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.
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"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.

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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.