Work Text:
Hooray for the child who makes it through
If there's any way, because the answer lies in you.
They're laid to rest before they've known just what to do.
Their souls are lost because they could never find what's this life for.
- Creed
Chris Keller was a good whore.
He learned early and well that survival depended on playing the game, on giving them what they wanted. Sex, like everything else, was a commodity: given when it could protect him or gain him some favor, taken when the opportunity arose for a few minutes - just a few - that would get him out of his head and bring the rush of pleasure and oblivion that orgasm gave.
He discovered he could divorce himself from his body, if he had to. If he had been a little younger, he might have ended up with some company inside his own head. But he was 17 when it started, a man in the eyes of the world and the justice system, and anyway, multiple personality disorder seemed a bit esoteric for a two-bit hood from Hell's Kitchen.
He had no use for the romantic aspects of sex. It was a bargaining chip. Hell, even before he went to prison, that's all it had been. A reward for spending enough money on a girl or for dredging up the pretty words that got her to put out. He understood the rules. Once he started putting out, he expected something in return - protection at the very least. And the performance was more than sex. It was the same lesson learned by many women and some men over the centuries. It was keeping the alpha dog happy, wearing the mask, playing the part, putting on a pretty face when the man of the house came home from a hard day at the office, or the man of the cellblock came home from a hard day on the prison assembly line. Agreeing at the right time. Burying yourself, because you were safer hidden away somewhere inside, where no one could touch you, hit you or caress you with hands that may as well have delivered blows for all the tenderness they expressed.
His wives never understood that. Not even Bonnie. He met them, wooed them, married them. Then he tumbled them and came to realize that no matter how he tried to fool himself, it was all just part of the game. He was skilled, and they mistook expertise for passion. Eventually, when their passion wore off, they found themselves unable to breach the steel wall around the core of Chris Keller. They tired of bruising themselves against it, and they left.
Locked inside Emerald City, Tobias Beecher had nowhere to go.