THE ICE AGE
Headers and Disclaimer
The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
London is drowning-and I live by the river.
The Clash: London Calling.
Orlando
Orli has a regular gig with Ian from ten-thirty in the morning until one-thirty in the afternoon pretty much every Saturday, unless Ian’s away or having a family-gathering or something. Orli gets thirty quid a go, which is an irresistible chunk of money all at once.
Ian’s a very different animal from the other men who pay to use Orli. The punters who’ll hand over two or three or four quid in return for three or four or five minutes of grunting and shoving and swearing against an alley wall are paying for an orifice, a fist or mouth or arse to stick their dicks into. Orli winces at the rasp of rough asphalt against the bones of his back or face or knees, and makes small breathless keening sounds that can be interpreted equally as pleasure or pain, as the punter’s fancy strikes him. Orli’s been fucked by men who couldn’t say if he was fair or dark. When they’re done and Orli has his money and he’s cleaning up with a wad of toilet paper in the men’s room of some pub (provided, of course, they’ll let him in and there’s any loo roll in the men’s room anyway) Orli’s always certain he’s had the best end of the deal.
Ian - well, Ian buys some of the old push and pull too, of course, not like the pathetic old geezer who picks Orli up on occasion and gives him a couple of quid just to drop his jeans and boxers and let the old fart paw a bit, until Orli starts to get hard and the poor bastard gets to hold an erection, even if it’s not his.
Ian may have the long refractory period of an older man, but he’s also got forty years of experience, and endurance that Orli finds frankly unbelievable at times. Orli suspects Ian of slipping a Viagra now and then.
“Orlando, how nice,” Ian always beams, as if Orli’s appearance at his front door is a delightful surprise.
It’s the cleanliness of everything that gets Orli every time. Ian wears white canvas tennis shoes and pale gray linen pants and a voluminous white cotton shirt, and his silver gray hair shines and his skin glows pinkly and his pale blue eyes are clear as glass. Orli goes upstairs, past gleaming mahogany and fresh flowers, into the guest bathroom. He sheds his grimy clothing in a heap on the white tiled floor and steps into the shower.
When Orli’s scrubbed and shaved, hair toweled into damp ringlets, fingernails pared smooth, he walks naked into the guest bedroom, where Ian’s reclining barefoot on the bed with the color-supplement of the Sunday Times.
“Ah, there you are,” Ian smiles. “Ready?”
It’s not a real question; there’s no illusion of seduction in this. Ian is civilized and considerate, but it’s not for Orli to acquiesce or refuse. He crawls onto the bed and stretches out on the cool crisp sheets.
The others are all about surfaces - spit and come on Orli’s skin, fingernails scratching, hard palms and harder knuckles trying to break through but jarring to a halt on his bones. They shove into him, tongues and fingers and dicks, but the pain’s sharpest right under the skin; contrary to what the punters might like to think, a cock, no matter how far it’s thrust up Orli’s arse, cannot reach his soul.
Ian’s different. Orli’s not sure Ian means to be different, or knows or cares that he’s different, but he is. Ian, in pursuit of his own pleasure, inadvertently digs into Orli.
Ian, thank God, is not one of those nightmare punters who fancies himself a sexual god, who knows what buttons to push and nerves to fret, and can drag a painfully sudden and utterly unpleasant orgasm from the most reluctant body. Orli hates those bastards - hates them for trying to get to him that way.
Ian just likes to feel silky young skin and dense young flesh under his hands, under his mouth. Ian likes to feel a smooth young cock swell and harden in his fist or in his mouth. Orli shudders and groans, letting the pounding of the blood in his veins drown out the noise in his head.
Ian loves to feel long sleek muscles and slender limbs trembling with pleasure. Ian loves the extravagant pliability of young joints, the way long limbs can be arranged to provide complete access, a perfect angle, powerful leverage. Ian loves how a young body instinctively responds to skillful stimulation, how with the right press and push and a smear of lube a young body opens like a pliant flower. Ian loves to go slowly … very slowly.
Orli pillows his face on his own folded forearms, ass in the air, rocked forward a little with each gentle but inexorable thrust of Ian’s cock into his hole. Ian’s paper-soft hands pet and stroke Orli’s balls, Orli’s half-slack cock. Orli usually loses his erection once Ian starts fucking him - it’s like the sensations washing over Orli are too weighty and too strange to produce such a mundane effect. Ian doesn’t mind: he knows it’s a common reaction, and besides, as long as Orli remains receptive and responsive, it’s not Ian’s problem.
Ian adores toys, nothing fancy, nothing that would detract from the simple immediacy of the situation. Orli kneeling in the midst of snowy sheets, fucking himself slowly and deeply on the dildo braced between his heels, pleases Ian immensely. Ian dictates the position, the pace, and the killing turn of the hip each time Orli grinds down. Orli’s cock hardens again, and the hairless skin of his narrow chest flushes pink.
Orli has defenses. He has places in his mind that he can withdraw to, abandoning his flesh and bone and blood to the exigencies of the world - to cold and hunger and rough-usage and the crawling fear that he hasn’t begun to know how bad things can get. But he doesn’t have defenses against this: not against soft sheets on his clean skin and Ian’s velvet voice and hour after hour of the relentless building of heat along every nerve and -
- when Ian takes him again, Orli claws at the sheets and digs his bare heels into the bed, trying desperately for more traction. He arches and twists, his breath sobbing unevenly between clenched teeth. He clutches at Ian, fingers biting deep into the ropey muscles of Ian’s shoulders.
“Oh God please fuck Ian God,” he begs, and finally finally at the moment of Ian’s choosing, Ian withdraws and closes his lube-slick hand around the head of Orli’s cock and Orli comes in thick gouts of semen, shaking and sobbing and shivering with relief.
After a couple of hours in bed, Ian tells Orli to get up and get dressed. He doesn’t mean Orli’s own clothes. There’s a few garments hanging in the otherwise empty closet of the guest room: a pair of black drawstring cotton pants, a selection of three gauzy cotton over-shirts. Orli puts the pants on, pulls on one of the shirts without bothering to fasten it, and wanders out to the sunroom.
Orli sprawls in one of the wide wicker armchairs, waiting for the muscles of his back and legs to resolidify out of the mush they’ve been reduced to by two hours of non-stop fucking. Ian brings him a drink - ice tea, or beer, or orange juice with champagne as the mood takes Ian - and Orli drinks it without comment. Sometimes Ian will hand Orli a book or magazine, and it’s Orli’s job to turn the pages. Sometimes he just has to sit there, head resting on the chair back, one long leg and naked foot swinging idly. Occasionally Ian has his camera; Orli’s posed for punters once or twice before, but nothing like this.
“Orlando,” Ian will say from the doorway, and when Orli looks up Ian clicks the shutter, and Orli’s captured like that, eyes wide and sharp and faintly guarded, not certain of who or what he’s meant to be.
Sometimes Ian will come and lean over him, fruitlessly trying to brush Orli’s hair smooth with his hand. Sometimes Ian sits down next to Orli, one hand roaming between the unbuttoned fronts of Orli’s shirt and inside the loose hips of Orli’s pants. Sometimes - and God bless the guy’s fucking energy, Orli thinks - Ian hasn’t let himself finish and strips Orli and pulls him across his lap and fucks him one more time to be sure. Orli jerks limp-limbed in Ian’s embrace, arousal a reluctant distant blur deep in his guts, incapable of anything except moaning softly against Ian’s shoulder.
At one-thirty, Ian dismisses him. Orli goes up stairs, throws the borrowed clothes into the bathroom hamper, cleans up, and pulls his own clothes back on. When he comes down, Ian’s waiting in the hall, three crisp new tenners in his hand.
“Same again next week?” Orli asks, accepting the cash.
“Oh, I think so, don’t you?” Ian smiles, and Orli ducks his head in affirmation.
Afterwards, walking to the bus with the tendons at the backs of his legs still shaking and his stomach trembling and his arse stinging, Orli resists the urge to step aside and puke into someone’s neatly manicured shrubs. Orli knows it makes no sense, and he’s not idiot enough to resent his trade with Ian, but the fact remains … Orli comes away from Ian’s elegant, sunlit house more shaken than he’s emerged from any midnight alleyway.
Elijah
Elijah and Diane have found a sheltered corner in the lee of a couple of trash bins, where they’re protected from the chill wind but warmed by the thin spill of autumn sunshine. They’re hunkered down side by side, pressed against each other from shoulder to hip to knee, passing a single cigarette back and forth.
When it’s not his turn for the smoke, Elijah watches Diane stealthily from the corners of his eyes. She has shoulder-length straw blond hair, and angular, almost harsh features that fascinate Elijah. When she smiles or smirks or smokes, she develops two deeply engraved lines at the corners of her mouth; her lips are pale and matte, and Elijah imagines putting his own lips on them and feeling her mouth fragile and dry and chill under his.
“ - wasting it,” Diane says sharply.
Elijah flinches guiltily and takes the offered cigarette from her, cupping it inside the cage of his curled fingers and palm. He drags slow and deep, filling his lungs with acrid heat and then streaming a ribbon of smoke from between his pursed lips.
“You’re too young to smoke anyway,” Diane says, taking the cigarette back promptly.
“Fuck you,” Elijah answers mildly, shoving his hands into the opposite armholes of his jacket in an effort to warm them.
“You’re too young for that too,” she smirks, and the lines at the corners of her mouth spring into relief and the bottom falls out of Elijah’s stomach and lands heavily in his groin.
“I’m four months younger than you,” Elijah protests.
“You’re a boy; boys mature later.”
Elijah makes a sour face, unhooks one hand from inside his jacket, and takes the cigarette end from her, squinting at it to estimate how much drag is left before he hits the filter. It seems to him that he’s maturing just fine, if maturity means an obsession with other people’s skin and a tendency for his blood to relocate violently to his prick at the flimsiest excuse. Elijah’s not one for dwelling on the past, but he’s almost sure that even a year ago he wasn’t wracked by these hair-trigger plunges into sexual arousal.
It’s ironic in a way that Elijah’s humorous enough to almost appreciate, if it weren’t so fucking frustrating. Here he is, fifteen and a half years old, hormones screaming under his skin, two years and two hundred miles away from what passes as parental supervision in his family. He’s surrounded by kids not significantly older than he is, all equally adrift from any kind of guidance or control. They know every dead-end alleyway and inadequately boarded up house within a three mile radius, and sex is the best free entertainment they have access to.
And Elijah, baby Elijah, never gets a look in. For one thing, Elijah looks even younger than he is. Orli develops a silky dark beard growth along his jaw-line after a week of neglect, but Elijah’s cheeks and chin stay peach smooth from one end of the year to the other. He’s grown an inch over the summer, and Orli says there’s still time for a sprint to six-foot, but right now Elijah’s five-three and pretty sure he’s doomed to remain so all his life.
Elijah’s astute enough to know it’s not just his juvenile physicality that’s working against him. There’s a hardcore long-term population on the piazza that remembers back to when Orli first found him and brought him here, Elijah three months past his thirteenth birthday but looking like a fey nine year-old. He’d been frozen and starved and half-blind from crying, his clothes soaked and filthy, his face and body still a mass of fading bruises. He’d flinched away in terror from everyone, clinging to Orli’s side under the folds of the voluminous old army-coat Orli wore. He remembers trembling in fear when the others told Orli Elijah was too young, too certain to attract the attention of the cops; better to hand him over right away and save trouble later. Elijah remembers digging his face as deep as he could into Orli’s fleshless ribcage.
“He’s staying,” Orli had said flatly, as if no one was more annoyed about it than him, but there it was, and nothing could be done about it.
It’s probably hard for those people to remember that was more than two years ago. Elijah’s grown up a lot since then, he just hasn’t grown much taller.
Diane wasn’t there then, of course. Diane only got here at the beginning of the summer.
Elijah figures that when Diane looks at him, she sees a skinny big-eyed kid in grubby clothes, and she can either accept that that’s pretty much what he sees when he looks back at her, and they’re both too young to be here, and so fucked it’s not even funny - or she can tell herself she’s older, and a girl, and girls mature faster.
“Hey, there’s Orli,” Diane says, jerking her sharp little chin to indicate the direction.
“Orli!” Elijah yells, throwing himself onto his feet and running - no flying across the open space.
“Shit!” Orli has time to yell around his laughter, bracing himself for impact as Elijah leaps one-footed onto one of the low wooden benches that dot the piazza and then launches himself at Orli.
There’s an explosive huff as the air’s knocked out of their lungs and Orli staggers, then rights himself as Elijah swings his feet under himself again and unwinds his arms from around Orli’s neck.
“What y’been doing?” Orli asks, messing the front of Elijah’s stiffly spiked hair with his hand.
Elijah grimaces and shoves Orli off.
“Hanging.”
“Smoking,” Orli corrects, leaning in for another whiff of Elijah’s breath. “You’ll stunt your fuckin’ growth man.”
“Fuck you,” Elijah beams, ducking back in and winding his arm around Orli’s waist under Orli’s coat. Orli smells of warmth and soap, under the sharper taint of his clothes.
“Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee,” Orli says, draping his own arm around Elijah’s shoulders. “Keep you a fuckin’ midget all your life.”
“You okay?” Elijah asks quietly, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on Orli’s broad hand hanging loosely on the front of Elijah’s jacket.
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
Elijah hesitates.
“I’m fine,” Orli says gently. “You don’t need to worry. Ian’s a nice old guy.”
Elijah doesn’t answer, but his expression darkens.
Of course Elijah prefers Ian to Orli’s other johns. Orli’s never come back from Ian with so much as a hickey. On the contrary, Orli comes back clean, his hair in shining curls, his skin silky smooth, his nails round and white-rimmed. For the rest of the day he’ll move with loose-limbed laziness, and no matter where they end up spending the night, he’ll sleep long and deep. Of course Elijah wants Orli to have Ian in preference to the spur-of-the-moment quick tricks Orli turns to supplement the money he gets from Ian. Elijah hates those bastards, hates them for throwing down a few lousy coins and telling themselves that makes it okay for them to grab Orli and shake him and shove him and push him to his knees. Forcing their tongues and fingers and dicks where they’re not fucking wanted. And they’re so fucking stupid that even when Orli hangs in their grip like a blank-eyed rag-doll, they don’t even fucking know he’s not there anymore.
The ones that really scare Elijah, though, are the fucking freaks that like to think they’re some kind of high-rollers, offering Orli fifty quid for a couple of hours, and honestly thinking that buys them the right to do whatever the fuck they want to him, short of outright killing him. Orli doesn’t take those deals too often, just when Ian’s been away for a couple of weeks and it’s deep winter and they’ve seen one hobo too many bagged up and taken away by solemn-faced ambulance men.
“You wanna sleep in tonight?” Orli asks, breaking into Elijah’s grim reverie.
“It’ll get colder than this,” Elijah answers. “We should wait.”
“Sensible kid,” Orli smiles, pressing the side of his mouth briefly against Elijah’s temple.
Elijah ducks his head, looking away to one side. They can never afford to pay for two beds in a hostel; Orli pays for one and later smuggles Elijah in. If the four-bunk room is mostly unoccupied, Elijah helps himself to a place to sleep. If the room’s full, as it generally is in cold weather, Orli and Elijah share the narrow mattress, arms wrapped tight around each other so the person furthest from the wall doesn’t fall off the edge of the bed.
It doesn’t really make any sense, but Elijah would prefer to wait until the scent of Ian’s soap fades from Orli’s skin before they do that.
The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
London is drowning-and I live by the river.
The Clash: London Calling.
Orlando
Orli has a regular gig with Ian from ten-thirty in the morning until one-thirty in the afternoon pretty much every Saturday, unless Ian’s away or having a family-gathering or something. Orli gets thirty quid a go, which is an irresistible chunk of money all at once.
Ian’s a very different animal from the other men who pay to use Orli. The punters who’ll hand over two or three or four quid in return for three or four or five minutes of grunting and shoving and swearing against an alley wall are paying for an orifice, a fist or mouth or arse to stick their dicks into. Orli winces at the rasp of rough asphalt against the bones of his back or face or knees, and makes small breathless keening sounds that can be interpreted equally as pleasure or pain, as the punter’s fancy strikes him. Orli’s been fucked by men who couldn’t say if he was fair or dark. When they’re done and Orli has his money and he’s cleaning up with a wad of toilet paper in the men’s room of some pub (provided, of course, they’ll let him in and there’s any loo roll in the men’s room anyway) Orli’s always certain he’s had the best end of the deal.
Ian - well, Ian buys some of the old push and pull too, of course, not like the pathetic old geezer who picks Orli up on occasion and gives him a couple of quid just to drop his jeans and boxers and let the old fart paw a bit, until Orli starts to get hard and the poor bastard gets to hold an erection, even if it’s not his.
Ian may have the long refractory period of an older man, but he’s also got forty years of experience, and endurance that Orli finds frankly unbelievable at times. Orli suspects Ian of slipping a Viagra now and then.
“Orlando, how nice,” Ian always beams, as if Orli’s appearance at his front door is a delightful surprise.
It’s the cleanliness of everything that gets Orli every time. Ian wears white canvas tennis shoes and pale gray linen pants and a voluminous white cotton shirt, and his silver gray hair shines and his skin glows pinkly and his pale blue eyes are clear as glass. Orli goes upstairs, past gleaming mahogany and fresh flowers, into the guest bathroom. He sheds his grimy clothing in a heap on the white tiled floor and steps into the shower.
When Orli’s scrubbed and shaved, hair toweled into damp ringlets, fingernails pared smooth, he walks naked into the guest bedroom, where Ian’s reclining barefoot on the bed with the color-supplement of the Sunday Times.
“Ah, there you are,” Ian smiles. “Ready?”
It’s not a real question; there’s no illusion of seduction in this. Ian is civilized and considerate, but it’s not for Orli to acquiesce or refuse. He crawls onto the bed and stretches out on the cool crisp sheets.
The others are all about surfaces - spit and come on Orli’s skin, fingernails scratching, hard palms and harder knuckles trying to break through but jarring to a halt on his bones. They shove into him, tongues and fingers and dicks, but the pain’s sharpest right under the skin; contrary to what the punters might like to think, a cock, no matter how far it’s thrust up Orli’s arse, cannot reach his soul.
Ian’s different. Orli’s not sure Ian means to be different, or knows or cares that he’s different, but he is. Ian, in pursuit of his own pleasure, inadvertently digs into Orli.
Ian, thank God, is not one of those nightmare punters who fancies himself a sexual god, who knows what buttons to push and nerves to fret, and can drag a painfully sudden and utterly unpleasant orgasm from the most reluctant body. Orli hates those bastards - hates them for trying to get to him that way.
Ian just likes to feel silky young skin and dense young flesh under his hands, under his mouth. Ian likes to feel a smooth young cock swell and harden in his fist or in his mouth. Orli shudders and groans, letting the pounding of the blood in his veins drown out the noise in his head.
Ian loves to feel long sleek muscles and slender limbs trembling with pleasure. Ian loves the extravagant pliability of young joints, the way long limbs can be arranged to provide complete access, a perfect angle, powerful leverage. Ian loves how a young body instinctively responds to skillful stimulation, how with the right press and push and a smear of lube a young body opens like a pliant flower. Ian loves to go slowly … very slowly.
Orli pillows his face on his own folded forearms, ass in the air, rocked forward a little with each gentle but inexorable thrust of Ian’s cock into his hole. Ian’s paper-soft hands pet and stroke Orli’s balls, Orli’s half-slack cock. Orli usually loses his erection once Ian starts fucking him - it’s like the sensations washing over Orli are too weighty and too strange to produce such a mundane effect. Ian doesn’t mind: he knows it’s a common reaction, and besides, as long as Orli remains receptive and responsive, it’s not Ian’s problem.
Ian adores toys, nothing fancy, nothing that would detract from the simple immediacy of the situation. Orli kneeling in the midst of snowy sheets, fucking himself slowly and deeply on the dildo braced between his heels, pleases Ian immensely. Ian dictates the position, the pace, and the killing turn of the hip each time Orli grinds down. Orli’s cock hardens again, and the hairless skin of his narrow chest flushes pink.
Orli has defenses. He has places in his mind that he can withdraw to, abandoning his flesh and bone and blood to the exigencies of the world - to cold and hunger and rough-usage and the crawling fear that he hasn’t begun to know how bad things can get. But he doesn’t have defenses against this: not against soft sheets on his clean skin and Ian’s velvet voice and hour after hour of the relentless building of heat along every nerve and -
- when Ian takes him again, Orli claws at the sheets and digs his bare heels into the bed, trying desperately for more traction. He arches and twists, his breath sobbing unevenly between clenched teeth. He clutches at Ian, fingers biting deep into the ropey muscles of Ian’s shoulders.
“Oh God please fuck Ian God,” he begs, and finally finally at the moment of Ian’s choosing, Ian withdraws and closes his lube-slick hand around the head of Orli’s cock and Orli comes in thick gouts of semen, shaking and sobbing and shivering with relief.
After a couple of hours in bed, Ian tells Orli to get up and get dressed. He doesn’t mean Orli’s own clothes. There’s a few garments hanging in the otherwise empty closet of the guest room: a pair of black drawstring cotton pants, a selection of three gauzy cotton over-shirts. Orli puts the pants on, pulls on one of the shirts without bothering to fasten it, and wanders out to the sunroom.
Orli sprawls in one of the wide wicker armchairs, waiting for the muscles of his back and legs to resolidify out of the mush they’ve been reduced to by two hours of non-stop fucking. Ian brings him a drink - ice tea, or beer, or orange juice with champagne as the mood takes Ian - and Orli drinks it without comment. Sometimes Ian will hand Orli a book or magazine, and it’s Orli’s job to turn the pages. Sometimes he just has to sit there, head resting on the chair back, one long leg and naked foot swinging idly. Occasionally Ian has his camera; Orli’s posed for punters once or twice before, but nothing like this.
“Orlando,” Ian will say from the doorway, and when Orli looks up Ian clicks the shutter, and Orli’s captured like that, eyes wide and sharp and faintly guarded, not certain of who or what he’s meant to be.
Sometimes Ian will come and lean over him, fruitlessly trying to brush Orli’s hair smooth with his hand. Sometimes Ian sits down next to Orli, one hand roaming between the unbuttoned fronts of Orli’s shirt and inside the loose hips of Orli’s pants. Sometimes - and God bless the guy’s fucking energy, Orli thinks - Ian hasn’t let himself finish and strips Orli and pulls him across his lap and fucks him one more time to be sure. Orli jerks limp-limbed in Ian’s embrace, arousal a reluctant distant blur deep in his guts, incapable of anything except moaning softly against Ian’s shoulder.
At one-thirty, Ian dismisses him. Orli goes up stairs, throws the borrowed clothes into the bathroom hamper, cleans up, and pulls his own clothes back on. When he comes down, Ian’s waiting in the hall, three crisp new tenners in his hand.
“Same again next week?” Orli asks, accepting the cash.
“Oh, I think so, don’t you?” Ian smiles, and Orli ducks his head in affirmation.
Afterwards, walking to the bus with the tendons at the backs of his legs still shaking and his stomach trembling and his arse stinging, Orli resists the urge to step aside and puke into someone’s neatly manicured shrubs. Orli knows it makes no sense, and he’s not idiot enough to resent his trade with Ian, but the fact remains … Orli comes away from Ian’s elegant, sunlit house more shaken than he’s emerged from any midnight alleyway.
Elijah
Elijah and Diane have found a sheltered corner in the lee of a couple of trash bins, where they’re protected from the chill wind but warmed by the thin spill of autumn sunshine. They’re hunkered down side by side, pressed against each other from shoulder to hip to knee, passing a single cigarette back and forth.
When it’s not his turn for the smoke, Elijah watches Diane stealthily from the corners of his eyes. She has shoulder-length straw blond hair, and angular, almost harsh features that fascinate Elijah. When she smiles or smirks or smokes, she develops two deeply engraved lines at the corners of her mouth; her lips are pale and matte, and Elijah imagines putting his own lips on them and feeling her mouth fragile and dry and chill under his.
“ - wasting it,” Diane says sharply.
Elijah flinches guiltily and takes the offered cigarette from her, cupping it inside the cage of his curled fingers and palm. He drags slow and deep, filling his lungs with acrid heat and then streaming a ribbon of smoke from between his pursed lips.
“You’re too young to smoke anyway,” Diane says, taking the cigarette back promptly.
“Fuck you,” Elijah answers mildly, shoving his hands into the opposite armholes of his jacket in an effort to warm them.
“You’re too young for that too,” she smirks, and the lines at the corners of her mouth spring into relief and the bottom falls out of Elijah’s stomach and lands heavily in his groin.
“I’m four months younger than you,” Elijah protests.
“You’re a boy; boys mature later.”
Elijah makes a sour face, unhooks one hand from inside his jacket, and takes the cigarette end from her, squinting at it to estimate how much drag is left before he hits the filter. It seems to him that he’s maturing just fine, if maturity means an obsession with other people’s skin and a tendency for his blood to relocate violently to his prick at the flimsiest excuse. Elijah’s not one for dwelling on the past, but he’s almost sure that even a year ago he wasn’t wracked by these hair-trigger plunges into sexual arousal.
It’s ironic in a way that Elijah’s humorous enough to almost appreciate, if it weren’t so fucking frustrating. Here he is, fifteen and a half years old, hormones screaming under his skin, two years and two hundred miles away from what passes as parental supervision in his family. He’s surrounded by kids not significantly older than he is, all equally adrift from any kind of guidance or control. They know every dead-end alleyway and inadequately boarded up house within a three mile radius, and sex is the best free entertainment they have access to.
And Elijah, baby Elijah, never gets a look in. For one thing, Elijah looks even younger than he is. Orli develops a silky dark beard growth along his jaw-line after a week of neglect, but Elijah’s cheeks and chin stay peach smooth from one end of the year to the other. He’s grown an inch over the summer, and Orli says there’s still time for a sprint to six-foot, but right now Elijah’s five-three and pretty sure he’s doomed to remain so all his life.
Elijah’s astute enough to know it’s not just his juvenile physicality that’s working against him. There’s a hardcore long-term population on the piazza that remembers back to when Orli first found him and brought him here, Elijah three months past his thirteenth birthday but looking like a fey nine year-old. He’d been frozen and starved and half-blind from crying, his clothes soaked and filthy, his face and body still a mass of fading bruises. He’d flinched away in terror from everyone, clinging to Orli’s side under the folds of the voluminous old army-coat Orli wore. He remembers trembling in fear when the others told Orli Elijah was too young, too certain to attract the attention of the cops; better to hand him over right away and save trouble later. Elijah remembers digging his face as deep as he could into Orli’s fleshless ribcage.
“He’s staying,” Orli had said flatly, as if no one was more annoyed about it than him, but there it was, and nothing could be done about it.
It’s probably hard for those people to remember that was more than two years ago. Elijah’s grown up a lot since then, he just hasn’t grown much taller.
Diane wasn’t there then, of course. Diane only got here at the beginning of the summer.
Elijah figures that when Diane looks at him, she sees a skinny big-eyed kid in grubby clothes, and she can either accept that that’s pretty much what he sees when he looks back at her, and they’re both too young to be here, and so fucked it’s not even funny - or she can tell herself she’s older, and a girl, and girls mature faster.
“Hey, there’s Orli,” Diane says, jerking her sharp little chin to indicate the direction.
“Orli!” Elijah yells, throwing himself onto his feet and running - no flying across the open space.
“Shit!” Orli has time to yell around his laughter, bracing himself for impact as Elijah leaps one-footed onto one of the low wooden benches that dot the piazza and then launches himself at Orli.
There’s an explosive huff as the air’s knocked out of their lungs and Orli staggers, then rights himself as Elijah swings his feet under himself again and unwinds his arms from around Orli’s neck.
“What y’been doing?” Orli asks, messing the front of Elijah’s stiffly spiked hair with his hand.
Elijah grimaces and shoves Orli off.
“Hanging.”
“Smoking,” Orli corrects, leaning in for another whiff of Elijah’s breath. “You’ll stunt your fuckin’ growth man.”
“Fuck you,” Elijah beams, ducking back in and winding his arm around Orli’s waist under Orli’s coat. Orli smells of warmth and soap, under the sharper taint of his clothes.
“Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee,” Orli says, draping his own arm around Elijah’s shoulders. “Keep you a fuckin’ midget all your life.”
“You okay?” Elijah asks quietly, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on Orli’s broad hand hanging loosely on the front of Elijah’s jacket.
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
Elijah hesitates.
“I’m fine,” Orli says gently. “You don’t need to worry. Ian’s a nice old guy.”
Elijah doesn’t answer, but his expression darkens.
Of course Elijah prefers Ian to Orli’s other johns. Orli’s never come back from Ian with so much as a hickey. On the contrary, Orli comes back clean, his hair in shining curls, his skin silky smooth, his nails round and white-rimmed. For the rest of the day he’ll move with loose-limbed laziness, and no matter where they end up spending the night, he’ll sleep long and deep. Of course Elijah wants Orli to have Ian in preference to the spur-of-the-moment quick tricks Orli turns to supplement the money he gets from Ian. Elijah hates those bastards, hates them for throwing down a few lousy coins and telling themselves that makes it okay for them to grab Orli and shake him and shove him and push him to his knees. Forcing their tongues and fingers and dicks where they’re not fucking wanted. And they’re so fucking stupid that even when Orli hangs in their grip like a blank-eyed rag-doll, they don’t even fucking know he’s not there anymore.
The ones that really scare Elijah, though, are the fucking freaks that like to think they’re some kind of high-rollers, offering Orli fifty quid for a couple of hours, and honestly thinking that buys them the right to do whatever the fuck they want to him, short of outright killing him. Orli doesn’t take those deals too often, just when Ian’s been away for a couple of weeks and it’s deep winter and they’ve seen one hobo too many bagged up and taken away by solemn-faced ambulance men.
“You wanna sleep in tonight?” Orli asks, breaking into Elijah’s grim reverie.
“It’ll get colder than this,” Elijah answers. “We should wait.”
“Sensible kid,” Orli smiles, pressing the side of his mouth briefly against Elijah’s temple.
Elijah ducks his head, looking away to one side. They can never afford to pay for two beds in a hostel; Orli pays for one and later smuggles Elijah in. If the four-bunk room is mostly unoccupied, Elijah helps himself to a place to sleep. If the room’s full, as it generally is in cold weather, Orli and Elijah share the narrow mattress, arms wrapped tight around each other so the person furthest from the wall doesn’t fall off the edge of the bed.
It doesn’t really make any sense, but Elijah would prefer to wait until the scent of Ian’s soap fades from Orli’s skin before they do that.