((Warnings:
1. slash
2. This story has no plot. Should it obtain one later on, I will not be held responsible.
3. Along with no plot, this story may be more like a series of character sketches or moments with no real purpose, otherwise known as one-shots. The characters remain the same, hopefully they'll be chronological, and because of the nature of this particular beast, an ending is possibly nowhere to be found. We shall see!))

"Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long way from home"

traditional gospel song

The Gomer Project

His hair was a long rope of golden brown, slinking down across his shoulder and over his bare shoulder blade. It had a snake like quality beckoning to fingers and minds alike. There was a softened look about it, a silken rope that could be used in the worst of ways and had been, as well. And because of the many uses it had been put to, the pain it had wrought and the pleasure it had given, it also gleamed like a red light in the central district, promising things that it would deliver for the right price.

And right now, it hung down across that bare back and curled like a not so innocent hand against the black leather flank, shining in the neon coming from the all night bar where men stumbled out with girls, boys on their arms and eyes drowsy with living life too fully.

His hand gripped the brick archway next door and held him up while his eyes skittered across the patrons entering and leaving. Red lips curled, glossed so that they looked as if they'd just been lover to a tongue, and his free arm crossed a bare abdomen. It was a warm night and this block had been hit by the undercover cops only a week before. It was more likely that they were trying to catch their usual fare of prostitute, druggie, and measly punk kid in some other place. They never stayed anywhere long. Like hunters they feared frightening off their quarry if they took down too many in one place so they moved about, strutting with power in their hidden badges in packs, roaming their large territory, keeping to one street until the pickings were slim and then moving on to the next. They would be back. But they wouldn't be back soon.

The street that kept secrets from the bar's inside ear, lay with a smell that could be home and could be curse, or maybe both to the long haired youth holding up the brick wall with his shoulders and hand. His hand ached, actually. It had been a busy night but all five doller jobs, which meant for a raw hand and he could still sit down. The big spenders had been frightened off by the cops the week before. They weren't willing to take the chance that they could be caught with their pants down around their knees and the pictures of their families on the dash of their twenty thousand dollar car, complete with custom pearlized paint color. So for now, the youth would make do with those few socially incomptent wrecks who thought that a fiver might just get them enough to get by on, or maybe something to finish off what they'd started by hanging out by parks or on internet cafes or in the bars a bit further down the street. Nice thing about the hair, they didn't always care if they were with a man. They'd grab his hair and pull it close and murmur how wasn't it so pretty, and they would imagine that the cheaper five dollar job was the brunette in the Vu on the corner.

He had made enough for dinner and to buy that new pair of bitch boots he'd seen at the Bon. It wasn't a bad night. He might even take the rest of the night off. Maybe after the next one. By one in the morning, he could call it an early day, half an hour away.

Making the clock his boundary, he smiled coyly at a pair leaving the bar. He could have gone in, but he'd have to spend six bucks for the cover fee. That was two gallons of milk or a nice tube of lipstick, dammit. He wasn't willing to spend that much when he'd not made much to begin with.

Heels clicked up the sidewalk behind him, recognizing the step, his smile grew and he turned his head to grin at the girl. The two men who'd exited the bar were swaying, muttering low to each other in the door of the bar, just a step out of the way of those who wanted to enter or leave. He could hear their thoughts whirling, could hear the alcohol driven lust begging to be freed, for the right price.

Cool fingers found their way across his lower back and made goose pimples raise on his skin. "Hands, babe.." he hissed, staring down at her electric green eyes. Contacts. She had a different pair for each day of the week and under their circular color, he could sometimes glimpse the brown lurking, bland and worth a dime to the dollar the colors got. It was in the eyes. He had a violet blue that should be patented and was strictly natural. The darkness of the pupils wasn't, he got that from adding drops to his eyes or having a hit before he went out. Dilating pupils was another extra buck or two.

Music poured from the bar, thrumming against his chest and mixed in with the chuckle that jiggled her breasts against his chest. She was not topless like him, but then she was a dame, so it would have been illegal for her not to be covered at least the little bit she was. Still, that halter top left little to the imagination, almost see through in the pale street lights and blue and red flickering neon.

Marinated, the drunken argument from the men diluted and then died in the liquid sex she was pouring out with just her red nails on his breast bone and the look she was aiming at them.

"Hi Duo," she purred and smiled, then without looking away from the two men, tilted up her mouth for a kiss which he gave her, sizzling hot on the outside and cold as ice under, directly disproportionate to what she was on the outside, her night cooled skin and warmth in that wet cavern. They made sure to show enough of tongues tangling and he left it up to her to time the breaking apart just right; long enough to titillate but not so long that it seemed a hopeless case for the other two.

She pressed Duo back into the brick wall, her long thigh in between his legs and her cheek on his chest, and he could see in his eyes the look she gave the two men. He added his own version of the same thing, dark eyes and slightly wanting mouths, cheap, easy, and hot enough to put dreams to rest even if for a moment or two.

"You boys want to join in?" she purred. "One of us for fifty, both for seventy five?" She made sure to let those beckoning red nails trail white tracks down Duo's arm, lightly scratching.

"Se'nty five?" one of the men, a larger, portly man who probably was hiding a picture of some kids in his back pocket. "S'not bad fer two, Herb."

Duo felt a grin tickle his throat and he dropped his mouth into her hair to hide the laugh that rushed against his chest and leapt about a moment. Who was named Herb? Oh he'd have fun with that name later.

"S'not," the taller, younger man had a distinctively gay feel to him, the way he looked over Duo with hunger. "S'not at all…" and Duo looked askance at him and then gave a small smile. Herb looked like he might want to be a top. There was a sense of need for power in his desperately drunk grin.

"Well then," the girl laughed and left Duo using a lingering touch, almost touching his belt as she let her hand run down his chest and Duo watched "Herb" lick his lips and watch her red nails like a bull watching for the signal to charge. "I'm Suzie."

"Stan," the portly father of two or three or four said and reached out to touch her.

"Pay up front," she spoke calmly and with a business like mien.

"Shit.. Oh.. Yeah…" and Stan fumbled for his wallet as Herb sidled around and slowly started to advance on the braided man leaning against the wall.

Herb halted just shy of his target when Stan's whine broke through the desire coated night air. "Herb? Yu got'nything? I only gotsa twenty.."

Herb blinked, pulling away and looked back at his partner in drunken stupor. Duo chuckled low at the look of disappointment on the taller man's face. There would be no hour long orgy tonight with these two. They'd pissed away most of their check on the booze that had almost got them broke with too much sex.

"Only a twenty? Oh baby, that's okay," Suzie crooned and hooked her arm around Stan's shoulders, rubbing her body next to his. "I can still do some pretty wild things for twenty."

That was Duo's cue to get lost and he shrugged into a shadow just south of a garbage can before Herb ol' buddy ol' pal could think to say otherwise. Suzie would give Herb enough to be thankful for. 'Sides, the guy looked closeted. You aren't always sure what you get with the closeted ones.

The sidewalk glittered from a sixties attempt to add crushed glass to the cement, it felt like walking on stars and Duo watched the ground at his feet as he walked. Checking his watch it was ten to. He should just head home. He wasn't feeling up to a quickie hand job or anything that easy. And what was an extra fiver tonight?

Things would pick up in a few days when the big spenders figured out the girls were being targeted elsewhere. It was always the girls (and the few boys as well) that were picked up. The guys in the black and silver cars always seemed to finagle their way out of things.

Duo watched the traffic pass by, sparse and uncertainly wavering now and again as exhaustion or drink made hands slip. The white and red lights were kind of festive. And considering what holiday was here, it was kind of nice. Only needed some green and blue and you'd have a long, blinking string to decorate the great black tree that was the city's girdle. Could almost make you believe in things like perfect turkeys and rings in black cases and firelight; stuff you saw on advertisements during breaks between television shows. Not that he was in the habit of watching television much.

It was just outside of his apartment that he heard a purring downshift of an expensive motor just behind him. Sounds like that weren't natural to his ear. Coughing and growling motors, the high whine of a performance sports car or the low rumble of a car with hydraulics, those were real. But this purring, like a whisper of silk and velvet, this just didn't belong and it made him turn around.

The car gleamed silver and enticed him like his braid tempted others. There was no flash in the color or the make. Instead there was a comfortable richness about it, something you'd expect a long time millionaire to have. It was a car that the owner to exchange for his sports car when he wanted to make a good appearance at an operetta down at the Met or to take his girlfriend to some out of the way hideout for a perfect weekend getaway. It wasn't the type of car anyone picked up a hooker in.

It made Duo hungry for something he couldn't name and it made him hate, all in the same breath. He sneered in disgust and began to turn when he noticed one slightly tinted window drop and a dark form lean forward.

"Excuse me," the voice called and Duo wanted to run toward and away from it simultaneously. It was a kiss of sound that made him shiver with lust and want and desire and it made him want to show his own superiority over anyone who thought they could make it doing his life after living with a silver spoon in their mouth. Money was Duo's bread and butter as well as the thing he abhorred and wanted most of all. He dreamt of his own Pretty Woman story happening but he'd been burned plenty by the judgment of the more upstanding citizens of his city.

His sneer curled backwards and folded in on itself until he was almost smiling. He could hear his boot heels on the starry pavement as he approached the purring car. He made sure to thrust his hips forward and smoothen his actions and to stop just before the window so that his belly was visible. Then putting the hand that was sore and marring the perfection of that car's sides with the disgusting essence of what made him so worthy of disdain as he gripped the side and knelt slowly, he arched a brow. "Lost?" he purred, much like Suzie had to her drunken guests.

The man inside was lost to shadow.

"No, but I want something."

"Oh?" Duo's lips lifted until his canines flashed and his eyes danced like the cement around his haunches. "What do you want? Maybe I can help."

"You."

The answer was so predictable Duo should have laughed. But the way it was said frightened him. He knew better but he didn't give right away. "Yeah? Well, lots of people think they need me."

"Oh no," came the soft voice like a summons from the depths of hell, sliding smoke like out of the darkened window. "Oh no, I don't need you. I want you, you see. Will you come?"

"Baby, I can come…" Duo let the double entendre take effect but the man did not laugh. Duo sighed in resignation. "Look, four hundred an hour. Can you do it?"

"Four hundred…" the man pondered. "How much will you give me?"

"Everything," Duo wondered at why he was shivering.

"That," the man said pointedly, "is exactly what I want."

"Wait," Duo hedged in an uncertain tone. "What kind of everything you talking about? I do have rules, mister."

"Of course," the voice stated patiently. "I will abide by whatever rules you have."

Duo sighed in relief but didn't feel overly relieved. "Let me see you." He wanted to see what the man looked like.

"Get in first."

"No, you show me," Duo was afraid he'd be taking on something… frightening. He didn't like this man. His voice was too gentle, almost loving. Like he knew something Duo didn't.

A sigh, a rustle in the darkness followed by a click of an overhead light and the interior of the car was flooded with a gentle, comforting glow. And Duo stared a moment and looked away, his body shaking.

The man was more frightening than he'd thought. And it wasn't that he was ugly or disgusting. It was that he was so… perfect. His black hair fell around his face and tangled over his skull in a nest that looked softer than down. His face colored golden, showed nothing but a sweetness and patience and strength that was almost angelic. But it was his eyes that were the worst. They were secret, wild, beautiful blue eyes, like seeing the inner heart of the ocean, hidden from mankind because to look at them once would be lose yourself. And Duo had no intention of being lost.

"Six hundred," the man upped the ante at seeing how Duo was faltering.

Duo swallowed hard. "An hour," he murmured. "Beginning the minute I enter your car."

"Agreed," there was the quiet rest and promise in that voice again and Duo looked into the car.

It was silver, like the outside, leather interior and was immaculate. It would be stained by having him in there. But then, he'd stained the outside of the car with his sore hand already. He felt like crying. And because boys never cry, he sneered instead, hiding effectively behind his hatred of those who take their comfort for granted.

Obviously Mr. Perfect wasn't so damned perfect or he wouldn't be picking up a hooker and a guy at that. Confident in that, Duo stood and before he could think twice, opened up the car door and slipped inside. "Okay."

The man smiled at him and Duo's gut twisted. He watched the smile and refused to look into the man's eyes. He didn't want to see those eyes again. "Just go," he growled. "Let's get this over with."

TBC…