Red lowlight scattered shadows against every surface in the small, infected room. With rustled sheets a whore had won his spoils -- a reservoir in the face of punishment, should his mistress ever be so cruel. Truth be told, it hadn't been necessary yet -- but addictions were dangerous, and heavier with each passing day, each injected vein.
"I don't suppose you could spare an extra hit on this one?" More a hint than a request. He'd put out so well, after all. He purred, reached fingers out to caress the man's thigh.
"Please?"
The whore was regarded in the following fashion: like a moth. Pretty at first, but upon closer inspection, rather frightening. Delicate, easy to crush or handle improperly. Lined with wings so fragile, yet beautiful in the way they glimmered like silver in a fire's light.
That was how Trystan appeared to Jack. Fragile.
And yet there wasn't a trace of gentleness in the way he titled the boy's chin up with a finger, uncaring if he mishandled this little moth.
"Please?"
"I'm not completely incapable of nicety," Trystan drew away, fluid and feline. He pressed up, all twisted and concave, sinking into one shoulder in pretty airs.
"I'm sure your dick can verify." An envy gaze cast down, and up just as quickly.
The blond slipped fingers through his own hair, from darker root to tip. "I'm sure my dick would say a lot of things, if it was capable of speech." And it hardly was, so asking it was entirely out of the question.
"You didn't answer the question." Impossibly long legs untangled from themselves. Amidst papers and papers and several billion words the whore crept, over to a vanity that made him ill with its antiquity -- that was drowning in perfume, in cocaine, in powders of all kinds and little satin pouches they'd all come in.
He was wearing a robe -- one tossed away by one of the girls from Manji's land, but a very different time. He turned round, and it pooled at his feet, draped across his back in crimson and gold. He stared expectantly.
And in return, he got a stare back. "There was a question?" queried the blond, who had taken to lounging rather comfortably. Being a dick was part of the job. It was so inherent that if someone were to find a cure for his sheer assholery, it would be a miracle. Yet so it was.
"Was it the 'please'?"
"It was its predecessor; don't play stupid. You know I know better." His fingers had found something, toyed with it as silken words sweetened his abrasive lips. He stepped once, twice -- a graceful, burdened move rife with deliberation. He brought a cigarette to his lips -- a match to follow.
"I know, also, that your answer won't be what I want to hear." An exhale. It mingled with the smoke of an extinguished match.
"So, how do we reconcile that, baby?"
Jack was more than content to commandeer the mattress, the daunting sensation of a growing craving settling deep in his bones once those dark blues flickered over to the cigarette.
He tilted his head back. "Do we reconcile it?" The urge to tack on a sarcastic 'baby' in return was quelled.
There was a rustle outside the door. The blonde paid it no mind, turning back towards the bed with a silent step. A pity, how devastating he was despite death hanging from his sallow skin, but it wasn't the point -- pretty wouldn't buy him what he wanted from Jack; he wasn't Jill, after all.
"Are you going to give it to me or not?" Irritation laced those words like arsenic. What was a lethargic, lulled purr before suddenly had a razor's edge.
"After all, I'm doing all this shit for you for free, and it's worth far more than you've ever given me."
A pair of eyebrows rose slightly, lips curling into a mock laugh. "Don't be a touchy little bitch, Bones," warned the dealer in a smarmy tone as he gradually eased into a seated position. "With an attitude like that, does it surprise you?"
Of course, it was hardly the attitude that bothered him. Many things bothered him about Trystan, but that razor edge never threw him off.
He stood for a moment, all sharp eyes and angles. Slowly, it softened -- melted into spun sugar and venom lies. He drew forward, straddled Jack, and with a flick of the wrist and cheap perfume sitting heavily in the air, Trystan deposited the filter of his cigarette between Jack's lips to watch him suck, oh, suck deeply in.
"You're right." A kiss, a lick along jawbone.
"Pretty please?"
Unceremoniously plucking the cigarette from those bony, spidery things called fingers, meanwhile angling his neck in appreciation, Jack took another long drag, peering at the whore through his lashes.
"The magic word changes everything, doesn't it? Even if it's just for show." Rhetorical, that question. "Front pocket." He would have to be able to shift in order to indicate just which pocket of his jeans he referred to.
The whore took it upon himself to find it for him. He arched up, legs spreading further to accommodate the slip of his hand between them. His thumb toyed with the hem of Jack's pants as the remainder of his hand dipped into one pocket -- another -- and withdrew a small plastic bag, tainted by the vices enclosed.
"You know," he whispered, clutching it in his sparrowbone hand, "for a nasty little pissant you're really not that bad." Another lick, and a kiss.
"I'm so fucking flattered," came the dealer's response, in little more than a whisper in return. One hand snaked up to furl itself in Trystan's blonde locks, twisting not entirely unkindly.
"So what does that make you?"
"Whatever you want me to be," a beautiful hush, and despite tearing tendrils he inclined towards Jack's ear, licking the shell of it wantonly.
"You know that."
Fingers slipped from those tendrils, tracing down the back of a neck, over protruding vertebrae. Each touch both disgusted and fascinated him, because for being mostly unattracted to the slip of a boy, it was bizarrely easy to be around him. If Trystan was the moth, he was the flame, drawing in those silvery wings.
But any closer, and those wings would burn. Simmer into nothing from the lick of a flame.
The dealer traced soft lips along the underside of the whore's jaw. "Just be you."
"That's ten lies and eight-thousand conjectures." His neck bowed, back arching to continue that sickening line. Redlacquer claws made their way up Jack's bare chest, catching on the subtle planes of barely-exposed bones so different than his own. His head lolled over so that envy eyes were upon Jack's face, every inference cast upon him.
"I hope you don't mind." It was an act, all an act. He didn't know anything else anymore.
Jack reached up, running a thumbnail under the curve of one bottom lip. This close up, the other didn't seem so skeletal. Under his fingertips, however, that was another story. "I'll cry myself to sleep later," was his murmur, a lie for a liar.