Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“The world has many edges and it's easy to fall off.”

— Anderson Cooper

It’s half past two in the morning when Will awakes from a nightmare. He’s drenched in sweat, hair matted to his forehead and cheeks as he bolts upright in bed. It was a murky kind of dream, which is rare for him, but he thinks they may be the worst of all because he never can see what it is that’s scaring him so badly. His life, both waking and sleeping, is a nightmare that never seems to end. He finds some peace in fishing—sometimes—and with his dogs—occasionally. He can get a little lost in his lectures, but not too much. The fear is always there, waiting around every corner. It lurks in the back of Will’s mind like a crouching demon sent to devour him.

He sits in the dark, dimly aware of the sounds his dogs make in their sleep. One of them chuffs a soft bark and he listens to dreaming paws lazily racing after something. Normally that would make him smile, but he can’t do it. He can only sit on the side of his bed and shake-shake-shake. He’s so tired of shaking. He’s tired of being afraid. He’s tired of being a freak. He’s tired of having an “empathy disorder”.

He cradles his head in his hands, feels the sticky wetness of his sweaty hair, gummy against his clammy palms. Tears are a heavy weight in the back of his throat. They perch there with the scream that’s been threatening to tear loose from his voice box for years. He pictures the tears and that familiar scream as carrion birds. He’s tired of that, too; of the scream and the tears that fall sometimes in secret, sometimes in his waking moments and sometimes in his sleep where they mix and mingle with the salt of his sweat.

He thinks about getting up and going outside to sit on his doorsteps for a little while. Sometimes that helps… sometimes it doesn’t. Nothing is a sure thing. Nothing. All he can really do is distract himself or suffer through it. He is tired of not having any kind of way to really deal with himself. He is tired of considering taking up alcoholism as a viable coping mechanism given his special circumstances. At least then he may be able to sleep.

The wind outside is a low, whispering moan that slips around the eaves of his tiny house like silk on a woman’s body. Will focuses on it and lets it lull him into an almost trancelike state. Then it picks up and screams through the darkness, which startles him and sends his heart racing again. He is tired of being frightened by the wind. He is tired of jumping at shadows, even his own. He is tired of being trapped in his dysfunctional mind.

He wants to escape and with every cell in his body he wishes he could. It’s building up inside of him like steam and he only wants it to go away. The lost time is scary, but it’s also a respite. Will finds himself longing for it as much as he is repulsed by it. He begins to rock himself gently on the side of the bed, hunched over with his arms wrapped tightly around his torso, fingertips almost touching the backs of his shoulders. He makes a strained sound through his gritted teeth and bows his head. He listens to the screaming wind and lets it in. If he lets it, the howling wind can lull him just as well as the whispering wind. He is tired of almost everything, but most of all, he is tired of being tired.

What Will is actually tired of is of being himself. This is not a revelation. It never stops being true though. He is so damned tired of being Will Graham that he’d give anything to not be for a little while. Maybe for forever.

He squeezes his eyes closed as tightly as he can and wishes.

He wishes.

He wishes.

The wind screams on.

The clock reads 4:18 AM when Will finally rises from his bed. The wind has quieted back down to a gentle soughing. It almost sounds like a lullaby. He’s standing on a tightrope while he moves around in the dark, getting dressed, getting his cash together. He puts his cash in his right hip pocket and puts his ID and credit cards in his left. He leaves his wallet on his dresser.

At the moment, he is in between worlds. In one world, he is Will Graham, basket-case extraordinaire. In the other world, he is someone he hasn’t yet become. Will Graham needs to be at least partially present for the next couple of acts and then he can say farewell. That knowledge lurks much like the crouching demon does, but this isn’t scary. This is a wish come true.

He pats each of the dogs goodbye then stands back and smiles at the whole pack. “I’m going on a trip,” he tells them. His voice is soft, flat and far away. “A trip, a trip,” he sing-songs under his breath with soft glee. The dogs cock their heads almost in unison and stare at him with dark, worried eyes.

Will only smiles at them again and then he turns away. He walks right out his front door with nothing but the clothes on his back and a genie, which is the lamp, too. It is all his mind. The brain is a powerful thing, capable of much more than most people realize. Will Graham’s brain, in particular, is quite extraordinary. For the first time in his life though it’s actually doing him a favor.

Will catches a ride with a long distance trucker who’s passing through on his way to wherever it is truckers go late at night. Will asks him to take him to the bus station. He gives the man directions and even offers him money for fuel, especially after Will decides they need to stop so he can withdraw a little extra cash from his bank’s ATM. He takes the maximum amount and offers the trucker fifty dollars of it, but once again the man refuses him and says the bus depot is on his way.

Will accepts that and settles back into his seat and lets another piece of this world fall away. The grass on the other side is so much greener, he can really see it now. He is checking out by degrees and soon he’ll be gone entirely. It’s like watching a shoreline erode. It is lovely to behold.

He buys a ticket for Chicago, Illinois. It’s not something he actually thinks about, he just picks a place and that happens to be it. Will is okay with that. Once he’s paid for his ticket, he goes to the restroom and throws away his credit cards and his identification. His last act before he steps off into his new world with its green grass is to write his name on his palm with the pen he stole from the ticket window. It’s not a conscious act, not really, but some little part of Will Graham is a bit apprehensive about this move. He thinks he should keep at least that much and having it written on his palm is a kind of insurance.

He gets on a bus an hour later with a little over 100 dollars in his pocket and his name written on the heel of his left hand: My name is WILL. These things are all he needs, he thinks and he is content with that. As the bus pulls away from the terminal, Will leans his head against the window and closes his eyes. Chunks of the earth that made up Will Graham fall away while he slumbers. By the time he reaches Chicago, only My name is WILL will really remain.

This is his design.

He steps off the bus into Chicago’s early morning light with a bounce in his step and no idea anything is really wrong. He is here and that is all.

“I am here,” he says to himself with a small smile. He’s glad about this, but doesn’t know why. He doesn’t bother to try and figure it out. He tosses his ticket stub in the first trashcan he sees.

He walks out into the light of a new day and takes a left, letting his feet take him where they may. The wind Chicago is so famous for howls all around him. Will thinks it is like being in the throat of a giant wolf. Fenris, perhaps, come to swallow the world. He takes heart in that thought and walks on.

By dark-fall, Will is hopelessly lost and finally starting to panic a little bit. He doesn’t know where he’s at or what he’s doing here. He doesn’t even know where here is and the one person he tried to ask pushed him away, muttering something about “damned crazies” as she strode past him. He knows he is WILL, he saw that on his palm when he went to the restroom at the diner he ate breakfast in. Then the soap washed even that away.

His earlier mood is gone because he doesn’t know where he’s going to sleep or how he’s going to eat. He has a little money now, but it won’t last long at all. Maybe only one more day, two at best and three if he stretches every dollar to its breaking point. He doesn’t know where he’s at or what he’s doing here. The buildings loom high above him and he stands on a street corner in the dusky light, staring up at their ever-darkening silhouettes. His insides feel quivery with panic. He wants someone to tell him where he is. He is alone and afraid and confused. He needs help. He needs someone to tell him who he is because all he knows is, My name is WILL.

Unsure what to do and exhausted, he keeps walking, keeps hoping he will find a friendly face and someone with an answer to give him. If they cannot tell him who he is, maybe they can at least tell him what to do so he doesn’t starve or die out here.

Finally, he can walk no more and takes refuge in a rundown little playground. He sits on a rusty bench that is likely meant for parents to occupy while they watch their children. Weeds grow through the cracks in the sidewalk here. It is an ugly place and it feels haunted. There are crows roosting in a scraggly tree, cawing at the darkness and Will shivers in his light coat. Summer’s coming on quickly, but not so fast that it’s taken the chill out of the night air or the teeth out of the wind entirely. Will hunches his shoulders against it and ducks his head, hair whipping around and tickling his ears. He closes his eyes and pays attention to the throbbing in his feet and muses on how it feels like the beat of a sick heart. It’s better than thinking about all the rest, all the things he doesn’t know about himself or where he’s wound up.

He manages to doze off sitting there and when he awakes, it is a few hours later. The streetlamps are all on, what of them work anyway and the sidewalks are coming to life again. Will doesn’t know what time it is, but he thinks of this difference like a shift change—the day world goes to bed or at least home where it hides behind locked doors. The night world slowly wakes up and stumbles out into the darkness, still groggy from the sunlit hours it was hidden away from. Now it’s in full effect, a living, breathing thing in the knots of people cluttering up the street corners. A few lean against light poles. Laughter can be heard from some of the shadows and in another cluster of darkness comes the sound of a low argument. Cigarette smoke coils into the air like phantom serpents.

Will takes it all in, blinking slowly and letting his eyes rake the little clusters, the few standalones. He watches as a car creeps down the street and stops at one of the clumps of people. A shadowy shape breaks away from the clump, words are exchanged that Will cannot hear and then the shape crosses in front of the car. In the flickering light of the lamp on the opposite sidewalk, Will can see a bit better. It’s a young man with golden hair and pale skin. He looks too thin, but Will can’t be sure. Then the young man gets in the car and it pulls away from the curb much faster than it approached.

Once the little show is over, Will’s worries start to creep back on him. Across the playground, the swings sway on rusty chains. They squeak with a repetitive, toneless rhythm that is grating on him so badly he finally gets up and walks away. Hands stuffed in his pockets and head ducked against the nosy fingers of the sharp wind, Will scans the faces he passes, looking for someone, anyone that has a face even the slightest bit friendly. He has questions he needs to ask because he needs help. Panic threatens to tighten his muscles as it skitters up his spine, but Will swallows past the dry click in his throat and tells himself to hang on.

One face at last seems to jump out to him. It’s a man leaning against one of the light poles. He’s maybe in his early 20s, tall with black hair in a braid that hangs below his waist and shines in the bad light. His face is angular and just shy of being too sharp. As it is, however, the angles and harshness of his features lend him a kind of architectural beauty—all clean lines, sloping, hard angles and fine skin. His eyes are dark and seem deep as an ocean trench in the muddy light.

Will stops to stand in front of him and the man notices him, smiles and flashes his teeth. The glint of a tongue stud winks from his mouth like a lonely star. Will hears it clack lightly against the man’s teeth.

“Can you help me?” Will asks him.

“I can do anything you want me to,” the man says, smile turning sly and wolfish. He pauses for a beat and Will feels hope flutter in his chest. “For a price. Tell me what you want and I’ll tell you how much it’s gonna cost you.”

“I want answers,” Will says.

“Answers to what?” the man asks. His eyes are dancing with unvoiced laughter. “If you want to know where babies come from, you’re askin’ the wrong guy.”

“I want to know where I am,” Will says. He blows out a frustrated, shaky breath and rakes his fingers through his hair. “Do you know where here is?”

“You’re in the city of Chicago, which is in the state of Illinois. The state of Illinois is in the country called the grand ol’ US of A,” he says. He leans forward to study Will better. He feels his sharp eyes rake over him like dragging fingers. “How the hell is it you don’t know where you’re at?”

“O-okay,” Will says. He lets another breath, this one slower and longer. He knows where he’s at. Good, that’s good. Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. It’s a start. My name is WILL can find himself on a map now. Still…

“Can you help me?” Will asks again. The desperation in that question makes his voice crack. “I don’t know how I got here or where I’m from or…”

“You on somethin’?” the man asks him. He’s stopped threatening to charge Will, he’s too curious to worry about that right now.

“Like drugs?” Will asks. The guy rolls his eyes, but nods his head yes. Will shakes his head. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. I’ve been walking all day, trying to find answers. I don’t even remember… anything.”

“You don’t even know your name?” the guy asks.

“My name is Will,” he says. It’s automatic, the words out of his mouth in a rush. His name is an almost tangible thing to him; it’s the one answer he’s got.

“Will who?” he asks.

“I… don’t know,” Will answers. “Just Will. My name is Will.”

“And that’s the only thing you know?”

“Yes, damnit, that’s all,” Will says. “I don’t know where I’m from, what I do, who I am. I don’t even know how old I am. I have almost no money and nowhere to sleep. I don’t know what to do.”

The guy is silent for a long time and Will looks down at the pavement. He can feel his eyes on him, prickling his skin with their frank appraisal and Will tries not to fidget. He doesn’t walk away because this is the first human contact he’s really had and he keeps thinking maybe this guy will give him answers. Although, in the back of his mind, Will’s pretty sure this man knows no more than he does now: His name is Will and he’s in Chicago, Illinois. He focuses on the sidewalk even more intently to shut up his doubts. There’s a sickly looking little dandelion growing out of a crack there. He wants to pick it, blow the fluff off and make a wish. He would wish for his knowledge of self back.

“I might can help you,” the man says.

Will’s head snaps up instantly at that. “Really?”

“Yeah,” the guy says. He’s got his hands in his pockets, rocking lightly back and forth on his heels. “I can’t tell you who you are or nothin’ like that, but I might can help you with shit like having some money and a place to sleep. I mean, anything’s better than fighting winos over sheets of cardboard, right?”

“Anything, yes,” Will says.

“Alright then, we’re cookin’ now,” he says. He motions for Will to follow him off into the darkness of a side street. “Come with me and I’ll introduce you to Mack. He’ll take care of you.”

“Thank you,” Will says. He’s shaking again, but this time it’s with gratitude. “What’s your name?”

“Spark,” the guy says.

“Spark? That’s unusual,” Will says. He thinks that probably isn’t his real name.

“Uh-huh, that’s ‘cause it’s fake,” Spark says. “It’s better than the one I was born with.”

Suspicion confirmed, Will only nods his understanding. “Why’d you pick Spark?”

“Because like a spark, I’m here,” Spark says as he waves one of his thin, elegant hands through the air. Then he snaps his fingers and his hand disappears back into his coat pocket. “And then I’m gone.”

His teeth are faint white outlines in the gloom when he grins. Somewhere a few blocks away, a train rumbles over some tracks high above the street.

“So… You’re really fast or something?” Will asks.

“No,” Spark says. “Because I probably won’t be here for very long.”

“Oh,” Will says. He can’t think of anything else to say to that, so he shuts up and follows Spark on to wherever it is he’s taking him.

Will ends up spending about half an hour standing in the hallway of an apartment building. It smells like cat pee and cigarette smoke, at least those are the most prominently bad odors. The rest is old cooking smells, cheap perfume, spilled liquor and a harsh, sharp smell reminiscent of burning plastic. He can hear Spark talking to someone he assumes is Mack.

“I know he’s kind of old, but not that old, only like 34 at the most,” Spark says. “The dude’s all fucked up in the head or somethin’, but he’s not like some psycho though. ‘Sides, Mack, you said to look out for somebody that wasn’t no twinky ‘cause some of the customers don’t want what looks like baby ass. You said they’s getting creeped out and you needed somethin’ new. Well, I found you somethin’ new. Just take a look at the guy.”

“Yeah, yeah, but if I decide to keep him, he’s your responsibility ‘til he learns the ropes,” Mack says. “And if he does turn out to be some psycho mental defect then I’m gonna take it out of your ass, Lawrence.”

“Okay, okay,” Spark says. “But c’mon, man, don’t call me that. It’s not my name.”

“Oh, alright, Norman,” Mack says.

Will is only partially listening to the conversation, but he has a bad feeling he’s just walked into something he’s going to want out of. Maybe he should’ve just kept walking past Spark—whose real name is Lawrence Norman or maybe Norman Lawrence—and found someone else. Now he doesn’t know what to do. He has no ID on him, no address that he can remember. He has nothing but a sentence written on his left hand, except even that’s gone now. What is he going to do? What is he supposed to do?

Not this. Not this. Not this.

He is about half a second from bolting when the door pops open and Will finds himself looking right at Mack. Behind him is Spark and he gives Will a quick thumbs up over Mack’s shoulder. Will guesses he’s supposed to be glad about this meeting.

“Come in,” Mack says as he steps back from the door.

Will doesn’t know what else to do, so he crosses the threshold. When Mack slams the door behind him, he jumps and then looks up at Mack who’s stepped back around him.

Mack isn’t unattractive, but he’s led a rough life and that much is obvious. It’s taken its toll on his features regardless and his handsomeness, while still there, is an echo of what it once was. He has lovely, but hard, blue eyes the color of the autumn sky. His hair is such a light blonde it’s almost white. He’s powerfully built, with large hands he wastes no time in using to grab Will’s face with. Will freezes and stares at him with big eyes, afraid to move, afraid to speak, afraid to breathe because he doesn’t know what Mack may do to him.

He uses his hands to turn Will’s face first one way and then the other. He leans in close enough that Will can smell the beer on his breath as he looks him over. Mack mutters something about Will’s eyelashes and how his eyes are a nice color, pretty even.

“Let me see your teeth,” Mack says.

Not knowing what else to do, Will opens his mouth for him. Mack sticks one of his fingers in his mouth and pokes around. He pulls Will’s lips up, pushes the walls of his cheeks out and checks under his tongue for some reason. Will feels like a horse that’s up for trade or a dog for sale. How much is that doggy in the window? Mack’s finger tastes vaguely of popcorn butter and nicotine.

“You take it up the ass?” Mack asks him once the dental exam is over. “I ain’t got room for some toppy ass motherfucker that thinks he’s too good to switch.”

“I—” Will starts. He stops because he doesn’t know the answer.

“Of course he’ll switch, Mack, be serious,” Spark cuts in for him.

“Shut your goddamned mouth,” Mack snarls. “If I want your opinion, I’ll fuckin’ ask for it.”

“Sorry, Mack,” Spark says.

“Well?” Mack asks Will.

“Yes,” Will says.

His voice comes out faint and shaking again. He wants to say, No, I don’t do any of that because I am not a prostitute. It keeps not happening though because he’s stuck. No matter how he looks at it, he is fucking stuck. Will has no ID, no last name, no home, no… nothing. There isn’t a reputable workplace in the world that would hire him. At that moment he feels desperate and sick with that desperation. It looks like a yawning black pit to nowhere. He feels alone. He feels like he is making a mistake. Will feels like he has no other choice.

“Good,” Mack says. “So, here’s how it works: You work the corner with Spark here until you figure shit out. If you want your own patch of walk after that then that’s up to you to claim. You always use condoms and no matter what the johns may offer you, you don’t give in on that. I find out about you doin’ somethin’ stupid like that and your ass it outta here. I run a clean operation, I don’t need some disease spreader ruining my good name just ‘cause some trick offered you twenty extra bucks to fuck you bareback. When you’re done for the night, you come back here to this very door and give me your money. I’ll count it out and keep sixty percent for myself. You get to keep the rest. Spark’ll talk to you about pricing, but first he’s gonna go get you some rubbers.”

That said, he turns around and shoves Spark.

“Going, going,” Spark says. “Fuck, Mack.” He disappears down a dark, claustrophobic looking hallway.

When he’s gone, Mack pins Will with his butcher blue eyes. “Do you understand everything I just told you?”

“Yes,” Will says. His voice isn’t much more than a whisper.

He is transfixed by Mack’s eyes. He looks into them and sees a young man a lot like Spark, but with pale hair and eyes, skin white as chalk but for a ginger dusting of freckles. He sees him on his knees in alleyways and bent over the hoods of anonymous cars. He sees him with split lips, scraped knuckles and skinned knees. He sees a man who survived and followed his particular career’s ladder up to the top. Now Mack stands before Will much like someone once stood before him. This is part of Mack’s design.

Will blinks at the thought and cocks his head, wondering where that came from. Mack distracts him though when Spark comes back with a handful of condoms in a rainbow of colors. He has a tiny tube with him, too. “You forgot to tell him about lube,” Spark says.

“Right,” Mack says as he plucks the lube from Spark’s hand. He gives Spark a brief smile, but Will thinks there are too many teeth in it for it to be all nice.

“Lube,” he says, turning back to Will and holding up the small tube. “Use it. If you get your ass torn up or fucked bloody out there then that means you won’t be able to work on your back for a couple of days, which costs me money—and you, too. So, remember to make the johns use the shit. They don’t wanna do it, tell ‘em to get lost.”

“Okay,” Will says. “Thank… Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Mack says. He smiles at Will now. Will sees he has a gold cap on one of his jaw teeth. “Now, come on. I get first crack at it.”

“At what?” Will asks.

Mack stares at him and then he laughs. “Where’d you find this guy, Spark? He fall off a stupid truck while you’s standin’ around?”

Spark laughs, but it’s a nervous laugh. “He’s just green’s all,” he says.

“Motherfucker’s so green he ain’t even sprouted yet,” Mack says. “You’re kinda old to not have a clue.”

Will stares at him as it processes and when it does click, the bottom falls out of his stomach. “Oh,” he says. He licks his lips and nods, tells himself he won’t cringe away from this. He lifts his head and meets Mack’s eyes. “I’ve got the clue now.”

He manages to get it to come out level and steady. Inside, Will feels like he is screaming.

“Glad to hear it, sweet thing,” Mack says. He lightly pinches Will’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting his head back to look at him better. He’s got a good three inches on Will, maybe four. “You’ve got a good cocksucker’s mouth,” he notes. He says it offhandedly, like he’s making a mental note; adding it to the list of Will’s “pros”, he supposes. “Enough conversation,” he says abruptly, letting go of Will’s chin and stepping back to openly appraise him. “It’s time to see what you’ve got under those clothes and if you know how to use it.”

“Here?” Will asks, looking around the tiny living room. Spark’s standing off to the side, near the entry to what looks like an even tinier kitchen.

“Down the hall,” Mack says. He turns and begins walking away, motioning for Will to follow him.

Will tells himself to run, to just get the fuck out and never come back and find some other way to survive. Some other way to exist as the mystery he has become to even himself.

Spark gives him a quick smile. “You’ll be alright, he’s not mean or nothin’. He’s actually pretty good. You might like it and I mean… that’s… it doesn’t… Just go on, Will. It’s all cool, you’ll see.”

“Yeah,” Will says. He’s still telling himself to run when he takes his first step forward, towards Mack who’s waiting for him about halfway down the hall. He’s waiting to see if Will’s going to run, Will thinks. Run! he screams at himself again. He takes another step forward. Then another. Another.

Before he knows it, he’s in Mack’s bedroom and the sheets are clean, which is a surprise. They’re cold against his naked back. His legs feel shaky, knees watery and he wants to close his eyes. He honestly thinks he may vomit. Instead he watches Mack take his shirt off. His belly ripples with muscle, his chest is hard with it and his arms are thick. He could reduce Will to a bloody pulp if he so desired.

When he turns around to throw his shirt on the small dresser he’s got shoved into a corner, Will sees he has a tattoo across his shoulders. In elaborate cursive script, it says: Do Unto Others.

Will shivers and closes his eyes then.

Mack isn’t rough or mean to him, but when it’s over, Will still feels cheap and dirty. He once again has to fight the urge to vomit even though there’s nothing in his stomach. His ass hurts, not badly, but it’s there, a dull ache that doesn’t seem to want to quit. He got very little, if anything out of it, other than a sense of ever-growing humiliation. The first tender shoots of self-loathing sit bitterly in the back of his throat. Some of them are because a couple of times, Mack did something that Will did like—or almost liked. It was a flutter of pleasure low in his belly that could’ve been more had he been relaxed or Mack had taken his time. His cock is half hard when Mack pulls out of him and takes the condom off.

“Jesus Christ are you tight,” Mack gasps. “You ever bottomed before?”

I don’t know, is Will’s automatic answer, but he swallows it down. “No,” is what he says instead.

“The tricks’ll love you,” Mack said. “You ever get one into role playing that lets you pick, try the virgin angle. You can pull that shit off no problem.”

“Sure,” Will says. He’s staring up at the ceiling. He’s feeling his semi-erection wilt back to nothing. He’s feeling the faint stickiness of the lube drying in the crack of his ass. He wants to put his clothes back on. “Can I get dressed now?”

“Yeah,” Mack says. He doesn’t sound concerned with Will’s hurry to clothe himself and get out. He understands it, Will thinks.

Will stands up from the bed and jumps when Mack slaps his ass, a hard, resounding smack that makes him yelp. He whips around to stare at him, instantly angry. Mack sees it, but only shrugs one shoulder. “That’s a prize piece you’re sitting on. Use it well,” is all he says. He plumps the pillow under his head and motions at the door. “Now, get the fuck outta here and go make some money.”

Will watches him for another moment, notices the way his pale eyelashes fan out in the hollows of his eyes when he closes them. Then he shuffles around and pulls his clothes on. He doesn’t forget to take the lube with him when he goes.

Spark’s waiting for him in the kitchen, eating a bag of popcorn, but he looks up when Will walks in. “How’d it go?” he asks.

“Peachy,” Will says. His head hurts faintly and he rubs at his temples. “He said we have to leave. Need to go make money.”

“That’s about all Mack worries about. That and free ass when he feels like it,” Spark says with a shrug. “Let’s go then.”

He walks around Will and he follows him out of the apartment and back into the cat-piss scented hallway. Spark shares his popcorn as they go and Will’s thankful. It seems to sop up some of the roiling acid in his gut.

As they walk, Spark fills him on pricing and tells him that if the john wants anything “extra” then it kind of goes by kink and how hardcore said kink is. Will thinks that’s pretty vague, so he asks for clarification.

Spark gives him a quick rundown—spanking is 20 extra, spanking with a paddle or belt is 35 extra. Holding him down, that’s 40. Rape fantasies, no matter what kind, are 200. It’s the same for anything that has too much S&M flavor—whipping, flogging, slapping or punching. Spark says the high price helps discourage the really bent kinkers. Most role playing is around 60 as well, but props and costumes—even if the john provides them and some will, Spark informs him—cost 75.

He tells Will he can say no if they’re asking him to do something he’s not okay with. If they want it bad enough then they’ll find someone else to give it to them, no big deal.

Spark stops about halfway back to the place they met and turns to look at Will. “Here’s the bottom line shit: Never, ever agree to do something that may make you or them bleed. If they want to, say, whip you then you tell them that up front. If they do it anyway, game’s over and it’s time for you to take your money and split. No burning at all and no hitting that will leave a bruise or welt that lasts longer than a couple of days. Don’t let them even get close to your face if they’re into that shit,” he says.

He’s dead serious as he speaks and Will listens attentively while he watches a moth flutter and swoop around Spark’s dark head. “Never, ever, ever let them tie you down, no matter how much extra they offer you. Nothin’ good comes from that kind of shit, not usually. At least not with people in our line of work. And finally, the most important thing of all is that you always ask for payment up front. Work out the details and add up the cost in your head. They spring surprises on you then you straight up tell ‘em that’s gonna be even more extra. They don’t wanna pay, you tell ‘em adios. You got all that?”

“Yes,” Will says. “I didn’t know this was all so complicated.”

“You think we just hang out, get picked up and what? Have vanilla sex, get paid and go back to the pavement?” Spark asks him with the corner of his mouth quirked up in a lopsided grin.

“I don’t know what I thought,” Will says. Spark has no idea how very true that statement really is.

“Well, you know better now,” Spark says and then he starts walking again.

When they get back to where Spark was standing when Will met him there’s a homeless woman digging in an rickety old shopping cart full of junk right in front of the light pole. Will stands back while Spark runs her off. There is yelling involved and the woman threatens to stab him. Spark counters by asking her what she plans to do that with, the stumps of her fuckin’ teeth? Eventually, the woman trundles off into the night, throwing a few choice insults over her shoulder every few feet or so that Spark ignores.

Will joins him by the light pole after she’s gone, but he slips into the shadows that pool around the building behind it. Spark catches him at it and shakes his head. “Nuh-uh, dude, front and center,” he says. “Ain’t nobody gonna see ya if you’re hiding back there. The point of this shit is to be seen.”

He eases out of the comforting darkness and wraps his arms around himself, drawing his shoulders in. Spark sighs and pushes his shoulder. “Don’t do that either,” he says. “You want people to see you and you want them to think you’re a good time. Don’t nobody wanna fuck some shy weirdo actin’ like a junkie. Dig?”

“Not really,” Will says. Except that’s not true, not completely. He unwraps his arms from his torso and leans against the light pole next to Spark, trying to copy his lazy stance.

“That’s better,” Spark says with a grin. “You’re all nervous and shit right now, I know, but you get over it. Wait and see.”

Will doesn’t want to wait and see. Still, he stands there and stares straight ahead into the murky darkness across the street. It reminds him of a nightmare, the sickly yellow light, the shadows swooping down from the buildings like bat wings. There is the faint sound of rap music coming from somewhere. It’s all about shooting cops then getting new shoes before going to fuck some bitches.

Will wonders how those things are related. Maybe the shoes are bought in celebration for shooting the cop. The new shoes maybe give the speaker the confidence he needs to go cruising for a nice bitch he’d like to fuck. Perhaps she approves of his taste in footwear and finds the idea acceptable. And maybe Will is over-thinking the lackluster lyrics to a stupid song as a way to distract himself. He doesn’t even know what kind of music he likes, but now he’s pretty sure it isn’t rap. That leaves him with only a few hundred more genres and subgenres to choose from. It makes him feel tired and anxious all at the same time.

“Does it really get better?” he asks Spark about half an hour later.

“What?” Spark asks. He’s fighting with a cheap disposable lighter, trying to light a cigarette.

“This,” Will says. “You said it gets better. Does it really?”

“Oh,” Spark says. He finally gets his lighter to cooperate and says, “Ha, motherfucker!” under his breath. He lights his cigarette and blows smoke out of his nose. “I said you get used to it and you do. With gettin’ used to it, yeah, I guess it gets easier, but I’m not too sure about better. You just gotta learn not to think about it too much.”

“How do you not think about?” Will asks.

“You look at it as just another job,” Spark says. “When that doesn’t work, you get drunk or do some drugs. You’ll forget then for sure. It’s good enough. Oh and hey, before I forget, you always ask if they’re a cop. They have to tell you. That’s the very first thing you gotta do. Remember that.”

Will nods and resumes staring out into the darkness across the street. He doesn’t know how this has happened. Sure, he remembers all the steps it took him to get from point A to point B, but that isn’t what he means. He even knows why he didn’t run when he told himself to, when Mack more or less gave him the opportunity to. Instead, he’d gone into the back room of a cheap apartment and let a stranger fuck him for what may or may not have been the first time. If he shifts just right, he can still feel the dully aching reminder of that.

Will closes his eyes and tries not to think about that. The end of the point is this and even though he knows the steps it took to get from there to here, he still really cannot understand how it happened. He thinks for a second and realizes the better way to put it is: He doesn’t understand how he let this happen. Then he sighs because even that, he knows the why of. So, here he stands on a cold street corner in late spring with a man he barely knows, waiting for a stranger to pick him up and pay him for sex.

An hour later a car pulls up to the curb and a fat man with a florid face leans over the seat to look at Spark and Will. He points at Will and says, “You.”

Will goes to lean in the window and tries to make eye contact, but can’t quite do it. He picks a point somewhere to the left of the man’s jowly face. “What do you want?”

“I want a suck job,” the man says.

There’s no hesitation in what he says. He’s done this before, probably lots of times. He’d be unattractive even if he was thin and his vehicle suggests he doesn’t even have money to overcompensate with. This man is probably destined for a lifetime of a being alone and jerking off to dispel that loneliness. When even that doesn’t cut it, he comes here for a little company that isn’t a television set or a dirty magazine. He’s bitter about it. Will bets he will pull his hair, his fingers are already clenching and unclenching where one hand still grips the steering wheel. He’s imagining doing it already. His eyes are feverish with hungry want.

“Are you a cop?” Will asks him while all of that reels through his head so quickly he feels dizzy.

The man snorts. “No,” he says. This is old hat to him. “Are you?”

“No,” Will says.

“Then can we do business?”

No, Will thinks. He says, “Yes.”

“Then get in,” the fat man says.

Will nods and opens the passenger door. He slides into the truck. It smells like old sweat and stale fried chicken. Beneath it is the odor of motor grease. Will notices the man has grease under his fingernails. He’s a mechanic and probably a good one. Will doesn’t know how he knows that, but he does. He can blink and see the man working away under the hood of a car and there, he is a maestro; he is an artist.

They find an alley that’s almost totally wrapped in darkness. When the john kills his truck, Will can hear feral cats growling, gearing up for a fight. “How much?” the john asks him.

“Thirty,” Will says.

“Shit, that’s steep,” he says. “I usually pay twenty.”

“You get what you pay for,” Will says with a grin that feels like flaking paint. His teeth are cheap plastic parts.

“Oh yeah?” the john asks. He takes his wallet out and starts counting. “Alright then, let’s see about that.”

“Sure,” Will says. He holds out his hand for the money and when the john gives it to him, Will slips the money into his pocket and pulls out a condom as he withdraws his hand.

“Put this on,” Will says.

“You put it on,” the john says. “In the alley. There’s not enough room in here.”

Will lets out a silent breath of relief. He was wondering how he was supposed to fit his head between the steering wheel and the man’s prodigious gut. He had a brief flash of worry when he pictured his head getting stuck there, a strange cock forever crammed in his mouth.

He nods and opens his door to get out. He can hear the cats growling even louder now. They’re somewhere down at the far end of the alley and the sound of humans moving around this far away doesn’t dissuade them at all. He thinks about the cats as he moves around to the driver’s side of the truck. It’s better than thinking about what he’s about to do, about how he’s fixing to put a condom that’s the bright red of a circus balloon on a stranger’s penis. Then he’s going to get down on his knees and suck that penis. All for the low, low price of thirty damned dollars.

Will does it though and his hands are steady as he rolls the slippery latex onto the man’s short, fat dick. It occurs to him with an almost jittery sense of twisted amusement that prostitution is not a career one eases into. It’s all or nothing straight out of the gate. It makes Will feel dizzy.

“Yeah,” the john says when, on what’s almost a whim, Will gives his cock a couple of quick, light strokes. “Get it good and hard, baby, that’s it.”

Will tries not to grimace, but does make a note to ask Spark if they can charge extra for cheesy dirty talk. Out loud, he says, “Yeah? You like that? Want me to do it some more?”

He can’t believe what just came out of his mouth. He doesn’t even feel like himself. Which is funny considering he doesn’t really even know who he is. Even still, it’s like he’s standing slightly outside of himself and watching what he’s doing. It makes him feel like he’s suffering from mild vertigo.

“No, I want you on your knees,” the john says.

His breath is already rough. He’ll be quick, Will thinks, if he can figure out the best way to do this. Mack didn’t make Will blow him and so far, that’s the only practice he’s had in the prostitution department. Will is pretty sure he’s not stupid though, so he’s betting the house on being a quick learner. God, he hopes he’s a quick learner.

Will sinks to his knees onto the gritty, nasty concrete and smells the sour stench of the john’s crotch sweat. He grimaces, head bowed and glad for the truly terrible light in the alleyway. He can do this. He has to do this. He closes his eyes, opens his mouth and leans forward.

The lube on the condom makes his mouth tingle and his lips go a little numb, but the john seems to like what he’s doing. Will figures out that he likes when he sucks him with unrelenting pressure all the way up his stumpy length. He keeps it steady, working out what’s too much pressure and what’s not enough. He has it figured out within a minute and then it’s disturbingly smooth sailing. Will keeps his eyes closed the whole time and tries to keep his breathing shallow.

Down the alley, the cats finally grow tired of posturing and attack one another with a screaming, spitting clash. Metal trashcans overturn and roll off down the alley with rumbling clatters. One of the cats screams in pain and then the other does. Will lets that be his soundtrack instead of the panting of the sweating man above him.

When he comes, he uses Will’s hair to pull his face right against his crotch. Will can feel his fingers twisting in the strands and he makes a soft sound of pain that’s followed with one of disgust as he feels the thick, heavy heat of the man’s semen filling the condom. He’s so unbelievably glad there is a condom there to catch the mess and keep it out of his mouth.

Will stands up when the john lets go of his hair and stands back as he strips off the rubber and tosses it into the darkness. One of the cats is making a pitiful sound, obviously injured and maybe badly so. The victor is silent, perhaps already gone. Will feels like the loser, but he ignores the pain in his knees and thinks about the thirty dollars in his pocket instead. That’s a cup of coffee and a sandwich, maybe a candy bar. It’ll do.

The john gives him a ride back to the street light and when he gets there, Will finds that Spark is gone. It kind of surprises him when the john tells him to have a good night and really seems to mean it. Will automatically responds with, “You, too.”

Once he’s gone off into the night again, Will wipes his mouth and spits onto the concrete to try and get the faintly chemical taste of spermicide off his tongue. He wishes he had some gum and makes plans to buy some as soon as he can.

Spark comes back about ten minutes later and without him needing to ask, he gives Will a stick of gum. He’s noisily chewing a piece of his own as he leans against the pole and lights a cigarette.

“Thanks,” Will says.

“Welcome,” Spark says. He rolls his neck and then works his jaw. “Goddamn, guy was hung like a mule.”

Will has nothing to say to that, so he just nods. Spark notices him, sees the look on his face and snuffs out a soft laugh. “You’re kinda uptight.”

“I am?” Will asks. Then he thinks about it and nods. “I am.”

“Yuh-huh,” Spark says. He cuts his eyes over to look at Will. “How’d you end up here?”

“I don’t know,” Will says. He’s talking to his feet, hands balling into tense fists.

“Did you get hit on the head or something?”

“I don’t know,” Will says again. He’s talking through his teeth now and still staring at his feet. He’s not upset with Spark, he’s upset with himself and starting to get scared about that stuff again. Mixing that with the low, simmering fear in his belly about the shit he’s stepped in here is not a pleasant combination.

Spark’s quiet for a few minutes after that, but Will can feel him watching him even though he’s taken up staring into the darkness across the street again. “So, you really don’t know shit, like for real?”

“For real,” Will confirms. He stares into the darkness, not even blinking and proceeds to tell Spark what he knows. It isn’t much and it doesn’t take very long. “My name is Will. I’m in Chicago, Illinois, which is in the United States. I’m standing on a street I don’t know the name of, waiting for strangers to stop and pay me to give them blow jobs. Your name is Spark, but it’s not the name you were born with and the other guy’s name is Mack. It’s dark and I’m kind of cold. I feel really dirty. That is all I know for sure.”

“Whoa,” Spark says. He flicks ash from the end of his cigarette then pushes away from the lamp post. “You’re fucked, dude.”

“I am aware,” Will says. He chews on his bottom lip for a second, tastes the residual spermicide there and stops.

“You wanna go get some coffee?” Spark asks. “There’s a shop around the corner that’s open all night. We can maybe grab a bite to eat, too and warm up a little.”

Will is hungry and a cup of coffee would be like heaven right now, so he nods. “Yes, I would like that.”

Will pays for his coffee, a cup of chicken and stars soup and a half a turkey sandwich out of his small cash supply. He is painfully aware of the other thirty dollars in his pocket, sixty percent of which belongs to Mack. He doesn’t feel like he can spend it until he’s had that percentage taken out. He’s learning already.

They eat inside the warm confines of the convenience store. The clerk, a middle-aged woman who looks bored with existence itself, reads a tabloid and pays them little attention. When they’re done eating Will buys a big pack of Ice Breakers gum and then it’s back to work.

Not five minutes after they’re back, a car pulls up with two guys in it. They have Massachusetts accents and are wearing wedding rings. They want Will and Spark both and so, they go. Will’s second experience of the night finds him once more kneeling in an alley with the taste of latex, lube and spermicide in his mouth. These men are cleaner and don’t talk dirty or otherwise, thankfully. They simply lean over to kiss one another while Will sucks one and Spark sucks the other. After the two men have come and thrown the condoms away, they zip up and ask Spark to suck Will off while they watch.

Will starts to refuse, has his mouth open to do so. He’s not even hard and he doesn’t know if he can get hard, but Spark touches his arm lightly and says, “That’s extra if you want us to do that.”

“How much extra?” one of them asks.

His wedding ring glints in the light coming down the alley as he reaches in his pocket for a wad of cash. It’s a stupid move to flash that kind of money around, but he seems confident. Will thinks he may have a weapon of some kind. Either that or he’s just an arrogant prick and stupidly so.

Spark mulls it over for a second then says, “It’s sixty, thirty for me and thirty for him. Pay up front, same as before.”

The man peels the bills off the wad in his hand; three tens go to Will, a ten and a twenty goes to Spark. The money disappears into their pockets and Spark comes out with a condom after it’s gone. He looks at Will for a second and he swears he looks apologetic, but business is business and that’s how this business goes. Will is a commodity, a good to be bought and sold at the whims of others. He is here for their entertainment. He wants to sink into the pavement.

Spark’s hands on his waist are light and gentle. As he unzips Will’s jeans and pushes him against the car to position him, he says one thing before sinking to his knees, “Relax, Will.”

Will closes his eyes the second he feels Spark’s hand slip into the fly of his boxers. He hears one of the men, the one with the wad of cash, say, “My God, look at his eyelashes.”

“They’re beautiful,” the other says.

Will almost flinches then makes himself hold still when he feels the pad of the stranger’s thumb stroke lightly over his eyelashes. He breathes slowly through his nose and listens to the crinkle of the condom wrapper as Spark tears it open. Then he says something that endears him to Will forever, “Touching is extra. It’s sixty to watch, if you want to join in then that’s another eighty.”

The thumb disappears with a slight grumble from the toucher, but they don’t produce more cash. Will has to catch himself to keep from sagging against the side of the car with relief. Spark’s hands—elegant hands, Will reminds himself and then allows himself to picture them—touch his hips, lightly bracing against the slight jut of bone there. Then wet warmth slowly engulfs him. He can feel the moistness of Spark’s saliva even through the latex of the condom and although he’s limp right now, it doesn’t take long for him to start responding. He doesn’t want to, but he can’t help himself. His body likes what is being done to it and all of those little signals run along his nerve endings from his dick to his brain and back again.

Before long, Will is gently thrusting into Spark’s clever mouth and panting softly. His hands are balled into tense fists at his sides and he startles when he feels hands on him again. His eyes pop open this time and he looks down to find Spark looking back up at him. He gently massages Will’s wrists until he uncurls his fingers and lets them hang, lets himself feel his blood rushing into them and circulating around. His palms sting from where he dug his nails into the flesh there. He tells himself to close his eyes, but he can’t manage it.

He stares at Spark’s lips wrapped around him. Half of his almost lupine face is in dingy yellow light, the other is engulfed in shadows. He is all hollows and angles and he’s beautiful to look at. He has his mouth on Will and his pulse is a stuttering hammer in his chest as he watches. Spark smiles around his cock, just the head in his mouth and then he slowly slides back down Will’s length. When he does, he begins to hum. Will recognizes the tune as “Three Blind Mice”. He barks out a laugh right as his orgasm slams into him and his hips jerk. Spark holds onto him and pushes him back so he doesn’t shove his cock down his throat. Will is smiling as he gasps and pants and watches Spark suck him dry.

When it’s all over and they’re back by the light pole, Will wonders if that counted as a foursome. He thinks maybe it did. “Have you ever done anything like that before?” he asks.

“Nope,” Spark says. “First time for everything though, right?”

“Right,” Will says. “I’m having a lot of firsts today.”

“I can’t even imagine how bad your head is messed up for you to be out wandering around and not knowing anything ‘cept your name,” Spark says. “You’ve gotta be kinda loo-loo, man, I’m just sayin’.”

“I feel very loo-loo,” Will says. “You really have no idea how damned loo-loo I feel.”

Spark grins and shakes his head. His hair has partially come undone and falls over his face, but doesn’t muffle his soft laughter. “No, I don’t,” he says. “I ain’t even gonna try to pretend. But look, about that back there, I know you’re nervous and if I freaked you out then ya know, I guess I’m sorry.”

“You guess?” Will asks. “And it’s okay. I mean, it… I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I think I must be doing something right. And thanks for being nice to me.”

“Why wouldn’t I be nice to you? You’re alright enough and are without a doubt the most interesting person I’ve met in a long time. You’re like a puzzle.” Spark leans against the light pole and blows cigarette smoke up at the city night sky. Then he cuts his eyes to the side with a sharp little grin. “You’re a seriously hot loo-loo lost boy. If the situation was different and all that, I’d have sucked your dick for free, if you really wanna know. That’s why I guess,” Spark says.

Will chokes and then laughs, the sound startled and loud, echoing down the sidewalk. A group of younger hustlers down the way turns to look in their direction and Spark flips them off then yells for them to mind their own. Will counts three different hair colors in the group before they fade into the shadows of a busted streetlamp and become nothing more than blacker shapes within the darkness.

He sips his coffee after his laughter dies down again and kind of wishes he’d gotten a bigger cup. Depending on how long they’re out here, he may need to go back to the store. Apparently he’s a big fan of coffee. Spark seems to be as well since it was his idea they go around to the convenience store for more after the tricks dropped them off. Now they’re standing around and drinking it. Will thinks this is what passes for water cooler conversation with prostitutes. It’s morbidly amusing and he bites back a grin.

“Thanks, I think,” Will says.

“You’re welcome, I know,” Spark says back.

They lapse into silence after that. Spark tends to talk in bursts, but mostly seems to be content with quiet. Will’s not sure why, but he likes that about him, likes that Spark isn’t some nonstop chatterbox. Will’s pretty sure someone like that would drive him up the wall.

Will’s coffee is almost gone when another car pulls up to the curb. “Oh, yeah, it’s the judge,” Spark says, speaking low and quickly. “If he ever decides he wants you, go with him. The judge will take care of you if you ever get busted and end up in his courtroom. Be extra nice and he may even put a bug in some of the pigs’ ears to leave you the hell alone.”

The window on the lovingly tended classic Mercedes rolls down and a deep, cultured voice says, “Spark.”

Spark hops-to and is gone before Will can think of a reply. He makes a mental note about the car and finds himself hoping that one day the judge will pick him. This is a line of work that curbing favors where one can is probably important.

It’s only a few minutes after Spark leaves before another car cruises down the street, makes the block then comes back around and stops beside Will. This part of the routine is easy and he’s learned it already. He gets down to business at once, asks if the guy’s a cop, gets the “no” answer and is satisfied. He slides into the car with him. Will’s stomach is a mess of butterflies. This newest customer wants to fuck him. Before he ever opened the door, Will told him the lube rule and the guy nodded. He even brought his own. Will thinks that’s handy and that he has, yet again, got another one that’s familiar with the workings of picking up hookers. It’s kind of amazing how many people seem to do this on a regular basis.

The man finds yet another alley—at this rate, Will’s going to be familiar with every one of them in the neighborhood. He tells Will to get out of the car. He’s all business, no chit-chat at all. He has kind of mean eyes, but maybe that’s just the light.

Will tries to study him, tries to get a better look at him, but the guy says, “Turn around, drop your pants and bend over the hood.” Will still moves too slow to suit Mr. Business and when he barks, “Now, I don’t have all goddamned night,” Will has no choice but to comply. It’s that or lose a trick. He doesn’t like the guy, but he’s not actually afraid of him either, so he thinks telling him the deal’s off would just be him being a fraidy cat.

So, Will does as he is told and feels like a fucking hole. He passes the guy a condom, but he shoves his hand away. “I have my own,” he says.

He reaches around to show it to Will and he nods. He hears the snap of medical gloves shortly thereafter and figures Mr. Business had them in his trouser pocket. Not long after, there are two cold, slippery fingers pressing inside of him at once. Will winces and grits his teeth as those fingers work inside of him, aggravating the lingering soreness Mack left behind. Mr. Business curves his fingers inside of Will just so and it’s like sparks fly up his backbone. It’s the fully realized version of what he only had a hint of earlier with Mack. He moans and bucks his hips back against the fingers inside of him, the reaction purely instinctual.

“Be quiet and be still,” Mr. Business says.

Will nods and tries to, but his hips give sharp little jerks every now and then. Mr. Business seems to excuse those at least, maybe he understands that Will can’t help everything. He’s fucking him with his fingers hard and fast, Will can hear the lewd, wet sounds of the lube and the faint squeak of the rubber gloves as he moves his fingers inside of him. He’s sweating and the second it beads on his skin, the wind comes down the alley to coast over him and leave him covered with chill bumps.

An unbidden whining sound comes up from his throat. On the heels of it is a rush of heat that spreads across his cheeks and another twist of dislike for Mr. Business. He’s getting off on getting Will off. Not because he likes to see his pleasure, but because he likes giving it even when it’s not really wanted. It’s a twisted kind of sadism at work here, Will realizes and on the heels of that he thinks he should’ve charged the guy extra. Even as he thinks it, the guy adds a third finger and runs all three over the spot inside of him. Will almost cries out, but reminds himself he’s supposed to be quiet. That is a cruel thing to demand of someone when you’re doing such things to their body.

Will is breathing heavy and hard through his nose, his fingers biting into the sweat-slippery metal of the car under his hands. His orgasm is right there, so close, but just out of reach and it’s frustrating. He wants to move back against the fingers inside of him, but he has to be still. It’s making him shake with want, with the desire to move and rock against Mr. Business’s fingers so he can claim his pleasure—his prize.

When it abruptly stops, Will almost collapses on top of the car in his frustration. They’ve been here about fifteen or twenty minutes now and Spark told him to never go over half an hour if he doesn’t have a room, but Will’s so hard he hurts. He’s thisclose to begging Mr. Business to put his fingers back inside of him so he can have some relief.

It’s when Mr. Business begins to push his cock inside of him that Will rethinks that. He recalls Spark saying one of his tricks was hung like a mule. Well, so is this guy and it hurts. The lube and fingering has helped, but Jesus fucking Christ. He’s going so slow that Will has to grit his teeth to keep from whimpering at the discomfort. He hears the sound of the lube opening again and feels more of it run down the crack of his ass then there’s fingers rubbing it around. He’s tense and aching and still so fucking hard because pleasure is a snapping turtle in his belly. It has latched onto Will because of this sadistic fucker and it won’t let go until it thunders. He does not know why he thinks that, but he knows it’s a superstition of some sort.

“You are marvelously tight,” Mr. Business says as he continues to ease inside of Will. His voice is strained and he sounds short of breath.

Will says nothing, he’s supposed to keep his mouth shut after all. Besides, he knows that already. He knew it before Mack ever told him because he felt it when he fucked him.

Mr. Business gives one last shove and pushes Will hard against the car. It rocks under the sudden force of his weight against it and Will grunts at the flash of pain that causes. He can feel himself stretched tight around Mr. Business’s cock and it’s an achingly full sensation, but there’s pleasure skulking around in there somewhere. He can feel it in the way his heart is beating heavy in the back of his throat. If he was used to this—he supposes that’s the right term—then he thinks he may kind of like it. But he’s still new to all of this and his poor body’s just not accustomed to such things yet.

When Mr. Business finally starts to fuck him, he’s as quick and hard with it as he was the fingering. Will’s mouth falls open as pain and pleasure bloom under his skin. He closes his eyes and sees thorn roses tearing through his whole body, his cells the opening petals. It’s such a cliché, the flowers, but the pictures in his head are a different beast of the imagination. He gasps and starts to move with the man, to try and ease some of the pressure and only stops when his large, hard hands dig into his hips.

“What did I tell you?” the man says. “Be still. If you do it again, I’ll stop.”

Yes, the son of a bitch knows exactly what he’s done and the quick stab of anxiety that follows his threat makes Will nod his head.

“Say you’re sorry,” the man says.

“I’m sorry,” Will says.

He stops moving inside of him anyway and Will feels a shivering shake run up his spine. A throb of pleasure bursts low in his belly and he wants the rest of it. All of it. He thinks he could genuinely come to hate this man. He knows he should’ve charged him extra, but he was sneaky. He didn’t give much sign of what he was doing until it was really too late.

“Say it again,” Mr. Business says.

“I’m sorry,” Will says. His voice is a raw rasp and there is humiliation like an itch at the top of his spine and a wad of tingling, burning nerves at the bottom. He feels the man run his hand over that bundle of nerves, pressing down as he rocks forward again. Another throb of pleasure follows that and Will’s mouth falls open on a helpless little moan.

“Now beg me for it,” Mr. Business says.

“No,” Will chokes out. He will not beg.

“No?” A rock of his hips against his ass, another throb of pleasure that’s laced with pain. It’s like powdered glass and velvet twisting inside of him.

“N— Oh,” Will gasps and hangs onto the hood as the man fucks into him hard, once, twice and then he stops again. He’s not impatient at all, Will realizes through the fog in his mind. This man is cruelly patient in a way Will never would’ve suspected.

He tries to follow, to ride the rhythm, but makes himself stop. He feels like he is being pulled in about thirty different directions at once. When the man pulls almost completely out of him, Will’s voice is different when he says, “No, please don’t.”

“No, what?”

“No, please don’t stop. Don’t stop fucking me,” Will manages to get out. His breathing is ragged, he’s slicked with sweat and shaking like a fucking leaf. He hates himself for this.

“Again,” Mr. Business says. He leans over Will’s back, enveloping him in a cloud of cologne and cinnamon scented breath mints.

“Please, fuck me, don’t stop,” Will says. He’s talking through his teeth, fingers squeaking against the car. He has the feeling Mr. Business is waiting for some kind of magic word or phrase. Maybe one he’s not even sure he wants, but Will bets he’s been waiting for years, doing just this kind of thing, hoping to hear it. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and lifts his head to look over his shoulder at Mr. Business. “Use me,” Will says.

He has a split second to see the look on Mr. Business’s face. His eyes go hot and cold at the same time, his mouth parts a little to let out the breath he’s been metaphorically holding for years, maybe since he was a teenager. He slams back inside of Will hard enough they rock the car again. He gave Mr. Business what he wanted and in turn, he got exactly what he wanted. Deep down inside, he still feels dirty and low and disgusting for what he’s just done, but goddamn at the way the garden grows inside of him.

Will drops his head and braces himself the best he can as pain and pleasure twist up his spine like a dragon. He feels a bead of sweat run down the bridge of his nose and swears he can hear it when it hits the car hood. Then Mr. Business is digging his fingers into Will’s hips and pulling him back against him and when Will cries out once, the sound sharp and loud, he doesn’t shush him this time. Will though, he bites his lip against anymore sounds like that because it’s too loud for what they’re doing—and where they’re doing it at.

“Say it again,” Mr. Business says.

“Use me,” Will gasps. “Use me, use me, use me.”

He pants it over and over and every time he says it, Mr. Business fucks him even harder seems like. Will’s pulse is a red light behind his eyelids even in the dark alley, the heartbeat of a blossom about to explode into a million points of light along his neural pathways. He’s pushed himself up even more, head tipped back and sweating, wind-chilled face turned to the sky. He can feel Mr. Business’s breath on his shoulder through his clothes. He can hear the scrabble of rats in the garbage strewn along the alleyway. He can hear his own heartbeat like the roar of ocean surf in his ears. He can taste his heartbeat, copper-cream red, on the back of his tongue.

“Use—,” Will tries to say once more, but his orgasm cuts him off. It bleeds through him and makes him shake. He whines through his gritted molars as his front teeth press hard into his bottom lip. His body feels like a livewire, stretched taut to the point of snapping like a rubber band and then the tidal surge washes over him. He drops his head and shakes even harder. It seems like it will never end, a slow flood of pleasure leaking into his blood like nitrogen bubbles.

Mr. Business fucks him through his orgasm, through his body’s contractions and Will feels the responding ache marry with the washing pleasure and he cries out again. The sound is mostly trapped in the abused flesh of his lips and the enamel of his teeth.

“Yes,” Mr. Business says a couple of minutes later.

Will is boneless now, panting and whimpering softly while he waits for Mr. Business to be done with him. That one word lets him know it’s over and he’s so glad he could do a dance if he trusted his legs to hold him for it. He had no idea such things as what just transpired were possible. He may hate him, but Will thinks Mr. Business is a man who knows precisely what to do.

He pulls out of Will unceremoniously and the ache that follows makes him bite his lip again. The messy sound of his lube-slicked cock leaving him makes Will’s stomach flip a little bit.

“Pull your pants up and come on if you want a ride back,” Mr. Business says.

Will straightens and pulls his jeans back up as quick as he can. When he looks up again, Mr. Business is holding out a one hundred dollar bill. “For the extra,” he says. At the look on Will’s face, he smirks.

Bastard, Will thinks even as he snatches the money from him. He keeps his mouth shut though and gets back in the car. Sitting down makes him wince, but aside from the mess of lube—he wants a shower, desperately so—he thinks he’s okay. It may’ve hurt, but Will doesn’t think the man fucked him bloody, to paraphrase Mack’s earlier eloquence. His lip curls a little at the recollection, but he stops himself and stares out the window.

When they pull up to the curb again, Mr. Business says, “Can I see you again?”

Will thinks for a second then remembers the hundred bucks in his pocket. “Yes,” he says. What surprises him is how much dirtier that makes him feel. He was kind of starting to think that wasn’t possible.

“Good,” Mr. Business says. “Now get out of my car.”

Will doesn’t need to be told twice. He stumbles, but catches himself on the doorframe and gets himself sorted out. He’s barely shut the door before Mr. Business is zipping off down the street again.

Spark is back and he takes one look at Will and the way his hands shake when he pushes his hair out of his eyes and says, “Okay, we’re done for the night.”

“Already?” Will asks.

“You’re wrecked, man,” Spark says. “You caught a live one and he did you funny, right?”

“Did me funny…,” Will muses. “He didn’t rape me if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s not what I mean, no,” Spark says. “I mean he did you funny—he fucked you and made you like it, right? Some of them really get off on that shit.”

“Oh,” Will says. That’s not quite all he did, but it’ll do for now and he’s fine with Spark not knowing the details.

When he doesn’t elaborate, Spark just nods. “Thought so,” he says. “C’mon, let’s go count out to Mack and then I’ll take you to the motel.”

“Motel?” Will asks.

“Damn, you’re really out of it, man,” Spark says as he takes Will’s arm to get him moving down the sidewalk. “What the hell happened?”

“I think… I think you could safely say he fucked my brains out,” Will says.

Spark laughs back. “I guess so ‘cause you’re loopy as fuck right now.”

“I hate him,” Will says about half a block later.

“I know the kind,” Spark says.

They carry on the rest of their way in silence, make it to Mack’s and let him count out their pay. He’s impressed with Will’s obvious earning potential and even offers him and Spark a beer. Spark accepts, but Will says he’ll pass. He thinks this may’ve been a pretty good night, but they won’t all be and he’s not naïve even if he doesn’t know his own last name. All of his nights will not be as good as this one. He thinks he should save that beer for one of those nights.

Will has a dream about a book with blank pages. It fills up his entire line of sight and he madly flips through page after page of nothing with panic shivering in his bones like the low ting of a cymbal. Stuck on a loop is an unfamiliar voice saying, My God, look at his eyelashes…

Will starts awake when someone touches his shoulder and says, “Wake up, Will.”

He pops his eyes open and stares back into the fathomless black of Spark’s dark eyes. He’s lying in the creaky motel room bed that he shared with Spark last night; Spark who has been assigned Will’s caretaker and seems to’ve taken on the task without much worry. Spark, he thinks as he stares at him, is the luckiest break he’s had since realizing he had zilch, not even memories.

“Hello,” Will says as he sits up. He winces and sucks a sharp breath in through his teeth. He’s feeling the full brunt of what his body endured last night. Before bed, Spark had told him to sleep on his stomach and he had, which had made it better.

He looks down at the stained carpet between his feet, listens to the rattling hum of the air conditioner that’s spitting frigid air into the room. This is the very definition of “roach motel” and it seems to wear the badge with honor, right down to its sign that proudly declares it rents rooms by the hour, day or week. Spark rents on a weekly basis—this is his home. Will shifts his weight on his hips then turns to lay out on his belly again, stretching horizontally across the bed. He ignores Spark’s low, not unkind, laugh.

“So, I’m thinking we should eat somethin’ then go get you some clothes,” Spark says as he goes to sit in one of the crappy chairs that goes with the scarred, unstable little table in the room. He looks at Will lying there with his chin propped on his crossed arms and shakes his head. “Moving around’ll help some, too. You won’t think so at first, but trust me.”

“I have clothes,” Will says. “No, I don’t believe you about moving around. I feel like… like I’ve been raped.”

Spark sits back with a nod and lights a cigarette. There’s a thin beam of late afternoon sunlight coming through the crack in the curtains, licking along his deep copper-gold skin. Will watches it dance along the fine hairs of his arms like tiny lights. “You’ve got those clothes, man, which ain’t much of nothin’. ‘Sides, you need something more… work appropriate,” Spark says. His smile is a sickle blade slicing across his face.

He doesn’t say anything about Will feeling raped, but he does lean across the narrow space between the bed and chair to give his shoulder a quick squeeze. I know, is what it says and that’s good enough for Will.

Will’s mind is full of blank pages. My God, look at his eyelashes… He knows that voice now and finds it odd that is what bugged him the most about last night—that stranger’s thumb stroking his eyelashes. He hates Mr. Business, but he loathes that uninvited caress as much, if not more.

“Get up now, Will,” Spark says.

He’s gentle about it, but his voice tells Will it’s time to go. It’s getting late and they’re going to have to work soon. He doesn’t know if he can do that a second time. As he carefully gets up from the bed, he also knows that’s a lie. He will do it because he has to do it. If he doesn’t then he will die frozen to a sidewalk come winter. At least this way, he has a place to sleep and enough money to feed himself for now.

As he puts on his shoes, Will thinks to tell Spark, “I’ll be able to help with the rent by the end of the week probably.”

“Cool,” Spark says. He’s counting his money and separating some change out of the mess on the wobbly table. “Today, I’ll teach you about the bus and show you where the Goodwill is.”

Will nods and slips on his coat. He’s ready to go now, he’s hungry and he supposes he does need some clothes. A moment later, Spark gives him some loose change for his bus fare then motions for him to come on. Will follows along behind him, Spark’s longer legs eating up the concrete. He has a loping walk that only lends more to his wolfish appearance. Will does not lope, in fact he kind of limps and about a block in, Spark stops and walks back to him.

“Sorry, dude,” he says when he reaches Will. “I didn’t think about your sore ass.”

“God,” Will says, making a face at the phrasing.

Spark just laughs. His teeth are very white. Will wonders how long they will stay that way; how long either of them will even have all of their teeth. It’s not like their profession comes with a dental plan. He chews over the fact he just thought of whoring himself out as a profession and realizes he doesn’t like that very much. He has a feeling he should be doing something different, it niggles in the back of his mind, way down deep, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s another drawback to him applying for a respectable job: He has no references. He has no résumé. He has no idea what he is qualified to do or if he’s qualified to do anything at all.

Will shakes his head and when Spark nudges him and points at the door to a diner he just nearly walked past, Will stops then simply stands there. “They won’t bring us the food out here,” Spark says. He snags Will’s coat sleeve in his fingers and tugs him along.

“No curbside service?” Will asks.

“Nope, that’s our job,” Spark says.

Will clears his throat and laughs once, a soft, cracked sound. “Yeah,” he says.

He marvels at how okay with being a prostitute Spark is. He wonders if, in time, he will be the same. The theory is that things get easier with repetition and eventually stop mattering, at least on a large scale. Things are what they are and nothing more. Will wonders how he knows that. It feels like an opinion, but when did he form it? All of the questions with no answers are enough to drive him mad if he thinks about them too long.

They find an empty booth near the back of the diner and order coffee. Will breathes in the scents of old grease, eggs, bacon, hamburgers. He listens to the low murmur of conversation from the handful of other patrons. He thinks he wants a hamburger as well. He’s got enough money for one. It’s right there in his pocket beneath all the condoms.

“Where are you from?” he asks Spark after they’ve ordered. Will splurged and got a bacon cheeseburger. He’s looking forward to it. Spark’s having pancakes and scrambled eggs.

“Not here,” Spark says. He flips his lighter in his fingers, tapping the end lightly on the tabletop once with every rotation. “Where are you from?”

“I have no idea,” Will says. He thinks sometimes Spark is testing him, trying to catch him in a lie. If this was a lie, Will thinks it would be about the biggest lie anyone has ever told—remembering nothing of themselves but their own name.

“Montana,” Spark finally allows. “I ran away when I was fifteen.”

“Why?” Will asks.

“Why not?” Spark asks back.

He’s dodging Will now and Will leaves it alone. He stares at Spark and imagines him young and skinny, probably too skinny, packing a bag. It was the bag he carried his school books in, Will would bet on it. Those he would’ve left scattered on his bedroom floor in a little avalanche pile. He dumped the bag and stuffed some clothes into it. He wouldn’t have had much money, but he’d have needed some. He probably took it from his parents. That was Spark’s design.

Will can see the how, but he does not know the why. Will thinks he isn’t the only puzzle here now. Somehow, it makes his footing seem more even.

The waitress refills their coffee and Will thinks of another question after she’s walked away. These are things he feels like he ought to know, although why he feels this way is beyond him. “Are we… I mean, does Mack… um… pimp out other guys?”

Spark snorts laughter and stirs sugar into his coffee. He glances up at Will through his eyelashes and shakes his head. “Mack prefers to think of himself as our manager. Don’t you ever slip up and call him a pimp, he’ll kick the shit out of you for that,” Spark says. “We’re not the only ones under Mack’s management, there’s three more, but I don’t like ‘em much. One’s a little twink from up in Maine somewhere. Barely legal and all that, the pervs love him. I think he’s shithead, but the fuck ever. Another of us was—get this shit—an Army Ranger. He couldn’t find work after his enlistment ended and now he’s taking another one for his country. I don’t know nothin’ about the other one aside from he fits what Mack likes in his guys.”

“Mack’s design,” Will says.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Will says. He shakes his head. He wishes he knew where the hell he’d gotten that from. “I just meant he has a type, right?”

“Yeah,” Spark says. “He’s got a type and a good eye. Mack was a hustler back in the day.”

“I know,” Will says. Why or how he knew that the night before is yet another mystery, but he’s discovered he has an uncanny knack for reading people if he’s around them long enough.

“Now you do, yeah,” Spark says.

Will doesn’t argue with him about it. They lapse into silence again and when they bring their food, conversation remains on hold until they’ve eaten. They decide on having one more cup of coffee before they pay up and leave for the Goodwill.

The bus smells a lot like the hallway of Mack’s apartment building did except there’s an underlying scent of stale vomit and strong disinfectant. There’s also a lot more cheap perfume and cologne jockeying to be the dominant odor. Will’s head is aching dully after just a few blocks, but he sits quietly and looks around, glad Spark’s sitting on the outside. He likes being sandwiched in by the window, it makes him feel safer.

There is a crazy man talking about Jesus wearing cowboy boots and driving a star-car. The man is very excitable, hands waving and a huge smile on his face. He is obviously insane, but Will thinks he at least looks happy and that’s not something most people can claim to be while still being honest.

Most people shy away from the man and leave him standing at the back of the bus, chattering away to no one in particular. Will listens to him, fascinated with the things that come out of his mouth. He wonders if the man is schizophrenic, especially when he starts talking about how the government genetically engineered him and his twin, Eliza Dushku, to be psychic spies.

Beside him, Spark rolls his eyes and says, “I noticed somethin’ about the crazies, ya know. Either they talk about the government bein’ up to no good or they talk about Jesus. This whacked out motherfucker’s goin’ on about both.”

“Maybe he’s really dedicated,” Will says.

Down the aisle, the man is talking about fortune cookies and how there are tracking devices hidden in them. We are all full of tracking devices!

“Damn,” Spark says with a faint smile.

Will thinks the man is interesting and he finds himself identifying with him. Not with the delusional nonsense spilling out of his mouth, but with his insanity. Will feels insane himself, so on that front, he gets where the man on the bus is coming from. Unfortunately, Will isn’t as happy about the fact as his bus compatriot appears to be. Something in the back of his mind whispers that it isn’t true happiness, the man is manic and that causes wild and extreme moods. Maybe later, he will be crying and despondent over how there are just too many flavors of ice cream. The government may or may not be responsible for that, too.

Will is grinning to himself when the bus stops and Spark jostles him lightly. “This is where we get off,” he says.

Will nods and follows him off the bus. As they exit, the man at the rear has moved back to Jesus. He’s talking—quite irately now—about how Jesus didn’t have to take his medication. Will smirks at that and figures someone must’ve asked him about it, someone Will didn’t notice or hear. Maybe his twin sister asked him psychically.

They walk about two blocks down the street, take a right and go another two blocks to get to the Goodwill. It’s a large building and there’s all manner of crap inside to peruse. Some of it is in excellent condition, some of it has weird stains and even stranger smells. There is a chair that looks like it has bloodstains on each of the arms. Will pictures someone cutting their wrists and kicking back to watch David Letterman’s monologue one last time before the curtains came down for good. He stares at the chair until Spark drags him away, muttering about how Will is a space cadet. He wonders aloud if Will would wander into traffic if left unattended for too long.

“I think you may got brain damage, dude,” Spark says.

“I don’t feel brain damaged,” Will says. He feels the sleeve of what’s left of a leisure suit—the coat—and wonders how anyone could’ve ever thought that shade of green was actually a good idea. It looks like chartreuse and puce had a baby.

“I don’t mean like you got stupid-makin’ brain damage,” Spark says as he rifles through a rack of clothes. “I mean like you got crazy-makin’ or spacey-makin’ brain damage.”

Will smiles and takes a navy blue t-shirt when Spark hands it to him. “Is there such a thing as “spacey-makin’” brain damage?”

“I don’t know, but if there is, then you got it,” Spark says. “C’mon, let’s go find you some pants.”

“We came all this way for a shirt and pants?” Will says.

“Yeah, we did,” Spark says. “After you make some more money tonight, we’ll come back tomorrow and get you another coupla shirts and pants. You can’t buy all this shit at once, else you’ll go broke.”

“It’s the Goodwill,” Will says. “How much could it possibly cost? They have bloodstained furniture, for God’s sake.”

“It don’t cost that much, but you don’t make that much money either,” Spark says. “You gotta be what they call frugal about this stuff. ‘Sides, you gotta get a toothbrush and shit, too. You can’t keep usin’ mine. I mean, I don’t mind helpin’ you out, but I ain’t no charity either.” Spark cocks his head and then snorts. “And yeah, that fuckin’ chair man… I don’t think they supposed to sell that kinda shit. Thing’s been here for months now.”

Will nods because that makes sense. If he bought all he may need in one go then he’d be broke and wouldn’t be able to buy any coffee tonight or another pack of gum. Or the aforementioned toothbrush because last night, that was kind of weird, but he’d been desperate to get all the bad tastes out of his mouth. He’s going to need shampoo and deodorant, too. He’s going to have to help out with food and rent. Spark’s idea makes more and more sense the longer he thinks about it.

“Hey, what size pants you wear anyway?” Spark asks him.

“Uh…” Will thinks about it and then he shrugs. He can’t even remember that much. “I have no idea,” he says helplessly.

“Turn around,” Spark says. “Lemme check your tags.”

“Here?” Will says.

Spark gives him a flat, patient look. “Will, you’s suckin’ cock in an alley last night and now you don’t want me lookin’ at the tag on your pants? You can’t be serious.”

Will wrinkles his nose. “I can be serious,” he says for lack of anything better to say, but he turns around anyway.

Spark lifts up his shirt and coat then tugs out the waist of his jeans to grab the tag. “You got a bruise on your hip,” he says. “That last trick do that?”

“Yeah,” Will says. He shivers at the recollection of Mr. Business.

He did something to him other than leave a bruise. He fucked with his head, too and that’s worse than any bruise. He can’t believe he said he’d see him again. Then he also thinks about the hundred dollar bill he earned and remembers why. He doesn’t know much of anything about himself—read: nothing—but he’s still kind of stunned at how quickly he’s started putting price tags on everything to do with his body.

He’s watching Spark dig through the jeans and really hoping he doesn’t decide Will needs the pair with the hole in the upper thigh. The jeans are black, but the hole looks like it may’ve been made by a knife. He thinks about the blood trapped in all the denim fibers, waiting to scrape against his skin.

“We should save up and buy the bloody chair,” Will says. It’s just occurred to him that it’s kind of sad no one wants to own the thing. Someone obviously loved it well enough they chose to die in it. It must be a very special chair. It’s probably incredibly comfortable.

“See, that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Spark says as he turns to point at Will. Will feels his eyebrows lift in question. “Brain damage.”

“It’s not— It’s just that I was thinking that it looks comfortable and probably is,” Will says. He feels obligated to try and explain his reasons for wanting the thing and that makes him feel awkward. He doesn’t think he’s any good at this sort of thing, not really, not when it comes to stuff like bloodstained chairs. “Someone loved that chair. They chose to die in it. It’s special.”

“And you’re fuckin’ twisted,” Spark says. “How the hell’re we supposed to get that on the bus?”

“I dunno,” Will says. “Maybe we could have it delivered?”

“Goodwill don’t deliver furniture,” Spark points out. He takes a pair of jeans off the rack, inspects them and then shoves them back.

“Maybe we could walk it back,” Will says.

Spark stares at him for a second then he laughs. Will jumps when he reaches out and pats his cheek. “Sure thing, man,” he says.

Will watches him and relaxes—Spark’s not making fun of him. He thinks Will’s a freak, but it doesn’t bother him in the least. Will knows he’s a freak, he feels it like an instinct. He also can’t help the relief he finds in knowing that Spark seems to like him despite that fact. Hell, he may even like Will, in part because of it. He feels the strangest urge to thank him, but bites it back.

When Spark finally hands him a pair of jeans with worn places along the outer seams and speckles of bleach spotting on them, Will just takes them. A blue t-shirt and a pair of bleach-spotted, faded jeans and his wardrobe is on its way, he supposes. He dreads the night, but he’s almost glad for this little interlude with Spark. It makes him feel like a normal person doing normal things. He doesn’t feel lost or like an alien. He doesn’t feel like a whore. It’s nice.

Back at the motel, Will finally tries on his new clothes and when he comes out of the bathroom for Spark to check him over, he plucks at the front of his shirt. “It’s too small,” he says. “It’s tight.”

“Then it’s just the right size,” Spark says. “You can’t float around in your clothes and expect tricks to pick you up. You’re doin’ good—real good—because your face sells, that deer-in-the-headlights look you’ve got going on works. It’ll work even better though if you wear the right shit to show off the merch.”

“Merch? You mean merchandise, right?” Will says. It reminds him all over again that he is now a commodity. He is an object. He chose this because he went down the hall when he should’ve ran.

“Well done, genius,” Spark says.

Will scowls at him for that and Spark just grins and lights a cigarette.

“My body is merchandise,” Will says under his breath as he turns to go back into the bathroom to try on the pants.

They, too, are tight and hug his crotch; they cling to his ass. He feels utterly exposed even though he’s fully dressed and nothing is hanging out. Everything is on display though and he is hyperaware of that as he walks out again.

“Perfect,” Spark says. His eyes flick over Will’s body from head to toe. He’s smiling again, but this time to himself. When he meets Will’s eyes again, his smile changes—it’s for Will this time. “You’re gonna do alright, man. Alright?”

“Alright,” Will says. “Can I still wear my coat?”

“Yeah, don’t want you getting sick or nothin’,” Spark says. “Just don’t button it.”

“Okay,” Will says.

He sits down on the foot of the bed and shifts around a bit uncomfortably at the way the jeans seem to squeeze his thighs, mold against his crotch. It’s not a lot of fun bending his knees either. Denim does stretch though and Will figures after a while, they’ll give enough that he can at least kneel without feeling like his knees are going to pop through the fabric.

Spark is quiet for a long time, maybe twenty minutes, maybe an hour. Will tunes out and loses time as he listens to the people in the room next to theirs fighting about how, You smoked the last of it, you fuckin’ stealin’ piece of shit! A door slams and he hears, That was mine, you cunt! That is followed by the sound of glass breaking and, Liar!

“We have such nice neighbors,” Will muses.

Spark snorts. “They been here about a month now. They’ll be gone soon enough. Either they gonna OD or they gonna get busted. Fuckin’ crack heads don’t last long, no way you look at it.”

“Do you know a lot of crack heads?”

“You live around here long enough, you get acquainted with a few,” Spark says. “You don’t get to know them though since they’re so fuckin’… I don’t even know what. Crazy, I guess.”

“Ah,” Will says. He doesn’t really want to meet any crack heads. He probably will though if Spark is to be believed.

“Hey, you still wearin’ your panties?” Spark asks.

“Boxers,” Will says and only when Spark coughs a laugh does he realize he was fucking with him. Will wonders if his sense of humor has always been so lacking. Then again, he’s got a lot of other shit to worry about besides getting a joke.

“So, yes,” Spark says.

“Yes,” Will says. He’d rather not be, but they’re the only ones he’s got and Spark told him they don’t do laundry until Sunday. The idea is disgusting to him, but he doesn’t want to go totally bare.

Then Spark says, “Lose ‘em, you wear underwear, that’s just one more layer in the way.”

At the look on Will’s face, Spark shakes his head. “Maybe you don’t like it, but you ain’t gotta like it to do it. You get used to that, too, just like everything else. After a while, it’ll feel weird to wear them.”

Will only sighs, gets up and goes into the bathroom again to take off his pants so he can shuck his underwear. That one more layer in the way was also one more barrier between him and the tricks. It gave him that extra two seconds that now seem so precious as he steps out of his underwear and tosses them in the corner.

Spark’s standing up and putting on his coat when Will emerges again. He’s frowning, but Spark gives his shoulder another squeeze then says, “You ready?”

“Not really,” Will says.

He almost flinches from the tired sadness in Spark’s eyes. It’s not for himself, it’s for Will. There’s an apology there as well and Will doesn’t miss it. He’s not mad at Spark for taking him to Mack; he knows that Spark was genuinely trying to help. He saw Will, remembered what Mack had said and saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. He’s regretting it now and Will doesn’t miss that either. He wants to tell Spark it’s okay, that he will be okay. He wants to tell him that, regardless of where he’s ended up, he’s glad it’s not sleeping behind a dumpster or in a shelter. Despite everything, Will is stupidly grateful. He’s not glad to be prostituting himself, but he is glad to’ve met Spark. To’ve met someone who is nice to him. Someone who doesn’t mind he’s a freak.

But then Spark turns to go to the door and the window closes. “Close enough for me,” he says. “C’mon, Will, we gotta work.”

“Yeah,” Will says and follows him out into the purple light of dusk.

The next couple of weeks become something of a routine and Will does find himself adjusting. For one thing, he gets better about being alone and doesn’t hide in the shadows like he did his second and third nights. He lost his nerve when Spark was with a trick and he was alone under the—their—streetlight. His earlier moxie from the first night seemingly disappeared into the ether and Will let the shadows have him until Spark returned. By his fourth night though, Will mustered his resolve once more and didn’t lose it again. He promised to help with the rent and he can’t do that if he doesn’t work.

He still dreams of a book with nothing but blank pages. Sometimes he wakes Spark up. He starts out muttering, but the words rise to a panicked yell as he frantically searches the white pages. “Where are the words? Where are the words? Where are the words?!”

Spark smoothes his hair back from his sweaty face and gently tells him to shut the hell up. Will takes to sleeping curled up against him and Spark just rests his hand on the back of his neck.

“You are fucked up, Will No Name,” he tells him one night and Will almost cries because it’s so true.

Spark tells him he’s fucked up at least a couple of times a week now, it’s become something of a joke between them. In the early morning hours as Chicago awakes and they seek rest, it feels like a knife in Will’s spine. Spark shushes him when his shoulders give a threatening shake.

“I’m sorry, I take it back. You know I don’t mean it.” Will makes a low, miserable sound in the back of his throat and Spark wraps an arm around him, drawing him closer while still shushing him. “Now, none of that, man. None of that. Don’t waste ‘em on this shit.”

So, Will shushes and falls back into an uneasy sleep while Spark pets his hair.

They never talk about these things the next day, but Spark always keeps an eye on him unless he has to go with a john.

One night near the end of the month, they go to a party at Mack’s place and Will meets the other guys. One of them is new—the one Spark hadn’t met before—but not as new as Will. He’s been doing this for a couple of years, but in another part of the city. Mack stole him away from his old pimp—manager, Will reminds himself.

He smokes some of a joint that’s passed around and lets Spark give him a shotgun. Their lips almost touch they’re so close and Will stares into Spark’s black eyes as he inhales the thickly scented smoke he’s exhaling. He finds himself wondering what would happen if they kissed, but then there’s a tickle in his chest and he’s coughing in huge, staccato bursts. Everyone else laughs and before long, Will is laughing right along with them.

Will meets the twink from Maine, a whip-thin blonde with a heart shaped, almost angelic, face. He introduces himself to Will as Stevie and that’s weird to Will—most guys his age would be Steve or Steven, not Stevie. Maybe it’s just a thing, Will thinks. Half an hour later, he’s with Spark in the “I don’t like Stevie” department because he talks too much about things he doesn’t really know anything about. Will gets a round of strange looks when he tells Stevie he’s a pseudo-intellectual. The fact that Stevie doesn’t know what that means only proves his point. Will says something that draws a round of laughter to chase the strange looks from everyone’s faces. It makes him smile and Stevie looks like he may pop something he’s so mad.

Later that night, Spark gets into a shoving match with Stevie. Will sits on the couch, tilted to the side and in danger of toppling over as he watches it escalate. Will is rooting for Spark.

When Stevie lands on his ass on the dirty carpet, Will claps and Spark gives him a quick, fierce grin before going to get another beer. No one helps Stevie up. They aren’t that kind of people—if you fall down, you pick yourself up or else you lay there. Accepting help is a sign of weakness and if you stay down then you just get stepped over. Will learned that lesson very quickly, although he thinks Spark would help him up if he fell.

Not long before they leave for the night, Will sucks Mack off in front of everyone. His head is spinning with pot, beer and some kind of pill the ex-Ranger, David, passed around. He’s so fucked up, he doesn’t even mind that much. When everyone, save Spark, applauds after it’s over, Will stands up with a grin. Then he staggers to the left and bumps into one of the guys, the one from the other side of town. When he feels his hand on his ass, Will jumps and looks at him with bloodshot, startled eyes.

“You wanna?” the guy asks.

Will blinks at him, trying to remember his name. It’s something easy, something made up, but he can’t quite get it. “Wanna what?”

Before the guy can answer him, Spark tugs him away. “No, he don’t wanna, Angel,” he says.

“I didn’t ask you,” Angel says.

“No, but I am tellin’ you,” Spark says. “Leave him the fuck alone.”

Angel holds his hands up and backs away with a mocking smile. “Calm down, big chief.”

“Don’t say that stupid shit to me,” Spark says. “I’ll scalp your stupid ass.”

“Who’s scalping… Wait. What?” Will asks. He’s slumped in Spark’s arms, back leaning heavily against his chest. “Leave hair alone,” he says. Then he laughs and laughs and laughs and—

The next thing he knows, they’re out on the sidewalk and Spark is patting his cheek on the steps leading into the main building. Will doesn’t know how they got from there to here. “I think I’m forgetting again,” he says. His heart is beating too fast just at the thought. Even with the drugs and liquor, it’s downright racing, trying to catch up with its echo that’s suddenly ringing in Will’s ears.

“You’re not,” Spark says. He sits back on his heels and looks into Will’s face. “You passed out right there in the middle of the living room and Mack helped me carry you out ‘cause I wasn’t gonna leave you in there. You’re fuckin’ wasted, man.”

“I kinda like it though, being wasted. It’s… hmm… Quieter, yeah” Will says with a grin as his heart slows back down. Then he frowns. “I can’t believe I… with Mack though… that was…”

Spark nods and then shakes his head. His long black hair whips around his face. It’s better lit here out front of Mack’s building and Will is fascinated to see how it flashes with a deep indigo sheen in the brighter light. He’s never noticed that before.

“Can I touch your hair?” Will asks. He leans back then rebalances himself and struggles forward again.

Spark eyes him for a second and then shrugs. “What the hell? Sure,” he says and leans forward with his head down. Some of his hair falls across Will’s knees in inky loops and whorls. The rest disappears down into the shadows puddled between them.

“Silky,” Will says. His voice is almost wondering as he lets Spark’s hair slide through his fingers like black water. “Wow. I like it.”

Spark laughs so hard his shoulders shake and Will grins, wondering what’s so funny. “I repeat: You’re fuckin’ wasted,” Spark says from beneath the curtain of his hair.

He lets Will pet him a little bit longer and then sits back. Standing, he holds his hands down to Will and wiggles his fingers at him. “C’mon, time to go home,” Spark says.

Will takes his hands and lets Spark pull him up and laughs when he falls into him. He breathes in the booze and pot smoke smell of him, the underlying scent of tobacco and finds he likes it. “I knew… knew you’d help me up if I fell down,” Will says.

“What’re you goin’ on about now, Will?”

“Nothing,” Will says. “I was just thinking earlier is all.”

“And it’s all… whatchacallit… relative, right?”

“We’re not related,” Will says. Then he stops and looks up at Spark. He squints to bring his face into focus. “Are we?” He wonders if he forgot that, too, but then if that’s the case, he doesn’t know why Spark would lie to him about it.

Spark only laughs again and turns Will so he’s facing the right direction. Will tolerates the gentle manhandling with amicable placidness. “No, Will No Name, we’re not related,” Spark says.

“Oh, okay,” Will says. Then they’re moving and Spark’s got a hand on his back to guide him when he stumbles too far towards the curb. “That’d be weird, huh?”

“It’d be impossible,” Spark says. “I’m all Blackfoot and you’re all white dude.”

“Why are your feet black?” Will asks.

“No, you idiot, that’s my tribe,” Spark says.

“Ah,” Will says. He thinks about that a second and nods. “Got it.”

“You sure?” Spark asks. He sounds amused.

“About that at least,” Will says. “Not about much else though. I shouldn’t’ve done that with Mack. Why did I do that? Why did he make me do that?”

“You did it ‘cause you’re outta your head bombed and Mack’s your manager,” Spark says. “He made you do it ‘cause he can and ‘cause the new ain’t wore offa you yet. He’ll stop though, I promise.”

“Good,” Will says with another nod. “I don’t like doing that with him. With any of them, but especially with him because he… he should know better.”

“Why’s that?” Spark asks. He steers Will away from a chain link fence and when Will overcorrects, heading for the curb this time, he carefully maneuvers him back from there as well.

“He just should,” Will says. “He was like us, so he oughtta know how… how…”

“Fucked up that is?” Spark supplies.

“Yes! Exactly!” Will grins and turns to smile at Spark. He almost falls again.

“Careful, concrete’s hard, you don’t wanna be kissin’ that,” Spark says as he catches Will’s shoulders and turns him around again to keep him moving.

“Ick,” Will says. He tips his head to the side, which throws his balance off again and Spark mutters a curse as he grabs him. Will carries on, mostly oblivious. “Did you know that I don’t even remember what it’s like to be kissed or to kiss somebody? Isn’t that weird?”

“You are weird,” Spark says as he rests both hands on Will’s waist to better steer him. “Ain’t much you say or do don’t surprise me by this point. ‘Specially when it comes to shit you don’t remember.”

“It’s fucked up, yep,” Will agrees. “I wonder what it’s like though.” He makes an unhappy scoffing sound. “I know what everything else is like, but not that. I don’t want to kiss the tricks though, but that’s okay because none of them try to do it anyway.”

“Because kissing’s somethin’ you do with people you give a damn about,” Spark says. “You’re a warm body with a coupla holes they need for a few minutes. There’s a big damned difference.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Will asks.

“No,” Spark says. “I know better than to expect anything else by now.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Will asks.

“Since I left home damn near it. I turned my first trick in a Wisconsin bus station bathroom,” Spark says. “It was all downhill and a one more state from there.”

“That’s… What is that?” Will asks.

His heart feels heavy. He’s sad about Spark in a bathroom, touching what was probably some dirty old man. He doesn’t like the picture of his too skinny young body kneeling on a sticky tile floor with all of his blue-black hair falling around him like a broken dream. All of Spark’s design is sadness turning to jaded bitterness. That will turn him to dust scattered across a potter’s field one day, probably sooner rather than later. Will’s throat tickles with sorrow and his eyes burn with it.

“Stop it, Will,” Spark says. He halts him on the corner. Just up the way their street light glows in the darkness. Will blinks at it and watches fragments of light burst into prisms made from the wetness in his eyes.

“Your design is fucked up,” Will says as he swipes at his face.

“Everybody’s design is fucked up,” Spark says as he steps around to face Will. He blots his face with the frayed sleeves of his over shirt. “Don’t cry for me, you asshole. I did enough of that for myself a long time ago. You don’t get to do it, too.”

“I can’t… it’s just… I can see it,” Will says.

“You see somethin’, that’s for damn sure,” Spark says. He doesn’t sound mad at Will for this as he wipes his wet face and Will’s glad for that much at least. “What the hell’s this design shit you’re always goin’ on about anyway?”

“It’s how the—it’s how…” Will trails off and shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just how I see things. It’s like… I watch it happening. I watch it being designed.”

“That’s… I don’t know what that is,” Spark says. “Not only are you fucked up ‘cause you can’t remember nothin’, you’re also a special type of headcase.”

“Thanks,” Will says. “I feel real special.”

“You oughtta,” Spark says, studying him. “People like you… even if you can’t remember you… you’ve got somethin’.”

“A bad case of crazy brains, sure,” Will says.

Spark grins at him and gives his face one last swipe with his shirt sleeve. “It’ll do for now,” he agrees.

“Uh-huh,” Will says. “I… Can I tell you something?” Spark nods. “I don’t know, but I think I was like this even before I forgot. I can feel that.”

Spark nods. “Makes sense. There’s that sayin’, goes somethin’ like, wherever you go, there you are. You can run away from your life and all the shit in it, but you’re stuck with yourself, I think is what that means.”

“Stuck,” Will says with a sigh and a nod.

“You are here, Will No Name,” Spark agrees.

“That’s no fun,” Will says.

“Not much is,” Spark tells him.

Will watches Spark for a minute, how the shadows fall into the hollows made by the light-stroked angles of his face. He looks like he was carved by the most talented of hands, not created of flesh and blood. He’s smart, too, uneducated maybe, but so far from being a moron that Will wonders about all he could’ve been. He could’ve at least been more than this, Will thinks. No, Will knows. He could’ve been loved. He should’ve been loved. Spark deserves that.

Will lurches forward and kisses him without much thought past that. Spark makes a surprised sound and then pulls away to look at him. “The fuck are you doing?”

“Um… Kissing you?” Will asks.

“Yeah, but why?”

“Because I… because someone… you,” Will huffs and tries to stuff his hands in his pockets. He misses and his hands zip down his outer thighs. “I just… I wanted to…”

“Shut up, Will.” Spark smirks at him, the left corner of his mouth quirking up and Will likes that look on his face. It seems like it was made for smirking. “You suck at this shit.”

He takes Will’s face in his hands and kisses him again, slow-slow, until Will catches on and follows him. There’s an aching, hollow sense of familiarity to the kiss—he’s done this before, his body remembers even if his mind doesn’t. He leans into Spark and shivers at the way his tongue stud rolls over his tongue. Breath hitching, Will leans even closer, grabbing some of Spark’s hair when he clenches his hand against his shoulder. He can feel Spark’s fingers on his hip and his other hand is on the side of his neck, thumb stroking the pulse that beats there like tiny wings. Will can still feel his warm palms on his cheeks as he pulled him forward.

When they break apart, Spark pushes Will’s hair back to look in his eyes. “That’s the last time, got it? It’s gotta be the last time,” Spark says. There is regret in his eyes, but Will doubts it’s half as much regret as what’s eating him up inside. “We can’t do this, man. It’d get complicated then it’d get messy and wouldn’t nobody win shit but a lotta hurt probably. So, no more. Understand?”

“But…” Will says. He frowns and touches his face where Spark’s hand just was. “Why?”

“We’re whores, we fuck other people for a living,” Spark says. “One day, one of us is likely to end up dead or worse. Ain’t no sense and no point in getting tangled up in somethin’ that’s more than bein’ friends.”

Will is and is not surprised to find himself a little heartbroken. Rejection, gentle or otherwise, is a painful ghost rattling its chains in the pit of his belly. He understands though and he hates it. Still, he tries, “Can’t we just—”

“C’mon, Will, it’s time to go home,” Spark says, cutting him off. The conversation is over and Will watches his—perhaps their—chance slip through his hands like smoke.

“I’m sorry I kissed you,” Will says when they’re about halfway home.

“I’m not,” Spark says.

He slings an arm around Will’s shoulders and Will leans into him with a sigh. It’ll have to do because that’s all he’s going to get; Spark doesn’t go back on what he says and Will knows it would be a monumentally bad idea anyway. It would be the very definition of “unhealthy relationship”. Even knowing that, Will’s attachment to Spark is stronger now than it was before. He closes his eyes and walks blind, letting Spark lead him for a few yards as he locks the memory of that kiss up somewhere he hopes it will stay safe and unmarred and unforgotten. This hurts now, but in the end, he knows it would only hurt worse.

“Okay,” Will says way too late for Spark to know what he’s talking about.

Spark turns the key to their room in the lock and leads Will inside. “Okay what?”

“Just, okay,” Will says. “I’m sleepy.”

“We’re gettin’ there, hang on,” Spark says.

“That’s all I do,” Will says.

“Don’t get dramatic on me,” Spark says as he sits him down on the side of the bed and stoops to untie Will’s shoes for him. “It’s too late and I’m too tired.”

“I don’t think it’s dramatic,” Will says. He flops back across the bed. “It just feels true. Like it’s always been.”

“Maybe so,” Spark says. “Now turn around and lay right, I gotta sleep there, too.”

“Yeah,” Will says. He struggles around until he’s lying right, although he’s too far down in the bed. He keeps his eyes closed and idly wonders where his pillow’s gone.

Spark laughs from somewhere above him and Will watches tiny lights flare across his mind’s eye. They are red-orange dots of fire in the night of Will’s creeping sleep.

On the last day of the month, Mr. Business comes back and Will takes half a step back from where he’s standing beside Spark when he sees his car. It’s a silver Jaguar. It has leather interior. It still smelled new when Will was last in it and it probably still does. Mr. Business is the type to take pride in the care and upkeep of his toys.

He wants a room this time and Will tells him where to go—the motel he lives in with Spark. They can get a room there and the manager, Mr. Tran, gives weekly renters a small discount on the fee. Mr. Tran is by far the most cheerful person Will has met while living in this city, in this hole on the fringes of it. He’s nice to the rent boys and thinks he’s doing them a favor with the discount—and by not calling the cops on them. Spark told Will that Mr. Tran’s philosophy on their profession is that a job’s a job and it’s better they do theirs inside, where it’s cleaner and at least superficially safer than doing it in a back alley somewhere. That does not mean Will hasn’t found himself in a few more alleys, however, since most people don’t want an hour or longer. They just want the product of a few minutes work.

The biggest upside to renting at their home-base is that they don’t have to tell the tricks about the discount. So when Mr. Business asks how much it is for an hour, Will quotes him the standard price, goes in and gets the room then pockets what’s left.

Mr. Business isn’t much different than he was before. He came prepared with his own lube and condom. He still has no interest in chit-chat and is brusque to the point of rudeness. Not that Will expects any of them to be friendly, but he is often surprised at how civil they are at least.

Some, on the other hand, are not even as kind as Mr. Business. Wednesday, still hungover and feeling like a skank on top of being a prostitute, Will had a john that kicked him after he’d sucked him off. He’d laughed and got back in his car, leaving Will on the ground while he held his throbbing ribs. He still has no idea why he did it and Spark said that sometimes they just do it because they can, that’s all.

Will is not surprised though when Mr. Business lightly runs his fingers over the bruise on his ribs. He makes a low, humming sound of approval. He likes it, Will can see it in the way his eyes light up and he licks his bottom lip.

“Turn around,” Mr. Business tells him after another minute spent lightly stroking the bruise. He wants to press down, but doesn’t and Will’s glad for that. “You remember what I told you before?”

“Be quiet and be still,” Will says.

His heart is already thudding. He was actually starting to think—hope—that this man wouldn’t come back after all. It’s been days since he saw him and he’d just started to push it out of his mind. Something about this man is unsettling; his patience, his brittle calm… the way his eyes turned to burning ice when Will found the words—use me—that really did it for him.

He’s afraid now that in doing so, in finding those words, he’s endeared himself to Mr. Business in some way. He thinks maybe he’s unlocked a door that would’ve been better left closed. He has the full two hundred dollars extra fee tucked in the pocket of his jeans, which are laying on the floor right inside the door. It’s enough to keep him there, hands bunched in the fabric of the cheap polyester blend bedspread.

“Good,” Mr. Business says.

Then he snaps on his gloves. A second later, he’s twisting slippery fingers inside of Will and Will is telling himself that this time he won’t like it. This time he won’t beg.

Pleasure flares up his spine a minute later and Will grits his teeth and tries to think about something else. It doesn’t work because Mr. Business seems to know all the tricks and pushes through them or goes around them or sneaks up on them from the side. This man is fearsomely intelligent and terribly competent. By the time he’s got three fingers inside of him, Will is trembling all over and sweat is streaming off his sides in the cold air of the room. He’s once more and trying not to moan and whimper, trying not to fuck himself back on the fingers in him. Mr. Business makes him feel filthy and wanton. He despises it, but he loves the way the pleasure burns through his body.

A strained sound finally escapes his throat despite his best efforts, his body starting to wind clock spring tight as he teeters on the verge of orgasm. Just like he should know by now, even if it is only the second time, Mr. Business takes his fingers away. Will pants and waits though, certain he’s going to start pushing his cock inside of him next. When it doesn’t happen, Will looks over his shoulder at him and finds Mr. Business lazily stroking himself. His eyes are closed, so he doesn’t see Will move and he’s thankful because he forgot to be still. He has to be still. He hurts, just like last time, he hurts and now he’s being made to wait. It only makes it hurt worse.

Mr. Business strokes a hand over the curve of Will’s ass and says, “You need to come back down. I don’t want you going off too soon.”

“Please,” Will whispers.

Mr. Business laughs. “Soon enough.”

“Please,” Will whispers again a couple of minutes later.

Mr. Business gives his ass a sharp smack that makes Will rock forward on his elbows. “Hush.”

Will hushes. Will waits. His cock throbs and his breath catches with anxious anticipation. This man keeps him on edge because he thought he knew what he wanted, but now he’s gone and changed the rules on him and he’s lost again.

Will focuses on his breathing to tune out the ache of want in his body. He’s so far into himself that when Mr. Business pushes the head of his cock into him, Will startles and then moans before he can stop himself. Mr. Business grabs his hair and pulls his head back to whisper in his ear, “Mind yourself, boy.”

Will nods the best he can and Mr. Business lets go of his hair. He fucks him slowly this time, so slowly that he keeps Will right on the edge. He’ll fuck him hard and deep for a few strokes then he’ll slow back down to shallow thrusts and there’s no pattern Will can find. His body is a livewire of anticipation and pleasure that’s verging on agony.

“Do you want to come?” Mr. Business asks. He sounds calm, save the faintly breathless strain in his voice.

“Yes,” Will says. His fingers are bunched in the bedspread, knuckles hurting and white he’s clenched his hands so tightly in the scratchy fabric.

“Say please.”

“Please.” Will tries to think, to suss out what he wants to hear. “Please, make me come.” He swallows back the old familiar bile of self disgust and says, “Use me.”

Those are the words. He’s opening another lock on the door of Mr. Business, but he can’t help it. He’s doing something to him, sowing some kind of seeds. It feels wrong to Will, like he is being played with for some bizarre reason. This isn’t usual, he doesn’t think. People are kinky, he has an understanding of that, but this somehow goes beyond that. Going beyond is also part of Mr. Business’s design.

“Tell me when you’re close to coming,” Mr. Business says. “If you don’t then we’re going to repeat this until you get it right. Understand?”

His hips jerked forward at the words, at use me, but he calmed himself back down. Will can feel the strain of his self control in the way his fingers are flexing and clenching against his hips. He wants to move, but he’s not done yet. He’s moving a little faster now, a little deeper, but it’s still not enough.

Will nods and that’s good enough for Mr. Business. Will’s mouth falls open on a breathless, soundless scream when he starts to fuck him in earnest, no more teasing, no more toying. This is relentless, tireless pounding that sings through Will’s whole body. His stomach muscles clench, release, clench, release as it builds inside of him in waves. The bedsprings scream and Will knows now he can make some noise now, so he does. He cries out over and over, but he remembers what Mr. Business told him. He hangs onto it because he doesn’t want to do this again, not tonight.

When his body is starting to feel like it’s coming apart, his stomach muscles clenched tight in a trembling sheet across his belly and pleasure a snake in him, ready to strike, Will says, “I’m close. Now. I’m gonna co—”

It hits him and he bucks, mouth open again in a wordless, noiseless scream. He twists and writhes when he feels Mr. Business’s fingers digging into the bruise on his ribs. It runs into the stream of his pleasure and together, the two become a river that floods Will because he doesn’t know where one ends and the other begins. It hurts and it feels good and it’s confusing and oh, God he doesn’t want it to stop. He wants it to’ve never happened.

Mr. Business has just sown a seed, Will knows he has, even as he bucks and makes helpless, whimpering sounds in the back of his throat.

A couple of minutes later, he hears, “Yes,” through the fog in his mind and sags with relief. It’s over for now. For this time.

Mr. Business pulls out of him as roughly as before and without his hands on his hips to hold him up, Will collapses on the bed with a soft sound of exhaustion. He lies there for maybe ten minutes before Mr. Business’s voice cuts in with, “Get up, get dressed and get out. I want a shower before the time’s up on this dump.”

Will nods and pushes himself upright. He sits for a second and clumsily tries to push the sweaty curls of his hair out of his face. It doesn’t really work and so he staggers to his feet and fumbles his clothes on, leaning against the door for support. Mr. Business doesn’t even look at him. He’s got his trousers on again and seems lost in thought.

Will ducks out of the room and slips down to his and Spark’s so he can take a shower of his own. It helps jolt him out of the fog he fell into, but as he washes, he tries to work out what happened. He touches the bruise on his ribs and remembers the river it made when it mixed into his pleasure. He tells himself to stop, the money is not worth it and that—that is true. Will has a dangerous curiosity about this though, about what’s going on. He wants to figure out what Mr. Business is up to with him. He wants to know his complete design.

Spark gives him a concerned, curious sidelong glance when he makes it back to the light pole, but he doesn’t say anything. Will doesn’t offer any details or comments. He still hates Mr. Business, but his curiosity has made his bed for him, whether he likes it or not. Will has a tendency to follow things all the way through, regardless of where they may lead. It’s something else he knows instinctually about himself. Once something’s caught his head then he is caught and can’t extricate himself until he’s worked it all out to his satisfaction. That way lies madness or death, he knows and it scares him, but he doesn’t think he can hide from it either. It’s one of those things that’ll get him in the end. If not now with Mr. Business then later with someone else.

“Be careful of that one,” Spark says after a few minutes. “I don’t know what that fucker’s deal is, but he ain’t all right. He’s doin’ somethin’ when he takes you and I don’t just mean doin’ you funny, I don’t think. I don’t know why, but there it is.”

“He is,” Will agrees.

“What is he doin’ to you?” Spark asks. His voice is sharper than it usually is, his black eyes beetle-back bright in the yellow light.

“I don’t know yet,” Will says. “He’s got a design, but I can’t figure it out.”

“Leave that motherfuckin’ shit alone,” Spark says. “I don’t give a damn about his design and neither should you. The fuck, Will?”

“I don’t know that either and that’s part of it—I have to know,” Will says.

“What if he fuckin’ kills you?”

“That’s not part of his design,” Will says. “He wouldn’t do all this just to kill me.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know!” Will yells, his frustration with not knowing so much finally popping out the seams of the carefully constructed box he’s been keeping it in. “I don’t fucking know, Spark! I just do! And I have to know what it is, alright?”

“Fuck no, it’s not alright,” Spark says. He grabs Will by the shoulders and digs his fingers in to hold him there. “You even hear yourself? Even a little fuckin’ bit? This shit is dangerous and you’re runnin’ right at it.”

Will hates that he’s upset Spark—made him mad—something, but he can’t stop now that he’s made up his mind. He can only try to reassure him. He reaches up to touch one of his hands and squeezes his fingers the best he can with them digging into his shoulder.

“I’ll be okay,” he says. “He won’t kill me.”

“He’s gonna do somethin’ to you and you know it, too. I don’t need that whacked out The Shining thing you got goin’ on to know that,” Spark says. He leans close to Will’s face to stare intently into his eyes and slides his hands up to cup the sides of Will’s neck. “Don’t fuck around with that bastard.”

“I’m sorry,” Will says and looks away.

Spark lets him go and steps back to run his hands over his head. “You’re doin’ wrong, man. I am tellin’ you this.”

“I know,” Will says. “I’m sorry and I know and I can’t leave it alone. I have to figure it out.”

“Crazy son of a bitch!” Spark yells at him.

Will flinches, but only slightly and then turns to look across the street. “We’ve already established that,” he says. His voice is flat and he’s sorry and Spark’s right, but done’s done and he can’t go back now.

“Will,” Spark says.

He sounds worried, tired, sad and exasperated. It’s a mixed tone of voice that is tantalizingly familiar to Will, but he doesn’t know where, why or how. He just knows he doesn’t like it coming from Spark, but in a way that’s different from the way he despises how it echoes down the empty corridors of his mind. He resents it in the old shapeless, formless, imageless context he knows he’s heard it in before.

With Spark, there is none of that, all that’s there with him is a dull ache of regret that he can’t do the one thing he’s asked of him. Will sighs and lets his shoulders slump as he stares into the murky nightmare darkness across from him. Without thinking, he turns to Spark and hugs him, presses his face into his chest and hangs on. For a second he thinks Spark won’t return the hug, but then he does and Will feels a little better.

“A damned fool, you are, Will No Name,” Spark says into the top of his head before gently disentangling himself from the embrace.

Will smiles humorlessly and shrugs, trying to let it roll off his shoulders where it sits like a pair of ravens. “Why do you call me that?” Will asks him.

“Because you have no name,” Spark says.

“My name is Will,” he says.

“Yeah, but what’s the rest of it?” Spark asks him.

Will stares at him, eyes narrowing a bit. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly,” Spark says. “Will No Name.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I gave you a name, a whole one,” Spark says. “Now you’re not a ghost.”

“Is that part of your—”

“If you ask me if that’s some kind of tribal thing, I will kick you,” Spark says. “If you’re lookin’ for mystic Indian bullshit then you’re lookin’ at the wrong Indian.”

“You mean Native American,” Will says.

Spark tilts his head back and laughs up at the sky so loudly it echoes all the way up and down the street. “No, I mean Indian. Indians are the only ones even use the word anymore. I think that’s pretty funny.”

“Isn’t Native American the… uh… correct term?” Will asks.

“Politically correct, yeah,” Spark says. He shakes his head. “If you think about it, Indians and politics ain’t never been real close friends though.”

Will frowns. “I guess you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” Spark says. “We’re taught what the Battle of Wounded Knee really was.”

“What was it?”

“A goddamned massacre of women, children and old people,” Spark says. He curls his lip.

“Oh, I didn’t—”

“Know? I figured,” Spark says. “It’s not your fault and I ain’t mad at you about it. History’s written by those who win is all.”

“You’re smart,” Will says. He feels like a moron the moment he says it, even though he does mean it; he’s thought it since his second day with Spark. Because sometimes he says things like that and it can’t be missed.

“Not really,” Spark says. “I just ain’t stupid is all.”

“Is there a difference?” Will asks.

“Yeah, there’s a difference and a damn big one at that,” Spark says. “I ain’t stupid, but you’re smart.” He tilts his head to the side in thought. “You do some seriously stupid shit though.”

“Fuck you,” Will says. “I still think you’re smart though.”

“Keep talkin’ that way and I’m gonna start thinkin’ you’re sweet on me,” Spark says, turning to look at Will. He flutters his eyelashes at him and smiles.

Will feels his stomach clench and then flip. My God, look at his eyelashes, he thinks with only the faintest touch of revulsion now. They didn’t pay enough attention to Spark though and they missed out. He has thick black eyelashes that fringe around his eyes like shredded silk. They even shine faintly in the bad light. He’s got a smile that would make the devil blush and cheekbones that Will could happily cut his hands on.

Then there’s all the rest and yeah, Will’s a little sweet on him. He is wasting his time though and Spark has made that abundantly clear. So, he just breathes through the little ache in his belly then shoves Spark playfully while he’s still batting his lashes at him. Spark laughs as he tips to the side, his long braid of hair swinging like a pendulum through the air.

“Sweet like antifreeze,” Will says as he rocks back on his heels with a grin that’s only half forced.

Spark leans back against the light pole and chuffs out a bit more soft laughter before lighting a cigarette. Will wonders what it would be like to taste the smoke coming out of his mouth, having it exhaled into his lungs, like the marijuana smoke had been. He looks away at that and back into the nightmare darkness across the street.

A little while later, a car pulls up and motions for Spark to come on. He gets in the car and Will watches the taillights disappear into the darkness.

Twenty minutes later Spark comes up the sidewalk with a bloody lip and skinned, bleeding knuckles. “We’re done for the night, c’mon. We can deal with Mack later,” he says. He grabs Will with his other hand and drags him away from the streetlight.

“What happened?” Will asks as he twists out of his grasp to cut in front of Spark and look at him.

“Guy was a fuckin’ limp noodle and thought he was gonna take it out on me, that’s what,” Spark says. He wipes his bloody mouth on his forearm. “Ain’t my fault his dick’s broke. I told him that, too.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Tried to kick the shit outta me, but he got the shit kicked outta him instead,” Spark says. His grin is fierce, the one that makes him look wolfish. He’s got blood on his white-white teeth. Then he tugs at Will’s sleeve to get him moving again.

Will blinks, processes that then asks, “What did you do to him then?”

“Left his ass laying in an alley with a broke nose and what I hope like hell is a fuckin’ concussion,” Spark says.

“What if he calls the police?”

“He ain’t gonna say a fuckin’ thing,” Spark says. “Tricks don’t say nothin’ just like whores don’t say nothin’. You can’t go cryin’ to the cops about shit like this ‘cause they ask a lot of questions. Like, What were you doing in that neighborhood, Mr. Suburban Soccer Dad? and other uncomfortable things like that. The tricks are too embarrassed to talk and we’re just trash, so cops don’t give a shit if we get beat up.”

“We’re not trash,” Will says.

Sometimes he feels like trash and that’s the truth, but underneath that is always the knowledge that he’s also a human being. He deserves to be protected or helped if he needs such a thing from the police. He has a right to live and exist just as much as anyone else. He is not a scrap of paper caught in the gutter.

Someone once said that we’re all laying in the gutter though. It’s just some of us are looking at the stars. Will remembers that, but not who said it. If that’s the case then he’s looking at the same stars everyone else is looking at.

“You with me?” Spark asks.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m here,” Will says. “I was just thinking about the stars in the gutter.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Will says. “Let’s get you cleaned up and maybe when we’re done, we can walk down to Nelly’s for breakfast before we go to bed. My treat.”

Spark’s still thinking about stars in the gutter, but he nods. “We can do that, if you want to. I could eat for sure.”

Will nods and they walk on. The night teems with shadows all around them and Will sees them, but he doesn’t mind them now.