her much money that day.

Leaving more for Freddy to do. The cloud cover is thick but New York is still hot as hell, raising the stink of the garbage left behind by a union that still refuses to play ball with city hall, leaving the whole place wreaking. Sport's lost his contact with the people who were moving the crap away from ninety second street and everyone is in silent agreement that they're not gonna bother asking about what the fuck that means for the rest of them.

"How you feeling?" Freddy prompts Iris, when it's five pm and she ain't eaten all day.

"I'll be good." She mumbles. "Sport's gotta big client for me to see tonight, just trying to psyche myself up for it."

And she falls silent. There's about fifty questions on the tip of Freddy's tongue, starting with how much she remembers of the party and taking a few detours via what exactly did the two of them wind up doing on the dance floor. They all wind up in her room the day before though, trying to be sure she's ok.

She'll be fine. Sport dismisses her and Freddy early, and she retreats to her room while Freddy decides he's going to go for a stroll. He can do that now, take himself round the block, maybe visit an arcade. See the girls on the other corners round here. Most of them are Sport's, so there's no issue with him trying to be friends with them.

He's seeing Larry in the morning. The thought leaves a happy sort of heat in his chest, he likes it. Likes it a whole lot more than the lukewarm recognition he runs though every time Nice Guy walks through the door.

Nice Guy and Vic Vega, he just about remembers that. He supposes he won't be seeing Nice Guy no more.

As the sunset hits, the bottom layer of clouds burns off, leaving a fiery red strip for the sun to peak up at them from. Two blocks away, Freddy has to catch his breath when he first spots it, heading back home at a pace, to reassure himself that his home isn't on fire all over again.

The sun blinkers between the fingers of the mitt, trying its damndest to blind him. Freddy squints, wishing he had his cap pulled down low enough to save himself. They all laughed at Calvin Myres when he pulled his cap way down.

The ball appears as a black spot on a spotless afternoon, hurtling towards the ground at breakneck pace. The roar of the crowd builds by the second, in angry or in joy he can't quite tell but they're cheering for him, urging him to drive himself forward to the last breath.

He sees it all happening, three seconds ahead like he's Martian Manhunter. He's not going to make it, but he's going to fight for it like he is.

Freddy's never been much of an athlete, for all he'd like to be. He leaps into a full sprint from standing, and it's really nothing to write home about but in the moment it feels so fast he's grinning despite himself. The ball is speeding towards the ground six feet in front of him but he's barely four foot anything, so he jumps, holding out his mitted hand, feeling the scrape of the dried out lawn against his front, and watches the thing miss by millimetres.

The cheers wind down to disappointment pretty quick, but his team mates are surrounding him before he's even made it to his knees, offering commiserations for his spectacular brush with greatness.

"I thought you had it." Zack Martin holds out a hand to help Freddy up. Zack is three inches taller than anyone else in their grade, and he only hangs out with kids who's social capital is in the upper quartile. Strictly speaking, he doesn't talk to Freddy.

Freddy takes the offered hand. "Maybe next time."

At the end of the game, his dad is waiting at the far end of the pitch, smiling as he watches Freddy approach. "Good game."

"Ah, I missed the shot."

"Yeah, well. You put your back into it. You keep up like that you'll catch the shot soon enough." A hand on Freddy's back, drawing him away from the field and into his father's side. "You wanna get ice cream on the way home?"

"Sure!"

"Ok. But don't tell mom."

Freddy is ten years old and everything feels fine. He doesn't want a damn thing to change.

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

"Freddy, honey, can you please not chew with your mouth open." Mom coos at him across the dinner table. Freddy scowls and presses his lips together, like it matters. It's just family so who cares

"Less of that attitude." His dad follows up. "C'mon, let's have a nice family meal with no grumping at each other."

Easier said than done when the guy dispensing advice is fixing up a frown of his own. He's been wearing it all day, ever since Freddy got back from school and handed in his report card.

He didn't peak, he's not that kind of kid. His grades have always been good to average and it's not like his parents have ever made a fuss so why would that change now? Why did he come down for dinner to find Mom's smile tight and his dad's face stony?

He shovels meatloaf into his mouth, imagining that his lips have been sewn shut on every bite, like Loki in the old Norse myths and in the comics. They'd be sorry if that happened, if they asked him to keep his mouth shut and someone showed up with a big old needle to make sure he wasn't gonna be opening up any time soon.

The minutes crawl on by till there's nothing left on their plates but a few scrapings of gravy. Mom starts gathering things together to take them through to the kitchen and his dad leans forward, steepling his fingers under his chin the way he only ever does when he's trying to look imposing and self important.

"Son, we gotta have a word about your grades."

"Ok." Freddy tries to focus on the fingers rather than his father's eyes.

"You're doing fine in literature and arts, but there's no good use for literature and arts out there. Your math grade has slipped and you're tanking gym."

"What do I need a gym grade for any-"

"Hey! You listen to me when I'm talking to you!"

"Ok."

"Ok what?"

"Sorry." Freddy swings his legs furiously under the table and doesn't kick anything. You don't kick stuff, when you kick stuff they have definitive proof that you're angry. When you don't kick, they know that you're angry and you're too smart to get in trouble over it.

His dad glowers. "Freddy, I need to know you're taking school seriously."

"I am!" He thinks. Maybe. It's hard to take this stuff seriously when you're thirteen.

"I need you strong, I need you tough. You gotta be able to protect yourself."

"I don't think that's what school's for." Freddy tells him.

His dad does a double take. "Then where exactly do you think you're supposed to learn to toughen up?"

"Ain't you supposed to teach me?"

Freddy gets sent to bed without desert, where he spends the rest of the evening reading comics under the cover with the aid of a night light he hasn't used in years. He kind of wants to go downstairs and yell at his dad, just to get it all out, but most of all he's desperately pleased with himself. No one gets that angry at someone who isn't right.

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

Mom has errands to run and Freddy's at that awkward age where he's too big to help her out without making a fuss about it and not big enough to be left home alone. She leaves him with Rebecca Farrow, a friend of her's from her swim club who has a son in the year above Freddy. Their house is white and airy, and all the pictures on the wall look carefully chosen, rather than hung up out of a misguided sense of duty.

"Mikey!" Rebecca calls up the stairs. "Jackie Newandyke's son is here!"

Freddy opens his mouth to say that she doesn't need to drag her son out of her room on his account, but he can already hear footsteps moving around upstairs. He's seen Mikey Farrow around at school. Relaxed, surrounded by friends. He doesn't really go in for sports but he's cool enough that people like him anyway.

Plenty of his friends are girls. That's barely happening to anyone in Freddy's classes.

"Hey." Mikey smiles, reaching out a hand for Freddy to shake. "Freddy, right?"

"Yeah." Freddy shakes the hand.

Mikey Farrow has dark hair and dark eyes and is half a foot taller than Freddy and the blue jeans and polo shirt he's wearing fit him like they were cut for him and he's not covered in pimples and his jaw is strong and Freddy just wants to vanish because people like this don't talk to people like him.

Nerdy Newandyke. Ha. Kids are so original with their taunts. He has five friends and he doesn't know if he would even bother talking to them if there were anyone he liked better in his immediate social circle. The others are trying to grow out of comics, trying to sneak into r-rated films for the fun of it. They don't want to run off into the woods any more.

"The two of you are gonna go outside!" Rebecca hollers through from the kitchen when Freddy and Mikey start talking about TV shows they like. "Jackie's gonna be back by six and you two are getting at least two hours of exercise before then."

"Ok, mom." Mikey smiles at her, just goes right ahead and smiles. Like he doesn't care when she tells him what to do. He turns to Freddy. "I know it's kinds dry round here but there's a park a few blocks away if you wanna go."

Honestly, Freddy would rather stay indoors and watch day time TV. But he says yes and lets Mikey lead him down the road to the park, soccer ball tucked under his arm. Turns out that he doesn't much like to play the game either, but he thought Freddy might.

They talk about school, and all the teachers they share opinions on. Mikey talks like he doesn't hate anything, like there's a reasonable explanation for everyone's bad parts and against his better judgement, Freddy doesn't resent him for his chipper disposition. He asks Freddy something about comic books and doesn't mind when he starts up a whole spiel about the technical variance in each of the Fantastic Four.

"We should hang out more." Mikey smiles at him, sat on the swings because there's no little kids around to steal them from. "You're pretty cool."

Freddy feels his face stain bright red, and he wishes and wishes that Mom would never come pick him up.

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

Mikey starts coming over to say hi to Freddy at school, then he starts asking Freddy to join him and hiss friends for lunch. The older kids look at him weird for a second and then incorporate him into the conversation like he's just another part of the social furniture. Just another one of Mikey's friends.

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

"That's good, that you're making friends." His dad says when Freddy gets back from a Saturday spent kicking around the mall with some of Mikey's friends. Mikey himself hadn't even shown, and it hadn't sucked. "Never liked those kids you used to hang out with."

Freddy's barely seen his before-Mikey friends outside of classes in a month, but he still takes objection to the suggestion that there's anything wrong with them. "I see Aaron and Jim plenty."

His dad rolls his eyes. "Forget I said anything." His fist is tight on his knee, sat in the one good chair in the living room.

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

"No! Guthrie, god!" Mom is standing between Freddy and his dad, eyes wide like she might be about to cry.

His dad stares at her like he forgot she even existed till she put herself in his presence. "Jesus, Jaqueline. I'm not gonna hit the boy."

That's true enough. Freddy never gets hit in these arguments. But the arguments keep on coming, over pointless shit like who takes the trash out, why there are scuffs on Freddy's boots, whether he's spending enough time studying, if he's out partying with his little friends.

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

Freddy is absolutely out partying with his little friends. To the tune of three cans of beer apiece and the odd spliff. It feels nice, it feels normal, it feels free.

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

"You'll be old enough to move out soon." Mikey tells Freddy. They're sat out on his back porch while Rebecca fires up the barbecue.

Mikey never talks about his missing dad, and Freddy doesn't ask.

"I guess." Freddy mumbles. He doesn't feel it though, he barely feels older than thirteen, kicking his feet uselessly against the struts of the dining room table.

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

This time the anger comes so fast that Freddy's not ready for it, and he almost falls off his chair trying to escape the speed at which his father surges into his personal space, screaming loud enough to wake the dead.

"And just what are you and that Farrow boy getting up to together?"

Drinking, smoking. Obvious teenage shit. Freddy's not gonna spell it out for him, he must have done this once as well.

"Guthrie!" Mom urges in a voice that's grown quiet over the past nine months of constant shouting. "Mikey is the son of my good friend Rebecca, a very respectable woman-"

"There's nothing respectable about that boy." His dad growls. He goes on and on about it, till Freddy has run out of anything to say beyond 'he's my friend'.

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

They share Mikey's bed when Freddy stays over, even though they're more or less fully grown and it's not big enough for the two of them. They wake up warm and tangled together, which is funny because it's just the two of them. If anyone else were in the room it would get weird, it would mean something.

Freddy is perfectly fine with this meaning nothing at all.

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

College eventually calls Mikey away. His grades were always better than Freddy's, more natural talent for school. And it may not be out of state but it is out of town, some place up north that Freddy doesn't really register as real or valuable when he sees the name on the piece of paper Mikey gives him, urging him to write.

"I'll miss you." Mikey tells him as they hug it out for the last time. He's not leaving for two more days but he has family to see and bags to pack and all his time with Freddy has run out. "I gotta find a comic shop when I get there, so I can keep reading the X-men."

"You don't have to..." Freddy smiles at his feet, still blushing after all this time.

"I know I don't. But you're right, Newandyke, some of those stories are pretty damn cool."

They look at each other, for a long moment. Something tells Freddy it's supposed to be significant but he can't quite put his finger on it. "Well..."

They say their final goodbyes and the front door to the Farrow's house closes.

Freddy goes home and packs a bag, tucks it up neatly under his bed where Mom won't find it.

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

He gets home late, but not so late that his dad's gone to bed. Just after midnight, an hour past curfew, and here he is, slightly drunk, standing in the living room.

His dad's eyes glance off him, unseeing. He shuffles and shrugs and has no opinion, telling Freddy to go to bed.

Not even bothering to ask which friends Freddy had been with. He always used to ask, as if knowing would stop Freddy from hanging out with the worst of them. ever since Mikey stopped popping up on the list of names though, he doesn't care.

And that's worse. For no good reason. Freddy kicks at the side of the armchair. "Where's Mom?"

"She went to her sister's." His dad says.

So Freddy grabs the bag under his bed, and when the front door falls closed, his eyes are still locked with his father's.

I do believe all of the nasty stuff that requires warnings is now over. If anyone's reading this...just enjoy the rest of the ride I guess

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

There's a trail of bloody footprints leading away from the tenement. Freddy looks down and sees it seeping between his toes. He's not the only one, the girls, in their slippers and trainers, have left a similarly grim streak behind them, like a heard of antelope marking out their path for the incoming lions.

Glancing up, he can see the dim red sheen echoing out from the light in his kitchen and the foggy pink from Iris's. Unthinking, he takes a step back towards the front door.

"What are you doing?" Gemima pulls him back. "We have to get out of here."

"Iris is still up there."

"Iris is gonna be on the cop's most wanted list if she ain't there to tell them exactly what she didn't do when they show up."

"She didn't do nothin'!

"I know that!" Gemima groans in frustration. "C'mon, we need to start walking some place fast."

"All together?" Freddy squints at the gaggle of girls collected behind her, all vaguely trying to shuffle away without losing the immunity of the herd.

"Why not?"

"Nothing looks more suspicious than a big load of people leaving a crime scene all at once. You gotta go in like, twos and threes. All in different directions." As soon as the words are out of his mouth he feels attention shift to him, like he knows what the hell he's talking about. He might just be on to something with this idea, but fucked if he knows where he got it from.

Probably something Blue said, when Freddy wasn't really paying attention. Or something Pink let slip, something Brown monologued about, something one of the guys at the cab company had told him and he had thought he wasn't really paying attention.

"And just where do you think you're going?" Gemima growls as Freddy tries to head back to the tenement. She throws herself between him and the building and her arms stretch just wide enough to stop him ducking through and pushing on without her.

Freddy pinches his lips and tries to do that thing where he looks up through his eyelashes to make himself look smaller than he really is. It would work better if she had more than a couple of inches on him. "We gotta go, right?"

"Right! So go!"

"Well jeez, Gemima, I'd fucking love to!" Freddy grins at her but he's irritated on his way to being pissed. "Tell me, how much cash did you grab on your way out your room?"

She blinks, taken aback. "Just a handful, Freddy. I didn't get everything."

"You know what I got?" Freddy pauses and waits for her to shrug back at him, like it's his fault she dragged him down the stairs without a moment to think about it. "I got nothing! Didn't even get a jacket. Fuck, Gemima, I'm not even wearing shoes right now. So I'm gonna head back inside and grab my shit."

"The police are coming." Gemima says, enunciating every word overmuch like he's stupid. She jabs a finger skywards, like she's pointing at the sirens that they can all hear, creeping closer by the minute.

What are they gonna do, the fucking cops? Look around and see some gang shit that they don't want no part of. Squirrel Iris away, put her in some foster home. He can't picture it. Iris, who's walked the streets f New York City for God knows how long, dumped down in a normal house and expected to be a normal kid. To go to school to fight with her parents, to not go out at night to drink and dance and fuck and get high till she can't remember herself any more.

Gemima lets him pass. "I'm sending the others away but I'm gonna be right here waiting for you, Freddy Orange, you hear? If the cops get you that's on me."

"Whatever, Mom." Freddy calls back, flipping her the bird as he hops up the steps to the front door.

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

He doesn't let anything in the hallway distract him, or anything on the way up the stairs. The third floor feels a mighty long way away, hovering too far out of reach to touch. In the however many months since Freddy moved in, he's adapted, his legs more than strong enough to carry him up with barely a whimper of protest. But now it feels like a chore, time closing in on him till every step is monumental and he is forever sliding back to something out of reach and awful.

There's no fucking blood pouring out through Iris's door if he doesn't look at it. There's no Travis. Someone, somewhere, maybe groans, but that's to be expected in a whore house. He slips into his bedroom and takes the trouble to twitch the curtains enough to see the girls peeling off in small groups, and Gemima staring determinedly at the pavement as she smoked a cigarette from a stiff hand.

There's a bag under the bed, as always. Freddy grabs his box of cash, safe in the knowledge that Sport won't be after him for the proceeds, a couple of clean pairs of underwear and the closest stack of comics to him. His hand is on the doorknob when he hears the shouts from the police outside and he freezes up long enough for them to bust down the front door.

From here, you gotta move fast, think fast, weigh up your options. Iris is gonna look good coming out of all this. even if they did think she killed those Johns, everyone will think she's in the right. Cute kid kills rapists or some shit, the headlines will love her. If he gets caught here, that don't look so good. The cops don't look to kindly on whores and they don't look too kindly on fairies and as for fairy whores...

Freddy's never really thought of himself as a fairy before. He opens the door to his old apartment and decides that he doesn't want to do it again.

There's a bathroom on the floor below, a shared situation that they all partake in. It's unassuming, out of the way and if the worst comes to the worst, there's a tiny little window that wouldn't give him more than a six foot drop to the fire escape. He takes the stairs two at a time, not pausing to think about how much noise he's making as he ducks into the bathroom just in time to catch the upper end of a beam of light trailing off someone's flashlight.

"He's dead." Someone says. The voice is rich and thick and male and not Sport's and Freddy feels the same tight reluctance he always gets hearing a John make his way up the stairs to see him.

Not Sport's voice, but talking about the guy all the same.

It can't take them longer than two minutes to sweep the area before they make their way up to the third floor landing but it feels like an age. Freddy holds his breath and lets it out in increments, like that's gonna make a bit of difference. He fiddles with the catch on the window, theorising that he can probably get his head through if he stands on the back of the toilet.

When they find the bodies, and Iris, and Travis, there's cursing and yelling and someone complaining that the sight's enough to make them want to puke. Travis is, by some buttfuck miracle, still alive. The guy doesn't think to scream, he's barely even groaning when they carry him downstairs.

Apparently they got an ambulance outside. Someone called one, though Freddy's fucked if he could tell you he heard that conversation play out.

"Is...is she ok?" Travis asks in a voice that would be perfectly relaxed if it weren't for how thin it comes out.

Freddy slides towards the door when he passes, laying a hand flat against the wood, then letting ring and little finger curl in, holding index and middle up to the space where Travis must surely be, keeping him at gunpoint.

Iris passes soon after, completely silent despite the barrage of questions that she's being asked. So fucking out of character. She wasn't expecting this shit. She wasn't expecting to be dragged away from everything she's built here in the blink of an eye.

And really, fuck Travis.

It takes hours. The time to clear away Sport's body, and the bodies of the guys upstairs. The time taken to organise the shifts that the fuzz are supposed to run around here in the morning. Freddy sits on the lid of the toilet, desperate for a piss and unable to go, feeling stupid. Who needs a pair of shoes, who needs money? What's all that compared to your liberty?

On the night the Cabots had been brought in, Larry had said the streets were filled with people on the move. He gets that. He can't stop his body jerking and figetting, leg bounding like it's gonna save him when what he really wants to do is run a mile.

The sun is well on its way up by the time the last of the night crew leave, and if Freddy's been paying attention, that means that are a couple of guys stationed at the top of the stairs and a couple of guys with a car out front, till the morning shifters arrive.

Nowhere to go but down, realistically speaking. It sounds better than braining himself on a metal staircase and being found two week's later by a traumatised neighbour.

He slips the door open as quietly as he is able, and is thankful that he hasn't yet put his shoes on as he creeps across the landing. Down one flight of stairs, and another. The hallway comes up on him sharper than he was expecting, and he has to move fast to make it to the shadows before the cops outside catch wind of him.

Or not. He pauses, blinks, tries to re-calibrate his eyes so that he can actually see in the mismatched light. The cops on duty are leant over the hood of their car, looking at something that they evidently find hilarious if the way their shoulders are shaking is any indication.

Against his better judgement, Freddy glances down to the corner by the door. No more body there, no more dead brown eyes. If anything, the result is all the more shocking, leaving a fan of blood that perfectly marks where the body once was.

The thing about blood is that it dries out fast. Becoming sticky then hard then a stain you'll never quite get out of your clothes. Freddy's been living around women who are all very preoccupied with whether or not their period is still incoming, he knows this shit.

Quietly, quietly, he scampers out of the building once again, barely feeling the difference between the floorboards that are caked in blood and the ones that aren't. Like a rat leaving a sinking ship, he vanishes with as little fanfare as possible. Not running, so as not to attract attention to himself, but moving fast enough that he's not getting caught in the same frame as anything incriminating.

Stopping at the end of the block, Freddy pulls on his shoes and then looks back over his shoulder.

No Gemima. Maybe she was lying, maybe she ran, or maybe the cops got her. Like watching Brown be bundled into the back of a police van, unsure if Pink and Blue were following suit. Freddy blinks at the pale grey skies, soon to turn into a riot of colour as the sunset begins. He's gonna be a few hours early, but he figures he really doesn't have anything better to do than head round the corner to the diner where he can hurry up and wait for Larry.

It turns out that the wad of bills in his bag will buy Freddy more than enough coffee to keep the waitresses happy with him. And pancakes, and bacon. It's not like he's never been able to do this under Sport, but generally speaking he didn't. They were always trying not to push their luck, not to piss him off. Saving up goodwill for some mystery future act of rebellion that never seemed to come.

On second thoughts, maybe Iris was right.

The door of the diner clicks open not a minute after ten and Larry comes through, dressed in a white tshirt with his cigarettes rolled up into his sleeves, his hair slicked back tight enough that he might have used an extra half can of grease that morning.

Freddy smiles and waves him over, laughing to himself when Larry fails to wipe the look of grim determination off his face as he strides across the floor.

He doesn't laugh for long. More guys pile in after Larry, trailing after him like a string of ducklings. Which is weird enough in and of itself without Freddy recognising every last one of them.

"What the shit?" Freddy feels more than a little outnumbered, looking up at the assembled ranks of Larry, Brown, Pink, Blue and Vic Vega. Aside from Larry, they're all dressed up in black suits like they're on their way to a funeral.

"Freddy." Larry says with a clinical calmness that doesn't match the murder writ large in his eyes. "You mind stepping outside for a minute?"

Freddy doesn't want to go anywhere with him looking like that.

"Jeez, White. You're scaring the kid." Pink frowns at Larry. "Listen, Freddy, your benefactor here has an idea that he might be able to help you out of a sticky situation, and we gotta talk to you about it some place where we don't have the attention of the entire room cramping our style. Capice?"

Sure enough, when Freddy looks up and around the room, pretty much everyone is eyeing the group of overdressed ex-cons warily or straight up gawping.

It's Larry, he figures. And Brown and Pink and Blue and what the fuck is going on there? The only one of these guys who he's got any worries about is Vic Vega and the guys less of an issue when he's not the only threat staring you down.

Freddy nods, pays up, and follows them out to the corner, where Larry whips out his pack of cigarettes and insists they all take one. Make it look real casual, just a bunch of guys having a smoke and shooting the shit.

Or not. "What the fuck happened to you guys?" Freddy asks, far too loudly, just as soon as he's got Brown, Blue and Pink in his sights.

Blue shrugs. "What do you think? The cops took down this one's," He elbows Brown roughly in the side. "Shady operation and they scooped us up with him. You were lucky not to get caught up in that."

"Yeah, we'll see about that." Larry mutters.

"They barely had shit on me anyway." Brown snaps, defensive. "See, Orange, you might not have known this but I was on the hook for some shit with the Cabots. Cooking the books and all that shit. But the dumb fucks of the NYPD let the evidence burn along with all my stock, and I gotta say I'm still sore about losing all that, still trying to pick myself back up. Anyway they couldn't get me on anything because all their evidence against me was word of mouth circumstantial bullshit."

"And we were just pulled along for the ride." Pink explains. "They let me and Blue out within twenty four hours. Brown was back on the streets in a week. Been wondering what happened to you."

The words make a sick sort of sense but Freddy can't feel them settling into place inside his stupid thick skull. It was all fine. All fucking fine. He could have met up with them all within a week if he had any inclination to go check out their old haunts. The bars, the cinemas, fucking sixty fourth street. And what did he go and get himself into?

The news that Brown, Blue and Pink is evidently supposed to be exciting to him, but it's hard to be excited when he's staked most every decision he's made since he turned away from Wacko Comics on the premise that they were all locked up and lost. He smiles, weakly. "So, what are you all doing here?"

Everyone turns to Larry, who pulls a pair of sunglasses out of his back pocket and makes a show of sliding them on one handed. "You know why we're here, Freddy."

"Yeah, well what if you gotta spell it out for me?"

Silence while Larry fiddles with his very much lit cigarette, the cogs in his brain whirring visibly as he tries to articulate what he intends to do whilst still allowing the rest of them a measure of plausible deniability. He's wearing high topped boots, which look at odds with the rather drab attire he's otherwise wearing, though nowhere near as ostentatious as the cowboy boots Vic has on. Freddy's seen Sport shake down guys who come by wearing boots. You gotta watch out for them, for the shit they try to smuggle into the rooms. You can hide a weapon real easy in a big enough boot.

Vic is the one who bails Larry out. "My friend, Mr White here, says that you've been having trouble with a guy who I'm not much fond of. So he asked if I would help him get you away from him. These guys owed someone a favour."

"I owe White about half a dozen favours." Blue drawls, flashing Larry a smile like this is an inconvenience he's more than willing to play nice about.

Of course that's why they're fucking here. Freddy lets out a bark of laughter that's tense and drained and has to shove his hand into his mouth to stop himself from running away with it. He's thinking about blood and pink curtains, about the delineating line of a mohawk.

"The fuck were you doing at that party the other week if you hate the guy so much?" Freddy asks, looking at Vic because it's easier.

Vic shrugs. "Him and his people have been rising, figured I'd at least make use of their facilities if they were rolling out the welcome wagon for me. I never signed no contract." He spits, landing just close enough to Pink's shoe to earn him a filthy look in return.

"Wait, hold up. What party?" Brown asks, eyeing up the two of them like they've been keeping secrets. "Orange doesn't party."

Vic levels a cool stare at him. "You don't got a fucking clue what Orange does or does not do."

Freddy winces at the implication, subtle, but not so much that Pink and Blue don't have a pretty good idea what he's angling at if the alarmed looks they flash him are anything to go by. Brown remains hopelessly oblivious.

"Listen, guys- Listen!" Freddy barks, before Brown can get too carried away. "I appreciate you coming out today, and you calling in all those favours, Larry. But you're wasting your time."

"Like fuck I am." Larry growls. He steps forward, close enough to grab Freddy by the scruff of the neck and it feels like his eyes are plastered to Freddy's lips. "We're getting you out of here, today. No ifs ands or buts and we're taking care of your little problem so you don't gotta worry about what him or his people might do to me or you for the trouble. And enough with the Christian names, kid. Call me White till this is all over."

"Yeah, ok, White, that's great and all." Freddy carefully extracts himself from the guy's grip. "But you really don't gotta do this shit."

"I'm telling you-"

"He's dead, Larry."

Silence. Confusion. "You fucking what?"

"Last night, guy came by and shot up the place. He caught a bullet in the gut."

Larry's eyebrows fly towards his hairline as Vic starts to laugh. "You ain't shitting us, right Orange?"

"I still got the guy's blood between my toes if you need some proof." Freddy tells him, and this time his smile feels real. Real and firm and fucking weird.

The suits seem really fucking dumb in the wake of this news, made real by Freddy's tongue finding the power to wrap around the words and give them life. He's dead. Dead and gone.

And Iris is gone too. Freddy looks to Brown, Blue and Pink, lined up on the sidewalk like a group of kids who can't wait to get out of their uniforms. He owes it to her, he supposes, to at least try to find her. Even if all he finds is that she's been sent beyond the system to where she can't be touched by him or any man.

She probably deserves it, though he doubts she'd see things that way.

Larry's hand finds it's way back to Freddy's shoulder, slow and careful, trying to parse out new information. He's not needed here. The best thing he can do is take Freddy home and tell him to get a proper job.

"Well." Blue sighs, raising his eyes towards the heavens. "That's one less thing we gotta deal with."

"Yeah." Freddy grins at him. "You can say that again."

Reservoir Dogs Prompt Post: ROUND 1

Re: Sport/Orange - shady skeevey stuff - 11b/?

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