Chapter Text
Pete knew that leaving Vegas was the worst idea he’d ever had.
Regret was already rooted, aching, in his chest. He didn’t even know why he was doing it; he couldn’t make sense of himself or the tension boiling it over. It seemed the only way to disperse it was to leave.
But he was going to regret it. Even as he was leaving, a peculiar sensation flooded his body, twining around his bones and settling unbearably heavy against his spine. It wasn’t exactly emptiness. Pete thought it was the memory of being full. That his body used to belong to someone, that Vegas used to flay him open, crawl inside and fill him up.
He was going to have to get used to being hungry. It was a persistent ache as he left, sneaking out of the house at five in the morning, before the sun was up.
While Vegas was still asleep, curled up under the sheets and looking particularly small.
And Pete walked away from him. Out of the house, avoiding the guards who wouldn’t have stopped him anyways. Down the street as the sky grew steadily lighter, onto a bus, then onto another bus.
Six buses until he was lost in some part of the city he’d never been to, then he found a payphone
It took him three cigarettes to work up the courage to call.
Pete memorized Vegas’s number years ago — just in case; some habits couldn’t be shaken off — but his hand was shaking so bad it took him two tries to dial. Funny how easy it was for a body to forget how to be human. Even the sounds of the city were far away, his ears muffled like he was underwater, drowning.
Nothing but the crisp sound of the phone ringing, abruptly cut off into silence when the call connected. He came up for air.
Vegas’s voice filled the line. “Pete? Is it you?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Pete said as calmly as he could manage. Ash from the cigarette drifted down towards his feet like snow. His voice might be crumbling apart too. It was just him and the smoke in the phone booth, so clouded he couldn’t see his reflection in the glass.
He could be anyone, could be lying straight through his teeth.
“Where the fuck are you?” The hoarse edges of Vegas’s voice were unraveling at the seams, proof that he’d been yelling non-stop since he woke up. Vegas must be frayed and worn too; his pet had disappeared. Already Pete hurt for him. “What happened, who took you? Are you hurt? I’ll come get you now.”
Of course Vegas assumed that Pete was kidnapped. Perhaps even dead. He wouldn’t have assumed Pete left. He’d have woken up to the bed empty, the sheets cold on Pete’s side, and thought nothing of it, because Pete always woke up early.
He wouldn’t have assumed that Pete broke up with him.
Pete had been shying away from thinking it, but leaving after last night — there was no way to pretend this wasn’t a break-up.
“No one hurt me,” Pete said, clutching the payphone like his life depended on it. The plastic was slippery in his sweaty hand. He’d ditched the cellphone, putting it on one of the outbound trucks that loaded up at the dock and drove out of the city. “And it’s not Bank’s fault, okay? I snuck out early.”
“He should have been watching you,” Vegas said darkly, as if anything could stop Pete when he put his mind to it.
“Don’t kill him.” Pete blew out another ring of smoke, inhaled another drag. This cigarette was the only thing keeping him tied to earth. If he stopped smoking, he’d never manage to fit back into his body ever again. “For me?”
“Where are you.” Not a yes or no.
“I’m not coming back.” A resounding silence, broken only by the crackle of the payphone connection. “Vegas?”
“Why.”
Pete winced. Vegas’s tone of voice was flat and empty, the sort of hollow thing he got whenever his father ground him down into the dirt. Now Pete was the one breaking his heart. “I just,” Pete said. He didn’t have a reason. “I need some time alone.”
“Is it your grandmother?”
Pete shut his eyes. Every fucking word felt crafted, like Pete’s heart was the one down in the basement with the other prisoners, dissected with pliers that Vegas wielded, pulling out bits of aorta to inspect with glee. “No. She’s fine. If she calls you, just — tell her I’m busy, alright?”
“Pete,” Vegas begged, voice desperate. Now that he’d heard Pete’s voice, knew he was at least well enough to talk, now he’d beg. Now that he thought that Pete might have left of his own volition. “Pete. Let me pick you up. I’ll come by myself, okay, baby, I’ll take the bike and we’ll go to the docks like you like.”
Pete did love the docks.
“I can’t,” he repeated. Ash from the cigarette landed on his bare foot — where had his shoe gone? Why did he only have one shoe? — the ash was hot. “Can’t you give me some time alone?”
“Fuck no!” Vegas wouldn’t believe it without seeing it, but Pete could probably get a couple of weeks before Vegas found him if he was careful, if he only paid with cash, if he ditched the full suit he was wearing because it was the first thing on the floor when he’d realized he was leaving. “Not until I know you’re safe!”
“I’m very safe,” Pete reassured him. “I just need some time alone.”
It was a weak refrain, but he didn’t think himself capable of being crueler right now. Of saying all the things Vegas was already thinking. He couldn’t tell Vegas that he wanted to leave him; if he said it, they would both shatter into pieces. Pete’s splinters would need to be swept off the floor of the phone booth.
Vegas thought everyone wanted to leave him. Pete wanted anything but.
Which was why he was leaving.
“Bye, Vegas,” Pete said firmly, hanging up the phone. Last connection for now. Pete would have to get a new phone and a new job, some place to sleep. A new life, for a couple of weeks — that was how long he estimated it would take Vegas would find him, at least.
Pete was probably going to have to break his heart, to get him to go.
Pete hadn’t fucked anyone since that phone call with Vegas six months ago.
He thought about it whenever money was thin. Bartending only got you so far, no matter how good the tips, and Pete had been pretty good at his last job. He figured he was a better escort than a bartender, though they used a lot of the same skills.
Pete was personable. Pete was your best friend. Pete was slowly losing his mind, sure, thinking about a guy he’d broken up with himself who still lived angrily under his skin.
But he could make people like him just fine.
He’d always been good at pretending to be something he wasn’t — he could make it real. It wasn’t a lie. Pete was friendly. He was your best friend. He also was just terrified that if he slept with someone else, and they didn’t know him, he’d break apart.
Pete used to joke that Vegas treated him like he was made of glass. “Fragile?” Vegas would ask, doing something beautifully brutal that proved Pete was anything but. Sometimes he’d bite straight through Pete’s lip. Pete needed stitches for that once. “Baby, we both know you aren’t interested in something sweet.” Or even, “You like when I break you like that.”
Pete would press up against the places Vegas held him down in the hopes that he would bruise. What he meant was that Vegas made him feel seen, clear through to his core. Like a house with pretty paint and a beautiful garden that you passed by, every day, and never realized there was a dead body rotting away inside.
Vegas saw it. Vegas nurtured it. Vegas was the only person who ever fucked him knowing about the rotting corpse.
If Pete slept with someone else, though, then Vegas wouldn’t be the last person he’d fucked. In fact, the last person he’d fucked would never be Vegas. Vegas would just be a man that he’d fucked; every trace of him would be erased entirely.
So Pete never could. Even though he had rent to pay, food to buy, and a friend to help out. If there were any circumstances in which he should go back to his old job, it was this. Every time Porsche counted his tips in the back room, chain smoking like that would solve the problems, Pete tried to convince himself he could just do it. That it wouldn’t matter.
Instead, he rooted around in his back pocket for his own tips.
“I dunno if I can pay the school what I owe this week,” Porsche mumbled around the cigarette as he flipped through the money. Tired even though he’d only started his shift an hour ago. He unbuttoned his shirt one more button, like that would help.
It probably would.
Pete shoved his tips into Porsche’s own front pocket. “I picked up a double tomorrow,” he said, which would be grueling but worth it. He worked the early shift; he could handle a night one too.
“This is your money.” Porsche said, the way he always did. Heart of gold, that one.
“You barely even charge me for rent,” Pete argued. “Besides, I want to.”
“It’s not your problem.”
“Family’s family.”
They did this song and dance every time; Porsche had learned to give in easy. “It’ll help a lot,” he said. “Thanks.” He never asked Pete for anything except for the honestly paltry sum that Pete paid as rent, saying that Pete owed that nothing, he was their tenant and little else.
Pete didn’t see it that way. He lived in Porsche’s spare room but it didn’t really feel like renting. Porsche saved his life, got him a job, gave him a house to live in. To him, this was family. He wanted Chay to be able to go to university and he wanted loan sharks to stop coming around. Porsche should get to finish school too, like his mom wanted.
It was the same way he wanted his grandma to stop working and his auntie to be able to quit her job to take care of her and, maybe if they were lucky, send his cousin to college too, in several more years.
In an hour, Pete would get off shift, go home to make a late dinner, and leave the leftovers in the fridge for Porsche. “You’re my best friend, Porsche, you know? Lemme help”
“You’re so sappy, man!” Porsche flicked his cheek and Pete laughed; tension breaking. “Some girl is gonna love that one day. Why don’t you go home with someone, take your mind off things?”
Porsche was always taking his smoke breaks to fuck whichever girl tipped him the best for the night. Pete couldn’t count the number of times he’d walked into the back patio and seen Porsche’s bare ass.
Still, he wasn’t Porsche. Porsche was a good bartender and a handsome man, flashy and smug, beautiful as hell, and always trying to get Pete to take someone to the back to fuck.
“Not interested,” Pete always said. He wasn’t a particularly good bartender — he wasn’t shit, because Porsche had been the one to teach him — but Pete was fine being just fine. Fading into the back and spending most of his breaks sitting in the back smoking patio doing nothing.
When he’d first gotten the job, he’d sit out here and miss the smell of Vegas’s cigarettes so much that it would hurt deep in his lungs. Now he just sat out here and smoked his usual brand.
He didn’t begrudge Porsche his happiness.
Honestly, he wished he could get over his hang-up about Vegas, so that he could fuck someone. For money or for love, whatever, it didn’t matter. Instead, he was going to love Vegas forever, in the inevitable way you pressed on a tender bruise to feel sensation.
They always say never to fall in love with your clients. It was easier then, though, when Pete was in love. Vegas’s well-kept boytoy.
Pete couldn’t say if he was happier now.
There were truths about Vegas and Pete that everyone knew.
They had been together about five years. That Pete was Vegas’s little pet, but did he really know what he was getting into? What a shame, that someone as friendly and gullible as him got taken in by Vegas.
(Being with Vegas was… not an accident, because that implied that Pete had stumbled into it. In truth, he was hired; no nonsense. He’d been an escort for two years; it was hardly a special circumstance.)
There were truths that people knew but didn’t say to Pete or Vegas’s face. Not that Pete wasn’t aware of the rumors.
That Pete used to be an escort, that Vegas hired him because Kinn had him first. That Vegas’s little pet was just as lethal, if you pushed him the right way. That Vegas was certainly still paying him, why else would Pete stick around?
And there were the truths that people didn’t know.
That yes, Vegas had hired him purely because of his desire to take everything that Kinn had, boys included. That Pete had taken a bullet for the family and that Pete would kill someone for Vegas if he asked.
That Vegas held a knife to his throat on the first date.
Spilt blood, even, a thin line of red that ran down Pete’s neck and stained the crisp white collar of the shirt that Vegas had bought him.
Pete should have been afraid. But his first thought was, actually, that pulling a knife on someone who was giving you a blowjob was terrible etiquette. It sounded like one of those stories people tell, about how you think the most ridiculous things when you’re frozen with fear, right before you fall. How you remember that you forgot to turn the bathroom light off this morning, like that matters when you’re about to be murdered.
But Pete just wasn’t scared.
He should have been, thinking about the sharp edge and the tang of his own blood. He should have been terrified. He should have been worrying about whether or not Vegas was going to kill him.
Instead, he was still hard in his suit trousers, thinking huh, the rumors really downplayed this.
Anyone who went on a date with Kinn knew the rumors. After their third date, some charity auction, everyone pulled Pete aside and said, “Ooooh, you’re going to get a call from Vegas soon.” Pete’s roommate, Win, had a special sort of glee about it. “He’s Kinn’s cousin. He has a habit of stealing Kinn’s boys from him.”
Pete raised his eyebrows. “That’s…”
Win snorted. “Yeah. He’s a lot, so be prepared.”
And like clockwork, a week later, Vegas decided he wanted to hire Pete.
Pete didn’t care one way another. He only expected it to be one date. Apparently, Vegas didn’t keep anyone around for very long — a date or two, just enough to rub it in Kinn’s face. No one really seemed to know what he wanted, other than the fact that he was rough in bed. That he usually needed to be reminded not to leave marks, that he was into handcuffs, that he was controlling.
That had all sounded fairly reasonable.
Pete should have gone straight back to the agency and said he should be blacklisted. He can’t be trusted. In fact, he should have said, hey, remember all those rumors the other employees told me about? Remember how you said he was eccentric? Yeah, he’s way past that. Blacklist him.
What Pete was thinking, though, slow pain crawling its way up his throat, was that’s really hot.
Right from the start, Vegas was magnetic. Enough that Pete thought about him off the clock, which he’d never done before, running his fingers over the thin cut that healed up so easily. Didn’t even leave a scar.
But Vegas wormed his way in.
“How was it,” his boss asked afterwards. She’d warned him, beforehand, that Vegas was eccentric and rough, but that he paid well for the privilege, so long as the boy going to him was alright with the rough handling.
Half the clients Pete worked with could be considered eccentric, though most of them didn’t come with the warning label. Vegas, though, usually specifically requested someone who didn’t mind being slapped. So at the time, Pete had exchanged eccentric for temperamental and told his boss that was fine.
He should mind it.
He should tell her about the thin cut on his neck that he felt every time he swallowed. “He was… eccentric,” Pete said against the healing skin. “I’m not sure you should send anyone who isn’t me to him.”
“Did he do something?” She asked, alarmed.
“No,” he lied. “He just… got easily upset. Somewhat violent. But I don’t mind going back, if he requests again.” Then, when she wasn’t convinced, he added, “You know what I did for my last job. I can handle whatever he throws at me.”
Pete used to work in private security, in fact. He was no stranger to pain. He’d boxed his whole life. It was better it was him than someone soft, who couldn’t handle it.
Eccentric was interesting.
What Pete did not say, at the time, was if you send anyone else to him, I don’t know what I’ll do. What Pete didn’t say at the time was I have to dig into him, pull him apart. What Pete didn’t say, at the time, was he’s mine.
Pete first got the inkling something was wrong when Porsche came home with the watch, crowing about his luck. “Let me see.”
Porsche handed it over. “How much do you think it’s worth,” he asked curiously, because he knew Pete knew expensive shit. Pete didn’t know how he knew, when Pete didn’t tell him, but Porsche was good at reading between the lines. “Did you take care of your face?”
“Chay made me,” Pete mumbled around his cigarette. “He was awake, sorry.”
The loan sharks had come around that night while Pete was reheating dinner.
He didn’t bother to fight back, really — only a few basic moves that any group collecting money would expect from someone desperate. The gun was upstairs under his bed, and Porsche didn’t know he had it. Pete wasn’t about to send Chay up to get it, fuck no, and besides, the loans sharks didn’t want him to fight back.
They wanted to rough someone up.
It was a dull sort of pain, like he’d packed each one of his nerve endings down flat into a suitcase for a trip. It was better him than Chay, though he wished the kid hadn’t seen. Pete couldn’t imagine the split lip and the black eye and the cut from a ring, scabbing up sluggishly, were very pretty. At least his nose didn’t seem to be broken, despite the blood.
“Ah, it’s alright,” Porsche said, sighing deep in that world-weary way he did whenever Chay was asleep. “These loans existed way before you started living here; it’s not like he doesn’t know we’re in fucking debt.” He nodded towards the watch. “Worth 200,000?”
Pete hefted it up off the table. This was a brand of watch that Vegas liked, but didn’t wear because Kinn wore it. “At least a million. Probably more.”
Porsche gaped at him. “You’re fucking with me.”
“Nope. That’s a good brand. It’s engraved, though—” He squinted at it, the name on the back becoming very clear. He knew that name. He heard that name, spat out from Vegas’s lips, every day. He’d slept with that name, twice. “Fuck, Porsche, who the fuck did you rob?”
“Some rich thug.”
“No you fucking didn’t!” Pete shook the watch at him. “This is the rich thug! This is the mafia, Porsche!”
“You know him?”
“Kinn Theerapanyakul? Yeah, he runs the family business.” Pete shook his head. How many times had he been in the family’s compound, trailing after Vegas? How many times had Kinn, had least, given him a smile — albeit a cold one, since he’d never really gotten over the fact that Vegas kept stealing his men. Pete wouldn’t either, so that was fair, but Pete knew Kinn. “You don’t want to mess with him. Really.”
“I’ll sell the watch tomorrow,” Porsche said easily, stubbing his cigarette out on the bottom of the shoe. “Then we shut our mouths forever.”
“No, I’ll sell it,” Pete said immediately. “You can’t take that to your uncle’s usual place, believe me. I know where to go.” Also, Pete didn’t trust Uncle as far as he could throw him. He seemed a nice enough guy, but Porsche seemed unable to cut him off even though his gambling debts kept growing bigger and bigger, and tangling Porsche up in them.
Porsche groaned, stretching his arms up over his head. “Thanks, man,” he said in relief, standing up. Pete heard the pop of his spine even from across the table. Porsche worked himself too hard. “Sleep with me tonight?”
“Yeah, alright,” Pete said, like it was a favor, like Porsche didn’t invite him into his bed, just to sleep, almost every single night.
Pete had his own room, a small square that was probably originally meant to be an office. There was a desk pushed up against the window, overlooking the yard, and the mattress was squeezed into the corner.
It was a far cry from the rooms Pete shared with Vegas at the minor family’s house, but Pete didn’t need that much. He didn’t even own that much. He was perfectly happy sleeping in there, watching the moon out of the window, which didn’t explain why he so often ended up in Porsche’s bed.
He blamed not being able to sleep alone.
Which was stupid, because he slept alone plenty of times, even back when he was with Vegas. When Vegas had work to do outside of the house where Pete couldn’t go — when he had work inside the house, Pete was in his office with him, warming his cock, keeping him company. And then when they fell asleep together, after Pete had been taken apart and put back together so many times that he couldn’t be sure if assembly was complete before he drifted off, curled around Vegas, his nose buried between Vegas’s shoulder blades.
Porsche liked to cuddle the same way — liked to be held — so Pete held him like this, face pressed to his back, breathing in the smell of cheap aftershave and a fruity shampoo instead of Vegas’s expensive cologne. Pete tried not to, all that often, not wanting to take advantage, but Porsche always offered.
When they were drunk. When they had a hard day at work. When they were lonely. They’d curl up together like this and fall asleep.
Pete hoped it helped Porsche as much as it helped him.
He’d stolen the gun under his bed from Vegas. He’d known how to use it before Vegas ever hired him, but Vegas had fun teaching him anyways.
Hands on his hips as they stood out in the center of the yard, biting his neck right when he pulled the trigger so he couldn’t hit the target. It had been a game, at first — no one expected Pete to learn how to shoot, not even Vegas. Pete wasn’t hired for that and the escorts at his agency certainly couldn’t.
So Pete played dumb. It was only later that he understood that Vegas liked when his soft things were sharp underneath.
“Here you go, baby,” Vegas said into Pete’s ear. His breath ghosted against the back of his neck and Pete shivered as Vegas’s hands wrapped around his. Their fingertips gentle against the trigger of the Glock. Whenever Vegas got like this, parading Pete around, it was impossible to think straight. Like Vegas consumed all of Pete’s thoughts. “Shoot one.”
The targets were three alive bodyguards. Pete knew all of them, because they were his and Vegas’s bodyguards, and they were honestly pretty good. The one on the left had been watching Pete for over three years now. It wasn’t exactly their fault that Pete had been kidnapped, except they were his bodyguards, so it was. He didn’t want to shoot one. “Do I have to?”
“They’re responsible. They should have had eyes on you at all times. So shouldn’t it be your choice which one dies?”
Pete pursed his lips. “I don’t want them to die.” He made his hand waver purposefully on the gun. He could kill a man easily, but he didn’t want to.
He did want to pull the trigger.
“I can do it then,” Vegas said, running his hand over Pete’s shoulder, sliding his fingers over Pete’s wrist until his fingers formed a painful ring. Pete gasped from the pain. Vegas was so good at pinpointing little places — the curl of his wrist, the underside of his ear — that sent pain through Pete’s entire body. “Just tell me which one, baby.”
“What do I get if I do?”
“I’ll be pleased,” Vegas said, amused. He always did like when Pete was a bit of a brat, talked back to him.
“You really want me to?”
“Yes.”
Pete studied the bodyguards. It didn’t matter which one it was. He made his hand tremble, like he was nervous, then let his finger slip on the trigger before Vegas could try to help him. It grazed the guard’s upper arm, like intended. An injury that would require stitches but not too much time away from the field. “I don’t want to do it again,” he said, dropping the gun to his side and burying his face in Vegas’s shoulder. “Are you happy?”
“Very,” Vegas said, dipping his fingers to Pete’s waist. Over Pete’s head, he said, “Dismissed. And feel lucky that my pet decided to be so kind to you.”
Pete smiled, hidden against Vegas’s collarbone. “I didn’t do a good job, did I.”
Vegas pressed an errant kiss to his temple. “You’re too nice to them,” he said mock-sternly, in a way that meant he found it cute that Pete hadn’t shot any of them to death. “You aren’t going to get them to believe you’re helpless, you know.”
No. Pete had managed to break himself free of his kidnappers by way of breaking one of their wrists and jumping out of the van. There was still road burn on his torso and arms — he’d been shirtless.
“The act is for you,” he told Vegas, to hear the joyous little laugh and then the sharp pinch to his waist, like Vegas was punishing him for his own break in composure.
“Can this be considered behaving?”
He said that, but he rewarded Pete all the time when he wasn’t behaving. Pete was going to get something good the moment they went inside, either way.
Somewhere during Pete’s night off, the mafia had found Porsche. Pete had gone to bed before Porsche got home — sloppy of him — and in the morning, Chay knocked on Pete’s door and said, “Is hia in there with you? He’s not in his room.”
Pete shot up in bed, heart pounding thunderously against his chest. There was a guilty little swoop in his stomach like nausea. He should have been clearer. He should have warned Porsche better. He should have taken the watch straight to Kinn or something and made his fucking apologies and begged Kinn not to do anything, not that Kinn would have listened.
Might have shot Pete right there dead in the front of the compound, since he wasn’t family anymore.
Pete hoped that Porsche wasn’t fucking dead. “I’ll find him,” he said, meaning alive, because he was not going to find a dead body. He rooted around for a pair of jeans while Chay watched him hop around, unimpressed. “You go to school, okay? Do you need me to take you?”
Chay rolled his eyes. “I’m seventeen, P’Pete.”
“Alright, tough guy,” Pete joked. “I’ll call you when I find him. Probably just stayed over at Jom’s house and forgot to text.”
Porsche would never forget to text.
Pete called Jom anyways, just in case, which woke him up. Then he called Tem, who hadn’t seen him either. Then Yok, who was far more knowledgeable than most of the people Vegas or Kinn employed. But no one had seen a handsome, tall idiot lately.
And Porsche or his body wasn’t at the empty pool where the fights happened. Just bloodstains. Pete could see it was empty all the way from the bike on the edge of the road.
Pete called down to the docks, pretending to be one of Vegas’s bodyguards, and then to a couple of bars that were notably scummy where sure, a person could disappear easily. Especially no one had seen a handsome, tall idiot die lately.
Should he ask Vegas? Terrible idea, but did he owe it to Porsche? Vegas would probably do it for him, but Pete hated to ask, hated to pull Vegas back to him like the moon rushed the tide. It was kinder not to.
He hadn’t decided by the time Porsche slouched in three hours after Chay had woken Pete up, sopping wet and spitting mad.
Pete knew even before he said it that he’d gotten in trouble with Kinn Theerapanyakul.
What kind of fucking trouble dunked him the fucking river?
“He wants a bodyguard,” Porsche said later, halfway through his third smoke of the day. He’d spent about an hour in the shower washing the river off himself, cursing Kinn’s name the entire time, and then came back after his visit to the loan sharks cursing his uncle’s name instead. “Me, for whatever reason. He’ll clear this last debt if I agree.”
“I don’t think you’re that good,” Pete mumbled around his own cigarette. Porsche scoffed and Pete grinned. “Sure it’s not ‘cause you look pretty?”
“Fuck off.”
“Those bodyguards get tough training, man,” Pete said, thinking of the black suit and ties, the neat gun room and the huge pool. The minor family didn’t have that same sort of training, though Pete had often thought it’d be worth it, given how easy it was to slip his own guards. “It’s the mafia, Porsche. Khun Kinn isn’t so bad, but…”
But Porsche wasn’t made for something like this. He shouldn’t have to be made for something like this.
Porsche watched him, throat working as he finished the last of his own beer. “You know him?”
Pete knew him. Kinn had hired him three times and been perfectly respectful and a perfectly good fuck each time. And Pete had, for the past five years, been the live-in plaything of his cousin. He knew Kinn better than a lot of people. “He worked closely with my ex.”
Porsche would understand. Porsche had been the one to scrape Pete off the sidewalk outside the bar and say hey, man you aren’t even wearing shoes, because Pete had left without shoes and there was a gash spanning in the sole of his left foot.
Porsche knew well enough what he was running from.
“I see,” Porsche said softly. “What do you know about him?”
“The bodyguards are treated very well,” Pete said, because that was true. They were well-trained and treated well and they got a lot of money. Their families were taken care of. “Paid well too. But it’s dangerous work, Porsche, and it’s not… nice.”
It sounded like a pretty lame ending, but it wasn’t nice. It was bloody, every bit of it. Pete was no good person either; he had done so many things for Vegas that were technically outside his job description as escort but well within his purview as Vegas’s…. well, as Vegas’s. He did whatever Vegas asked. He did whatever Vegas needed.
“You sound like you miss it,” Porsche said.
Pete wrapped his fingers around the beer, empty and hollow inside as he sloshed the last sip around in the glass bottle, over and over. “I do.”
Porsche scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t think there’s anything else to do, man,” he said. “Uncle owes a lot of money; it’s not the kinda thing we could ever come up with bartending. He bet the house.”
Pete stared down at the stone table, the little various pockmarks from wear. “There’s something else I could sell,” he heard himself say. He fished around in the collar of his t-shirt, spreading cold condensation from the beer bottle, and came up with the silver ring on the end of his necklace.
It was engraved, but it’d still bring in serious money. Pete would be horrified to see it sold off to some pawn broker the way he’d sold off the watch, for some other rich fuck to pick up.
“You can’t sell that!” Porsche shook his head. “You’ve been trying not to sell that for six months now.”
“Needs must.”
“No,” Porsche said, closing Pete’s fist around the ring. “You’ve helped a lot but — this is too much. I’ll join Kinn’s team.”
That was it. Pete couldn’t talk him out of it, couldn’t find the words to make a difference as they cleaned up the table, pouring out the last of the beers into the grass and locking the porch door behind them as they came in, shivering in the air conditioning.
It wasn’t even that Pete wouldn’t have done it himself; he would have. He had. He’d been private security before for some low-level thugs and some mid-level thugs. It was a far riskier job than the one Porsche was signing up for, honestly — Porsche would get training; he’d have a team. There would be people to have his back.
Pete had always been alone, until Vegas.
He was alone again, now, curled up in the bed alone. Alone, because although Porsche kept the bad dreams away, although Porsche kept him warm, kept him from crawling out his skin, Pete would have to get used to not having him.
It wasn’t that dreams were bad. They were sweet sometimes, melting on Pete’s tongue until he was drunk and Vegas could manhandle him any way he needed. So it wasn’t the fear of them that kept Pete crawling back into Porsche’s bed, night after night.
It was just that he liked them so much. He remembered every one and buried them down. Without Porsche, they all rose back up.
You sound like you miss it, Porsche had said, and Pete did. There was something spectacular about the violence that Vegas draped around him. It matched them together, broken piece to broken piece. It was beautiful, the way Vegas broke people apart.
Pete never got enough of just watching.
He wasn’t sure when it started, that he would go with Vegas down under the house, to the dimly lit cells where people got tied up and made to scream. He had the distinct impression that Vegas tried to keep that from him for a while, which was funny — Vegas could chain Pete to the bedpost for two days, come in and feed him and humiliate him and let him bathe, and Pete ate it up, Pete loved it, but when it came to something “real,” Vegas balked.
When you tie me up, that’s real too, Pete wanted to say, but he understood that, technically, torture was not the same as tying your pet to the bed to fuck whenever you wanted. He must have just followed Vegas down one time, quiet enough that no one noticed, and then Vegas must have turned around and found him there, eyes dark with desire.
So now Vegas took Pete everywhere, unafraid that his pet would walk off. Hotels when he wanted, restaurants when he wanted to show Pete off, even though he knew Pete didn’t like them much, and here, down in the cells.
“You want to watch, baby?” Vegas picked Pete up, no easy feat, and settled him on the table where he laid all his tools. A pair of pliers, beautifully clean and cool even through the jeans, was nestled against Pete’s leg. “Aren’t you pretty up there,” he said, smirking. He hooked his hands under Pete’s knees and jerked him forward, the pliers and everything else clattering to the ground, so that Pete was right up against him, his ass barely on the table.
His fingers trailed up to Pete’s throat, applying pressure. Just enough to make Pete’s head spin, just enough to feel a rush of heady pleasure and then cotton-candy sweet, floating away. “Vegas,” Pete breathed, already half-hard just from the feeling of Vegas choking him out.
“Maybe I should torture you instead,” Vegas said thoughtfully, moving his hand up to grip Pete’s jaw hard enough to bruise. His thumb rested just on the corner of Pete’s mouth and Pete dutifully, well-trained, opened for him.
“You’re kidding me,” the guy they had chained to the chair said. “This has got to be worse than actual torture.”
He was going to regret that.
Vegas’s eyes narrowed. Pete controlled himself when Vegas slid away from him, steps light, knowing that Vegas would just fuck him twice as good later to make up for it, because right now, Vegas had a goal and it was probably in bad taste to fuck in front of a guy who was about to be torture.
(Pete didn’t care to think much about the morals of this, personally.)
Vegas traced his fingers across the man’s shoulder blades, beautifully delicate. Pete did and didn’t like this part — the way Vegas would play with his food. It drove Pete wildly jealous, which was half the reason he came down here.
How could Vegas touch other people like that? Vegas was his owner; he shouldn’t feed anybody else.
Vegas circled back around, his back to Pete and his face towards the prisoner. His name was Tom, he’d been caught stealing a lot of cocaine off the top of the orders, and he was selling to competitors in the area. And he was cocky. They always were.
Everyone thought they were good at withstanding pain until they met Vegas.
“You didn’t enjoy the show? I apologize.” He cut a glance over his shoulder at Pete. “My pet is such a greedy little thing.”
“Take my eyeballs out first, would you,” the guy said.
“For that, I’ll leave them in last,” Vegas said pleasantly. “Consider that my gift to you.”
Pete bit down hard on the inside of his mouth to stop himself from protesting. From just killing the man there. That wasn’t what a well-trained pet should do but Pete ached to do it. Vegas would be mad. He’d find it hot but he’d be mad.
“So is this,” Vegas decided, holding up a hand. He gestured two bodyguards forward. “They can start with you, for now.” To the men, he said, “Don’t break anything that I’d want to break myself.”
He settled his hip against the table, one hand possessively on Pete’s knee, rubbing his thumb against the bare patch of Pete’s skin through the rips in a way that made Pete realize that the outfit chosen for him today had been a bit purposeful.
“Go on,” Vegas said leisurely, sliding his hand up Pete’s inseam. “Entertain me.”
It wouldn’t be correct to say the man told them anything. He told them so many answers that they were meaningless, which was the worst. It wasn’t something that Vegas could rectify with torture, because no answer could be trusted now that he’d given them ten.
And Vegas needed this win; Kinn had ordered he find the answer. He was already bristling with anger, shoulders rising like the hackles of a cat the more this man fucked them around.
He started pretending. He wasn’t great at it, but he wasn’t an escort for nothing, so he arranged his face to look upset, squeamish.
Pete wanted to give him this win.
“All warmed up,” Vegas said silkily, but Pete knew — no one else knew but Pete knew — that Vegas wasn’t feeling particularly confident about this. He’d start with a tooth. He always did, just working out one tooth in a surgical manner. Then he’d move onto easier things, like a reprieve. Like the break in violence, where it hurt less, when the worst of the pain washed away, wasn’t far worse than when the hammer smashed a finger.
But Vegas knew this time it maybe wouldn’t work.
Pete reached out and fisted his hand in the back of Vegas’s shirt. “Vegas,” he whined, making a face. He thought about the way Kan’s wife would make faces, fearful disgust whenever she had to hear anything about the family business, but then Pete caught himself. Thinking about Vegas’s shit father’s shit wife while trying to be scared and sexy was not hot at all, so he gave up on that and did what he wanted. “I don’t wanna watch.”
Vegas turned around, eyebrows furrowed. “Baby,” he drawled, voice smooth. Willing to buy into the game, but not sure where it was going. “You love this. Come on, pet.”
Pete has played the spoiled, pampered kept boy before, soft and innocent and unable to withstand any sort of violence. Usually in front of more people than this — with Vegas, he was always laid bare — but at dinners, sometimes, when there was too much blood, too much shop talk, he would cringe back, the same as the other wives and girlfriends at the table. Would tuck himself up against Vegas’s side, managing to make himself look small even though he had no issue picking Vegas up at all.
And Vegas liked when he was the only one who knew how ruthless his pet was.
This wasn’t in front of people, though. This was in front of two guards, who knew Pete was just as pleased by the blood as Vegas was, and one man who was being tortured. Disposable. There was no show here.
“I don’t like it,” Pete whispered. “Can I go? I don’t want to see.”
Vegas jerked Pete’s chin up so Pete met his eyes. “This is just business,” he said. “That’s all.”
“I got blood on me,” Pete whimpered. He had not, though there were traces of it on the table. He should have cut himself somewhere, to make it more believable. “I don’t want to be here anymore; can’t I leave?”
“You’ll leave when I say you can leave,” Vegas said, digging his fingers into Pete’s jaw to the point where Pete had to straighten his spine, each vertebrae popping, so that Vegas wouldn’t dangle him off the table. “Why are you so pathetic? Can’t handle what happens down here?”
Pete stared over his shoulder at Tom, the man who had been beaten to a pulp. He had a pretty unrecognizable face, now. “I don’t feel very good,” he mumbled, fisting his hands in the fabric of his shirt, which was so sheer it was basically see-through, and left clear wrinkles as proof of his worrying.
“Fine,” Vegas snarled. “I see you need to be taught a lesson.” He wasn’t usually so mad at his pet, when Pete did this — usually he was a lot sweeter, like his pet was oh so sweet, oh so willful, couldn’t handle the rougher things in life, what a spoiled boy — but Pete was interrupting business. Pete usually knew better. Pete was trained better, except for when he was willfully misbehaving, which was all the time, and Vegas treated him now like he would then.
Like he had a dog that needed to heel.
He dragged Pete out of the room by the collar of his shirt, Pete stumbling after him on too short a leash. Vegas dragged him up the stairs like that, too, Pete clinging to the banister as Vegas marched up and up and up, seething. Pete liked it when he seethed. There was a thrill to it, when Vegas got so worked up that he’d just rip the expensive clothes he’d bought Pete to shreds. After a fight, most often, and a lot of times when came back from dealing with Kinn.
There was something beautiful about the methodical Vegas, who’d take Pete apart much like he was torturing a body. But Pete loved this.
Vegas shoved Pete into the room, throwing him against the bed. “What were you doing,” he snarled, climbing on top of Pete. His hands were already working at the buttons on Pete’s shirt; Pete’s nails already found their way under Vegas’s waistband. “Pretending like that?”
“Vegas,” Pete whined, scratching his way down Vegas’s chest.
“I was working,” Vegas told him, flinging Pete’s shirt behind him. He took Pete’s hands and locked his fingers around the headboard. No handcuffs, which meant he wanted Pete to do as he was told and stay still. Pete’s chest heaved. “You’re that needy when I’m working? So needy you have to put on a show to get me to pay attention to you?”
“You gave him a gift,” Pete said mulishly, which was so far beside the point, but he hadn’t been pleased with it.
Vegas laughed, sliding his cool hands up Pete’s chest. He paid special attention to Pete’s nipple, circling it with his thumb kindly before twisting it harshly so that Pete groaned, body electrified, pleasure fizzing up. “Why were you playing at some pitiful little thing,” Vegas crooned, nosing his way down Pete’s body until his cheek against Pete’s thigh. Pointedly ignoring Pete’s dick right next to his face. “Is that what you like to pretend to be?”
Pete glared at him halfheartedly. “You treat me so well when I do.”
Vegas grinned. “I know you like that sort of thing, baby.” Pete ached to bury his fingers in Vegas’s hair but his hands were supposed to stay on the headboard. “I know how to take care of you.”
And then he took Pete in his mouth.
“Fuck,” Pete gasped, hips bucking up against Vegas’s tight hold. Vegas took Pete apart with his mouth, cheeks hollowing. He got so methodical when he gave blow-jobs, it was unfairly hot. “Fuck, Vegas, fuck, you take care of me so well, fuck—”
He imagined Vegas holding down the man in the cells below, a hand on his shoulder as he worked out that favorite first tooth. It was the same process, a craftsman interested in exactly how much a body could sustain. Vegas sometimes dedicated himself to Pete sometimes, like Pete too was a study to be tied down and splayed open like a pinned butterfly.
“Is this what you needed,” Vegas cooed, replacing his mouth with his hand, a steady, tight grip. He bit at Pete’s inner thigh while Pete jerked helplessly in his hold. “My desperate boy, is this what you wanted?”
“Yes, yes, fuck, put your mouth back on me—”
Vegas licked a thick stripe up the underside of Pete’s cock. “Come for me,” Vegas said, the bastard, even though it was too soon, he only just barely put his mouth on Pete’s dick and—
Pete came, every nerve ending in his body singing alive, lit up like fireworks. It shivered all the way up his spine, little aftereffects of pleasure as he collapsed back against the bed. He barely even noticed the way Vegas crawled back up to him, cool against his sweaty body, and kissed his own cum into his mouth.
“Mmmm,” Pete sighed, swallowing. “You feed me so well.”
“Still hungry, aren’t you,” Vegas said knowingly, settling half on-top of him. He was still dressed, though his shirt was rucked up and wrinkled where Pete had clung to it, and there was a raw patch of scratches that Pete’s fingernails had left behind on his waist, just above the loop on his jeans.
“I’m actually hungry,” Pete said, entirely unsexily. He had a purpose to this besides getting fucked, unfortunately, and he needed to get Vegas out of the room. And this was surefire — it was impossible for Vegas to ignore Pete when Pete was hungry, in both senses of the word, and he never let anyone else cook for Pete when Pete asked him. “You have to feed me normally too.”
Vegas gave him an annoyed look. “You’re always hungry,” he said, propping himself up on his elbow. “Don’t you want food later?”
After he fucked Pete thoroughly, he meant. This was just a warm-up. Too bad Pete had a mission.
Pete curled around Vegas sweetly. “I’m hungry now,” he whined, looping his arms around Vegas’s neck. Then he shoved Vegas off the bed. “You’re still dressed, even! You didn’t even need to take my shirt off!”
Vegas arranged himself so it wasn’t quite as obvious that he was hard — honestly kind of a lost cause, and the kitchen staff had long since learned to just look the other direction whenever Vegas came down to cook. Better the things you don’t know. He gave Pete one lingering look, like committing him to memory even though he’d been back in thirty minutes, and disappeared out the door.
Pete took stock of himself. Good condition — if he’d let Vegas fuck him more, he’d be too far gone, mussy and confused and needing to be taken care of, but he was only currently a little punch-drunk. His legs were a bit shaky as he swung them over the bed, and his hair was undoubtedly a mess. Vegas had also left behind a huge, throbbing bite mark on his shoulder as well as a perfect imprint of his teeth on Pete’s upper thigh.
Yeah, that would do.
Pete stopped by the other kitchen — the big one filled with Kan’s chefs, the one that Vegas didn’t like to cook in, and got some water and a sandwich — and padded downstairs. No one stopped him, of course, who would dare?
Tom was no longer strapped to the chair but handcuffed to the bars. “Here,” Pete whispered, sliding the thermos of cool water in between the bars of the cell, because this was the sort of place that had genuine cells. “It’s all western food — do you like Western food? Um, I can get Vegas to get me curry, if you’d like that, but it’ll be harder to wrap up—”
“You’re that bitch, aren’t you?” the guy slurred. He had all his teeth still. “Vegas’s bitch.”
“I’m — yes, I’m Vegas’s,” Pete said, which was true. A point of pride, though he made it sound terrible. Sorry, baby, it’s for your own good. “Can you eat? Did they rough you up too much? You have all your teeth, right, I stopped him before he got your teeth?”
Tom regarded him through the bars and gave him a wide, grim smile. “I got ‘em.”
“He likes teeth.”
“Gross,” Tom said. Tom was unfortunate enough to be one of those smart-ass guys who talked a lot during torture, which meant he was also going to talk to Pete a lot. He clearly hadn’t realized that real interrogation sunk its teeth down when you were just having a chat, being friendly. When you thought someone was on your side. “Poisoned?”
Pete stared down at the food. “Uh, no, I just,” he said, trailing off like he wasn’t sure of anything at all. What he was sure of, frankly, was that he was going to break Tom into tiny smashed pieces in under thirty minutes, but pivotally, Tom couldn’t know that. Pete worked a piece of the bread off and popped it in his mouth. “See?”
“Why did you bring me this,” Tom said, holding up the sandwich. He used it to gesture towards Pete’s neck, where Vegas’s bite was still sluggishly bleeding. “You already got yourself in trouble stopping him earlier.”
Pete chewed on the inside of the lip. Which he had just applied lipstick to, so that it would look very pink and beautiful. He'd found it in the back of the bathroom drawer, left behind by some other boy years ago. “I just,” he said. “Didn’t want to see anyone else die. I don’t know.”
Tom scoffed. “You’re not the smartest one, I see,” he said, but he said it nicely, like he felt sorry for Pete. “Thanks, kid.”
Pete was pretty sure he was older than Tom. “Sorry.”
Tom set on the food. He’d been here a while, not long enough to know starving, but long enough that hunger was becoming a friend. He ate it measuredly, too, like he knew he’d just be sick if he slammed it down fast. A worthy opponent, Pete thought wryly.
Pete was not a particularly good liar, but he was great at being whatever he needed to be. It barely seemed like lying, really. He just picked up little pieces of himself and put them together in a different pattern and people saw whatever they liked in it.
“You should go,” Tom said, the idiot, catching the way Pete subtly but noticeably kept glancing towards the doors like he was worried anyone would come in. “So they don’t catch you here.”
“I have to take the water bottle back,” Pete said, twisting his fingers in his shirt. The sheer one from earlier that showed off the bruises and the bitemark. Pete honestly hasn’t pulled out so many tricks in months.
Tom mulled that over, swallowing the water faster than he’d eaten the sandwich. “You’re gonna get in a lot of trouble if they find you here.”
“It’s fine.”
“They’re gonna kill me no matter what,” he said kindly. “Don’t get yourself killed too.”
“He won’t kill me.”
Tom gave him a look. “Don’t get yourself fucked over, either,” he said, eyes lingering on the bruises on the back of Pete’s legs. He’d chosen a tiny pair of pajama shorts to show off how high they went. Vegas had left those two days ago. “That’s not a guy you want to cross.”
Pete stared at him. “It’s alright,” he said, faking a smile. “He takes care of me.”
Tom grimaced at that. “Like he took care of you an hour ago?” Yeah, exactly, Pete thought. Just the way I like. “Look, you should probably get out while you can.”
Hook, line, and sinker. Pete didn’t even think it’d been ten minutes. Tom being so chatty was his downfall. Chatty people always liked to make friends. Pete was his new best friend. He felt sorry for Pete. He felt sorry this was all Pete could do.
Pete never liked doing this. He much preferred Vegas’s style of interrogation. Vegas could be charming when he wanted to be, but they both preferred the violence.
But he’d do anything for Vegas. “There’s no other choice for me.”
The best lies were all true and this one was as well. There was nothing else but Vegas, for Pete. There was no other place he could be so fulfilled, so content. It was a choice, true, but a compulsion too, like two magnets drawing closer and closer. Where else could they go?
Tom would take it the other way, though.
He sighed, gesturing for Pete to come closer. “Here,” he said, clearly deeply resigned. Pete imagined what Tom was going to look like when he was missing a tooth in the front. The first one Vegas would work out. He leaned in to hear the pivotal piece of information. “If you get in trouble. You can tell him this, then maybe…. he’ll go easy on you, yeah? It’s three guys from this Indonesian crew—”
This was, of course, the moment Pete heard yelling down the hallway. Distinctly Vegas yelling. “Shit,” Pete said, jerking back. He leaned forward to wrap up the plate and tuck the water bottle under his arm, like he was idiotically thinking he could still get out of here before Vegas saw him. He hadn’t gotten the information yet, after all.
Tom was staring at him with a look of object horror. Nice guy.
Vegas burst in, shirt still untucked from his pants, gun in his hand and followed by two bodyguards. “What the fuck,” he snarled, zeroing in on Pete, “Are you doing?”
Now this was actually a little nerve-wracking because Pete, crucially, had not asked for permission.
“Nothing,” Pete said, pressing himself back up against the bars, because fucking fuck, he still didn’t have the information. Vegas was early. By twenty fucking seconds, and also solidly ten minutes, because he was an extremely methodical chef who always took the exact same amount of time to cook Pete’s favorite curry. “Nothing, Vegas, really, I was just giving him some food.”
Vegas clamped his hand around Pete’s jaw. He smelled faintly of chili peppers, because these hands not five minutes ago had been busy trying to take care of Pete. “Did I say you could do that?”
“No,” Pete gasped, scrabbling at Vegas’s wrist in a way that he had never done before. Sometimes he made Vegas work for it. Sometimes he just submitted right away. He had never once acted like he didn’t want Vegas’s bruising force around his throat.
It killed him to do it now. He would never do this on his own.
Vegas slammed Pete’s back against the wall, pressing him up so high that he had to go up on tip-top. “Really,” Vegas drawled. “Because I think you and Tom are far too friendly.”
“We’re not.”
Vegas turned to look at Tom, hand still outstretched to press Pete fully against the wall. “I was going to have fun with you, but it turns out you were having fun with something of mine. That’s not very nice, Tom.”
“Come on, man,” Tom said desperately. “He was just being nice, that’s all. He’s just stupid and nice, you don’t gotta—”
“I do gotta,” Vegas said patronizingly. “I think, Tom, that I’ll break one of dear Pete’s fingers for every time you don’t answer my question. How does that sound?”
Pete’s eyes flew open. He hadn’t really thought Vegas would hurt him — at least, not in any way that Vegas hadn’t hurt him before. The normal kind of hurt. Vegas had never broken his fingers before. It was a strange fear-like feeling that came over him when Vegas turned to him, eyes gleaming.
“Tom,” Vegas said pleasantly.
“Seriously, man, you’re gonna do this to your own fucking—”
“Oh, I think he’s yours now, Tom. Let me break him in for you.”
Pete let out a horrible noise in the back of his throat — which he had not meant to let out, it was only that he couldn’t handle Vegas trading him to someone else so nonchalantly. No, Pete was his, not anyone else’s.
Vegas released Pete, who felt spectacularly off-kilter, and when Vegas pressed down on his shoulder, Pete collapsed to his knees on the ground. Vegas followed, kneeling in front of him. “Give me your hand, pet.”
Pete gave him his right hand. He’d let Vegas do anything. It wasn’t quite horror. It was only that Pete wasn’t much already and the only thing he was, a boxer, relied on his hands. And Vegas was going to exorcize it from him.
“Good boy.” Vegas turned Pete’s hand over, sliding off the flat, cheap silver ring he liked to wear and tucking it into the pocket of his shirt. He rubbed his thumb over Pete’s forefinger thoughtfully. This was the most permanent thing he was going to do to Pete, thus far. Pete couldn’t even say he minded, because he didn’t. “Tom? Now’s your time.”
There was the sound of spit hitting the cement floor. “Fuck you,” Tom said.
“Mm,” Vegas said thoughtfully. He gave Pete a gentle look and Pete — didn’t relax, exactly, but just like that, he was reassured. That Vegas was still on his side. That Vegas knew Pete was still on his side. So it was okay, whatever Vegas did. If he broke a bone, it was okay, because Pete was still his.
He didn’t actually break a finger.
He wrenched Pete’s hand up in some facsimile of a wrestling pin and Pete screamed like his finger was now broken and bent. He curled over himself, pressing his perfectly fine fingers, his perfectly fine wrists against his stomach, hiding it all from Tom. It all had to be a show, he realized belatedly. Vegas knew that Pete wasn’t going to scream if he broke a finger, not even if he broke every finger. Nothing Vegas had ever done could make Pete scream.
Sometimes Pete did, for fun. Like a gift. Because Vegas enjoyed it, hearing Pete scream. But that was something Pete chose; it wasn’t something Vegas could make him do.
Pete hadn’t screamed when his father broke his toe because he could still box with it broken. Or when his father broke his wrist, because he was drunk and he didn’t care what Pete could box with. Pete didn’t even scream when his father dislocated his shoulder and he had to take the bus to the clinic one town over, pain rattling up and down his arm with every twist the driver made.
This was nothing.
“Look how lovely that is,” Vegas said, making Pete uncurl his hand again. He was being showy now, a performance. “What about the middle finger next?”
“Please,” Pete whispered, and he didn’t know what it meant.
“Another.”
“Please,” Pete said, trying to pull his hand back. He wanted to give his hand, his mouth, his everything over to Vegas to be broken and remade again and again.
“Fuck, fine, fuck you,” Tom yelled from behind him, and Pete watched cruel satisfaction spread over Vegas’s face. “Dock twenty-three, two days from now, eleven a.m., now stop fucking torturing that poor kid!”
Vegas lifted his hands in accordance. “Certainly,” he drawled, standing up. Pete could see Tom again, through the bars, through Vegas’s legs. Tom looked terrible. Pete should thank him for the care. “Keep him alive until the intel proves good,” he told his bodyguards, not glancing at Pete at all, and then strode out.
Pete heard the distinctive click of the security room door down the hallway.
“Shit,” Tom said, dropping his head back to rest against the brick wall. “You okay, kid?”
Pete unfurled himself. “That was really nice of you.” It was really nice of Tom, who had decided to be nice to one particular whore that he didn’t even know. Not that Tom had a choice. Really, Pete deserved the accolades.
“You didn’t deserve any of that,” Tom said tiredly.
Pete reached his completely unbroken hand through the bars and patted Tom’s bruised cheek. “No one’s ever done anything like that for me before,” he said sweetly, watching Tom’s eyes widened as he took in the perfectly intact hand, the way there was no pain on Pete’s face at all. Pete wiggled his fingers goodbye. “I’ll see if I can get him to kill you quickly.”
“Fucking bitch,” Tom yelled after him as Pete left.
Pete scoffed. Real nice guy.
The door for the security office was closed, the guy who was supposed to be watching the screens standing outside, a look on his face like Vegas might decide to kill him where he stood. “I’ll talk to him, Bank,” Pete said, giving Bank a nice pat on the shoulder. “That is a very handsome shirt.”
“Thanks, Khun Pete,” Bank said pathetically.
Pete smiled at him, then pushed the door open. “Vegas?”
Vegas slouched against the counter where the small TV screens as well as Bank’s half-eaten lunch sat. “I wasn’t going to break your fingers.”
Pete blinked at him, confused. Took in the way that Vegas was still hovering around the counter, when usually he’d have been on Pete right away. Vegas wasn’t known for his restraint, but he refused to move from the counter, shoulders hunched in like he was ashamed.
“I’d have let you,” Pete said after a minute, because he can hardly understand being scared of Vegas. That was for other people. Vegas lived inside him and he was a far kinder thing there than everything else caught in Pete’s chest.
Vegas gave him a look. “You shouldn’t let me do that.”
“It’s fine if it’s you.”
Vegas sighed, clearly giving up when Pete was this stubborn. “Come here,” he said, reaching out. His hand hovered a little bit away from Pete’s cheek, the way you held out a hand for a cat who was nervous. Pete pressed his cheek to the palm of Vegas’s hand immediately. Vegas traced his thumb against Pete’s lip, his fingertip coming back stained pink. But he didn’t ask where the lipstick came from. “What were you even doing down here?”
Pete stared at Vegas’s pink fingers. He wasn’t sure how much Vegas picked up on. Vegas had been performing, sure, but did he know what Pete was doing or did he just find a good opportunity? Vegas was nothing if he couldn’t find a way to weasel through the cracks.
“He wasn’t going to give you the information no matter how you tortured him. It’s not always effective, you know.” Vegas was more effective than most, Pete would admit that. “The people who get the most information are people who you let in, think of as a friend. He thought we were both trapped. So he told me.”
Vegas’s eyes narrowed. He was clearly putting pieces together, little bits of Pete’s past suddenly connecting. “When you worked in private security,” he said slowly, “You did interrogation.”
Pete shrugged. It was true. “I did,” he said. “I was good at it.”
“You don’t seem like an interrogator.”
“It’s pretty similar to being an escort, actually.” Pete rested his hand on Vegas’s shoulder, thumb over his collarbone. “It’s just finding out what people want and faking a genuine connection.” He raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t I do that for you?”
Vegas rested his eyes on him. “Did you?”
Pete snorted. “You know what, you made it hard,” he said, poking Vegas directly in his forehead. “I couldn’t tell what you wanted for ages. By the time I knew, I was already in deep.”
Vegas looped an arm around Pete’s waist, dragging him close. Smiling as he asked, “And how do I know you aren’t just playing me?”
Pete laughed. “I guess you don’t,” he said, cupping Vega’s cheek. “But you didn’t know before, either. It’s the risk everyone takes when they hire an escort.”
Vegas buried his face in the crook of Pete’s shoulder, running his fingers light up and down Pete’s sides like a nervous tic. “You aren’t an escort anymore,” he mumbled, as if Pete might not know. “You’re much more. You know that, right, Pete?”
Pete ran his fingers through the fine hair at the nape of Vegas’s neck. “I know,” he said, because he did. He had been something else to Vegas for so long — since the beginning, maybe.
“I love you, Pete.”
It was the first time he had said it. But Pete had known it long ago.
Pete surged awake, the sheets tangled around his legs and hair plastered to his forehead. His heart was pounding, loud in the quiet in the house, but there was nothing to indicate that he’d been screaming.
The house was asleep and Pete was still alone.
Porsche, one room over, was soon going to be gone. Porsche, who had let him into his life so easily, and was now so easily his best friend, who Pete did not know how to be without. It would be like this, every night, Pete waking up alone, no one in the house but him and Chay.
Porsche couldn’t leave Chay to Pete. Pete couldn’t handle one night alone, forget the next year. Porsche kept Pete normal, he kept the dreams at bay, but Pete yearned for each one. Pete couldn’t regulate himself; he was no good person.
No, no, Pete would talk sense into him, demand to sell Vegas’s ring and pay off the rest of Uncle’s debts; he would make Porsche take it. He would tell Porsche everything, so that Porsche would understand what he was selling his life into, that who he was relying on to take care of his brother was nothing but a lost dog waiting for his owner to drag him home. And then if Porsche made Pete leave, fine, but Porsche couldn’t become a broken thing like Pete was.
Of course, in the morning, Porsche had already disappeared, leaving behind just a note. Pete’s in charge, he wrote. Take care of Chay :) he wrote, with typical flair.
Bastard.
Chay didn’t cry, at least. Pete thought that Macau probably would have cried, if Vegas had pulled this stunt on him. Then again, Macau would have assumed that Vegas was dead.