Wicked Boy (22) (Patreon)

(Warnings for: abuse.)

Abram isn't entirely wrong.

I don't have many friends — especially not one that I would invite along for coffee.  The scene is just as peculiar to me as it is to the barista, the quietness of my morning broken by something out of routine, out of character, and it has my hands trembling.

I inhale, turning from the counter, two hot americanos sleeved in holiday-themed, recyclable paper.  Ezra sits under the open sign that's attached to the window, the neon-light of it and the fairy lights dangling befitting him, a softer remnant of Huxley's memory that haunts the upper-class cafe.

Ez's eyes shift from the view of fresh-falling snow into the older, dingier grey slush of the city's heavy traffic before they make their way back to me.  I have the urge to stop, to turn around, to hail another cab.

"It won't stick," I say instead and set Ez's steaming beverage in his reach.  "...If it does, you can leave your motorcycle in my parking spot at the apartment complex.  I don't have a car."

I don't know why I'm offering him niceties. This isn't any different than a presentation, a PowerPoint, a meeting with fifteen well-versed and tired-eyed businessmen.   It's a business deal, I tell myself, even as I take my seat across from Ez.

He spreads his legs beneath the table, slouches the slightest bit, and our knees bump.  I nearly lurch out of my skin at the contact, and he reaches for the cream.  Ez hums,

"Boyfriend,"  Ez says this simply, his teeth split by the straw between them.  He tilts his head at my surprise, reaches forward, swiping the raw sugar from the edge of the table.  "Simple, huh? I'm your boyfriend."

He rips open a package and dumps one after the other into his watered-down shots of espresso.  I watch in dull distaste.

Boyfriend.

What?

Wait — what?

"Excuse me?"  It's really all I can manage, my brows gathering.  Ez exhales.  His eyes catch mine again, reflect the way the lights bounce jovially to the cafe melody, and for a moment — I feel like we're back in the red room of W 67th.  He reaches into his pocket and checks his phone.  He then nods towards Abram, whose back is turned to our booth.

"To avoid somethin' like that."  Ez shrugs, slides his phone towards me.  It's open to an input contact screen.  "Say I'm your boyfriend."

"...Right."  I laugh softly, adjusting my glasses.  Ez taps the screen of his phone impatiently, and I take it from him.  Milan Minett.  "Because that's convincing."

"...He said ya' have a type," Ez scoffs, ripping the plastic off of another small container of hazelnut cream, "yeah?"

"...That's a lot of sugar."  I don't mean to say it or to stray from the subject at hand — but my stare is tied to the way that the cream splits through the dark beverage.  Ez pulls the straw from his teeth, swiping it through the liquid until his coffee pales and settles. His eyes lift to mine, something unnerving about the way he's unraveled into the man I met outside the motel room.

"Well. When I said to get me whatever ya' like,"  he snorts a little, pulling his phone from my hands.  "I didn't expect ya' to like it so fuckin' bitter."

"I didn't expect you to like sweets." I frown, pulling my work bag off of my shoulder. The contract between us peeks from its unzipped opening. Ez nods towards it.

"Signed it?" His lips snag into a smile, ringed finger flicking towards the packet.

I avert my gaze, eyes on the drink that warms my palms.

"Yes." I pick at its cardboard cozy, "Do you require payment upfront?"

Ez laughs, something unbothered and strict. It contrasts with the low quality of it, the snake-like reverberation.

"Nah. Trial run, remember?"

Easy.

"Okay." I struggle to pull my gaze away from my cup. When I do, Ez's head tilts mildly in recognition. His regard strays over my features, over my neck, down to my hands. I feel wholly dissected by it. "...So what's next?"

"We go over what ya' need from me," His expression changes minutely, and he leans forward in his seat. His knees press against mine under the table, his paper coffee cup silent when it touches the table. My chest feels like it's tightening, balling into a fist. Ez reaches, and my eyes fall on his finger that trails over the pulse of my wrist. "What ya' want."

"Company," I say quietly, firmly, as Ez's thumb presses into the center of my palm. I watch it.

"And?"

"... Honesty. I want — to tell you things."

"Yeah?" His clipped nail drags over the arches of my knuckles.

I open my hand, and for a moment, I let Ez interlace his fingers with mine. I feel comforted; I feel delicate; my bare fingers caught between the metal that adorns his. There's something — something that feels like the hint of a spark, and I feel anxiety pool in my gut. Ez's eyes shift to follow mine, the contrast between us.

"I want to tell you things that you won't be able to tell anyone else."

Ez stares, something catching in his expression that I can't dissect.

"...Touch?" Ez asks, and our eyes don't meet, something lost in the hold we have on one another. I tell myself it's nothing, that he's assessing my needs as a customer, and I'm confiding them, "do ya' want me to touch you like this?"

My heart leaps. I pull my hand back, untangling our fingers.

"Actually," I say and place my hands in my lap. Ez's brow lifts in interest. "As part of our contract. I would like it best... if we don't touch at all."

—

I was sixteen, the only time I fled from my home life, and Lucas' house was the only safe-haven I could think of. He was my best friend — and, at least, in my mind, the only protected place to descend into.

Lucas didn't acknowledge my first three frantic calls because he was on a date with Sheena Norton. But finally, on the fourth, and after I found myself standing underneath a bus stop near his home to hide from the rain, he answered.

I found it hard to breathe, hard to articulate exactly what I needed — what I felt, what I wanted.

Maybe I didn't know. Perhaps that was why — there was always someone there, guiding me along, this way and that because I was just a threadbare blanket, an empty jar, a purposeless thing awaiting validation of my usefulness.

"Just come to mine. I'll meet you there." Lucas said it so simply, and the Gotthardt residence doors opened to me that night — almost like a beacon for change, a wish for contentment.

I greeted him there, drenched and desperate, sporting an open wound across my shoulder from where my father's belt had landed off-target in a quarrel, and Lucas never sought to pry further.

Maybe it was because he hadn't cared, but at the time, it had felt personal. It had felt like something unspoken — because Lucas was all snark and wit, eyes always half-lidded with his ambiguous curiosity, but that was one thing he decidedly didn't want to know, and one thing he didn't question. He gave me a warm washcloth, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and pointed in the direction of his bathroom.

When I came back, shaken, humiliated, and unnerved that I'd ran from someone with so much leverage and consequence — someone whose thumb I would spend the rest of my life under,

Lucas gestured to the television, flicked through a few videogames with an unsettled idiom, then his eyes fell on my wet shirt, the way the white had spilled a blossom pink with blood, and then back at me.  I felt my throat constrict as he sat next to me, as he put his hand on my knee, the warmth from it spreading through the chilled and aching parts of me.

"Your dad really fucks you up," Lucas was quiet, serious — something strangled in his expression, like his childhood care for me had rippled across the surface, and the bout of shock at the familiarity of it made my fingers curl, "don't he?"

I didn't say anything, eyes blurred and sore. Maybe I imagined it — perhaps I was bitter and sorry, desperate for love, and I imagined that look, but Lucas took my glasses from me gently, and I could smell pine, the wood of his home, and cheap detergent,

"With all his money and his private schools," he said, as I scrubbed my sleeve over my eye, melting with the acknowledgment into someone weaker than I already was, "and..."

I lifted my head as the man next to me folded my glasses and set them on his nightstand, the mattress shifting with his weight.

"Do you think..." the words felt like they ripped from my throat, somewhere lodged and surprising, and they cracked across the space between us with a vulnerable infringement.

"...Is it me?"  I asked my childhood friend, and it sounded like more than I wanted it to — sounded like a beg.  "Do you think — it's me?"

"Milan..." And Lucas laughed quietly, humorlessly; he paused, tapped his knuckles against my knee, and turned back to me, his look unsure for once. His green eyes shimmered with passing images on the muted tv screen. He dimmed with each gathering bout of tears until I blinked them away.

"...Can I kiss you?" Lucas shrugged a bit like it didn't matter much, like it was a careless thought — and my eyes widened a little, unsure, heart a weighted and drowsy creature that felt real only at that instant, thundering in my ribs, promising something happier — but I nodded, wiped at my face quickly, as he bent closer, marveled what this meant,

And his hand was warm against my skin, thumb flitted under the soft skin under my eye, and I watched his eyes, his dark lashes — and he pressed his thumbs into the trimmed hair near my ears.

His lips pressed against mine, and I could taste lemon-drops when he cupped my face, when his tongue ran across my own. I inhaled softly, stomach lighting with something different than apprehension, something that reminded me of dread, but my hands came up to his shoulders— pulling at the fabric that was drawn tight across his chest.

Lucas pressed forward, kissed me harder, and I let him, our noses bumping clumsily, tears and rainwater, as he pulled away.

"I always thought..." His hands traveled down, touched my broken skin, his jaw set with something different, with something troubled. I awaited his words, hoped for something sweet, desired to be held. "And, fuck. Did I hate you for it?"

It wasn't how I wanted to be touched.

The jar that I was, the threadbare sheet, took his words as stitches, as filling, and the lid twisted shut.

The blanket grew thicker.

"... Guess you're nothing to be jealous of, after all," Lucas whispered, something empty and weighted, almost like forgiveness. I had stared at him, not knowing quite what he meant.   Something that felt crushed ran into a static-like numbness.

But still, I responded,

"I've never been anything," and Lucas regarded me with that same curious ambiguity as Ez is now, "or nothing."

--

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