Long to be Free
Chapter 1: Nothing Unusual, Something New
There had been blood, sweat, and lots of screaming the first time he'd done it. The man wasn't very experienced, and they'd both had almost no idea of what to do. They'd both just done what seemed right at the time. Now, he almost didn't feel anything anymore, no matter if the man he was with was kind or cruel, ugly or beautiful, experienced or not. He really couldn't even care anymore.
He stood on the street corner between a liquor shop and strip club, the one that specialized in the more masculine variety of guilty pleasures. Today his ensemble consisted of tight black leather pants that laced up the side and just begged to be unlaced and played with, a dark green embroidered vest that was held together by only chains and some black boots with no amount of heel to speak of with a white diamond pattern. Nearly five o'clock in the afternoon, he'd only had two more hours until his job with the pole started and he wanted to supplement his inefficient income with as much as he could. Maybe that man walking towards him…?
He gave the man a flirtatious wink and leaned back just a little bit to make it appear as if he was inspecting the man with a coquettish grin, while in fact he did it to make his vest raise just enough to show off a sliver of sun-tanned skin. The man stopped in his tracks to look at him, and he could see the lust and desire begin to swirl at the backs of his eyes. "Who are you?" he asked quietly, taking in the visage before him: this boy was beautiful. His hair looked almost like it was spun out of gold, with the sun-bleached highlights like make shift beams of sunlight, and his sun-blessed skin not out of a machine but from the real sun and his eyes – oh goddesses, his eyes were like looking into the ocean's depths.
The man looked at the beauty as he waited for his answer. The beauty shrugged and with a smooth voice said, "Link."
Now that the man had his name, he was interested in something else entirely different. "I'm Robert. How much per hour?" the man asked, and if he had to sell something he would be back for the beauty. He was just too…something. Something that was unmistakably magnetic and attractive and entirely unavoidable.
The beauty, Link, thought about it for a moment before he said, "Two hundred." The man nodded and almost sighed in relief – he'd been told about the irresistible man on the corner of Nayru Street and Farore Boulevard. He'd taken two hundred and fifty out just in case, and he intended to use it exactly as he had planned. He told Link to follow him, and within minutes of their meeting they were in a seedy hotel only a block away from the street corner that Robert had found Link on.
The hotel girl at the counter didn't say a word as she took a key from the ledge that she reserved especially for her best customer while she took the fifty dollars from the new man that Link brought. The girl watched with the smallest amount of curiosity as Link led the man up to the room, recently cleaned and coincidentally right above the counter. The girl, whose name was Ky, took two steps closer to the wall behind the counter and put an empty glass cup to the wall, then putting her ear to the glass. Nothing yet…
"Hey Ky, what's your bet this time?" The blonde head of her coworker Stormy, a maid, poked out from behind the corner where she and their other coworker, another maid named Kess, were hiding and watching the proceedings of Link with the new man.
"I bet he's a uke," Kess stated, putting a sassy hand to his hip, "Did you see that haircut? The only thing he could be is submissive."
"I don't know Kess," Stormy said, "I don't think you saw how he looked at Link there. He has to be seme. What do you think Ky?"
"I think you both need to shush!" Ky adjusted the glass only slightly and listened as some rustling began, "I'm trying to listen! I bet he's an uke, that haircut with those shoes? Come on, he's an uke through and through, never mind that he was looking at Link like a steak. Oh, wait! I'm getting something! Keep quiet!" Utter silence as Ky listened in through the wall with her glass. She grimaced as she took her ear from the glass for just a second to say, "Yep, he's an uke." She put her ear back.
Stormy cursed under her breath while Kess did a victory dance that looked like Carmelldansen. "See?!" He danced the Carmelldansen around Stormy's glare, grinning all the while, "I told you it was the haircut that gave it away."
Stormy was about to say something smart to Kess when she noticed Ky's frown. "Ky? What's wrong? You won the bet. You aren't the one that has to clean up the mess afterwards."
Ky raised an eyebrow at the blonde before stating, "Well that wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that I'm not a maid right? But that's not the point – Kess, go get Link some soup in a bottle would ya? It didn't sound like he was in a good mood just then."
Kess asked, "What makes you say that?"
Ky removed her ear from the glass again, putting the glass into its special place on the counter right next to the pitcher of water that was half empty. She held up a single hand with four fingers raised. "Link's made that guy have four orgasms in the last ten minutes. He never goes all out on customers he picks up unless he's in a hurry to be somewhere or Gannondork's being an ass again."
Kess nodded, "Too right girlfriend. I'll go get that soup – do you think he'll want a cup, a bottle, or a thermos?" Above their heads they heard a loud moaning scream that faded into intense pleasure and silence. "Damn, might as well give him the whole tureen."
Stormy nodded, "Might be a good idea." Kess ran off to go fetch the soup while Stormy slipped behind the counter with Ky to talk with the auburn haired girl. "So what are you thinking this time? Do you think it's Gannondorf or something else?"
"I'm not sure," she answered, leaning against the counter on her elbows, "But I do know this – he makes the absolute best material for writing."
Stormy rolled her eyes, "You're such a yaoi writer."
"Yes I am. I'm also a yuri, shonen-ai, shoujo-ai, fantasy, sci-fi, historical, mystery, action, adventure, romance, and tragedy writer. Did I miss anything?" Stormy rolled her eyes once again but said nothing while she chuckled.
When Link finally stomped downstairs twenty minutes later, looking like he just rolled out of bed with a hoard of raccoons, Kess had already grabbed the soup (the whole tureen with a bowl and a spoon, with also a thermos just in case) and Stormy and Ky were waiting for him at the counter.
Kess's eyebrows raised into his short bangs. "Dang, he was rough wasn't he?"
Link just scowled but nodded at the man-maid. He looked to Stormy and Ky with the question that he didn't have to ask. "Yep, we got some food for ya luv," Stormy said, opening the door to the office behind the counter where Kess had set out the soup with some bread and coffee, "Go ahead and eat up."
Link disappeared behind the counter into the back room, where he devoured the soup with gusto. Kess looked at his nasty looking clothes and asked him, "Do you want to change?" Link nodded but didn't stop eating, just slowed down to be presentable. "Do you want bum, normal, nice, sexy, super sexy, or hot-damn-fall-on-your-face?"
Link thought about it for just a moment, "Normal." Kess scurried off to get the clothes he asked for – let me ask you this, how long do you think that Link's been going there?
Ky and Stormy sat across from Link, concern on Stormy's face while mild amusement was on Ky's. "So Link," Ky started, taking a small sip from her ultra mocha cup of coffee, "What's new with you? Find a way to get Gannonass off your back yet?"
Link stopped eating and sighed with a heavy heart, "No. At this rate he'll never let me buy out."
"Why not?" Stormy asked, "Haven't you paid your dues yet?"
"I can't!" Link said with exasperation, throwing his empty hands up to emphasize the fact, "He keeps coming up with new dues so that I can never pay out."
"Well you are his biggest bread winner," Ky said, "In a business sense it's best to keep you on. But, were you to be ugly and disgusting then he probably would've let you go a long time ago. Ah, the pain of beauty is quite the curse for you indeed."
"I'm back~!" Kess announced, throwing open the door dramatically with a black bag in hand, "And with your clothes!" Link gave him a sunny smile, making the boy swoon and fall to the ground while giving Stormy a minor nosebleed. Ky just sat there, grinning back as she got up and threw the bag of clothes to the sighing hooker, who caught it with ease.
"You should probably go change," Ky said still grinning, handing Stormy a tissue which was promptly shoved up her nose, "Don't worry, we've got you covered." Link nodded gratefully and disappeared into the employee's bathroom. "Ah, wonderful time to be a lesbian," she grinned.
"Should we tell him?" Stormy asked, ignoring Ky's smirks at the tissue in her nose, "About the guy we heard about?"
"Of course we should tell him!" Kess hopped up from his faint like nothing happened, "He can't keep living like this forever. He needs to be free and have fun – like a butterfly!"
"That settles it then," Ky said, beginning to pull up some documents from files present in the back room they were in, "We tell him about the Shadow."
"What shadow?" Link came in wearing a green knit sweater that seemed slightly too big for him, a pair of brown corduroy pants and plain black converse that were all pulled together with a wonderfully knit green beanie cap.
"There's this guy out on the streets whose name is the Shadow," Stormy explained, checking her tissue again and, finding that the blood had stopped, tossed it ungracefully into the trashcan beside her. "For a fee, he'll help anyone or do anything, no matter what it may be. I heard that he once defeated an entire British mafia syndicate with just a toothbrush and a bottle of laxatives!"
"So we have all agreed," Ky interjected, "That if this Shadow person can defeat His Royal Highness King Pin then he might have a chance at defeating Gannonjerk." She flipped open the manila folder in her hand to hold up a picture of a vague looking black figure in a long black trench coat. "Nobody on the streets really knows all that much about this guy. I had to give an arm and a leg to get these photographs. I won't tell you who I got them from."
Link waved away her secrecy, "Don't worry, I won't ask who gave you the photos."
Ky gave the blond hooker a sly sideways grin, "Where I got the photos…sure, let's go with that."
"But anyway, his price can be anything," Kess continued from where Stormy left off, "Like, it can be your dog, or money or your deepest darkest secret. Rumor has it that – don't sing that song Stormy! Cierra la boca! But anyway, I heard that he once took a guy and girl's virginity on the same night – they were twins! Can you imagine that threesome? Ew!" Ky held up a photo of two people, a boy and a girl with the same dark eyes and the same bright green hair. They were smiling at something behind the shot of the camera.
Link ignored the rest of Kess's ramblings, deeply contemplating what the three had told him, staring at the photo. "Can you get me contact with him?"
"We can," Ky grinned with all of her teeth, sending foreboding shivers down all of their backs, "And I have. I have something that is wanting to be taken care of as well – I'll just set you up an appointment with the dear Shadow and we'll be done with it. I'll call you when I get the date."
Link nodded his thanks, said his good-bye's until next times to the three hotel workers and walked out the seedy hotel to go to work. Ky went out to the front desk to man her station while Kess cleaned up Link's meal, putting some soup in a thermos, and Stormy got her cleaning supplies ready for action. Sometime later, about an hour after Link left, the man finally stumbled down the stairs, disheveled but extremely wide eyed and excited. "Fun time?" Ky asked, taking the key back from the man named Robert.
Robert nodded enthusiastically, "Holy fucking yes! He's amazing! Next time I'm going to have to four or six hundred dollars and ask him to keep it slow 'cuz hot damn he made he made me cum quick! And six times! God, he's just the – " the subject poor Robert was talking about finally caught up with him as he noticed Ky's amused Cheshire smile. His face turned intensely red as he shuffled out of the hotel door as fast as his aching ass would allow.
Once the door was properly closed Ky burst out laughing, not bothering to hold in the bellows of humor that she was trying to quell when Robert was talking to her. "Ok Storm'," she managed to gasp out between wheezes of hilarity, trying but epically failing to control herself, "Now you can go and clean up the room now."
Stormy grumbled as she took her arsenal of cleaning supplies with her to the dreaded room above the counter while Kess had finished cleaning up and stood with the auburn haired counter girl, putting the thermos of soup in the counter drawer. Kess and Ky silently mapped Stormy's progress by memory and sound of her groaning in despair. "I bet you she finds cum stains on the walls," Kess said, his hand itching towards his bottle of disinfectant.
Ky grinned and said, "Bet you a large trenta Starbucks frappaccino that she didn't find cum stains on the walls but instead she found toys instead."
"Oh, you're on!" Kess and Ky shook hands in manly (?) agreement. Only seconds later, Stormy came down with the bed sheets bundled up and a grimace easily pronounced on her pale features. "So what'd you find Stormy?" Kess asked nonchalantly, taking a peek into the folds of the dirty bed sheets without coming within two feet of them. "How were the walls?"
"What about the walls?" Stormy asked suspiciously, placing the bed sheets in the hamper in the office while digging through them, "They were fine. But I found some weird stuff. I think they're sex toys." Ky grinned triumphantly as Kess cursed his bad luck and began rummaging through his pocket for the money to buy Starbucks anything, let alone coffee.
"Let me see them," Ky dipped a newly gloved hand into the hampers and pulled out a large green leaf the size of a human torso. "Whoa ho ho! And what were they doing with this?" She dipped her hand in the sheets again and pulled out a white boomerang that was simple and wooden, and suspiciously deadly. She stared at the toy for a moment. "You know what. I don't even want to know."
The blonde girl nodded. "I completely agree with you."
Outside the back room the counter bell was ringing. Ky went out and saw Link there in his normal clothes. He gave her a sheepish look and Ky knew exactly what he came back for. "Yep, Kess got it ready for you," she said, pulling out the thermos from the counter and giving it to Link. He nodded his thanks and was about to leave when Ky asked him, "We found a Deku Leaf and a Boomerang. You wouldn't happen to know anything about those, would you?"
Stormy and Kess peeked around the corner to listen in more properly to Link's explanation. Link felt the heat rise up in his face but Ky's eyes bore into him like a drill trying to find some gold – or golden material in her case. He coughed awkwardly into his hand that sounded suspiciously like, "*cough* those are mine *cough*" Ky grinned and handed him the toys with her gloved hands, ignoring the wide eyed stares of her coworkers. Link snatched the toys from her hands and ran out of the hotel.
Ky grinned to her two coworkers, leaning against the counter triumphantly, "And that, dear colleagues, is what I call a man who keeps his secret ninja hobbies to himself. He's got such a hero dream, poor dear. No doubt that's why he picked up that poor dear Zelda."
"You mean you knew those weren't sex toys?" Kess blurted out in frustration, "But that's so disappointing! I really wanted Link to be super kinky. I mean, wouldn't that be so exciting?"
Stormy raised an eyebrow at Kess, "I think he'd shank you if he heard you say that. And Ky, how did you know that those weren't sex toys if you said so earlier that they were?"
"I never said that they were sex toys, I just said that they were toys. Now go get me my coffee." Kess grumbled as he stomped out the hotel for the Starbucks five blocks away while Stormy went back to her work in the room above the counter. Ky smirked as she leaned on the counter and slapped a notebook on the counter, writing down what she thought for the day. Then, what she needed to talk to the Shadow about. She grumbled to herself, "Hopefully he can do it."