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Ten

They were about ten minutes into the session, and since Alfred had gathered up the courage to undress Arthur completely himself, that was what he was doing, his fingers unsure and unwieldy in a way that was becoming familiar — almost comforting. Arthur waited patiently where he was kneeling between Alfred's legs on the bed as the buttons of his gray shirt were slid free. But when Alfred began to remove the garment, his hands pressed against the bruises in the tender hollows below Arthur's shoulders, and Arthur jerked forward. He let out a sound between a whimper and a sob before he could stop himself.

Alfred immediately pulled back. "Sorry! Did I hurt you?"

No, you weren't the one who gave me these bruises, Arthur thought. He shook his head. "No . . . no, it's fine." To distract Alfred — who was looking at Arthur's shoulders with puzzlement and concern, a question on the tip of his tongue, a question that Arthur didn't want him to ask — Arthur took his hands and guided them to his waist, feeling more assured when Alfred caught on, his fingers finding Arthur's zipper and coaxing it down.

Alfred's hands circled around to the small of his back, fingertips dipping just below the waistband of his briefs in a strangely intimate gesture, and Arthur prepared for him to push everything off his hips and leave his lower half naked and available. He wondered if Alfred was going to insist on doing the fingering, too.

But then he felt Alfred's touch leave him and reappear at his navel — and before he could say anything to stop or encourage him, Alfred slipped his hand down the front of his pants.

Out of instinct, Arthur grasped the front of his T-shirt, his whole body tensing as he felt Alfred gently fondle his cock. He'd been somewhat hard, idly aroused instead of consumed with fiery lust, but having Alfred's hand on him there was electric. Alfred hadn't touched him like that during the three or so weeks since he'd begun hiring him; the sudden advance was unexpected, the feelings that accompanied it a shock to the system. Arthur was especially weak there, had always been weak there, powerless to hands and mouths and any sort of direct contact — something that Gilbert and Francis had been quick to discover and exploit since the beginning — and having Alfred . . . Alfred touch him like that caused his mind to unravel, turned him into the helpless, pliable, rutting thing that all perverts wanted in their dreams but could never have in real life. The dream prostitute.

If Arthur wasn't being distracted by the pleasure, he would have laughed at the bitter irony of it all. Alfred, who had been so adamant about proving that Arthur's existence mattered, was the one making him feel as if he wasn't even worth a paid fuck. As if he was nothing but the cheap little slut that everyone else told him he was.

The idea swept through him like a small storm, taking away any enjoyment with it, and left Arthur feeling sick and used. It was a deeply-seated nausea that started somewhere low in his abdomen and crawled up into his stomach, his windpipe, oozed through his bones like cracks across the pavement in the summer. Alfred's scent, the salty, baked, attractive-repulsive hint that he had failed to notice the first time but was becoming stronger to his senses with every session, didn't help. For a moment, he thought he was going to vomit, and quickly moved to bat Alfred's hand aside. But Alfred seemed to sense that something was wrong and let go of him on his own. They sat in awkward silence, Arthur taking deep breaths through his nose to ward off the sickening feeling inside him and Alfred watching him uncertainly.

Finally, Alfred asked timidly, "Are we . . . done for today?"

Arthur raised his head, blind panic suddenly sparking in the back of his mind — what would Gilbert do to him once he found out that Arthur had screwed up a session? A prepaid session, with a customer that he'd already been with a few times? — and opened his mouth to say, "No, no, I'm fine, I just lost my focus for a moment, please continue what you were doing," but the words stuck in his throat. He didn't want Alfred to continue what he was doing. He wanted him, of course, he always wanted him, but he didn't want to be his plaything. No matter how much he thought about him, cared about him, he didn't want to be a whore for Alfred. He wanted the . . . the other aspect of their relationship, the one where Alfred had held him close, without the musk of sex between them, and told him he was worth something and treated him like a human being when no one else would.

Was Alfred's "friendship" pity? Or was his pity "friendship"?

Maybe I do want his pity, after all. I am so pathetic.

"Arthur, you're not okay, are you? You're crying," said Alfred, sounding worried. Arthur blinked in confusion, about to ask him what he was talking about, but when Alfred lifted a hand to touch his face and then drew it away, Arthur saw the tears glistening on his fingertips.

He scrubbed at his eyes and cheeks, embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I don't . . . I don't know why I'm . . ."

"No, it's okay. Sometimes you just gotta let it all out." Alfred reached out to hug him, and Arthur sank into his chest, pressed the side of his face against the warm cotton of his shirt and felt his steady heartbeat against his temple. When Alfred's arms moved to wrap around him, however, he provoked the bruises again, and Arthur flinched. Alfred looked down at him, brow knit together. "Arthur? . . . What is it? Are you hurt somewhere?"

Arthur couldn't answer him, and he didn't have a chance to act before Alfred eased him up and nudged his shirt off to expose the purple-black discoloring near his shoulders.

The breath that Alfred sucked in was loud in the small room. "How did that happen?" His voice was different. Harder, shocked, almost angry. Arthur turned his head away, huddled against the headboard.

"That's none of your business." The bruises were from when Gilbert had accosted him in the shower — almost a week and a half ago. That was the last time he had seen Alfred, the same day Francis had propositioned him. Gilbert had rammed him against the wall with his knees, Arthur dimly recalled, and the bruises had appeared a day or two later, welling up under his skin like a disease. His arms had been extremely sore since then. The discomfort faded a bit each day, but the ugly coloring had yet to disappear. And he still couldn't quite rotate his arms in a full circle without going weak at the knees from pain.

Alfred looked at him, his eyes disconcertingly bright — the blue in them pale, turned up to a frequency that made something in Arthur quake. "I don't care! That — those —" He gestured furiously at the bruises, dark in the shadows of Arthur's chest. "Who did that to you?"

"I told you, it's none of your business," Arthur shot back, tugging his shirt back on and doing up the buttons, hiding the damage. He clutched at the quilt under him after he was done, fisting it in his hands, knuckles white. He was shaking like the air was cold, even though it wasn't. He snapped, as an afterthought, "What makes you think it was a person? I could've just fallen."

"But those aren't not normal! You can't get those from — from bumping into something or falling down the stairs or whatever!" Alfred persisted, then cut across Arthur's next retort with a question of his own. "Was it the same person who gave you those scars?"

A barrier somewhere inside Arthur slammed down, and suddenly the foot and a half of space separating them felt like an entire ocean. He couldn't say anything about Gilbert. Not to Alfred. Not to anybody. I should've known his self-righteousness . . . his assumptions . . . would carry over into other things.

He said coldly, "I don't know what you mean."

"Like hell you don't!" The outburst startled them both, and Alfred flushed, but he didn't apologize even when Arthur matched his gaze. They stared at each other for several very long seconds.

Stiffly, Arthur slid to the edge of the bed and stood up. "I'd presumed," he said curtly, "that you'd hired me today for sex, not to hurl wild, baseless accusations concerning things you know nothing about. I suppose I was mistaken." Noticing that his pants were still undone, he began to zip them.

"Well, you're obviously not in any shape to do it, are you?" There was no vehemence behind Alfred's words, only distress. Distress on Arthur's behalf. "I'll — I'll gladly sleep with you . . . like I did before . . . but only when you're not hurt. It's not because I don't want it, honest!"

And there was the opening that Arthur had been waiting for, without realizing he'd been waiting for it. Whirling around, hardly able to control what was coming out of his mouth, he bit out, "That's what I don't understand. Why do you waste your time and your money on me? If you're horny, couldn't you just go out and pick up any woman — or man — you wanted? Why do you keep coming back for more?"

That brought Alfred, who had been about to keep going, to a dead stop. "What?"

"You're . . . you're . . ." Arthur struggled to find the right words, even though they were all wrong now no matter how he arranged them. "You're handsome, and you're perfect, and you have a good head on your shoulders despite all the idealistic nonsense you spout." Oh God, now his face was burning. Why couldn't he shut up before he humiliated himself further? "You're still young. Only nineteen, correct? You shouldn't be throwing away your spare time fucking with me in hotel rooms and promising to be my friend. You should . . . I don't know, go properly attend college, find a partner, a lover, anyone, as long as it's someone else, because I'm — I'm a hopeless case. I'm just a prostitute. You're too good for me."

There. He'd said it. He'd said what he'd wanted to say, what he'd been thinking since the first time he'd laid eyes on Alfred and his beautiful face and his beautiful body and realized that Alfred had hired him. The past three weeks had felt like an eternity when those thoughts were bottled up inside him, and now that they were free, Arthur could finally breathe. Gilbert could have his hide, his spleen, his ass, whatever he wanted, for losing Alfred as a client; Arthur just couldn't have gone on keeping up the pretense that this was just a normal relationship between a prostitute and a customer. Alfred had ruined it first, he thought in his own defense, by trying to make me a promise that he could never fulfill.

For some reason, that made him feel no better.

Alfred swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. He opened his mouth, but whatever he wanted to say refused to come out; he worked his jaw soundlessly for several moments, then shut it and averted his gaze toward the wall.

He said finally, "I am going to college. And I have a girlfriend."

It felt like someone had poured ice water down Arthur's spine. Grabbed him by the hair, shoved him under the cold spray, let it pepper and tear through his skin into his chest and rip out something that he didn't know was there.

"You're joking."

"I'm not." Alfred's voice was tight.

"You have a . . . you've been . . . cheating on your . . . just to be with . . ."

"Look, I don't feel great about that either, okay?" said Alfred, his head swiveling back to meet Arthur's eyes. "She's an amazing girl, one of the best people I've ever met, and she . . . she means a lot to me —"

Arthur couldn't even find it in himself to twist Alfred's words around and throw them back at him. He was going to be sick — for real this time. And he didn't even fully understand why. He mumbled, trying to tamp down the rising nausea, "You hired me because you just wanted a quick lay . . . because you didn't want to force her to do anything she didn't want to do or wasn't ready for?"

"Well." Alfred hesitated. "That's a part of it, but —"

"I believe I'm finished here." Arthur grabbed his jacket from where he'd tossed it across the back of a chair and threw it on. His limbs protested his every move, his joints feeling as if they'd been cemented in place, but he pressed his feet into his shoes anyway. "I apologize for cutting our session short, but it doesn't seem we'll get anywhere today," he said calmly. Even though it feels like we're now leagues apart and you have a goddamned girlfriend that you forgot to mention before you fooled me into thinking I could love you. "I'll talk to Gilbert about giving you a refund. Now, if you'll excuse me." He headed for the door. He had to leave before his composed mask cracked.

"No, Arthur, wait —"

Stopping just before he stepped out, Arthur said through his teeth, "If you really want sex, you should go back to your girlfriend and discuss it with her. Instead of toying with me." And giving me false hope, just to crush it underfoot like it's nothing. It occurred to him shortly that he had absolutely no right to act the way he was acting. He was, first and foremost, a prostitute, and it wasn't like he'd never entertained a married or otherwise engaged person before. Morals held no sway over him. Why was he making such a big deal out of it now?

And who was he to think that he had any sort of hold on Alfred? To assume that Alfred had any sort of obligation to him?

He promised.

Arthur slammed the door on his exit to shut out the clamor in his head. He walked out of the inn at a relentless pace, ignoring everybody and everything he passed, and tried to convince himself that he shouldn't be so worked up over Alfred, that they had never meant anything in the first place, that they shouldn't have meant anything — and that if they had, it was nothing now.

I was just a "friend." And now I'm not even that. And he remembered the time that Alfred had made his promise, and his own unspoken words. If he'd kept it, he would've been the first to do so. If he didn't, he wouldn't be the last.

Haunted by the fact that he'd been right all along, he ducked his head and let the tears fall.

It should never have happened.

A/N: Apparently, after I've been in a slump for a while, I get unhappy enough to begin writing again. Maybe if it continues, it'll have a reverse effect and I'll start churning out more chapters?

Thank you for the comments last chapter. They really made me feel better. :)

(An advance warning: the next chapter will contain S+M.)