really good distraction for the winter
ahahaha, this only took like a month and a half, which is frankly too long for my attention span. it is all things to all people, it is long and fairly overwrought, it is the fierce heartbreaking hooker au. at long last!
Everybody’s in it, and everybody’s gay. Christ, but I do love AUs. The total tonnage of what I don’t know about being a gay prostitute and the geography of Los Angeles could just about squeeze into the Grand fuckin’ Canyon (tm Kevin Smith). Forgive me my trespasses.
Because it’s not a fandom until there’s a hooker AU.
Strays
By Candle Beck
Mulder gave Zito a bottle of whiskey and the key to room fifteen, and told him that his name was Ryan tonight. Mulder smiled and winked and said, “I’ll be at Nicky’s till two or three, but I don’t want to see you before morning.” Mulder took thirty percent and the rest went to keeping Zito alive.
Zito got well and truly smashed and wedged the room door open with his shoe. He was stupid; he’d always been stupid. He was gonna get killed and robbed and then what would Richie do?
The trick was in his forties, wedding ring tan, receding hairline, necktie stuffed in his suit jacket. Zito gave him a big drunk smile and took off his shirt, ran his hands through his hair until it was messy and fell in his eyes like straw. Zito said, “I’m Ryan,” and the trick nodded, swallowing, looking nervous.
It was okay. Nervous was better than mean. Zito chanted in his mind, ‘ryan ryan i’m ryan,’ and ants sketched the wall, Los Angeles shone through the curtains all red and yellow. The trick didn’t know what he was doing, but Zito did, and it was okay. They both jumped when sirens went by outside.
The trick pushed folded money into Zito’s hand and Zito should have counted it, but he was passing out swiftly and the ceiling swam above him. The trick said, “thank you,” very quietly, and left. Zito curled up on the bed with the money between his knees, his jaw aching. The air tasted like pencil lead, and he fell asleep, got woken up by the motel’s manager, because Mulder had only paid for three hours.
Zito walked home, his head down, hands in his pockets. There was a rip in his coat and cool air shuffled in, coiling across his lower back. He was mostly sober, half-asleep. He had a headache and his shoes were falling apart.
Harden was passed out on the kitchen floor, his legs sticking out into the short hallway. Their place consisted of one medium-sized room and a small kitchen. Zito slept in the kitchen. Harden had fresh scratches on his arms and street grime on his face. His dirty sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as Zito hooked his hands in Harden’s armpits and dragged him into the main room, rolled him over onto his mattress.
Harden looked skinnier than he’d been twelve hours ago.
Zito pulled off Harden’s shoes and wiped his face with a red T-shirt. Harden muttered and turned away from Zito, biting the pillow. It had been his night off.
Zito put the money in the ice drawer of the freezer and it was too late to sleep, so he sat by the window and made sure that Harden kept breathing until the sun came up.
*
Mulder took them to a club, and Harden did lines off Mulder’s hand in the back of the cab, clinging to Mulder’s wrist. Zito held Harden’s lightning bolt necklace back with his hand so that it wouldn’t get in the way, drawing it tight across Harden’s Adam’s apple and feeling Harden swallow hard.
It was already past midnight. Harden jittered and grinned so nakedly it hurt to watch, and Mulder told them that all he wanted tonight was a hundred dollars from each of them, and then they were free. Zito met Harden’s eyes, skittery wide eyes, pupils like dimes, and Zito said to Mulder without looking at him, “I’ll have mine in an hour.”
Harden laughed through clenched teeth. “Have mine in thirty fuckin’ minutes, Mark.”
Mulder rolled his eyes, his hands cupped on the backs of their necks, Zito and Harden making faces at each other and taunting, “oh yeah? oh yeah?” Mulder thumbed open a few more buttons on Zito’s shirt, scraping his knuckles down the center of his chest, and Zito held Harden’s shoulders while Mulder carefully put glitter on Harden’s eyelids. Harden licked Mulder’s hand like there might still be some speed there.
“Meet me at the bar when you’re done, all right?”
Zito saluted and Harden giggled, curling his hand in the front of Zito’s shirt and pulling him off-balance. Mulder flicked Zito’s ear. “Don’t get caught, boys,” he said, and then headed into the club.
Harden kissed Zito, his eyes painted like stars, and whispered in his ear, “Game on.”
Harden got a head start, because Zito had to take a couple of shots before he could stand the volume of the music, and he caught flashes of Harden between the pretty boys, gleaming and dancing with his arms above his head. Mulder watched Zito watching Harden from the side of the bar, his mouth thin and tight.
Zito’s throat was on fire and Harden’s pulse was ringing like a bell. Harden liked angel-faced boys with no scars, which was lucky for Zito, because good-looking boys didn’t have to pay for it. Zito trolled the perimeter of the club, sharp and buzzing under his skin, looking for men with creased faces who didn’t belong there.
He found one and smiled shy, pushing his hair back out of his eyes. He waited until they were in the backroom and he had his hand down the guy’s pants before telling him it’d be a hundred to get blown, which was twice the usual price, but the guy was wearing expensive clothes and kneading Zito’s shoulders with desperation.
The guy’s eyes went big and betrayed, his hand clenching around Zito’s wrist. Zito held on, licked his neck, moved his thumb along the underside of the guy’s dick and said raggedly above the bass line, “c’mon baby don’t make me go back out there.”
The guy closed his eyes and breathed out, sinking back against the wall. Zito grinned and got down on his knees.
He saw Harden as he was leaving. Harden had someone half bent over, one hand on the boy’s shoulder and the other working his jeans open. Zito caught his gaze and Harden smiled cheerfully and waved at him. Zito flashed the money with a smirk and Harden's face warped into a scowl, jerking the boy hard back against him. Zito went to find Mulder.
Mulder bought him a drink and they talked about the weather, watching the boys dance. Zito’s eyes spun like kaleidoscopes, and Mulder twisted the ends of Zito’s hair around his fingers. Harden showed up and Zito shook Mulder off him, made fun of Harden and Harden said, “at least mine was cute.”
They toasted the night and then Mulder set them loose, and Zito followed Harden out onto the street as smooth as liquor, where the moon wheeled across the sky and the world was theirs.
*
Harden woke up clean for the first time in weeks, and Zito was at the window, watching the kids play baseball in the sandlot across the street. Harden stuck his head under the sink and blasted himself with cold water, thrumming into his ears and sliding down his bare back. He made himself some toast, his mouth sticky and sour, and filled up a bottle with water.
He checked the ice drawer and there was almost twelve hundred dollars in there, all of it theirs because Mulder had already taken his cut. Rent wasn’t due for two weeks, and there was nothing broken that needed to be fixed.
Harden joined Zito at the card table and said, “Hi.”
Zito smiled and pushed his half-full cup of coffee at Harden. Harden gave him his crusts.
“So I was out in Malibu last night,” Harden said, chipping paint off the windowsill. “I think I met somebody famous. I was on, like, a golf course.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I forget why, but we were there and I definitely recognized this guy.”
Zito chewed absently on a crust, his eyes trained on the sandlot. Harden could see the bruises on Zito’s shoulders through his thin T-shirt. Guys thought that because Zito was tall, he could take it rough.
“Who was it?” Zito asked.
Harden shrugged. His stomach felt small and uncomfortably tight. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, but he forced some of it down, his mind fixed on the half-gram in the toe of his sneaker, his after-breakfast treat. “I’m not sure. He had to be famous, though, he was, like, too good-looking not to be famous.”
Zito snorted. “Sure. Eat the rest of your toast.”
One of the kids across the street jacked the ball through a window, a high shattering noise bursting through the streets, and they scattered like a bomb had gone off. Harden put his feet on top of Zito’s under the table.
Zito had found him blacked out on the floor of a bus station bathroom ten months ago. Harden had regained consciousness with Zito’s arms around him, just as they were trying to haul him into the ambulance. Harden broke free and ran, his heart near to collapse and the walls of his mind as thin as tissue paper.
Zito had put his coat on Harden when Harden was passed out, because Harden wouldn’t stop shaking. Harden found thirty-three dollars and a strip of condoms in the pockets, a dead lighter and a blank business card with an address handwritten on the back. Later, when Harden was high and in the mood to be redeemed, he’d showed up at the address hoping he’d be able to return the coat to the tall guy who’d saved him, the guy whose face he’d never got a good look at but dreamed about sometimes.
He found Mulder instead. Mulder fucked him and then offered him a job. Harden was confused enough to say yes, and then Zito was there and Zito was all that Harden couldn’t remember, and Zito had the same job, and then it was okay.
Harden finished his toast and his body rebelled, sweat breaking out on the back of his neck and his palms crawling. He folded his arms on the table and put his head down, breathing carefully through his nose, vaguely aware of Zito’s hand smoothing across his hair, Zito’s thumb drawing a long straight line, high on his forehead.
*
Mulder didn’t have his name on a lease or anywhere official, lived on the other side of West Hollywood from Zito and Harden’s place. He was rich by rumor and action, but there was nothing written down to trace him back to this.
He had them over on a Tuesday night, dressed in black with his hair spiky and golden, his eyes kohl-shaded. They each killed a bottle of cheap red wine, Zito and Mulder eating macaroni and cheese for dinner, Harden a few forkfuls of plain pasta and then some crank.
Mulder had made good, he was the dream. The building was run-down and there were moths in the closets and hallways, but the place was his, and he had a working television set and a silver watch that Harden was always making plans to steal.
The boys were drunk and slumped against each other on the couch, Zito’s arm over Harden’s shoulders, Harden’s head resting on Zito’s chest. Mulder didn’t believe them when they said they weren’t fucking, but what could he do about it? He could see the artery jumping in Harden’s throat.
“There’s a party tonight,” Mulder told them, sitting in the beat armchair, green and yellow plaid pattern.
Zito rolled his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. Harden snickered for no apparent reason and pressed his face harder against Zito, his eyes screwed shut.
“Out in the Valley. Movie producer, something. He was asking for pretty boys and fuck if you two didn’t come to mind.”
“I’m not pretty,” Harden mumbled into Zito’s shirt. Zito rolled his eyes at Mulder.
Mulder smiled harshly. “Then your crank’s not good enough.”
“His crank is plenty good,” Zito said, his voice edged. He looked surprised for a second, sliding his arm down to cup Harden’s elbow. “Anyway.”
“Anyway. Thousand for each of you, but it’ll be a busy night.” Mulder made an obscene gesture with his hands. He watched as Zito leaned down and whispered something in Harden’s ear. Harden’s hands were starting to jig, twitching on Zito’s knee as he nodded.
Zito looked back up at him, and Mulder still had trouble reading him, Zito’s eyes the color of rum and Coke, the dark-blue tint of his hair, his fine mouth. Zito had never let Mulder fuck him.
“No filming. I broke my hand on that dude’s camera last time.”
Mulder nodded. “I remember.” He wasn’t sure why Zito cared; it wasn’t like Zito had anything left to lose. Mulder glanced at Harden, whose lips were moving silently, eyelids fluttering. “Give him another bump. He’s fading.”
Mulder drove them to the Valley, Zito and Harden messing around like kids in the backseat, playing the hand-slap game. Mulder was glad to be rid of them, leaving them on the sidewalk with their hands in each other’s pockets, squinting against the streetlight in something like pain.
He headed back to Hollywood, checked in on a few other of his boys, and then went to Figueroa and Carson, where Crosby was waiting on the corner in blue jeans and a gray hoodie, smiling hugely as Mulder pulled up and unlocked the doors.
*
They took a cab back from the Valley party at dawn, Harden shivering against the door with his knees pulled to his chest. Zito had tried to keep them in the same room, tried to keep his hand steady on Harden’s back, but he hadn’t been able to. The men at the party were not to be trusted, Zito could see that walking in the door, and Harden kept smiling sweetly at them, and Zito had to let him go.
He’d seen Harden with his nose bleeding, sometime between the fourth blowjob he’d given and the second time he got fucked, and Harden’s eyes were pure white, his face shiny with sweat. Harden was being passed from one man to another, his arms hanging loose and his head lolling. Zito wanted to call time-out and calm him down, but there was no chance of that.
Harden’s hand kept going to the lump of money in his front pocket. Zito stared out the window, the flat orange tinge of the morning settling on the strip malls and palm trees. Old people were already out walking, little dogs in knitted sweaters, bakery trucks stopped in the middle of the road with their hazard lights flashing. It was almost peaceful.
“Richie?”
Harden’s fingers tightened on the money. “Hmm?”
Zito swallowed. He needed a shower worse than he needed air. “I, I’ll take the money over to Mark’s, if you wanna get some sleep.”
Harden’s gaze traced the low city, the sun edging over the tops of the buildings. His cheeks were hollowed, the line of his jaw showing starkly. “Don’t think I’m gonna sleep, man.”
“You should,” Zito told him, scratching at the tear in his jeans. He was pretty sure Harden was out of speed, he’d seen the little plastic baggie with the skulls and crossbones empty on the coffee table as they were stumbling out into the light.
“Yeah.” Harden dug in his pocket and pulled out his half of the money, passing it to Zito without looking at him. “Steal Mark’s watch for me, will you?”
Zito half-smiled and reached out to touch him, but there was static electricity and it snapped into Zito’s fingers and against Harden’s face, and he jerked away, burned.
Harden got out at their place and Zito looked out the back window for him as the cab drove on, Harden shrinking and disappearing into the black hulk of their building. Zito didn’t expect Mulder to be awake this early, but he knocked just in case, and Mulder opened the door without a shirt on, the eyeshadow smudged with lines like fingernails scraped across his cheekbones.
Mulder didn’t say much to him, sitting down on the couch and counting out his cut from the money. Zito stayed standing because it hurt to sit. He asked Zito how the party had been and Zito shrugged.
Someone coughed from the bedroom and Zito let a ghost of a smirk drift on his face. “New boy, Mark?”
Mulder gave him an irritated grin. “Not yet.” He handed Zito the rest of the money back and rubbed his neck, looking exhausted.
“Didn’t realize you still fucked for fun,” Zito said, biting the insides of his cheeks. Mulder glared at him, the muscles in his arms pulled like slingshots, his chest tense.
“Don’t you have a fucking junkie to wet-nurse?” Mulder said quietly.
Zito would have hit him if he wasn’t so worn out. He wanted to light things on fire, smash the TV, tell the boy in Mulder’s bed to get out while he still could. Mulder’s eyes flickered, and he sighed.
“It’s been a long night,” Mulder told him. “Go get some rest.”
Zito ran a hand through his hair and even that hurt. Everything hurt. He nodded and went to the door, asking for no particular reason before he left, “What’s his name?”
Mulder looked at him suspiciously before answering, “Bobby,” with his voice careful around the name like it might break if he treated it bad.
Zito said, “I’ll see you tonight, man,” and left. By the time he got home, Harden was already gone.
*
Harden spent the day at the beach. It was hot and bright and made him feel like his skin was shredding off slowly from the inside. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep until nightfall. He couldn’t stay home with Zito, because Zito would stay quiet and watch him sadly and Harden would want to curl up around him and keep him awake too.
He lay in the sun, sweating out the poison. He’d gotten there early enough to be alone, white birds like thrown napkins, the surface of the sand turning to glass.
It was hard, coming down. He wanted to turn his watch ahead nine hours and pretend he was already over it, but he’d sold his watch last week in between tricks.
Zito took care of him, but Zito couldn’t do anything about this.
Harden only moved to drink his water and fill up the bottle again. The beach began to fill, get colorful and loud. Harden wasn’t sure what day it was, it was still summer and the high school kids told him nothing.
He stayed on the beach all day, his jeans forming to his body, sand rasping into his T-shirt. He did what he could not to think about anything, drifting in strange patterns. His lightning bolt necklace warmed and seared into his skin, and the sun was just below the line of the pier when somebody’s black and white dog came nosing into his side.
Harden was yanked from a terrible waking dream and a high voice was calling the dog off, calling, “Leave him alone, Ed!” The dog barked and licked Harden’s shirt. Harden lifted a hand in bemusement, tugging at the dog’s ears, narrowing his eyes against the dying light.
A silhouette arrived above him and pulled the dog off by the collar. “Sorry,” the silhouette said. “He, uh, he likes shiny things.”
Harden pushed up on an elbow and the sun shifted behind the silhouette and Harden could see his face then, and he thought clearly, ‘oh i get it, it’s the prettiest boy in the whole wide world.’
He smiled without thought, his teeth slick and gritty, and said, “No problem.”
The prettiest boy in the world smiled back at him, clean-white, his cargo shorts splattered with paint, his T-shirt looking brand-new and still unused to his body. Harden cruised him as casually as possible, licking his lips. The boy looked surprised, then kind of scared. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old.
“That’s a neat necklace,” the boy said, pointing with the hand that held Ed’s leash, his voice slightly accented, the South, maybe, Texas. Harden could never tell the difference. Ed strained and panted, grinning at Harden.
Harden touched the lightning bolt, absently hoping that he didn’t look as strung-out as he felt. “Thanks. That’s a. A neat dog.”
The boy laughed, palming his dog’s head. “He’s schizophrenic. Attracted to anything even a little bit pretty.”
Harden made his grin go keen, the skin of his face pulling back. “So’m I.”
The boy blinked at him, his mouth dropped open slightly. Harden ran his eyes over the boy’s arms and legs, the gild of the sunset around him. He could breathe, all at once, like his lungs were out of hock at last.
The boy smiled nervously and said, “Well, um. See ya.” He tugged Ed away, the dog whining, and moved slowly down the beach. Harden watched him go, thinking about maybe following, taking him to get a Coke or a sandwich, fucking him under the pier with the dog tied up and playing in the surf, but he decided not to bother.
The prettiest boy in the world looked back a few times, his face closed up and fretful, and Harden laughed. Harden picked himself up and took off his shirt, diving into the ocean still wearing his jeans, ducking under again and again, broke up into the clear pink light, his hands sliding down the back of his head.
*
Thursday was a Danny night. Zito went to the Glass Slipper Inn without thinking about where Harden was or what sort of trouble he was getting into. It was warm enough that Zito didn’t need a coat, but he wore one anyway, so that he would have a place to put his hands.
Haren was already in the room, his USC baseball cap slung over the bedpost, rolling a joint on the bed. He smiled when Zito came in, licking the paper and folding it over, a small piece of green between his teeth. Zito went over and put his hand on Haren’s forehead, told him, “hold still,” and picked the piece of green out, flicking it away. He kissed Haren, tasting beer and Big Red gum, and then took a shower. The Glass Slipper had excellent water pressure.
Haren was his favorite regular. He was twenty years old, a student, rich and good-looking enough not to have to bother with a guy like Zito, but Haren was also master of the double life.
When Haren was fourteen, his father had caught him jerking off a neighborhood boy and beat him so badly Haren lost eighty percent of the hearing in his right ear. Haren was as straight as a pencil after that, except for the fact that he really wasn’t at all.
His plan, he’d explained to Zito, was to wait until after he graduated, move across the country, and then be as gay as was physically possible. In the meantime, his parents could pay for his college education and the allowance that let Haren afford three hundred dollars a week for the company of a male hustler-nothing more than what Haren was owed for the fact that music would never sound right to him again.
He played baseball year-round for a club team, and belonged to a fraternity. He was taking summer classes so that he could graduate early. He almost always brought weed with him when they met at the Glass Slipper. Zito liked him for a number of reasons, but mostly because Haren viewed him as training ground, practice for being as gay as was physically possible. Zito hadn’t been sucked off so often since he went to work for Mulder. Haren was getting pretty fucking good at it, too.
Zito came out wearing a towel and sat down on the bed beside Haren. Haren popped him companionably in the shoulder, swiping his fingers at the water on Zito’s chest.
“How you been?” Zito asked him.
Haren grinned. “Gay,” he answered, same as he always did, and Zito half-smiled, leaning his head back against the headboard.
“You look rough, man,” Haren told him after a minute, creeping his hand sneakily onto Zito’s forearm, playing the veins of his wrist like a guitar.
“Yeah,” Zito sighed. He didn’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t anything new. “How’s school?”
“I failed a soc exam,” Haren said happily, his finger pattering on Zito’s arm. “One of the guys at the house broke his ankle skateboarding on the roof. I think my history TA is hitting on me.”
Zito hmm’ed and turned over onto his side, putting his hand on Haren’s stomach, which jumped through his shirt. “Go for it, dude. Easy A.”
Haren laughed. “She’s a chick. I’m already not sleeping with my girlfriend.” Zito pushed his shirt up and bent his head, mouthing Haren’s stomach. Haren breathed out cautiously, whispered, “whoa.” He always sounded so surprised, heating up quickly under Zito’s hands, getting hard in the crook of Zito’s elbow.
Zito got Haren to sit up, stripped his shirt off him, and cupped him through his jeans. “Did you bring the money?”
Haren slid down on the bed, his head clonking the headboard. He bit his lip and nodded. Zito pulled Haren’s wallet out of his back pocket and knelt, straddling Haren’s leg. He counted out the three hundred, Haren watching him through half-closed eyes. Zito put the money on the bedside table next to the neat-rolled jay, and settled on top of him, kissing Haren’s throat and undoing his jeans.
“What do you want?” Zito asked, speaking softly into Haren’s good ear. Haren twisted under him and drew the towel off, his eyes shuttering through the possibilities. He pulled Zito’s head close and asked Zito to fuck him. Zito could forget about everything, times like this.
The small of Haren’s back was the exact size of Zito’s hand. Someday, he’d told Zito, when he was allowed to be what he was, Haren was going to get a tattoo there, just over the curve of his ass, and it was going to read in dark blue ink, ‘faster. harder. deeper.’
It was kind of terrible that Zito would never get a chance to see that.
*
Mulder was drunk and for some reason Crosby was still in his house. Crosby slept roughly the same amount as a cat. As soon as he woke up, Mulder was gonna kick him out.
Mulder changed into something without sleeves, idly planning on going to a club. He considered shaving, but he didn’t trust his hands. It was still early, too early to go out, too late to stop drinking. He sat down on the edge of the bed, where Crosby was strewn out like starfish, and tried to make sense of his pocket calendar, figuring out which of his boys should be bringing in money tonight. Most of them were on the streets right now, in cheap motels and backrooms.
Crosby muttered in his sleep. He had nightmares, which annoyed Mulder a little bit. Crosby claimed to have had a hard life, but he didn’t have track marks or scars on his face, and Mulder didn’t really believe it.
Mulder would put Crosby to work, eventually. Another week or so, until Crosby got used to Mulder coming around and Mulder learned a little more about him, discovered something he could hold against Crosby.
Crosby had tried to lift Mulder’s wallet, almost three weeks ago now, at a party somewhere in Van Nuys. Mulder had only been playing dead, catching his breath on the deck, lights like Christmas tree ornaments spiraling in his mind. Crosby had gotten his hand halfway into Mulder’s pocket and Mulder sprung, pinning him to the wood and gently placing a knife against his throat.
He might have killed him, too, had Crosby done something other than smile, silver-blue eyes glinting like money given breath. Mulder took him home instead.
“Hey?” Crosby’s foot poked at his back. Mulder turned and Crosby was yawning, rubbing his chest. “You leaving?”
As if Mulder would ever leave Crosby alone in his place. He nodded, calculating swiftly how much he could charge for Crosby, for those arms and the flat cut of his stomach.
“’Kay,” Crosby said. He looked vaguely haunted, the way he always did when he just woke up. There were many things that he wasn’t telling Mulder, everything. Crosby didn’t know how to do anything but lie. Mulder could change that, though.
“What time is it?”
Mulder checked his watch. “Ten.” He considered that he had no idea where Crosby lived, or what he did for a living besides being a lousy pickpocket. He put his hand on Crosby’s leg, and Crosby gave him a sleepy grin, folding his arms behind his head. Crosby was always up for it. He was gonna be fantastic at this job.
“I’ll drop you off wherever you want on my way out,” Mulder said, his hand scaling Crosby’s leg.
Crosby looked at him, a sly skinned expression on his face. “I wanna go to Paris,” he said, and for a moment, stupid-drunk, Mulder thought about saying, yeah, okay.
*
Zito got home to find Harden sitting on the steps of their building, pressing his hands together and staring at the trash rolling in the gutter. Zito’s breath caught, and he slowed his pace, giving Harden plenty of time to see him coming.
Harden tipped his head to the side and his mouth bent up. “Hi,” he said.
Zito echoed it, and added hesitantly, “How are you?”
Harden half-shrugged, his lower lip chapped and almost bleeding. “Clean.”
Studying him, Zito stayed quiet, crossing his fingers in his pockets. Harden smirked, and moved his hand in an X over his heart. “Swear.”
Zito exhaled. He could see the blue of Harden’s eyes again, his pupils shrank down to periods. “What are you doing out here?” he asked, wanting to push the cobwebs off Harden’s shoulder, rattle the sand from his hair.
“Saving up my energy for the stairs,” Harden replied, and it must be true, the way he was keeping himself perfectly still, each breath measured. Zito offered him his hand, pulled him to his feet.
It was four flights straight up. They started slow. Harden asked, already unsteady, “Where were you?”
“Saw Danny.”
Harden smiled, a bit cold. “How. How is the c-college boy?”
Zito tightened his arm around Harden’s waist, bearing most of his weight and beginning to feel it in his legs and back. “Same. Failing half his classes. His team, like, won some game or something.” Zito paused, then said, keeping his voice carefully neutral, “Maybe you shouldn’t try and talk.”
“I’m fine,” Harden said sharply, and started coughing. They had to stop, Harden slumped over the rail, leaning heavily on Zito and his whole body shaking. Zito saw the sweat rising on Harden’s forehead, and angled so that Harden’s face was against his shoulder, feeling the heat and slick of it through his shirt.
“When did you last sleep, Richie?” he asked, hating the jerk of Harden’s chest, the way he gasped for air.
Harden shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “What’s today?”
“Thursday.”
Harden pushed himself up off the rail, wiping the tears out of his eyes. “Four days. Five? I can’t remember.”
Zito took Harden’s hands in his own and checked to make sure he wasn’t coughing blood. But Harden’s palms were pale and clear. “Okay.”
They made it the rest of the way up, but only barely. Harden wouldn’t let them stop again. Zito was pretty much carrying him by the time they got inside, kicking the door shut, hauling Harden into the main room and laying him down on his mattress. Harden shivered and curled into a ball. Zito sat next to him and opened his hand on Harden’s head, tucking his thumb into the dent of Harden’s temple.
“How was coming down?” Zito asked softly. Harden’s chest jackrabbited. He sighed.
“Actually. Not that bad. Saw the sun set on the beach. I met this. I met a dog.”
Zito raised his eyebrows. “A dog?”
“His name was Ed.” Harden smiled, his face settling until he looked at peace. Zito didn’t know what to say, rubbing his fingers through Harden’s hair, the sand sneaking under his nails.
“We’re rich, you know,” Zito said eventually, feeling the fold of Danny’s money in his pocket. “We could buy back the TV.”
“Fuck the TV,” Harden said, sinking away as Zito watched, tiny weights attached by thread to his eyelids. “Rots the brain.”
Zito snorted a laugh. His hand on Harden’s face started to tremble. He wanted to ask, how long will you last this time? But Harden could never say for sure. He touched Harden’s nose, his mouth. He lay down beside him and whispered, “I’m just gonna hang out here for a minute.”
Harden murmured and burrowed into Zito, his hot face against Zito’s chest, both of them still wearing their shoes.
*
Mulder came by sometime during Harden’s nineteenth hour of unconsciousness. Zito stepped into the hallway to talk to him, his hair wrecked by the bed, flat on one side and stabbing out on the other. Zito paid him for Danny and Mulder made the money disappear.
“Your boy skipped out on both of his regulars,” Mulder said, glaring at Zito. “That’s two hundred dollars he lost me.”
Zito pulled a hand across his face and let out a long breath. “He’ll make it up.”
“I don’t take IOUs,” Mulder snapped. “If he’s more interested in speed than paying his fucking rent-”
“He’s not,” Zito cut him off. “He just got clean.”
“For what?” Mulder scoffed. “A day? Week if we’re lucky?”
“Look, what do you want me to say? He’s clean, he’ll be clean for however long and then he won’t be. You act like this is fucking new.”
Mulder didn’t like the sneer on Zito’s face, briefly imagined hooking his thumbs into Zito’s eyes and gouging until he hit bone, and said quickly, “There’s a fine line, all right? It keeps him up, keeps his dick hard, keeps him on the street, great, fantastic. He’s cuter when he’s tweaked, anyway. But nobody’s seen him since the party in the Valley.”
Zito stared at the floor. “I’ve seen him.”
“You don’t fucking count,” Mulder half-shouted. He stopped, not used to getting angry so fast. Zito was always doing that to him. Mulder tightened his jaw, narrowed his eyes. “Just, bring him to Nicky’s tonight and he can start paying me back, okay?”
Zito shook his head, gritting his teeth. “Not tonight. He’s got to sleep it off.”
“Goddamn it-” Mulder began, but Zito was digging into his pocket, tearing the rest of Danny’s money free, and shoved it into Mulder’s surprised hands.
“There. Two hundred. All right? Let him fucking sleep.”
Mulder stared at him for a second, and then his face twisted into a cruel smile. He pocketed the money. “Well, aren’t you sweet.”
Zito raised his eyes and he looked plainly murderous, his hands clenched in fists at his sides. “You got what you came for, Mark. Don’t play like him being out of the game for a couple of days is gonna break you.”
“Not as long as he’s got you to cover his ass,” Mulder said, and then fell silent, watching Zito glare at him, liking the strict planes of Zito’s face and his hard-carved mouth.
“Was there anything else?” Zito asked, soft enough to be dangerous. Mulder shrugged.
“Free advice. Think real hard about what you’re doing with him. How far down you’re willing to let him take you.”
It felt like a script, nothing real. Not the smallest hope that was Zito going to listen to him. Mulder had never found Harden to be all that fucking spectacular in bed, but apparently with Zito he was a god.
Zito showed him a big fake smile, the one usually reserved for particularly unattractive tricks. “Thanks for stopping by, boss.”
Zito went back inside, and Mulder left, wishing faintly in the stairwell that Zito had, at some point, let himself be filmed.
*
Harden woke up and it was dark outside. The alarm clock’s red neon twelve o’clock was blinking insistently at him, painting his face. Zito was gone, but there was a note taped to Harden’s chest, which was bare, though Harden didn’t remember ever taking off his shirt. Harden took the note over to the window and read it by the streetlight.
‘Gone to work. Eat something. It’s Saturday.’
Harden nodded to himself, the world set in his head again. He made some cereal and took a shower, his feet skidding on the tile and his arms pinwheeling for balance. He realized in astonishment that he actually felt normal right now. Like maybe he was late for class or a date or something.
The stairs were tricky, the muscles in his legs feeling atrophied, but he made it, and walked down the block until he could read the time from one of the bank buildings that loomed a neighborhood over. It was early, only nine o’clock. Harden thought about maybe making some money, idly scanning the street for somebody who looked likely, but he gave it up pretty quickly. It was kinda nice to just walk around, the breeze meeting his skin, a hollow buzzing lighting up his mind.
He had coffee at the diner and it hurt his mouth. He’d chewed through the inside of his cheeks, like always, and he sucked on ice cubes and wet paper napkins, spitting blood into an extra glass. The waitress glared at him, but he tipped like he owned the city, and she would forgive him.
He thought absently that in a day or two he’d be healthy again, his strength would return and it’d be so good going back to it then.
On the street, Harden got propositioned a few times from the alleys, saying back politely, “Sorry, I’m off the clock,” and sometimes they swore at him, sometimes they laughed. Somewhere way far off, a dog was barking.
He got lost, wandering out of West Hollywood and into a place where the air smelled better and fewer windows were broken. There were bicycles in the yards, rope ladders hanging from the trees.
Harden’s feet were aching and his blood was starting to curdle, reminding him in a low insistent voice that some speed would be pretty good right now, the jagged rip through his sinuses, the thin cloud in his lungs. The pop under his skin. He sighed, dark thoughts building in his mind. He’d barely been clean a day. Usually it didn’t happen so fast.
Then his feet were suddenly gone from underneath him, and he was flying, momentarily in the air, crashing on his back. His head snapped onto the sidewalk with a dull crack and stars burst in his eyes. The baseball he’d slipped on shot across the street, rolled into the gutter.
“Oh jeez, are you okay?”
Harden blinked and the prettiest boy in the world was there and he was certain that he’d been knocked unconscious. He smiled all messy and dazed, and his head hurt magnificently. The boy knelt over him, appeared to recognize him for a split second, his eyes widening, and then Harden’s vision filled in gray, casting his last thought to Zito, who was gonna flip the fuck out when he got home and Harden wasn’t there.
*
There was a trick waiting for Zito at the motel, and it was supposed to just be a quick fuck, but the trick liked the look of him, running his hands over the steep curve of Zito’s shoulders, pushing his dick hard into Zito’s throat and Zito sighed through his nose, swallowed around him. He’d lost his gag reflex when he was sixteen, but people were always testing him.
And then the trick offered him five hundred dollars for the night, far more than usual, and Zito couldn’t say no. He wished futilely that they had a working phone at their place, so he could call Harden and talk him through the bad part of the second-day clean, when Harden’s mind was again clear enough to remember how nice being high was.
The trick called him Cody. Zito didn’t know where the fuck Mulder pulled these names from.
Zito got out of there at sunrise, the trick snoring and making the bed shake. There was a mirror with a couple rails of coke on it at the foot of the bed, the lines blurring as the trick shifted. Zito’s whole mouth was numb, white pressure behind his eyelids.
He half-ran home, picturing seared Pyrex pipes, shattered syringes. He was a block away and someone called his name.
Zito would have ignored it, but the voice was familiar, astonishingly so.
He slammed to a stop and slowly turned, and Eric Chavez was there, crumpling an empty coffee cup and tossing it into a doorway, black hair and brown eyes and he was wearing their middle school’s gym T-shirt.
Zito hadn’t seen him in five years. For a long second, he couldn’t even think of Chavez’s name.
Chavez came up to him and he looked completely terrified, jamming his hands into his pockets. “Hi, stray,” he said in a low voice. Zito’s mouth opened but nothing came out. Chavez trained his eyes over Zito’s shoulder, asking tonelessly, “How’s it going?”
Zito’s head snagged to the side. Chavez wasn’t supposed to be here. They were supposed to be three-times removed. “What are you doing here, Ricky?” he managed.
Chavez swallowed. “I’ve been looking for you. For a. A really long time, man. Somebody from back home said they mighta seen you around here. I just. I wanted to check.”
Shaking his head, Zito said without thinking, “I’ve got to go. There’s, there’s somebody I have to see.” He made as if to turn, a flash of black in the corner of his eye, their building, their window four stories up and Harden asleep on the mattress, eating soup maybe, in the shower burning the week off his skin. Chavez caught his arm.
“Don’t do that,” Chavez said desperately. “I’d. I’d like to talk.”
“About what?” Zito couldn’t stop looking at Chavez’s mouth. He’d never been able to.
Chavez moved his shoulders uncomfortably. The light was growing in the corners and angles of things, pressed like fingers against Chavez’s throat. “Can I come upstairs?”
“No,” Zito said automatically, and then winced. They’d grown up together, Zito in the top bunk and Chavez in the bottom, since Zito was eight years old. All Zito wanted to do was leave him on the street and run up the four flights, lock the door behind him.
Zito had fucked it up. He’d been given everything, and he fucked it up.
Chavez was looking at him with that terrible helpless expression that Zito remembered very well. Zito remembered being fifteen years old and accidentally handcuffing himself to Chavez for one joyful weekend before the replacement key came in the mail.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s go get some coffee or something,” he said. Chavez nodded, vaguely wounded.
Chavez couldn’t keep quiet on the walk to the diner; he wasn’t the keeping quiet type. He’d graduated from a technical college in two years and now he fixed computers. He still lived at home, the same cluttered ranch house with Zito’s initials carved into the doorframes, souvenirs from when Zito had been inchoate and stunned with rage to be in his fifth foster home in a year, not believing for a moment that he’d be allowed to stay.
Chavez still saw some of their friends from high school. He still surfed, sometimes. He glanced at Zito as they walked, his hand turning in the air like he wanted to brush the backs of his knuckles across the backs of Zito’s.
He was exactly as Zito remembered him. Maybe gun-shy, maybe older than he should have been, but his face still made Zito twist inside, his hair was still as shiny as cheap vinyl.
They sat in a back booth and Zito wove his fingers together on the tabletop, salt scratching at the undersides of his wrists, and said, “Okay, so talk.”
Chavez’s throat ducked, and he looked down, his eyebrows lowering. “I wanted. I was hoping that you’d. Come home.”
Zito blinked at him, his airway briefly cut off. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
Chavez raised his eyes, his hands clenching on the lip of the table. “You can. Dad’s been asking for you.”
“He has?”
Chavez nodded emphatically. “He didn’t mean what he said, man, he didn’t mean for you to just disappear.”
Zito watched his hands pressing into each other, white spots hardening on his knuckles. He could taste the drip of the coke in the back of his throat, and the coffee didn’t help, scouring his vocal chords.
Chavez’s father had walked in on the two of them, a few months before the end of senior year. His son and the stray, tied together like vines in the bottom bunk, Zito’s hands clutching Chavez’s wrists, Chavez’s legs hooked over Zito’s shoulders.
Chavez had begged his father’s forgiveness and Chavez’s father hadn’t spared him a glance, screaming at Zito over and over again, I let you into this house. Screaming at him, no son of mine.
Zito took what he could carry, and left before Chavez had stopped crying. Hitched his way north and slept on front porches and in homeless shelters, dreaming of the carpeted floors and rocket-ship sheets of the house in San Diego, waking up with ash in his mouth and a deep pain in his chest, until a month had passed, three months, a year.
Five years.
“He meant it,” Zito whispered. “He was right.”
Chavez’s hand came creeping across the table, and Zito jerked his away before Chavez could touch him. Chavez told him, “It was never like you thought. He’s missed you every day since. It was like when Mom died. Worse, even, because he’d made you go. He used to spend his weekends driving around looking for you.”
Zito looked at him in surprise, thinking of all the times he’d seen old mermaid-green Cadillacs and his heart had stopped, scanning the windshield to see if his dad was inside.
Chavez sucked in a breath between his teeth. “He’s had two heart attacks now and he keeps talking about all the stuff he wishes he’d done different. He keeps asking for you.”
Zito shook his head, his thoughts fracturing, caught up on a loop, two heart attacks, two heart attacks. “Is he, is he okay?” Zito asked, his voice splintering.
“No. He needs to get his family back together.”
Chavez had always been able to do that to him, cut him to the quick, deep enough that it would kill him without even leaving a mark. Chavez was supposed to be his brother, but Zito had never really felt that way about him.
“I can’t,” Zito said, almost too quiet to hear. He thought frantically that Harden must be awake by now.
Chavez’s face warped, and he kicked Zito hard under the table. Zito gasped in pain and cowered back into the booth, staring balefully at him.
“Yes you fucking can,” Chavez said angrily. “I’ve been trying to find you for five years, man. I. You’ve got to come home. If not for me, then for him. What’s so fucking important that you can’t come home?”
Zito covered up his face with his hands, his elbows on the table. He thought about the trick last night, who’d asked with a smirk, what do you do, and Zito had answered like he always did, whatever you want.
He couldn’t go home. Not like this.
“I’m sorry,” Zito said into his hands. “I’m not the same as when I left. He wouldn’t even recognize me.”
Chavez touched Zito’s arm, skated his nails down the line of bone. “You look the same to me.”
Peering at him between his fingers, Zito muttered, “You’ve always been blind.”
Chavez’s eyes snapped like pilot lights. Zito’s shin ached. “What the fuck have you done?” Chavez asked, steam from his coffee rising into his face.
Zito took his hands down, breathed out steadily. “All the bad stuff. Everything,” he said, feeling so bad he expected to see claws wrenched into his chest. Chavez just looked at him for a long minute, tired like he’d driven all night, though home was only two hours south and he could be back by lunchtime.
“I promised him that when I found you, I’d make it right again,” Chavez told him. He sounded brittle.
Zito couldn’t stand it. “Don’t tell him you found me,” he said, and got up. Chavez said his name, tried to stop him, but Zito shook him off, stumbled out of the diner into the morning, wanting nothing but to get back to Harden, the one thing he could save.
The empty apartment should not have affected him as it did. Seeing Chavez standing across the street, staring up at his window, did not help. Zito stood with his hand up on the wall, meeting Chavez’s eyes across the four stories of space that separated them. He knew it was only a matter of time before Chavez would give up and leave him, same as anybody else Zito had ever loved, and this time, at least, Zito wanted to be watching when it happened.
*
Mulder followed Crosby one night, hoping that he would see something that would make sense. Crosby was a thief and a liar and better than any boy Mulder had ever had before. His hair was growing in like grass, cotton under Mulder’s hands.
Crosby took the 16 bus east on Santa Monica Boulevard, all the way to Oakwood, and Mulder trailed in his car, glimpsing the back of Crosby’s head and the side of his face through the waxed plastic window, Crosby’s ear, the slice of his neck into his shoulder. He got off at where the shop signs blended from Korean into English, the street yellow-lit.
Mulder idled at the curb, both hands on the wheel and his chin near his knuckles, watching Crosby duck into a corner market and come out with a bottle of orange juice in his hand, mixing shots in his mouth from the flask of vodka he carried in the inside pocket of his coat, which Mulder knew plenty well, from the times Crosby had pushed Mulder’s head back with a hand in his hair, poured liquor down his throat.
Crosby spit in the gutter, walked five blocks into the neighborhood with Mulder a half a block behind him, his headlights off. Crosby went into a little unremarkable house with asphalt for a front yard, and a minute later the attic light went on. The moon was a sickle, stars like spilled sugar and the high shriek of alley cats rose above the trees.
Mulder didn’t know what to think. It was all too normal, and therefore not to be believed. He stayed out there, watching shadows move across the attic window, and Crosby tapped at the driver’s side window, making Mulder jump and yelp in shock.
Crosby was grinning at him. Mulder thought briefly about slamming the car into gear and flooring it, but then he’d never be able to look at Crosby again. He rolled down the window, already sighing.
“You lost?” Crosby asked amiably.
Mulder glared at him. “How the fuck did you get out here?”
“Back door.” Crosby snickered, sounding like a twelve year old. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”
“Whatever,” Mulder muttered, clenching his hands on the wheel. His face was hot and tight.
“You’re, like, the worst spy in the world.” Crosby was still grinning. Mulder kinda wanted to hit him.
“I was not spying.” Crosby lifted his eyebrows in disbelief and Mulder didn’t like the casual knowledge in his eyes. He knew everything that should have mattered about Crosby, the places that made him keen and the swift drive that made him gasp in air like his lungs were collapsing, but Mulder wasn’t sure if his name was really Bobby.
“Good thing, too,” Crosby said. “So what’d you come out here for?”
Mulder’s arms twitched and he punched the button for the door locks. Crosby smiled big and went around to the passenger side, climbed in the shotgun seat as if they were just friends on the way to a bar or the bowling alley or somewhere inconsequential like that.
“You never said where you lived. I was. Curious.” Mulder thought quickly, he could win trust and affection and then he could have everything. He’d done it a thousand times before.
Crosby was studying him, easily settled in Mulder’s car with his leg crooked, his knee resting against the door. “You coulda asked.” Mulder didn’t answer, and Crosby smiled meanly. “But I guess you don’t really like asking, huh.”
“Look-” Mulder began, and he was gonna tell Crosby to watch his fucking mouth and not talk about shit he didn’t understand, but Crosby cut him off.
“Those boys who’re always coming by your place, they’re not really your friends, are they?”
Mulder looked at him in shock. Crosby laughed, and put his hand on Mulder’s face, pressing his palm against Mulder’s cheek.
“You’re so fucking hot I can’t even deal with it,” Crosby said, and kissed him, licked the roof of Mulder’s mouth and drew Mulder’s lower lip between his teeth, vodka and orange juice and Mulder figured they both must be drunk. Crosby’s free hand moved nimbly up his thigh, and Mulder sighed, let his legs fall open. He tried to remember if the car was in park or not, whether they would go coasting into the street and die bloody and young.
“Ask me, Mark,” Crosby whispered. “I like money too, and I don’t care.” He kissed him again, fiddling with the zipper of Mulder’s fly. “I’ve been worse things than this.”
Mulder didn’t believe him. It was impossible. Still, he pulled away and touched his forehead to Crosby’s, breathing on his mouth. “You want a job, Bobby?” he asked, feeling a curious strain of possessiveness in the tautness of his arms, his mouth feeling swollen. He would charge five hundred dollars a night for Crosby, more than anyone else he had.
He thought hysterically, ‘I can afford five hundred dollars a night.”
Crosby smiled brightly, pushed closer to him, and the windows clouded, leaving them choked by the heat, idiotically searching for oxygen in each other’s lungs.
*
next
Everybody’s in it, and everybody’s gay. Christ, but I do love AUs. The total tonnage of what I don’t know about being a gay prostitute and the geography of Los Angeles could just about squeeze into the Grand fuckin’ Canyon (tm Kevin Smith). Forgive me my trespasses.
Because it’s not a fandom until there’s a hooker AU.
Strays
By Candle Beck
Mulder gave Zito a bottle of whiskey and the key to room fifteen, and told him that his name was Ryan tonight. Mulder smiled and winked and said, “I’ll be at Nicky’s till two or three, but I don’t want to see you before morning.” Mulder took thirty percent and the rest went to keeping Zito alive.
Zito got well and truly smashed and wedged the room door open with his shoe. He was stupid; he’d always been stupid. He was gonna get killed and robbed and then what would Richie do?
The trick was in his forties, wedding ring tan, receding hairline, necktie stuffed in his suit jacket. Zito gave him a big drunk smile and took off his shirt, ran his hands through his hair until it was messy and fell in his eyes like straw. Zito said, “I’m Ryan,” and the trick nodded, swallowing, looking nervous.
It was okay. Nervous was better than mean. Zito chanted in his mind, ‘ryan ryan i’m ryan,’ and ants sketched the wall, Los Angeles shone through the curtains all red and yellow. The trick didn’t know what he was doing, but Zito did, and it was okay. They both jumped when sirens went by outside.
The trick pushed folded money into Zito’s hand and Zito should have counted it, but he was passing out swiftly and the ceiling swam above him. The trick said, “thank you,” very quietly, and left. Zito curled up on the bed with the money between his knees, his jaw aching. The air tasted like pencil lead, and he fell asleep, got woken up by the motel’s manager, because Mulder had only paid for three hours.
Zito walked home, his head down, hands in his pockets. There was a rip in his coat and cool air shuffled in, coiling across his lower back. He was mostly sober, half-asleep. He had a headache and his shoes were falling apart.
Harden was passed out on the kitchen floor, his legs sticking out into the short hallway. Their place consisted of one medium-sized room and a small kitchen. Zito slept in the kitchen. Harden had fresh scratches on his arms and street grime on his face. His dirty sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as Zito hooked his hands in Harden’s armpits and dragged him into the main room, rolled him over onto his mattress.
Harden looked skinnier than he’d been twelve hours ago.
Zito pulled off Harden’s shoes and wiped his face with a red T-shirt. Harden muttered and turned away from Zito, biting the pillow. It had been his night off.
Zito put the money in the ice drawer of the freezer and it was too late to sleep, so he sat by the window and made sure that Harden kept breathing until the sun came up.
*
Mulder took them to a club, and Harden did lines off Mulder’s hand in the back of the cab, clinging to Mulder’s wrist. Zito held Harden’s lightning bolt necklace back with his hand so that it wouldn’t get in the way, drawing it tight across Harden’s Adam’s apple and feeling Harden swallow hard.
It was already past midnight. Harden jittered and grinned so nakedly it hurt to watch, and Mulder told them that all he wanted tonight was a hundred dollars from each of them, and then they were free. Zito met Harden’s eyes, skittery wide eyes, pupils like dimes, and Zito said to Mulder without looking at him, “I’ll have mine in an hour.”
Harden laughed through clenched teeth. “Have mine in thirty fuckin’ minutes, Mark.”
Mulder rolled his eyes, his hands cupped on the backs of their necks, Zito and Harden making faces at each other and taunting, “oh yeah? oh yeah?” Mulder thumbed open a few more buttons on Zito’s shirt, scraping his knuckles down the center of his chest, and Zito held Harden’s shoulders while Mulder carefully put glitter on Harden’s eyelids. Harden licked Mulder’s hand like there might still be some speed there.
“Meet me at the bar when you’re done, all right?”
Zito saluted and Harden giggled, curling his hand in the front of Zito’s shirt and pulling him off-balance. Mulder flicked Zito’s ear. “Don’t get caught, boys,” he said, and then headed into the club.
Harden kissed Zito, his eyes painted like stars, and whispered in his ear, “Game on.”
Harden got a head start, because Zito had to take a couple of shots before he could stand the volume of the music, and he caught flashes of Harden between the pretty boys, gleaming and dancing with his arms above his head. Mulder watched Zito watching Harden from the side of the bar, his mouth thin and tight.
Zito’s throat was on fire and Harden’s pulse was ringing like a bell. Harden liked angel-faced boys with no scars, which was lucky for Zito, because good-looking boys didn’t have to pay for it. Zito trolled the perimeter of the club, sharp and buzzing under his skin, looking for men with creased faces who didn’t belong there.
He found one and smiled shy, pushing his hair back out of his eyes. He waited until they were in the backroom and he had his hand down the guy’s pants before telling him it’d be a hundred to get blown, which was twice the usual price, but the guy was wearing expensive clothes and kneading Zito’s shoulders with desperation.
The guy’s eyes went big and betrayed, his hand clenching around Zito’s wrist. Zito held on, licked his neck, moved his thumb along the underside of the guy’s dick and said raggedly above the bass line, “c’mon baby don’t make me go back out there.”
The guy closed his eyes and breathed out, sinking back against the wall. Zito grinned and got down on his knees.
He saw Harden as he was leaving. Harden had someone half bent over, one hand on the boy’s shoulder and the other working his jeans open. Zito caught his gaze and Harden smiled cheerfully and waved at him. Zito flashed the money with a smirk and Harden's face warped into a scowl, jerking the boy hard back against him. Zito went to find Mulder.
Mulder bought him a drink and they talked about the weather, watching the boys dance. Zito’s eyes spun like kaleidoscopes, and Mulder twisted the ends of Zito’s hair around his fingers. Harden showed up and Zito shook Mulder off him, made fun of Harden and Harden said, “at least mine was cute.”
They toasted the night and then Mulder set them loose, and Zito followed Harden out onto the street as smooth as liquor, where the moon wheeled across the sky and the world was theirs.
*
Harden woke up clean for the first time in weeks, and Zito was at the window, watching the kids play baseball in the sandlot across the street. Harden stuck his head under the sink and blasted himself with cold water, thrumming into his ears and sliding down his bare back. He made himself some toast, his mouth sticky and sour, and filled up a bottle with water.
He checked the ice drawer and there was almost twelve hundred dollars in there, all of it theirs because Mulder had already taken his cut. Rent wasn’t due for two weeks, and there was nothing broken that needed to be fixed.
Harden joined Zito at the card table and said, “Hi.”
Zito smiled and pushed his half-full cup of coffee at Harden. Harden gave him his crusts.
“So I was out in Malibu last night,” Harden said, chipping paint off the windowsill. “I think I met somebody famous. I was on, like, a golf course.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I forget why, but we were there and I definitely recognized this guy.”
Zito chewed absently on a crust, his eyes trained on the sandlot. Harden could see the bruises on Zito’s shoulders through his thin T-shirt. Guys thought that because Zito was tall, he could take it rough.
“Who was it?” Zito asked.
Harden shrugged. His stomach felt small and uncomfortably tight. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, but he forced some of it down, his mind fixed on the half-gram in the toe of his sneaker, his after-breakfast treat. “I’m not sure. He had to be famous, though, he was, like, too good-looking not to be famous.”
Zito snorted. “Sure. Eat the rest of your toast.”
One of the kids across the street jacked the ball through a window, a high shattering noise bursting through the streets, and they scattered like a bomb had gone off. Harden put his feet on top of Zito’s under the table.
Zito had found him blacked out on the floor of a bus station bathroom ten months ago. Harden had regained consciousness with Zito’s arms around him, just as they were trying to haul him into the ambulance. Harden broke free and ran, his heart near to collapse and the walls of his mind as thin as tissue paper.
Zito had put his coat on Harden when Harden was passed out, because Harden wouldn’t stop shaking. Harden found thirty-three dollars and a strip of condoms in the pockets, a dead lighter and a blank business card with an address handwritten on the back. Later, when Harden was high and in the mood to be redeemed, he’d showed up at the address hoping he’d be able to return the coat to the tall guy who’d saved him, the guy whose face he’d never got a good look at but dreamed about sometimes.
He found Mulder instead. Mulder fucked him and then offered him a job. Harden was confused enough to say yes, and then Zito was there and Zito was all that Harden couldn’t remember, and Zito had the same job, and then it was okay.
Harden finished his toast and his body rebelled, sweat breaking out on the back of his neck and his palms crawling. He folded his arms on the table and put his head down, breathing carefully through his nose, vaguely aware of Zito’s hand smoothing across his hair, Zito’s thumb drawing a long straight line, high on his forehead.
*
Mulder didn’t have his name on a lease or anywhere official, lived on the other side of West Hollywood from Zito and Harden’s place. He was rich by rumor and action, but there was nothing written down to trace him back to this.
He had them over on a Tuesday night, dressed in black with his hair spiky and golden, his eyes kohl-shaded. They each killed a bottle of cheap red wine, Zito and Mulder eating macaroni and cheese for dinner, Harden a few forkfuls of plain pasta and then some crank.
Mulder had made good, he was the dream. The building was run-down and there were moths in the closets and hallways, but the place was his, and he had a working television set and a silver watch that Harden was always making plans to steal.
The boys were drunk and slumped against each other on the couch, Zito’s arm over Harden’s shoulders, Harden’s head resting on Zito’s chest. Mulder didn’t believe them when they said they weren’t fucking, but what could he do about it? He could see the artery jumping in Harden’s throat.
“There’s a party tonight,” Mulder told them, sitting in the beat armchair, green and yellow plaid pattern.
Zito rolled his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. Harden snickered for no apparent reason and pressed his face harder against Zito, his eyes screwed shut.
“Out in the Valley. Movie producer, something. He was asking for pretty boys and fuck if you two didn’t come to mind.”
“I’m not pretty,” Harden mumbled into Zito’s shirt. Zito rolled his eyes at Mulder.
Mulder smiled harshly. “Then your crank’s not good enough.”
“His crank is plenty good,” Zito said, his voice edged. He looked surprised for a second, sliding his arm down to cup Harden’s elbow. “Anyway.”
“Anyway. Thousand for each of you, but it’ll be a busy night.” Mulder made an obscene gesture with his hands. He watched as Zito leaned down and whispered something in Harden’s ear. Harden’s hands were starting to jig, twitching on Zito’s knee as he nodded.
Zito looked back up at him, and Mulder still had trouble reading him, Zito’s eyes the color of rum and Coke, the dark-blue tint of his hair, his fine mouth. Zito had never let Mulder fuck him.
“No filming. I broke my hand on that dude’s camera last time.”
Mulder nodded. “I remember.” He wasn’t sure why Zito cared; it wasn’t like Zito had anything left to lose. Mulder glanced at Harden, whose lips were moving silently, eyelids fluttering. “Give him another bump. He’s fading.”
Mulder drove them to the Valley, Zito and Harden messing around like kids in the backseat, playing the hand-slap game. Mulder was glad to be rid of them, leaving them on the sidewalk with their hands in each other’s pockets, squinting against the streetlight in something like pain.
He headed back to Hollywood, checked in on a few other of his boys, and then went to Figueroa and Carson, where Crosby was waiting on the corner in blue jeans and a gray hoodie, smiling hugely as Mulder pulled up and unlocked the doors.
*
They took a cab back from the Valley party at dawn, Harden shivering against the door with his knees pulled to his chest. Zito had tried to keep them in the same room, tried to keep his hand steady on Harden’s back, but he hadn’t been able to. The men at the party were not to be trusted, Zito could see that walking in the door, and Harden kept smiling sweetly at them, and Zito had to let him go.
He’d seen Harden with his nose bleeding, sometime between the fourth blowjob he’d given and the second time he got fucked, and Harden’s eyes were pure white, his face shiny with sweat. Harden was being passed from one man to another, his arms hanging loose and his head lolling. Zito wanted to call time-out and calm him down, but there was no chance of that.
Harden’s hand kept going to the lump of money in his front pocket. Zito stared out the window, the flat orange tinge of the morning settling on the strip malls and palm trees. Old people were already out walking, little dogs in knitted sweaters, bakery trucks stopped in the middle of the road with their hazard lights flashing. It was almost peaceful.
“Richie?”
Harden’s fingers tightened on the money. “Hmm?”
Zito swallowed. He needed a shower worse than he needed air. “I, I’ll take the money over to Mark’s, if you wanna get some sleep.”
Harden’s gaze traced the low city, the sun edging over the tops of the buildings. His cheeks were hollowed, the line of his jaw showing starkly. “Don’t think I’m gonna sleep, man.”
“You should,” Zito told him, scratching at the tear in his jeans. He was pretty sure Harden was out of speed, he’d seen the little plastic baggie with the skulls and crossbones empty on the coffee table as they were stumbling out into the light.
“Yeah.” Harden dug in his pocket and pulled out his half of the money, passing it to Zito without looking at him. “Steal Mark’s watch for me, will you?”
Zito half-smiled and reached out to touch him, but there was static electricity and it snapped into Zito’s fingers and against Harden’s face, and he jerked away, burned.
Harden got out at their place and Zito looked out the back window for him as the cab drove on, Harden shrinking and disappearing into the black hulk of their building. Zito didn’t expect Mulder to be awake this early, but he knocked just in case, and Mulder opened the door without a shirt on, the eyeshadow smudged with lines like fingernails scraped across his cheekbones.
Mulder didn’t say much to him, sitting down on the couch and counting out his cut from the money. Zito stayed standing because it hurt to sit. He asked Zito how the party had been and Zito shrugged.
Someone coughed from the bedroom and Zito let a ghost of a smirk drift on his face. “New boy, Mark?”
Mulder gave him an irritated grin. “Not yet.” He handed Zito the rest of the money back and rubbed his neck, looking exhausted.
“Didn’t realize you still fucked for fun,” Zito said, biting the insides of his cheeks. Mulder glared at him, the muscles in his arms pulled like slingshots, his chest tense.
“Don’t you have a fucking junkie to wet-nurse?” Mulder said quietly.
Zito would have hit him if he wasn’t so worn out. He wanted to light things on fire, smash the TV, tell the boy in Mulder’s bed to get out while he still could. Mulder’s eyes flickered, and he sighed.
“It’s been a long night,” Mulder told him. “Go get some rest.”
Zito ran a hand through his hair and even that hurt. Everything hurt. He nodded and went to the door, asking for no particular reason before he left, “What’s his name?”
Mulder looked at him suspiciously before answering, “Bobby,” with his voice careful around the name like it might break if he treated it bad.
Zito said, “I’ll see you tonight, man,” and left. By the time he got home, Harden was already gone.
*
Harden spent the day at the beach. It was hot and bright and made him feel like his skin was shredding off slowly from the inside. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep until nightfall. He couldn’t stay home with Zito, because Zito would stay quiet and watch him sadly and Harden would want to curl up around him and keep him awake too.
He lay in the sun, sweating out the poison. He’d gotten there early enough to be alone, white birds like thrown napkins, the surface of the sand turning to glass.
It was hard, coming down. He wanted to turn his watch ahead nine hours and pretend he was already over it, but he’d sold his watch last week in between tricks.
Zito took care of him, but Zito couldn’t do anything about this.
Harden only moved to drink his water and fill up the bottle again. The beach began to fill, get colorful and loud. Harden wasn’t sure what day it was, it was still summer and the high school kids told him nothing.
He stayed on the beach all day, his jeans forming to his body, sand rasping into his T-shirt. He did what he could not to think about anything, drifting in strange patterns. His lightning bolt necklace warmed and seared into his skin, and the sun was just below the line of the pier when somebody’s black and white dog came nosing into his side.
Harden was yanked from a terrible waking dream and a high voice was calling the dog off, calling, “Leave him alone, Ed!” The dog barked and licked Harden’s shirt. Harden lifted a hand in bemusement, tugging at the dog’s ears, narrowing his eyes against the dying light.
A silhouette arrived above him and pulled the dog off by the collar. “Sorry,” the silhouette said. “He, uh, he likes shiny things.”
Harden pushed up on an elbow and the sun shifted behind the silhouette and Harden could see his face then, and he thought clearly, ‘oh i get it, it’s the prettiest boy in the whole wide world.’
He smiled without thought, his teeth slick and gritty, and said, “No problem.”
The prettiest boy in the world smiled back at him, clean-white, his cargo shorts splattered with paint, his T-shirt looking brand-new and still unused to his body. Harden cruised him as casually as possible, licking his lips. The boy looked surprised, then kind of scared. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old.
“That’s a neat necklace,” the boy said, pointing with the hand that held Ed’s leash, his voice slightly accented, the South, maybe, Texas. Harden could never tell the difference. Ed strained and panted, grinning at Harden.
Harden touched the lightning bolt, absently hoping that he didn’t look as strung-out as he felt. “Thanks. That’s a. A neat dog.”
The boy laughed, palming his dog’s head. “He’s schizophrenic. Attracted to anything even a little bit pretty.”
Harden made his grin go keen, the skin of his face pulling back. “So’m I.”
The boy blinked at him, his mouth dropped open slightly. Harden ran his eyes over the boy’s arms and legs, the gild of the sunset around him. He could breathe, all at once, like his lungs were out of hock at last.
The boy smiled nervously and said, “Well, um. See ya.” He tugged Ed away, the dog whining, and moved slowly down the beach. Harden watched him go, thinking about maybe following, taking him to get a Coke or a sandwich, fucking him under the pier with the dog tied up and playing in the surf, but he decided not to bother.
The prettiest boy in the world looked back a few times, his face closed up and fretful, and Harden laughed. Harden picked himself up and took off his shirt, diving into the ocean still wearing his jeans, ducking under again and again, broke up into the clear pink light, his hands sliding down the back of his head.
*
Thursday was a Danny night. Zito went to the Glass Slipper Inn without thinking about where Harden was or what sort of trouble he was getting into. It was warm enough that Zito didn’t need a coat, but he wore one anyway, so that he would have a place to put his hands.
Haren was already in the room, his USC baseball cap slung over the bedpost, rolling a joint on the bed. He smiled when Zito came in, licking the paper and folding it over, a small piece of green between his teeth. Zito went over and put his hand on Haren’s forehead, told him, “hold still,” and picked the piece of green out, flicking it away. He kissed Haren, tasting beer and Big Red gum, and then took a shower. The Glass Slipper had excellent water pressure.
Haren was his favorite regular. He was twenty years old, a student, rich and good-looking enough not to have to bother with a guy like Zito, but Haren was also master of the double life.
When Haren was fourteen, his father had caught him jerking off a neighborhood boy and beat him so badly Haren lost eighty percent of the hearing in his right ear. Haren was as straight as a pencil after that, except for the fact that he really wasn’t at all.
His plan, he’d explained to Zito, was to wait until after he graduated, move across the country, and then be as gay as was physically possible. In the meantime, his parents could pay for his college education and the allowance that let Haren afford three hundred dollars a week for the company of a male hustler-nothing more than what Haren was owed for the fact that music would never sound right to him again.
He played baseball year-round for a club team, and belonged to a fraternity. He was taking summer classes so that he could graduate early. He almost always brought weed with him when they met at the Glass Slipper. Zito liked him for a number of reasons, but mostly because Haren viewed him as training ground, practice for being as gay as was physically possible. Zito hadn’t been sucked off so often since he went to work for Mulder. Haren was getting pretty fucking good at it, too.
Zito came out wearing a towel and sat down on the bed beside Haren. Haren popped him companionably in the shoulder, swiping his fingers at the water on Zito’s chest.
“How you been?” Zito asked him.
Haren grinned. “Gay,” he answered, same as he always did, and Zito half-smiled, leaning his head back against the headboard.
“You look rough, man,” Haren told him after a minute, creeping his hand sneakily onto Zito’s forearm, playing the veins of his wrist like a guitar.
“Yeah,” Zito sighed. He didn’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t anything new. “How’s school?”
“I failed a soc exam,” Haren said happily, his finger pattering on Zito’s arm. “One of the guys at the house broke his ankle skateboarding on the roof. I think my history TA is hitting on me.”
Zito hmm’ed and turned over onto his side, putting his hand on Haren’s stomach, which jumped through his shirt. “Go for it, dude. Easy A.”
Haren laughed. “She’s a chick. I’m already not sleeping with my girlfriend.” Zito pushed his shirt up and bent his head, mouthing Haren’s stomach. Haren breathed out cautiously, whispered, “whoa.” He always sounded so surprised, heating up quickly under Zito’s hands, getting hard in the crook of Zito’s elbow.
Zito got Haren to sit up, stripped his shirt off him, and cupped him through his jeans. “Did you bring the money?”
Haren slid down on the bed, his head clonking the headboard. He bit his lip and nodded. Zito pulled Haren’s wallet out of his back pocket and knelt, straddling Haren’s leg. He counted out the three hundred, Haren watching him through half-closed eyes. Zito put the money on the bedside table next to the neat-rolled jay, and settled on top of him, kissing Haren’s throat and undoing his jeans.
“What do you want?” Zito asked, speaking softly into Haren’s good ear. Haren twisted under him and drew the towel off, his eyes shuttering through the possibilities. He pulled Zito’s head close and asked Zito to fuck him. Zito could forget about everything, times like this.
The small of Haren’s back was the exact size of Zito’s hand. Someday, he’d told Zito, when he was allowed to be what he was, Haren was going to get a tattoo there, just over the curve of his ass, and it was going to read in dark blue ink, ‘faster. harder. deeper.’
It was kind of terrible that Zito would never get a chance to see that.
*
Mulder was drunk and for some reason Crosby was still in his house. Crosby slept roughly the same amount as a cat. As soon as he woke up, Mulder was gonna kick him out.
Mulder changed into something without sleeves, idly planning on going to a club. He considered shaving, but he didn’t trust his hands. It was still early, too early to go out, too late to stop drinking. He sat down on the edge of the bed, where Crosby was strewn out like starfish, and tried to make sense of his pocket calendar, figuring out which of his boys should be bringing in money tonight. Most of them were on the streets right now, in cheap motels and backrooms.
Crosby muttered in his sleep. He had nightmares, which annoyed Mulder a little bit. Crosby claimed to have had a hard life, but he didn’t have track marks or scars on his face, and Mulder didn’t really believe it.
Mulder would put Crosby to work, eventually. Another week or so, until Crosby got used to Mulder coming around and Mulder learned a little more about him, discovered something he could hold against Crosby.
Crosby had tried to lift Mulder’s wallet, almost three weeks ago now, at a party somewhere in Van Nuys. Mulder had only been playing dead, catching his breath on the deck, lights like Christmas tree ornaments spiraling in his mind. Crosby had gotten his hand halfway into Mulder’s pocket and Mulder sprung, pinning him to the wood and gently placing a knife against his throat.
He might have killed him, too, had Crosby done something other than smile, silver-blue eyes glinting like money given breath. Mulder took him home instead.
“Hey?” Crosby’s foot poked at his back. Mulder turned and Crosby was yawning, rubbing his chest. “You leaving?”
As if Mulder would ever leave Crosby alone in his place. He nodded, calculating swiftly how much he could charge for Crosby, for those arms and the flat cut of his stomach.
“’Kay,” Crosby said. He looked vaguely haunted, the way he always did when he just woke up. There were many things that he wasn’t telling Mulder, everything. Crosby didn’t know how to do anything but lie. Mulder could change that, though.
“What time is it?”
Mulder checked his watch. “Ten.” He considered that he had no idea where Crosby lived, or what he did for a living besides being a lousy pickpocket. He put his hand on Crosby’s leg, and Crosby gave him a sleepy grin, folding his arms behind his head. Crosby was always up for it. He was gonna be fantastic at this job.
“I’ll drop you off wherever you want on my way out,” Mulder said, his hand scaling Crosby’s leg.
Crosby looked at him, a sly skinned expression on his face. “I wanna go to Paris,” he said, and for a moment, stupid-drunk, Mulder thought about saying, yeah, okay.
*
Zito got home to find Harden sitting on the steps of their building, pressing his hands together and staring at the trash rolling in the gutter. Zito’s breath caught, and he slowed his pace, giving Harden plenty of time to see him coming.
Harden tipped his head to the side and his mouth bent up. “Hi,” he said.
Zito echoed it, and added hesitantly, “How are you?”
Harden half-shrugged, his lower lip chapped and almost bleeding. “Clean.”
Studying him, Zito stayed quiet, crossing his fingers in his pockets. Harden smirked, and moved his hand in an X over his heart. “Swear.”
Zito exhaled. He could see the blue of Harden’s eyes again, his pupils shrank down to periods. “What are you doing out here?” he asked, wanting to push the cobwebs off Harden’s shoulder, rattle the sand from his hair.
“Saving up my energy for the stairs,” Harden replied, and it must be true, the way he was keeping himself perfectly still, each breath measured. Zito offered him his hand, pulled him to his feet.
It was four flights straight up. They started slow. Harden asked, already unsteady, “Where were you?”
“Saw Danny.”
Harden smiled, a bit cold. “How. How is the c-college boy?”
Zito tightened his arm around Harden’s waist, bearing most of his weight and beginning to feel it in his legs and back. “Same. Failing half his classes. His team, like, won some game or something.” Zito paused, then said, keeping his voice carefully neutral, “Maybe you shouldn’t try and talk.”
“I’m fine,” Harden said sharply, and started coughing. They had to stop, Harden slumped over the rail, leaning heavily on Zito and his whole body shaking. Zito saw the sweat rising on Harden’s forehead, and angled so that Harden’s face was against his shoulder, feeling the heat and slick of it through his shirt.
“When did you last sleep, Richie?” he asked, hating the jerk of Harden’s chest, the way he gasped for air.
Harden shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “What’s today?”
“Thursday.”
Harden pushed himself up off the rail, wiping the tears out of his eyes. “Four days. Five? I can’t remember.”
Zito took Harden’s hands in his own and checked to make sure he wasn’t coughing blood. But Harden’s palms were pale and clear. “Okay.”
They made it the rest of the way up, but only barely. Harden wouldn’t let them stop again. Zito was pretty much carrying him by the time they got inside, kicking the door shut, hauling Harden into the main room and laying him down on his mattress. Harden shivered and curled into a ball. Zito sat next to him and opened his hand on Harden’s head, tucking his thumb into the dent of Harden’s temple.
“How was coming down?” Zito asked softly. Harden’s chest jackrabbited. He sighed.
“Actually. Not that bad. Saw the sun set on the beach. I met this. I met a dog.”
Zito raised his eyebrows. “A dog?”
“His name was Ed.” Harden smiled, his face settling until he looked at peace. Zito didn’t know what to say, rubbing his fingers through Harden’s hair, the sand sneaking under his nails.
“We’re rich, you know,” Zito said eventually, feeling the fold of Danny’s money in his pocket. “We could buy back the TV.”
“Fuck the TV,” Harden said, sinking away as Zito watched, tiny weights attached by thread to his eyelids. “Rots the brain.”
Zito snorted a laugh. His hand on Harden’s face started to tremble. He wanted to ask, how long will you last this time? But Harden could never say for sure. He touched Harden’s nose, his mouth. He lay down beside him and whispered, “I’m just gonna hang out here for a minute.”
Harden murmured and burrowed into Zito, his hot face against Zito’s chest, both of them still wearing their shoes.
*
Mulder came by sometime during Harden’s nineteenth hour of unconsciousness. Zito stepped into the hallway to talk to him, his hair wrecked by the bed, flat on one side and stabbing out on the other. Zito paid him for Danny and Mulder made the money disappear.
“Your boy skipped out on both of his regulars,” Mulder said, glaring at Zito. “That’s two hundred dollars he lost me.”
Zito pulled a hand across his face and let out a long breath. “He’ll make it up.”
“I don’t take IOUs,” Mulder snapped. “If he’s more interested in speed than paying his fucking rent-”
“He’s not,” Zito cut him off. “He just got clean.”
“For what?” Mulder scoffed. “A day? Week if we’re lucky?”
“Look, what do you want me to say? He’s clean, he’ll be clean for however long and then he won’t be. You act like this is fucking new.”
Mulder didn’t like the sneer on Zito’s face, briefly imagined hooking his thumbs into Zito’s eyes and gouging until he hit bone, and said quickly, “There’s a fine line, all right? It keeps him up, keeps his dick hard, keeps him on the street, great, fantastic. He’s cuter when he’s tweaked, anyway. But nobody’s seen him since the party in the Valley.”
Zito stared at the floor. “I’ve seen him.”
“You don’t fucking count,” Mulder half-shouted. He stopped, not used to getting angry so fast. Zito was always doing that to him. Mulder tightened his jaw, narrowed his eyes. “Just, bring him to Nicky’s tonight and he can start paying me back, okay?”
Zito shook his head, gritting his teeth. “Not tonight. He’s got to sleep it off.”
“Goddamn it-” Mulder began, but Zito was digging into his pocket, tearing the rest of Danny’s money free, and shoved it into Mulder’s surprised hands.
“There. Two hundred. All right? Let him fucking sleep.”
Mulder stared at him for a second, and then his face twisted into a cruel smile. He pocketed the money. “Well, aren’t you sweet.”
Zito raised his eyes and he looked plainly murderous, his hands clenched in fists at his sides. “You got what you came for, Mark. Don’t play like him being out of the game for a couple of days is gonna break you.”
“Not as long as he’s got you to cover his ass,” Mulder said, and then fell silent, watching Zito glare at him, liking the strict planes of Zito’s face and his hard-carved mouth.
“Was there anything else?” Zito asked, soft enough to be dangerous. Mulder shrugged.
“Free advice. Think real hard about what you’re doing with him. How far down you’re willing to let him take you.”
It felt like a script, nothing real. Not the smallest hope that was Zito going to listen to him. Mulder had never found Harden to be all that fucking spectacular in bed, but apparently with Zito he was a god.
Zito showed him a big fake smile, the one usually reserved for particularly unattractive tricks. “Thanks for stopping by, boss.”
Zito went back inside, and Mulder left, wishing faintly in the stairwell that Zito had, at some point, let himself be filmed.
*
Harden woke up and it was dark outside. The alarm clock’s red neon twelve o’clock was blinking insistently at him, painting his face. Zito was gone, but there was a note taped to Harden’s chest, which was bare, though Harden didn’t remember ever taking off his shirt. Harden took the note over to the window and read it by the streetlight.
‘Gone to work. Eat something. It’s Saturday.’
Harden nodded to himself, the world set in his head again. He made some cereal and took a shower, his feet skidding on the tile and his arms pinwheeling for balance. He realized in astonishment that he actually felt normal right now. Like maybe he was late for class or a date or something.
The stairs were tricky, the muscles in his legs feeling atrophied, but he made it, and walked down the block until he could read the time from one of the bank buildings that loomed a neighborhood over. It was early, only nine o’clock. Harden thought about maybe making some money, idly scanning the street for somebody who looked likely, but he gave it up pretty quickly. It was kinda nice to just walk around, the breeze meeting his skin, a hollow buzzing lighting up his mind.
He had coffee at the diner and it hurt his mouth. He’d chewed through the inside of his cheeks, like always, and he sucked on ice cubes and wet paper napkins, spitting blood into an extra glass. The waitress glared at him, but he tipped like he owned the city, and she would forgive him.
He thought absently that in a day or two he’d be healthy again, his strength would return and it’d be so good going back to it then.
On the street, Harden got propositioned a few times from the alleys, saying back politely, “Sorry, I’m off the clock,” and sometimes they swore at him, sometimes they laughed. Somewhere way far off, a dog was barking.
He got lost, wandering out of West Hollywood and into a place where the air smelled better and fewer windows were broken. There were bicycles in the yards, rope ladders hanging from the trees.
Harden’s feet were aching and his blood was starting to curdle, reminding him in a low insistent voice that some speed would be pretty good right now, the jagged rip through his sinuses, the thin cloud in his lungs. The pop under his skin. He sighed, dark thoughts building in his mind. He’d barely been clean a day. Usually it didn’t happen so fast.
Then his feet were suddenly gone from underneath him, and he was flying, momentarily in the air, crashing on his back. His head snapped onto the sidewalk with a dull crack and stars burst in his eyes. The baseball he’d slipped on shot across the street, rolled into the gutter.
“Oh jeez, are you okay?”
Harden blinked and the prettiest boy in the world was there and he was certain that he’d been knocked unconscious. He smiled all messy and dazed, and his head hurt magnificently. The boy knelt over him, appeared to recognize him for a split second, his eyes widening, and then Harden’s vision filled in gray, casting his last thought to Zito, who was gonna flip the fuck out when he got home and Harden wasn’t there.
*
There was a trick waiting for Zito at the motel, and it was supposed to just be a quick fuck, but the trick liked the look of him, running his hands over the steep curve of Zito’s shoulders, pushing his dick hard into Zito’s throat and Zito sighed through his nose, swallowed around him. He’d lost his gag reflex when he was sixteen, but people were always testing him.
And then the trick offered him five hundred dollars for the night, far more than usual, and Zito couldn’t say no. He wished futilely that they had a working phone at their place, so he could call Harden and talk him through the bad part of the second-day clean, when Harden’s mind was again clear enough to remember how nice being high was.
The trick called him Cody. Zito didn’t know where the fuck Mulder pulled these names from.
Zito got out of there at sunrise, the trick snoring and making the bed shake. There was a mirror with a couple rails of coke on it at the foot of the bed, the lines blurring as the trick shifted. Zito’s whole mouth was numb, white pressure behind his eyelids.
He half-ran home, picturing seared Pyrex pipes, shattered syringes. He was a block away and someone called his name.
Zito would have ignored it, but the voice was familiar, astonishingly so.
He slammed to a stop and slowly turned, and Eric Chavez was there, crumpling an empty coffee cup and tossing it into a doorway, black hair and brown eyes and he was wearing their middle school’s gym T-shirt.
Zito hadn’t seen him in five years. For a long second, he couldn’t even think of Chavez’s name.
Chavez came up to him and he looked completely terrified, jamming his hands into his pockets. “Hi, stray,” he said in a low voice. Zito’s mouth opened but nothing came out. Chavez trained his eyes over Zito’s shoulder, asking tonelessly, “How’s it going?”
Zito’s head snagged to the side. Chavez wasn’t supposed to be here. They were supposed to be three-times removed. “What are you doing here, Ricky?” he managed.
Chavez swallowed. “I’ve been looking for you. For a. A really long time, man. Somebody from back home said they mighta seen you around here. I just. I wanted to check.”
Shaking his head, Zito said without thinking, “I’ve got to go. There’s, there’s somebody I have to see.” He made as if to turn, a flash of black in the corner of his eye, their building, their window four stories up and Harden asleep on the mattress, eating soup maybe, in the shower burning the week off his skin. Chavez caught his arm.
“Don’t do that,” Chavez said desperately. “I’d. I’d like to talk.”
“About what?” Zito couldn’t stop looking at Chavez’s mouth. He’d never been able to.
Chavez moved his shoulders uncomfortably. The light was growing in the corners and angles of things, pressed like fingers against Chavez’s throat. “Can I come upstairs?”
“No,” Zito said automatically, and then winced. They’d grown up together, Zito in the top bunk and Chavez in the bottom, since Zito was eight years old. All Zito wanted to do was leave him on the street and run up the four flights, lock the door behind him.
Zito had fucked it up. He’d been given everything, and he fucked it up.
Chavez was looking at him with that terrible helpless expression that Zito remembered very well. Zito remembered being fifteen years old and accidentally handcuffing himself to Chavez for one joyful weekend before the replacement key came in the mail.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s go get some coffee or something,” he said. Chavez nodded, vaguely wounded.
Chavez couldn’t keep quiet on the walk to the diner; he wasn’t the keeping quiet type. He’d graduated from a technical college in two years and now he fixed computers. He still lived at home, the same cluttered ranch house with Zito’s initials carved into the doorframes, souvenirs from when Zito had been inchoate and stunned with rage to be in his fifth foster home in a year, not believing for a moment that he’d be allowed to stay.
Chavez still saw some of their friends from high school. He still surfed, sometimes. He glanced at Zito as they walked, his hand turning in the air like he wanted to brush the backs of his knuckles across the backs of Zito’s.
He was exactly as Zito remembered him. Maybe gun-shy, maybe older than he should have been, but his face still made Zito twist inside, his hair was still as shiny as cheap vinyl.
They sat in a back booth and Zito wove his fingers together on the tabletop, salt scratching at the undersides of his wrists, and said, “Okay, so talk.”
Chavez’s throat ducked, and he looked down, his eyebrows lowering. “I wanted. I was hoping that you’d. Come home.”
Zito blinked at him, his airway briefly cut off. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
Chavez raised his eyes, his hands clenching on the lip of the table. “You can. Dad’s been asking for you.”
“He has?”
Chavez nodded emphatically. “He didn’t mean what he said, man, he didn’t mean for you to just disappear.”
Zito watched his hands pressing into each other, white spots hardening on his knuckles. He could taste the drip of the coke in the back of his throat, and the coffee didn’t help, scouring his vocal chords.
Chavez’s father had walked in on the two of them, a few months before the end of senior year. His son and the stray, tied together like vines in the bottom bunk, Zito’s hands clutching Chavez’s wrists, Chavez’s legs hooked over Zito’s shoulders.
Chavez had begged his father’s forgiveness and Chavez’s father hadn’t spared him a glance, screaming at Zito over and over again, I let you into this house. Screaming at him, no son of mine.
Zito took what he could carry, and left before Chavez had stopped crying. Hitched his way north and slept on front porches and in homeless shelters, dreaming of the carpeted floors and rocket-ship sheets of the house in San Diego, waking up with ash in his mouth and a deep pain in his chest, until a month had passed, three months, a year.
Five years.
“He meant it,” Zito whispered. “He was right.”
Chavez’s hand came creeping across the table, and Zito jerked his away before Chavez could touch him. Chavez told him, “It was never like you thought. He’s missed you every day since. It was like when Mom died. Worse, even, because he’d made you go. He used to spend his weekends driving around looking for you.”
Zito looked at him in surprise, thinking of all the times he’d seen old mermaid-green Cadillacs and his heart had stopped, scanning the windshield to see if his dad was inside.
Chavez sucked in a breath between his teeth. “He’s had two heart attacks now and he keeps talking about all the stuff he wishes he’d done different. He keeps asking for you.”
Zito shook his head, his thoughts fracturing, caught up on a loop, two heart attacks, two heart attacks. “Is he, is he okay?” Zito asked, his voice splintering.
“No. He needs to get his family back together.”
Chavez had always been able to do that to him, cut him to the quick, deep enough that it would kill him without even leaving a mark. Chavez was supposed to be his brother, but Zito had never really felt that way about him.
“I can’t,” Zito said, almost too quiet to hear. He thought frantically that Harden must be awake by now.
Chavez’s face warped, and he kicked Zito hard under the table. Zito gasped in pain and cowered back into the booth, staring balefully at him.
“Yes you fucking can,” Chavez said angrily. “I’ve been trying to find you for five years, man. I. You’ve got to come home. If not for me, then for him. What’s so fucking important that you can’t come home?”
Zito covered up his face with his hands, his elbows on the table. He thought about the trick last night, who’d asked with a smirk, what do you do, and Zito had answered like he always did, whatever you want.
He couldn’t go home. Not like this.
“I’m sorry,” Zito said into his hands. “I’m not the same as when I left. He wouldn’t even recognize me.”
Chavez touched Zito’s arm, skated his nails down the line of bone. “You look the same to me.”
Peering at him between his fingers, Zito muttered, “You’ve always been blind.”
Chavez’s eyes snapped like pilot lights. Zito’s shin ached. “What the fuck have you done?” Chavez asked, steam from his coffee rising into his face.
Zito took his hands down, breathed out steadily. “All the bad stuff. Everything,” he said, feeling so bad he expected to see claws wrenched into his chest. Chavez just looked at him for a long minute, tired like he’d driven all night, though home was only two hours south and he could be back by lunchtime.
“I promised him that when I found you, I’d make it right again,” Chavez told him. He sounded brittle.
Zito couldn’t stand it. “Don’t tell him you found me,” he said, and got up. Chavez said his name, tried to stop him, but Zito shook him off, stumbled out of the diner into the morning, wanting nothing but to get back to Harden, the one thing he could save.
The empty apartment should not have affected him as it did. Seeing Chavez standing across the street, staring up at his window, did not help. Zito stood with his hand up on the wall, meeting Chavez’s eyes across the four stories of space that separated them. He knew it was only a matter of time before Chavez would give up and leave him, same as anybody else Zito had ever loved, and this time, at least, Zito wanted to be watching when it happened.
*
Mulder followed Crosby one night, hoping that he would see something that would make sense. Crosby was a thief and a liar and better than any boy Mulder had ever had before. His hair was growing in like grass, cotton under Mulder’s hands.
Crosby took the 16 bus east on Santa Monica Boulevard, all the way to Oakwood, and Mulder trailed in his car, glimpsing the back of Crosby’s head and the side of his face through the waxed plastic window, Crosby’s ear, the slice of his neck into his shoulder. He got off at where the shop signs blended from Korean into English, the street yellow-lit.
Mulder idled at the curb, both hands on the wheel and his chin near his knuckles, watching Crosby duck into a corner market and come out with a bottle of orange juice in his hand, mixing shots in his mouth from the flask of vodka he carried in the inside pocket of his coat, which Mulder knew plenty well, from the times Crosby had pushed Mulder’s head back with a hand in his hair, poured liquor down his throat.
Crosby spit in the gutter, walked five blocks into the neighborhood with Mulder a half a block behind him, his headlights off. Crosby went into a little unremarkable house with asphalt for a front yard, and a minute later the attic light went on. The moon was a sickle, stars like spilled sugar and the high shriek of alley cats rose above the trees.
Mulder didn’t know what to think. It was all too normal, and therefore not to be believed. He stayed out there, watching shadows move across the attic window, and Crosby tapped at the driver’s side window, making Mulder jump and yelp in shock.
Crosby was grinning at him. Mulder thought briefly about slamming the car into gear and flooring it, but then he’d never be able to look at Crosby again. He rolled down the window, already sighing.
“You lost?” Crosby asked amiably.
Mulder glared at him. “How the fuck did you get out here?”
“Back door.” Crosby snickered, sounding like a twelve year old. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”
“Whatever,” Mulder muttered, clenching his hands on the wheel. His face was hot and tight.
“You’re, like, the worst spy in the world.” Crosby was still grinning. Mulder kinda wanted to hit him.
“I was not spying.” Crosby lifted his eyebrows in disbelief and Mulder didn’t like the casual knowledge in his eyes. He knew everything that should have mattered about Crosby, the places that made him keen and the swift drive that made him gasp in air like his lungs were collapsing, but Mulder wasn’t sure if his name was really Bobby.
“Good thing, too,” Crosby said. “So what’d you come out here for?”
Mulder’s arms twitched and he punched the button for the door locks. Crosby smiled big and went around to the passenger side, climbed in the shotgun seat as if they were just friends on the way to a bar or the bowling alley or somewhere inconsequential like that.
“You never said where you lived. I was. Curious.” Mulder thought quickly, he could win trust and affection and then he could have everything. He’d done it a thousand times before.
Crosby was studying him, easily settled in Mulder’s car with his leg crooked, his knee resting against the door. “You coulda asked.” Mulder didn’t answer, and Crosby smiled meanly. “But I guess you don’t really like asking, huh.”
“Look-” Mulder began, and he was gonna tell Crosby to watch his fucking mouth and not talk about shit he didn’t understand, but Crosby cut him off.
“Those boys who’re always coming by your place, they’re not really your friends, are they?”
Mulder looked at him in shock. Crosby laughed, and put his hand on Mulder’s face, pressing his palm against Mulder’s cheek.
“You’re so fucking hot I can’t even deal with it,” Crosby said, and kissed him, licked the roof of Mulder’s mouth and drew Mulder’s lower lip between his teeth, vodka and orange juice and Mulder figured they both must be drunk. Crosby’s free hand moved nimbly up his thigh, and Mulder sighed, let his legs fall open. He tried to remember if the car was in park or not, whether they would go coasting into the street and die bloody and young.
“Ask me, Mark,” Crosby whispered. “I like money too, and I don’t care.” He kissed him again, fiddling with the zipper of Mulder’s fly. “I’ve been worse things than this.”
Mulder didn’t believe him. It was impossible. Still, he pulled away and touched his forehead to Crosby’s, breathing on his mouth. “You want a job, Bobby?” he asked, feeling a curious strain of possessiveness in the tautness of his arms, his mouth feeling swollen. He would charge five hundred dollars a night for Crosby, more than anyone else he had.
He thought hysterically, ‘I can afford five hundred dollars a night.”
Crosby smiled brightly, pushed closer to him, and the windows clouded, leaving them choked by the heat, idiotically searching for oxygen in each other’s lungs.
*
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