Collectibles
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Warnings: As the summary states, immoral Max … Mention of homosexuality, male prostitution, substance abuse, and such, but no actual depictions …
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Disclaimer: The Lost Boys, sadly, do not belong to me. No money is being made with this.
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Author's Notes: It was Rae Maxwell's "Edgar Frog – Intake and Violence Risk Assessment" that inspired me to write this one. Check it out, it's a pretty cool story! :-)
Mine hasn't much to do with it though; I only took the idea that there never might have been any vampires at all, and changed it into something rather strange … ;-)
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1. Introduction
Max liked his boys wild. He couldn't allow himself to be wild, not openly, for he was a businessman and respected citizen of Santa Carla. So his boys were wild in his stead.
They were all of age now. That hadn't always been the case. David had been barely fifteen when Max found him on the streets, selling his pretty body to ugly men. The boy just couldn't pass the deal Max had to offer. David was almost twenty now and, although he was their leader, the youngest of Max's boys.
Dwayne had come next, hardly a year after David. He had been twenty already, and Max had bailed him out of jail were he had landed after an alcohol induced, particularly violent bar brawl. Dwayne hadn't been easy, but David had instantly taken to him like to an older brother, and Dwayne just hadn't been able to leave after that. He was twenty-four now, and David's second-in-command; ever the calm, thoughtful advisor, ever having his back.
Then there was beautiful, mischievous Marko, who appeared to be far younger than he was, seeming like eighteen at the most, but being actually twenty-one now. Looking like an innocent boy had given him a fair advantage in his former occupation, but he was constantly annoyed by store-owners asking him for his ID to this very day even if he just wanted to buy some cigarettes. Marko had been singled out by Max on a San Franciscan street-walkers' patch a little more than three years ago. He got along great with David – who still was Max's favorite, and likely always would be.
Paul had come last, almost exactly a year ago. He had been pretty much on the ropes by then, a heroin addict since he had been sixteen, so Max supposed it was a good thing that he did hardly more than smoke weed nowadays. That he did a lot though. Paul was twenty-three now. He and Marko had become very close, but he sometimes got severely on the others' nerves – he was so vibrant and full of energy that he never seemed to stop talking, joking, and fooling around. Max was glad that he had picked Paul out of the gutter. Otherwise he would presumably have been dead by now, and that would have been such a waste of radiance and beauty.
In five years, Max had collected four beautiful boys. He had slept with each and every one of them, of course, and he still did – that was part of their agreement. In return, he funded them. He had bought their bikes and their clothes, and still substituted them with money whenever they came to him without asking what they wanted it for.
It had been their own decision to move out of his house and into the cave, or the decision of three of them, for Paul hadn't been among them back then, and Max hadn't fought it. Boys needed rules and a firm hand to enforce them for sure, but they also needed their freedom. The cave was more of a summer residence however, a place that belonged to them and them only. Max never visited without an explicit invitation. Usually the boys came to his house to fulfill their part of the deal, and they still lived with him during most of the wintertime.
There was a new boy in town who had peeked Max's interest, and he had asked David and the others to rope him in, befriending him and making him one of them. He was not of Max's usual clientele; he seemed to have a home and a family who cared for him. Max needed to modify his customary strategy in order to make him part of his collection.
He had seen the boy with what were apparently his brother and mother the day they arrived at Santa Carla, and had been fortunate enough to have the woman stumble into his video shop shortly afterwards. He had offered her a job – and himself. If he got her, then he would have the boy also. And the younger brother intrigued him too …
Besides, boys needed a mother, and Lucy appeared to be perfect for the job. Her older son was nineteen and named Michael, like the archangel, and the younger fourteen and named Samuel, like the prophet. Max was sure that Michael would fit in nicely with his other boys. As for Samuel … well, they simply would have to wait a bit.
Max considered it a good thing now that his boys had taken in a girl and her little brother this summer. They had picked them right off the streets as Max had done to them before. Her name was Star, she was nineteen, and she was rather pretty – probably just the kind of girl Michael would find attractive. Her little brother was ten and nicknamed Laddie. Perhaps, one day, when he was a couple of years older, Max would make him part of his collection as well.
In his own opinion, Max treated his boys fairly decent. They were free to leave any time, but so far, none of them had chosen that option. To Max, that was prove enough that their deal worked for both sides. He couldn't afford being associated with them in public, and their little mocking visits to his shop had become a game of their own, with him kicking them out on an almost nightly basis. Sometimes they played pranks on him, but that was quite alright. He wouldn't have wanted them tame and lame.
Nevertheless, Max had to admit that a mother really might do them good. Even Star's influence appeared to calm them down a bit, and they took better care of her little brother than Max had expected. He knew that all of the boys had slept with Star, and that was okay by him; he wasn't particularly jealous as long as they still shared his own bed from time to time.
In spite of that juicy bit of promiscuity, Star was generally considered as David's by the gang – but David did share almost everything with his brothers. Max wasn't so sure if Star liked the arrangement, but he didn't feel overly responsible for her. She was old enough, she could choose for herself. As long as the boys weren't abusive towards her, he saw no reason to interfere.
Max had gone through a lot with his boys, namely with David, who had been still so young but yet so very much rebellious when Max had taken him in, and Paul. In the beginning, all but Dwayne, who had never prostituted himself, had been dragged by him to a doctor he was friends with, in order to give them a thorough check-up and treat the various nastinesses they had gotten themselves infected with. He had had to lock up Paul in his house not only for days, but weeks for detoxification, drugging him with codeine instead of heroin, and leaving him in the care of the other boys when working at his shop.
They all had been pretty scarred when he took them in, distrusting everyone, and always expecting the worst. He had tried to give them reason to trust him and each other, and encouraged their various ways of expressing themselves, even their rebellious streaks.
His boys all owed him. He cared for them in many ways, and probably still would have looked after them and funded them even if they had refused to cater to his sexual needs and desires, though, naturally, he would never have told them so.
Another thing that he would never have told them was that he truly, madly, and deeply loved them. David, Dwayne, Marko, Paul – each and every one of his boys.
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To be continued ...