warnings: implied underage prostitution (no sex though), homophobic language, someone getting beat up, someone engaging in some self-harming thoughts/behavior, mentions of blood, a character saying they want to die, and mention of vomit and sickness
Chapter 4: Lito & Felix
In which Lito meets Felix and Wolfgang
When Lito was little, his mother would ask him, every afternoon when he came home from school, how his day was. And Lito would, invariably, reply with, "Good."
It makes him feel a painful prick in his chest to think about that now — to remember a time when life was an unbroken string of days that could be described as good.
There's no such thing as a good day on the street. Not really. There are a few okay days and many bad days and occasional very bad days. There are some days so awful that he tries — and mostly manages — to block them from his memory. But there are no good days, at least not for a teenage hooker who spends his nights giving blowjobs and his days asleep behind a dumpster.
o - o - o
The day Lito meets Joaquin starts out as one of the okay days. He buys a burger and fries in the morning and when he wakes up at dusk he's still got enough cash to get an order of chicken nuggets, which he eats with ketchup until he's full.
He says hi to the pregnant girl who busks on the corner and she smiles back. He reaches his own corner to find it mercifully empty of panhandlers or street vendors or other hookers. March is shaping up to be nowhere near as cold as February, so he isn't freezing to death as he stands there in ripped-up jeans and a t-shirt.
And he's barely been there five minutes before a man approaches him — handsome, tattoos, leather jacket. He's smiling.
Lito shifts a little, touches his crotch almost imperceptibly. "Hey," he says.
"Hey," says the man.
"You're looking a little lonely on this evening, sir," Lito offers.
"I suppose I am a little lonely," says the man. He flexes his fingers, balls his hands into fists. "You want to help me out?"
"Of course," returns Lito. "What's your name?"
The man's smile grows. "Joaquin," he says. And there's something about his smile, something hard and mean that scares Lito a little, but the guy obviously has money and wants to spend it and Lito can't say no to that.
"Joaquin," Lito purrs back. "Let's go somewhere a little more private, huh, Joaquin? What do you say to that?"
And the man nods, so Lito places a hand on his arm and leads him down an alleyway beside a seedy little coffee shop. "How's this?" he asks.
"It's perfect." The man eyes Lito up and down. "Get on your knees," he orders.
Lito complies. "Twenty dollars for a blow, twenty-five without a condom," he recites, reaching to unzip Joaquin's jeans, but the man slaps his hand away.
"Not so fast," he says, seemingly amused. He stares down at Lito for a moment. "I'll bet you give a lot of blowjobs, hmm? Such nice lips."
"Yes," Lito assures him. "I— I'm very good."
At this, the man chuckles softly. "I'm not interested in a blowjob," he says.
And Lito's stomach flips uncomfortably. "It's ten for a handjob," he supplies. "And forty for anal. And y-you have to use a condom if you want anal."
The man smiles again, the same cruel smile from before. "I'm not going to have sex with you at all, you little faggot," he spits out, and Lito doesn't even have a chance to react before the blow hits his groin. Then there's a punch to his face, and another, and another.
"Stop!" Lito yelps, holding up his hands to shield himself from the blows. "Please! What—"
But the man just shoves him to the ground so his shoulder smashes against the concrete, hard, and begins to kick him in the stomach, and the ribs, and the chest, knocking the wind out of him.
Lito doesn't fight back, just closes his eyes and waits for the pain to end.
Except it doesn't end. The blows do, finally, and Lito listens to Joaquin's footsteps recede as he leaves the alley without a word. But the pain is sharp and all-encompassing and keeps Lito huddled on the ground for god knows how long, sobbing.
The thought that finally manages to rouse him is the idea that if he dies, he wants someone to find him in the morning. So he stands up, his entire midsection throbbing, and begins to walk shakily toward the alleyway's entrance.
He's managed to cover a reasonable distance before he realizes that one of his flip flops is still lying on the ground behind him, but he can't summon the strength to turn back for it. So he just keeps dragging himself along, one foot in front of the other. He passes a bottle, smashed on the ground of the alley, and steps on it: presses his foot down until he can feel shards of glass sinking into his bare heel.
Then he continues, feeling a kind of numb satisfaction at the pain in his foot, the one part of his body, of his life, where the agony is self-inflicted. He focuses on it, relishes in it, and somehow it lessens the ache in his stomach and shoulder and ribs, enables him to make it out of the alley and onto the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop.
He lays down under the "CLOSED" sign, shuts his eyes, and falls asleep.
o - o - o
"Your foot's bleeding."
Lito opens his eyes. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to think. Slowly, the world comes into focus around him and he stares at the legs of whoever's talking to him. Scrawny legs, black jeans, sneakers held together with duct tape.
"Did you hear me?" asks the voice. Lito squints up at the person talking to him, who turns out to be a tall, skinny boy with shaggy blond hair. "Your foot is, like, really covered in blood," he says again.
"I don't care," Lito intones. His jaw hurts like hell. Images of the previous night flash through his mind— the hard toes of Joaquin's boots, the cold ground of the alleyway, the broken glass bottle.
He squeezes his eyes shut and that hurts too.
"Is it cut?" the boy is saying.
Lito sighs. "I walked around on glass."
"What, on purpose?"
Lito nods.
"Well that was fucking stupid."
It was. Lito agrees. But he can't find it in him to care. Part of him wants to care. Most of him just wants to die. So he says so. "I want to die," he croaks.
"That's fucking stupider than walking on glass," the boy tells him without missing a beat. He bends down and touches Lito's arm, and Lito is too tired to even flinch away. "Come on," says the boy. "Get up."
Somehow, Lito obeys.
o - o - o
The boy's name is Felix. He tells Lito this as they walk, or rather, as Felix walks. What Lito is doing can't properly be described as walking: it's more like limping, or hopping, his arm around Felix's neck, whimpering with every step they take.
Felix talks a lot. He talks about how tired he is and how his shoes are too tight and how someone named Wolfie is going kill him. His pimp? Lito wonders.
No, he realizes as Felix continues to talk. His friend, or maybe his brother. Someone good, anyway, someone Felix trusts.
"Wolfie will fix you," Felix says placatingly after Lito lets out a particularly miserable moan. "He's good with injuries. He's got, like, a whole first-aid thing of shit he's stolen."
"Please," groans Lito. "How much— further—"
"Not much. Just around this corner." Felix glances over, eyes him hesitantly for a few paces. "So what happened?" he asks at last.
"Beat… beat up," Lito coughs out. He doesn't elaborate, whether because he's ashamed of being a whore or because can't really form coherent sentences right now he's not entirely sure.
But somehow, Felix guesses the rest. "He didn't even pay you huh?" he says darkly, an edge of bitterness to his voice that Lito hasn't heard so far in their conversation. "Just got you down on your knees then started kicking the shit out of you?"
"I— how—"
"That's how it always happens," Felix tells him. "How long you been doing this? Two months? Three?"
"One," Lito mumbles.
"Right. And did— did you just lay on the ground out there all fucking night?"
"Yes."
At this, Felix lets out a sigh so sad and world-weary that Lito almost feels guilty.
"Alright," Felix says, his voice firm. "Don't do that again. You'll get better at guessing which ones to avoid. But this shit happens, okay? It's happened to me, it'll happen again to you, but it's no reason to lay down and die. You get used to it."
Lito lets out another whimper. "How long," he manages, "have you been…" He exhales painfully.
"Too long," Felix laughs humorlessly. Lito glances at him, and Felix looks away. "Six years," he mutters. "Well, for me. Wolfie, four."
"You were— god," Lito whispers. "Young."
They round the corner, and there it is: A church, huge and dilapidated, clearly long-abandoned.
"I was twelve years old," says Felix, as they gaze up at the towering structure. "Alright now, only a few more steps, come on."
Twelve, Lito thinks with each remaining step. Twelve years old, twelve, twelve, twelve—
Felix fiddles with the lock for a few moments and the door swings open.
Lito collapses on the ground as soon as they step inside.
o - o - o
Dimly, Lito is aware of Felix calling out and of someone else approaching, kneeling down, pulling off Lito's shirt. Felix is talking animatedly; Lito can't make out the words. He opens his eyes blearily and there's a face bobbing before him. Not Felix. A different boy.
"I'm Wolfgang," says the boy. Expertly, his hands touch Lito's neck, chest, breastbone. His fingers are freezing cold.
"What's your name?" the boy asks brusquely.
"Lito," whispers Lito.
"Good. Did you hit your head?"
"Huh?"
"Last night, did you hit your head?"
"I… no, I don't… think so."
"Where does it hurt?"
"Everywhere."
Wolfgang sighs. "At least try to be helpful," he says.
Lito starts to cry.
"Wolfie, man, go easy on him," he hears Felix's voice say somewhere above them. "He's like half dead."
"He is not half dead," snaps Wolfgang, and Lito can't help but be cheered by his apparent conviction.
"M-my stomach," he groans, and immediately Wolfgang's hands are pressing on his abdomen.
"You didn't puke, did you?" he asks. "After he kicked you?" Lito shakes his head, trying not to whimper at the pressure on his bruises.
"I don't think you're bleeding internally," Wolfgang pronounces. "How about your ass? Did he—"
"No," says Lito.
"Well. That's something," mutters Wolfgang.
His fingers move on to Lito's ribcage. Lito gasps in pain, eliciting another sigh from Wolfgang. "You're going to be fine," he chides. "Just a few fractured ribs and a foot full of glass."
"Just?" Lito whimpers.
"Yes," says Wolfgang. "Trust me. It could have been worse."
Lito sniffles and sits up a little. And though he honestly doesn't really think he could feel worse than he does right now, he nods.
o - o - o
Wolfgang isn't particularly gentle as he pries glass from Lito's foot with a pair of tweezers, but he doesn't get angry when Lito starts to sob in pain, just grunts an apology and continues his work.
"The pieces were big," he says after what feels like an eternity. "I got 'em all. You're lucky."
"Mmm," moans Lito, feeling anything but.
He presses his face into the mattress they've told him to lie down on, breathing in and out, ignoring the musty scent of body odor and smoke. At least it smells better than the dumpster he's been sleeping behind for the past four weeks.
Wolfgang washes his foot with water poured from a water bottle, smears it with antiseptic, and wraps it in bandages. "Alright," he proclaims at last. "That's that." He hands him the half-full water bottle and four tablets of ibuprofen, which Lito swallows robotically.
"That should kick in soon," Wolfgang tells him. "So just lay down and relax, alright?"
Lito nods and closes his eyes.
He can hear Wolfgang and Felix talking somewhere in the distance, and cars passing by outside, and for a long time he lies there in a swirl of confusion and gratitude and pain, not sure how the hell he's supposed to relax.
But little by little his foot stops throbbing, and his abdomen stops hurting so much, and finally, he sinks into a fitful sleep.
o - o - o
He wakes up to Felix touching him on the back. "Rise and shine, sleeping beauty," he's saying, seated beside the mattress. It's dark.
"What time is it?" Lito slurs.
"Like midnight. Wolfgang already went out ages ago but he told me to wait till you woke up," Felix explains good-naturedly. "Only I started to think you were gonna sleep all fucking night, so. Sorry."
"'S'okay," mumbles Lito, feeling a surge of guilt for keeping Felix from working. "You can go. I'm…" He grimaces in pain. "I'm fine."
Felix laughs. "Sure you are," he says. "I have more pain meds for you. And water. Wolfie said you should drink lots of water."
"Thanks," says Lito. He reaches for the medicine, then retracts his hand. "W-why are you… helping me?" he asks, before he can stop himself.
Felix shrugs easily. "The world is really fucking shit," he says. "I figure it's best to help if you can, a little. To make it less shit."
"Well it's very— It's very nice of you." Lito winces as he tries to sit up, but Felix gently pushes him back down against the mattress.
"Just lay down, man," he says. He holds out the pills again, and this time Lito takes them.
"I'm serious though…" Lito presses on. "Lots of people wouldn't… help— I mean— If I saw some guy… You can't just— You gotta protect… yourself… "
"Shhh," says Felix. "Take it easy, okay? I know it's supposed to be every man for himself on the streets and shit, but sometimes..." He clears his throat. "Wolfgang will never tell you how we met," he says after a moment. "But it happened because he was sick. Flu or something. And when you're living out here, you know, eating shit, never sleeping, cold all the time, the flu hits really hard."
Felix pauses, and Lito has a feeling that he's trying to decide how much of this story he should tell. Then he takes a deep breath and continues on: "Right, so I was in this grocery store, just minding my own business, swiping food off the shelves or whatever, and then suddenly I see some kid getting thrown out by the manager for shoplifting motherfucking cough medicine. And— well, he looked like he was in real bad shape, you know? So I went and stole the stuff for him. Found him puking in an alley, and... well, at first he was like a fucking feral cat or something— wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't let me get near him. But I gave him the medicine and he calmed down and brought me back to this place. Which was way better than where I'd been sleeping. So I stayed here and just..." He shrugs. "Took care of him till he was better. Probably saved his life, to be honest."
Lito gapes at him in the moonlight, but Felix shrugs again. "Wolfie is the best person in the world," he says simply. "I never would have met him if I hadn't tried to help him. So I guess I learned that, if you help people, sometimes you help yourself too." He flicks Lito's uninjured shoulder. "Now get some fucking sleep."