Work Text:
Fuck!
Another impersonal hotel room with its dour drapes and hard bed, non-absorbent towels, irritatingly dripping shower, and dull lamp light that made the colour leech out of everything reducing vibrance to sad sepia tones. All infused with the stink of stagnant cigarette smoke and loneliness. This one was in Baltimore but it could be any American city Dar had stayed in over the last few years. All those years and for what? As he got older the quarry got even more elusive, the 90s didn't seem to make kids like the decades before had; all gone soft watching MTV or playing thumb-numbing Super Mario. No balls!
Dar despaired. He had a case that was about to blow and no kid to use to retrieve the extremely volatile situation.
Outside the night had come on with a cavaliering quickness. All was dark, meagre street lights twinkling pathetically as dirty sleet began to fall. Cold and lifeless, the atmosphere was depressing as hell, the only comfort found in the bottle of thirty year old Scotch Dar had been keeping for just such an occasion.
Dar sighed, thought about phoning Marsha again but she had ignored his last seven calls, why would an eighth be any different? Marsha, who loved the finer things in life, who had traded her integrity for the big house and the big bucks he could provide her with, but who had found it increasingly difficult to overlook his reckless misdemeanours. Didn't she realise that it took a lot of dirty coal to create a shining diamond? He could talk her round this time again he was sure, if she would only answer the damn phone. The kid in question had looked younger than he was but Dar accepted having him in his own marital bed was a step too far. Who knew Marsha would be home early from the women's quilting circle with a migraine? Well, she had certainly got a worse headache afterwards. Marsha certainly knew he could talk his way out of anything of course, and that was why she wasn't picking up the phone.
A knock at the door brought Dar back from his self searching. He stood, legs stiff and shaky from their inactivity of the day, too many bleak interviews in piss-stinking police rooms. Moving like an old man, he opened the door on the chain. The hinges squeaked piercingly in complaint over this late night disturbance.
"Jimmy says you're recruiting." The voice was low and controlled but Dar heard the unmistakable tremor of youth. Something stirred with a sigh, deep in his guts.
"Does he now? Well I'm not."
A moment's pause. "Government shit, sounds exciting." The conceited drawl of the voice made it sound anything but. Dar swallowed hard. He should shut the door. The evening would be best spent alone with his whisky and self pity. But something stopped him. He squinted through the crack, saw a hint of blue. It was in the eyes, he knew, always in the eyes and against all his better judgement he undid the chain, opened the door wider.
A beautiful sight was revealed.
The kid's long, languid frame, at the age of blooming from the awkward angles of adolescence into smooth, fluid manhood, was dressed in regulation denims and a dirty almost grey shirt, wet now and clinging across his pectoral muscles. He hair was dark, untidy, dripping, it fell into his eyes... and those eyes, glacial blue, bottomless. Looking into them Dar felt like he was plunging into a frozen pool; the snatch at his heart was dangerously invigorating.
The kid pushed past him into the room. He was beautiful and he knew it, from the chiselled precision of his razor sharp cheek bones to the confidence of his lazy swagger, it oozed from him.
"Come in," Dar managed to mutter belatedly as his mouth went dry in expectation.
The kid sat on the bed, attraction dripping from every sinew. "Nice place you got here."
"You think?"
He shrugged, nonchalant. "Better than the street."
"Is that where you spend your nights?"
He sniffed, unconcerned. "Sometimes. Foster home sometimes. Most nights I find somewhere more comfortable." He rolled his eyes, the meaning clear.
Dar stared at him for a long moment as the emotions swirled like a maelstrom in his mind. Foremost was lust but there were others; caution and inquisitiveness, denial and rashness.
"It must be desperate," he muttered finally.
"Not really," the kid replied, looking around the room, eyes lighting on the whisky bottle on the bedside table. "The world is fucked up. You do what you gotta."
"How old are you?" Dar asked.
"Nineteen." The response without missing a beat.
Dar doubted it. But he wasn't too young either. Street kid, smart beyond his years obviously but something else, something deeper, something that Dar found bowel-twistingly attractive. "What are you doing here?"
The kid slid along the bed, leaving a damp stain where his pert bottom had rested. Took hold of the bottle and unscrewed the top, his ice blue eyes never leaving the older man's as if he expected censure at any moment. When he received none he took a long swig from the bottle.
"Christ," Dar snorted. "That's no way to treat 30 year old whisky. Here, let me." He moved forward, reached out to take it, and felt the kid's long fingers linger over his as he released the bottle. Pulling himself together Dar turned to pour out the peaty liquor into the glass he had found in the bathroom earlier. He passed it to the kid. "Here. Slowly."
The kid shook his head. "You first."
Dar snorted again and said, "Slainte!" As he took a long mouthful of the fiery liquid that burnt all the way down to his stomach.
"Old man's drink," the kid said.
"You don't like it?"
"Yeah, I do. Not as much as Irish Whiskey though."
Dar passed the cup back and with the hint of a smile, the potential of which caused Dar's stomach to flutter like a basket full of moths searching for a flame, the kid took it.
"So, you wanna do it?" The kid asked after downing the contents and licking his lips enticingly.
"Do what?"
"Oh, you gonna be coy with me?" The kid let out a guffaw that was far older and sadder than his years. "I thought that was my line."
Dar snorted but it was just the sort of cockiness he found irresistibly attractive. "What's in it for me?"
The kid licked his lips again just to confirm it wasn't to remove any whisky that remained there. "I wouldn't say I'm the best lay in town, but not far off. I don't get no complaints."
"You that desperate?" Dar asked.
The kid hesitated, for the first time revealing a chink in his hitherto impenetrable armour. "There you go again with that word. I'm not desperate," he snapped, trying but failing to control the childish pout that squeezed his lips together.
Dar, forcing away the image of kissing those lips that leapt into his head, poured more whisky. "What then?" Heart racing in his chest like a sprinter claiming a gold medal, he sat down on the bed at a tactically appropriate distance.
"Curious." The kid said finally.
"Of what?"
He shrugged enigmatically. "The power."
Entranced by the direction the conversation was taking, Dar cocked his head to regard the kid once more. Using long years of practice in such situations with young men, he bore into the very heart of the boy before him. This time he looked passed the beautiful packaging, the granite hard exterior and was increasingly spellbound by what he perceived beneath, a fragile vulnerability, a naivety and an honesty that was almost too pure. "Tell me more," he prompted gently.
The kid bit his lip, as if realising he had let his cloak of indifference slip, he looked away seeking assistance in the gloomy innards of the damp bathroom. Then he sniffed and looked back, eyes moist and intense in the lamplight. "Why men like you have it and I don't," he disclosed.
"Power?"
The kid nodded, looked down and began to fiddle with his zipper. Suddenly he appeared very young and vulnerable and Dar almost found the strength to turn him away. Almost, but there were too many well-used justifications in Dar's selfish mind; the night was bitter, the sleet turning to snow and even this sleazy hotel room offered more comfort than that.
It had happened many times before and would do so in the future, Dar pushed aside his empathy, ignored the intrigue of the softness in the centre of this street kid and letting his own desire take precedence, he gave in to the lust that was thrumming through his body and moved towards the boy. "Come here, show me how good you are. And maybe afterwards I'll tell you about power!"
*****************************************
Dar awoke slowly. In those few precious seconds between sleep and wakefulness, before the pressures of the day forced their burden on him, he felt uncommonly at peace. An unusual scent twitched his nostrils, forcing him to revive, to take cognisance of his surroundings. He groaned, rolled over and half opened one eye.
The kid was beside him, wide eyes watching, head resting on his hand, blowing nonchalant smoke rings from the joint in his hand.
"Money's in the dresser, top drawer," Dar drawled sleepily.
He tried not to look but failed as the naked, pert body slipped from the sticky sheets and moved forwards. "Fifty bucks," he growled to cover the flaming arousal reigniting in his soul.
"You trust me?" The kid asked but instead of going to the dresser, he went to his own jeans, discarded in a crumpled heap on the floor. He bent and retrieved something and then turned back to Dar. "You shouldn't."
"Why not?"
The kid smugly revealed, a small recording machine in his hand.
"What's that?"
The kid's smile was wide, as he pressed the play button. "You getting your rocks off, big CIA man."
Dar couldn't help himself, he actually laughed. "What the fuck?"
The kid's smile darkened to thunderous anger. "Why are you laughing at me?" he demanded.
Dar shook his head, he wasn't worried, quite the opposite in fact. "Switch it off, there's only so much moaning and groaning I can take." It was a shit recording, could have been anybody really but it showed promise. "You got balls kid, I'll give you that. What do you want?"
"I told you before. I want to be recruited. I want to get to the power. I want to do stuff. To make a fucking difference. If I don't get out of here now, I'll be dead before I'm eighteen!"
Dar's eyes twinkled as he ignored the slip. The kid could deny it as much as he liked but he was desperate, just like every other boy Dar had seen this week, but he was also far more intriguing. "You certainly have an innovative approach, I'll give you that, kid!" Dar let his face straighten to seriousness as he contemplated, maybe there was something here. Yeah, there was a lot of work to do but maybe this raw kid was exactly what he had been scouring every shit heap in America to find. How ironic that after all those wasted attempts, all those failures, the kid had come to him, had washed up in his bed like unknown pirate treasure on a deserted beach!
The slithering serpent of lust in Dar's belly, awoke from its satiated sleep, to ripple in anticipation once more. This was too good to miss.
"I'll send it to the papers. To your superiors. To CNN!" The kid threatened, still clinging to his blackmail attempt like a life raft in a stormy ocean.
Dar sighed, reached over to the ashtray where the kid had deposited the joint, picked it up and took a long, cool drag. "You don't have to do that. You got me."
The beautiful features were stunned pale and disconcerted as if he could not believe his success. The kid gulped, "I have? Fuck me."
Dar nodded. "Your plan was great, maybe your execution could use a little bit of work." He smiled. "Although parts of it were quite skilled."
"You're fucking with me."
"No, I'm not. I think you're gonna do OK, son."