Warnings: Allen's coping mechanisms are not healthy. Do not try them at home.
This is rated entirely for Allen's maladaptive way of dealing with his job: no foul language at all, nothing explicit except in the literal sense, and nothing worse than I've found in young adult novels, especially those wanting to be made assigned reading.
Use Me
By Ryo Hoshi
It wasn't love, nor even lust. It was something more primitive and less selfish than that, and in a way perhaps more selfish as well as perverted.
It did, however, make him feel better, like something deep inside, a half-formed scar, getting stretched. The act itself might hurt, physically and mentally, but it carried a vague unformed indefinite promise of being better some unspecified future day.
Sometimes he even wondered if the same feeling might be what drove his master to drink and gambling and sex, though alcohol had lost the little appeal it had once held for him. Gambling was not quite the right outlet, either, he had done it too much to win money to cover his master's debts and winning did not do it. Losing might, but cheating, and cheating to ensure he won, was simply too automatic for him to try that path. Besides, the amount of debts his master had loaded onto him would work against him.
That had left sex.
He had not been entirely ignorant of it. Before Mana, he had been treated like a communal convenience. He could, vaguely, remember when he had ceased to be virginal, though the rest of the details were burned too deep for him to forget; he could not remember having been innocent and being ignorant among people living with paper-thin and sometimes fabric walls had been impossible. He had only been used that way a few times, because most had felt his arm made his small body (promising a tight fit) not worth the effort needed to pin him down to use.
He would have considered this a good thing about his arm, except it was impossible to ignore that he was only there because of it.
He knew, too, that he would not be able to do it quite the way that his master did. It did not quite feel like that would give him what he felt he needed, though.
His master had either not been aware or simply not cared the first time. It had been half planned, and half impulse. He noticed when men looked at him certain ways, had learned from experience (which had in turn drawn him to pay some attention to instinct) what it had meant. His left eye had assured him they were not Akuma, and it was easy enough to make sure he had his own room (his master might not care about privacy but those he bedded did sometimes mind) and that the men eying him had overheard which room he would be in.
Luck had granted him a room not beside his master's, mainly because those were already taken, and he had simply not locked his door when he went to bed.
He did not know their names. He liked that, just as he had found that he did not care too much for the flirting and teasing he knew his master indulged in with his own partners.
What he wanted, what relieved the feeling deep inside him, was not something that knowing who it was could provide. What provided relief was, purely and simply, to be used.
He knew his master had not been unaware of his habit of enabling his use, of passively facilitating and of not resisting it.
He was not told to stop; in fact, his master said nothing about it, though he knew that his master was aware. Instead, offhandedly and in stages, he was given advice on ways to reduce the risks he was running and minimize the damage to his body that came with letting himself be used. If his master had taken any advantage of his inclinations, he did not (and did not want to) know.
He had found one of the advantages of traveling back to England, to the Order, alone, had been there being no need to worry about making it obvious and forcing his master to finally say something about it.
It had been a bit different, not needing to be as circumspect about hiding what he wanted, though it had taken a bit of extra effort, with some of them, to get it across that he really did not want to know the name of those using him, and that he wanted to be used.
At least only one or two had any trouble with being gone before the morning. He would have minded more, but the basic idea, of wanting to treat night before as if it had never happened, was respected even then.
The most any of those few had done was make sure that, when he went to settle his bill in the morning, he found the room (and once his board as well) already paid, and one or two who had left before he woke had done the same.
He was not going to ask for money or favors, just as he did not, when looking for somebody to be used by, care about the person's gender.
Whoring himself would not be what he needed, nor would letting it matter if the person he shared a bed with was a man or a woman (aside from the physical practicalities) or placing many limits on what was done once there.
He fully understood that what he needed, what satisfied and calmed that yearning deep inside him, was to not be alone, without any risk of later guilt from what happened too often to those who he let get close. To be used, and used anonymously, satisfied that deep-seated need. He could expiate the guilt he felt, let those who could use him do so in the stead of all the others he had failed.
He did not speak often during it, and usually to protest those few things he would refuse to do. It was not what granted his life meaning, and it would be wrong to let something he did for relief (for pleasure would have more meaning) hurt his ability to grant the souls made into Akuma freedom & save those not dead from Akuma.
Once at the Order, and properly an Exorcist, it became both easier and harder to take care of that need. The openness that, on the road, had made it easier to make his interest known, was no longer an option. He did not lock his door, though, and experience had taught him the proper subtle hints to leave for those who would act on them, and those who visited his room at night were less interested in conversation, no less getting to know each other in anything but a Biblical sense, than those he had been with while traveling alone.
Out on missions, now with others who might not be as understanding or cooperative as his master was, it was more difficult to avoid having a better idea of who had slipped into his bed at night. True, those who visited him at night back in the headquarters might be safely presumed to be members of the Order, but there were a lot of them there. Traveling, though, he knew exactly which were with him, and he did not try to guess if those with him knew that he would did not lock his door at night and would be available.
It might, admittedly, be somebody else, taking a chance, and he was satisfied enough by the anonymity that offered his nighttime visitors.
He made no mental effort to try to identify them later, either. If he was visited by a man with long rough hair, or a one-eyed young man, or a woman whose voice was familiar, that was not really thought about. It did not matter if his friends used him, nor did it matter to him if they did not.
What mattered was that, if they wanted to, they could, though even then he did not wish to know for certain who it was.
Later, though, when he found himself with a watcher attached to him and sleeping each night, every night, in his room, he could not help wondering how he would take care of that deep aching need.
While he might be able to get the blond to take care of using him, he still would know who it was doing so. It'd be equally awkward to have his visitors' names be recorded, and he doubted his watcher would not keep track, and note such details.
He resigned himself to having to wait until, hopefully, someday, he would no longer have his watcher there, and hope that the hollow inside would be temporarily placated by having the man sleeping in his room instead of its usual, richer fare.
Not much to say in the way of author's notes here. The title comes from the song of the same name by Love and Rockets off the album Sweet F.A., which is rather fitting for the story. This was written mostly to play with a random plot bunny that turned up, about what sorts of coping mechanisms Allen might have developed. It's intended to be a stand-alone, and if there's any sequels they will likely be able to stand on their own, and thus be posted as separate stories.