-1-

I slow down enough for Alex to catch up with me once we get in a Shy Cartel neighborhood. I usher him into the basement door of The Luxor. El doesn’t even blink as we speed walk through his bootleg distillery, through the kitchen and go upstairs to a booth in the Luxor’s dim dining room.

Alex’s eyes are wet and his entire face is bright pink , he’s hyperventilating and on the edge of a panic attack.

“Hey,” I say in what I hope is a soothing voice. I take his warm face in my hands. “We’re safe. It’s over, babe. Everything’s good. You did great.”  

 I swipe a glass of water off a nearby table.

“Drink this.”

He drinks it with shaky hands, I kneel in front of him and  rest my forehead on his knee, his hand plays with my hair. After a few minutes his color goes down and his breathing returns to normal.

“You okay ?,” I ask, wiping away the tears on his face,

“What…what did you call me before ?,” he breathes.

Fuck, what had I called him ? Babe. I fucking hated that term of endearment bullshit.

He smirks at me and I get off my knee and slide into the booth next to him.  He moves to sit in my lap but he still seems shaken.

His lips touch mine  and my body picks up right where it left off, grabbing his ass and bringing us closer  until our chests are pressed together. He’s kissing and touching every part of me but he’s careful not touch any part of my body that would get me too aroused  in public.

I make eye contact with Jenna, the bartender on duty  and hold up two fingers. She nods in understanding.

“So…that’s the kind of thing you put up with all day ?,” he asks.  

“More or less,” I admit as Jenna puts down two shots.

I reach around him and down my shot. It’s  a distilled alcohol that is basically vodka but not vodka since no Shy Cartel establishment would serve a spirit the Mjollner made.

“I’m sorry that I can’t be what you need,” I blurt out. “I want as much of your submission as you’re willing to give me, but I don’t like degrading you or putting your life in danger with my gun, even if it’s pretend. I can give you anything you want but that.”

Alex watches me and then leans back to take his shot, leaving half in the glass.

 “One day,” he says, tilting his head upwards to where a screen is projecting above the bar “I want you to give me that.”

I turn around to see a news story about how Attorney General Kenneth is feeling optimistic about the election. He’s at the opening of the Sprawl’s first public park with his family, cutting a ribbon and shit.

“Rigging an election is child’s play,”  I tell him. “Minnow thinks Maxwell is no longer interested in prosecuting Twyla for trying to kill him.  We can make him lose. He’d look pathetic if he tried to blame his loss on the cartel.”

“No,” Alex says contemplatively. “He has to lose more than an election.”

***

-2-

“Now,” I say softly.

Alex’s wet body is pulled tight against mine,  his back pressing into my chest, his arms around my neck. I secure my arm tighter around his hip,  letting my hand stay between his legs while still holding him up so he doesn’t slip beneath the water.

With my other hand I push two fingers into his body  and press hard  on his sensitive spot. He tenses up and soapy water splashes out of the tub. I caress his cheek with my lips,  kissing the leather strap of the ball gag in his mouth.  He lifts the hand he has around my neck to stroke my face, leaving a trail of water.

His sudden touch makes me jolt and my leg knocks over the half empty bottle of wine that was sitting on the other end of the bathtub. I’d let my leg dangle outside of the tub because, even though I had taken my cybernetic prosthetic off, I didn’t like to leave the stump submerged in water too long.

“Don’t use your hands.” I remind him.

We’d had a mostly silent early lunch at the Luxor, him getting lost in some game, me enjoying the silence of the odd hour we were eating. That’s what I liked about him—he was okay with my need for stillness in a way most people weren’t. We didn’t go out much because I couldn’t stand too much simulation and he was the pickiest eater I’d ever met. I’m sure it had to do with his past, but I stopped pressing because his stories about Fort Pride always left me feeling raw and guilt-ridden/

After lunch I’d walked with Alex back to Control and we’d picked up mostly where we left off before the chase and had spent the last three hours in his bed. I’d gone to take a shower while he changed the sheets and then decided I needed a bath and he should join me.

 There were a lot of things I disliked about Control, but I couldn’t deny Jean’s design of the en suite bathrooms.  The freestanding tub was over 7 feet and two people could fit comfortably—although Alex told me he never let clients use his shower or bathtub.

“I’m not stopping,” I say into Alex’s ear, stroking him and thrusting my fingers into him harder.

He was good at giving  but terrible at receiving. The amount of control he had over himself was impressive. He could get right up to the edge and just stay there for hours. He rarely gave in around his clients unless they specifically asked for it.

But I wasn’t a client.

He’d made me climax 13  times in the last three hours and he was going to at least once.

 “Stop holding back. Come for me like the fucking slut you are,” I growl into his ear. “Do you want me to be rough ? Is that what you want ?”

A soft moan escapes his lips and he’s suddenly fully erect.

“Is that what you like ? Answer me when I’m fucking talking to you.”

He makes a yes sound under the gag

“Sir.”

“Yes, sir,” he mumbles. It’s completely unintelligibly under the ball gag but I know what he’s saying. I’m getting hard again too, but this isn’t about me.

“Do you want it harder ?,”

“Yes, sir.”

He moans and twists in my grasp and I thrust my fingers faster

“You’re body belongs to me and you never hold back. When I say come, you come. Do you understand ?”

“Yes, s-”

“Are you going to be good and come for me--”

“Ye-”

“Who does you belong to ?”

That does it. I knew that would do it. 

He makes a desperate keening noise and then his body spasms violently, he lets out a half scream, half moan against the ball gag and finishes hard in my hand. His thighs are shaking as I pull us both out the tub, he collapses against the wall in the corner as I rinse my hand under the sink.

I get a towel to dry myself off and I’m glad to see the lid was still securely on the fallen wine bottle. I pick it up and finish it off.

“Come here.”

I sit on the closed toilet lid and Alex  shakily walks towards me, kneeling in front of me. His body is still sensitive and he shivers when I carefully dry him off with the towel, blotting his hair until it’s mostly dry. I apply a thick layer of Vitamin K gel to the bruises on his back and shoulder to help them fade. I catch his reflection in the mirror as I smooth over the gel  and he cringes when I touch him.

“Do the bruises still hurt ?,” I ask, pulling the gag out of his mouth and tossing it aside.

It was the first thing I’d said to him in the last few hours that wasn’t a simple command.

“…Yes,” he admits.

I reach up and open his medicine cabinet, it’s filled with illicit drugs he keeps to sell to his clients but I find a bottle of good old fashioned Oxy. I break a pill in half, gesture for him to open his mouth and lay it on his tongue. I’m tempted to take the other half myself but I instead take a paper cigarette out of the cabinet and light it up.

“Luce, no--,” he says when I reach to pick him up

“Don’t,” I respond in a warning tone. I didn’t like when people think I couldn’t do things.

I’d carried a lot of bodies and his weight barely registers to me. I throw him across my shoulders and secure him there with my right arm as I maneuver us back to the bedroom-- I made a point at becoming decent at walking without my prosthetic so no one could take me off guard—and deposit him on his bed.

His room at Control was nice, it  had been modeled after high ranking RLA  officer quarters, but when he wasn’t working he put away all of the RLA propaganda that gave the space it’s special sense of fucked up-ness.

 I take out one of the black garment bags pushed in the back of his closet. I’d left a few of my clothes here in case I got called to a job while we were in the middle of something

I secure my leg back on, make sure it’s calibrated and then slowly get dressed.

Alex is sitting on his knees at the end of the bed, naked and fucking gorgeous as usual, his head tilted slightly down and all that beautiful  hair falling across his face. When I finish dressing I walk over, tilt his chin up and kiss him because I can. Because he lets me.

Despite out height difference, he we was eerily good at figuring out positions that put us on the same level. When he kneeled on the elevated bed and I stood in front of it we were nearly eye to eye.

He inhales the scent of the  cigarette mixed with the bright scent of his shampoo and body wash. He plays with the zipper on my pants, moving it up and down.

 It turns me on when he’s completely vulnerable and naked when I’m dressed. I was that fucking simple. Sure, there was something that excited me about ropes, gags, chains and the other bondage implements in his room but I wanted him to accept my dominance so sufficiently I didn’t need them.

He’s not wearing a his prosthetic finger and I take his hand and suck on the stump where my idiot brother had cut his finger off. Not that I blamed  Rias, he had to do something to show he wasn’t to be messed with.

“Hey.” I say, jerking Alex’s chin so he looks up at me. “I don’t like it when you hold back on me.”

He kisses me harder, his hands rake roughly through my hair and a few  strands come out in his fingernails

“You have a lot of gray hair, Daddy,” he smirks, tilting my head down and kissing the top of my head.

“Don’t ever fucking call me that,”

He laughs, because he knows him calling me that pisses me off and he’s trying to distract me.

The premature gray had started with my facial hair in my early 20s but was spreading to my sideburns and the tips. It was apparently genetic but my Dad had been blonde so it didn’t show as much.

“Lex--”

“I don’t mean to hold back--”

“Then why do you fucking do it ?”

“Everything is better when you wait,” he smiles.

“Yeah ?”

“Yes….Are you mad at me ?”

“A little bit.”

 “I like it when you get angry,” he says, tugging on my shirt collar.

“I’m not angry, but I think you should be punished. What do you think ?”

“Do you care what I think ?”

I tighten my hold on  his hips, deciding what fun I’m going to have with him next  when he blinks and  his eyes stay closed a beat longer than they should. When he opens them they’re heavy lidded.

“That Oxy must have be strong,”

I should have known. Jean only dealt  the good stuff.

“I’m fine, Luce.”

“You can’t get away with that lie when your eyes are the size of dinner plates. You’re about to go sleepy bye,” I tease him.

“No, I’m not,” he says stifling a yawn.

“Too fucking bad. I’m going home.”

He deflates a little and I reluctantly take my hands off his body and turn around and take a pair of underwear from his drawer

“Can I ask you a question ?,” he asks, his voice already heavy with sleep.

“What ?”

“How are you getting back home ?”

“I can take the train,”

He grins at that because I hate the train and will likely kill someone on it. I didn’t know what it was with me and the assholes who wanted to make small talk on a god damn 45 minute train ride.

I push him on his back and when I lift his leg I notice a tattoo on his body I’d never noticed. Over the last year I thought I’d catalogued every scar and tattoos on his body but I’d missed this one. It’s small and in the small area of skin between his balls and where my cock spent the last three hours.

I look closer and recognize it as Forge Decartes’ artist tag.

I wonder if Alex even knows the tag is there. I saw him for who he was beyond that tattoos but I still fucking hated every single one of them because they hadn’t been his choice. It  both disgusted and pissed me off that his rapists had permanently marked their names on his body.

The worst parts of me sometimes want to yell at him for not saying no loud enough or  fighting hard enough back then. I use to imagine setting  his body on fire and letting the ink get covered by scar tissue but the sensible part of me knew that was cruel.

“We should talk about covering some of this ink up,” I tell him, pulling the briefs over his hips. “With the laser tattoos. They don’t hurt and it looks better than trying to fade it.”

I wonder if he’ll fight me on it. But he doesn’t, he just nods his head.

“Whatever you want,” he mumbles and he already looks half-asleep

While he alluded to Maxwell a lot, he never talked about the time he  spent in a prison cell with the serial killer and tattoo artist Forge DeCartes. All I knew is it left him the most vulgar of his tattoos and a scar from an infected feeding tube incision. One night he’d stayed with me and woken up the entire house screaming for his mother. Ma had tried to talk to him the next morning but he’d shut down any talk about that.

 “It’ll take time. We’ll cover them up  slowly…whenever you’re ready.”

I slip a Virtue t-shirt over his head and carefully pull his hair into a ponytail at the back of his head. I  pull him up until his head rests on my chest and the rest of his body wraps around mine.  I walk my fingers up and down his back, finishing my cigarette as his breathing evens out and he slowly begins to fall asleep on top of me.

I could stay like this forever. The only sound I hear is the quiet tick.tick.tick of my watch. It’s comforting.

“I’m sorry about your car,” he murmurs quietly out of nowhere

“I know. I loved that car.”

“I love you too.”

“What ?,”

“I—,” he sits up, his eyes clouded in sleep. “What did you say ?”

“Nothing,” I say, feigning nonchalance. “What…what did you say ?”

He just stares at me, his unnervingly pale eyes taking in every inch of my face.

“I’m so tired, Luce.”

“I know. Just go to sleep,” I say pulling him back down

Within minutes he’s snoring softly, I extract his limbs from my body and carefully place him under the covers.

I break into his Syndicate to look at his schedule and set his alarm in time for him to wake up for his  next client tomorrow.

I head upstairs to the opulence and good government sanctioned whoring of Virtue’s bar to see if I can find Alan or Minnow and convince one of them to drive me back to Mojave but none of them are around. I spot Charlotte frenetically moving around the club, but even I knew better than to get in her way when she’s busy.

-3-

A pair of dark brown eyes catch mine and my fight or flight instincts kick in.

I decide to fight and walk towards the lounge chair where Isla Haley is sitting. She’s wearing something Minnow would envy—a mini dress made entirely of pale pink sequins that clung to every thick curve  and roll on her generous body. I saw Isla at Virtue from time to time but I’d made a point to never make direct eye contact with her.

“Looking for your brother ?,” I ask her

“Ew, no! Of course not,” she grimaces taking a sip from a martini glass containing a sickengly sweet purple drink the bar made that involved cotton candy.

“Are you ?,” she asks warily, with an arched brown.

“I just dropped him off,”

Her face pinches into one of disgust and she shakes her head.

“Don’t give me details.”

She knew her brother worked in a restricted area of Virtue and she could probably guess why but that’s all she let herself know.

 “Want me to see if I can get you another drink on the house ?,” I offer. I didn’t know much about Virtue, but I knew the alcohol costs were negligible.

“You don’t have to pretend to be nice to me,” she bites back, rolling her eyes.

Isla didn’t bullshit around and I liked that about her.

“Actually, I do. I care about Lex--,”

“And you think I don’t ?,”

I hadn’t meant it like that, but actually I kind of did.

I liked that Alex knew what it was like to have bastard siblings but unlike my siblings his acted like bastards.

 Isla may not be the psychopath Harlow Haley had been but I didn’t understand how she just left him to suffer all those years and not even tried to call or get answers from the RLA. If I’d gone a year without hearing from Twyla or Rias I’d do anything to get answers even if I wasn’t in the cartel. I mean hell, Ma had been a lot like Isla and she dedicated her whole life to finding answers about my Dad.

But Alex had forgiven his sister.

“That’s obviously not what I meant--,”

“You know, not that anyone ever asks me but I hate what happened to my brother. I really do, but it may have been the best thing for him.”

“Are you fucking kidding me ?,” I say louder than I mean to and catch Charlotte’s attention from across the room.

Charlotte gives me a warning glare, nothing gives her more life than kicking me out of Virtue for every little outburst or drunken brawl.

“Listen, you see how cute  Alex is now, you can only imagine how he was when he younger,” Isla says draining her glass. “He was like a cute wittle bunny wabbit and do you know what happens to defenseless cute wittle bunny wabbits ?,”

“Yeah, I don’t have time for this--,”

“They get ripped apart and eaten by predators,” she says putting her glass down. “Or they get taken home as pets and put in cages to fawn over them. My mother and grandmother ? Protected him all his life. For years. Harlow and the army of  assholes we went to school with ? They were like tier one predators but the RLA went to fucking town ripping him apart. And it was awful, I’m sure. But atleast now he knows how to fight for himself and survive in this fucked up world.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night--,”

“And then comes you,” she says loudly. “And you’re just going to coddle and put him in a cage with bows in his hair and  protect him all over again.”

“You don’t know me. There are some battles only I can fight--,”

“Right,” she nods over enthusiastically. “Whatever makes you feel good and fuels your masculinity and keeps your kink or whatever going--”

“That’s not why I do it --,”

 “Then why else ?, Why are you bothering being nice to me ? ”

I don’t answer and she arches her eyebrow all the way up.

“Isla, sweetheart, our table is ready,” a smooth male voice says from the corner.

I turn to see Vincent, one of Jean’s newer escorts. He had the build of an athlete and wore a well fitted suit, in his hand he held another cotton candy drink for Isla.

 I didn’t know him as well as I knew a few of the others, but if what Jean mentioned in my presence the other day is true, Isla is going to be in a much better mood tomorrow. He completely ignores me, which I think was part of the orientation Charlotte gives new escorts.

Isla gives me a slight nod and then walks off arm in arm with Vincent towards the dining room.

I shake off the encounter and go back to finding a ride home.

I open my cybernetic system to see if Ma is in the city and can give me a lift but I pause at the screen waiting for me.

The search I’d started before our run in with the Covalcotti had completed and I had a positive ID on the man who’d roughed up Alex.

Isla was wrong about me. I didn’t have to slay every dragon for him or be his protector. I knew he wasn’t completely defenseless.

But.

Just this once.

 

***

-4-

Decker Wilson’s property is in one of those multi-million dollar mansions in Fellowship Square—a planned community built by the Federation in the ruins of what used to be mostly gang territory. The house were elaborate, big and showy.

I borrow (okay, steal) a car from a lot and code a  fake identity to get pass the community’s gate.

Wilson’s house is glass and geometric like every rich asshole’s house but I’ll give it to him that the shimmering oil spill texture on the black frame is pretty cool. A quick search of he and his wife’s syndicates showed they were both out of the house so I walk inside and give myself a tour.

It’s an amazing house, tastefully decorated with natural flowers. It’s not too showy or garish.

I pause when I see that there are rooms for children.  One is for a little girl, who clearly had princess aspirations and the other one for a baby

I canvas the kids’ rooms, tossing all their shit out the window.

My outfit of choice makes it easy for me to blend in in neighborhoods like these, so I sit on a bench in the neighborhood greenspace until I see Wilson’s Mercedes S-Class. It’s a nice car but the engine sounds like it’s not being taken care of.

Before Wilson can even turn the engine all the way off, I’m at his passenger side. I open the door of the car and recline in the passenger seat.

“What the fuck!,” the man yelps when he sees me.

I override the Mercedes’ system and lock the doors just as he goes for them.

“Where were you two nights ago ?,” I ask him

“Are you cop--,”

He jumps when I project a video of him at Control with the McQuillan Triplets, having sex with one while encouraging the other two to eat each other out; all while roleplaying as their pervy Uncle.

“That was supposed to be confidential, I’m fucking suing that son of--,” he barks, trying to sound like he isn’t freaked the fuck out.

“You’re right. It is confidential. You can sue the club later.” I say.

People loved to say that they were going to sue but they forget it means they have to admit they’d been at Control, what they did there,  and how much they’d paid for it. Jean had never really approved of me blackmailing some of his Control clients but he shouldn’t have made it so easy to break into his system.

 “But also, you broke your contract,” I remind him.

I show him the video of him attacking Alex, I’d blurred Alex’s face out for my own piece of mind. There was a specific clause about clients not hurting escorts they hadn’t paid for.

“I-I-I don’t remember that—I was drunk—it happens to us all--fuck--.”

“I don’t get drunk.” I say even though I was maybe a little drunk now. “But if this ever happens again I will come right back here, blow your wife’s fucking head off , let you decide which of your two children gets to live as an orphan and then drown you in your family’s still warm blood. Do you understand ?”

He goes stock still and looks at me with pure fear. I wouldn’t do any of what I said but the sicker and more specific I made the threat the better they  seemed to work.

“Do you understand ?,” I repeat taking out my gun. “Or do you want a demonstration ? You can speak can’t you ?”

“Y-y-yeah, okay,” he says. “I’m sorry, okay ? It won’t happen again.”

I smile at him and it disorients him, just like it should.

I unlock the door, get out of the car and walk back to my stolen car. I hear him hurry towards his house and I quickly press the detonator in my pocket. Before he can reach his front door his precious house explodes and bursts into flames, taking everything he owns with it.

***

If people weren’t so afraid of me I’d probably catch more shit for living with my mother most of my life.

I’d moved back  in with her  after I finished at Arkham because it was familiar and I had nowhere else to go. Then I stayed to make up for lost time with Rias,  then it was because Lachlan died and I wanted  be there for Twyla, then Rayne got sick and I wanted to be there for Rias and Ma.

But now Twyla had finally spread her wings and Rias had enough of my shit so I was honestly just staying because I didn’t know how to be on my own and Alex and I were never made for the domestic life.

I drive the stolen car back to the Hydra’s penthouse in Mojave and make a plan to actually return this car at some point tomorrow.

Ma’s sitting on the couch, talking and drinking a bottle of wine with Rias while the TV plays faintly in the background. I hate how much seeing her like that hurt me. I always walked in on her having a meal or late night talk with Rais or Twyla. She was close with them in a way we’d never been.

 When I was a teenager (and through most of my early twenties) she was constantly policing me and reminding me of my place.  Hell, we’d argued and fought so much she’s shipped me off to boarding school.  

“Luce, come have a slice of this cake Ivy’s newest beau made,” Ma calls to me as the garage door closes behind me.

I walk into the living room and as I sit down on the loveseat, Rias stands.  His dark hair is wet and he’s wearing  bright orange plaid pajama shorts and a tank top. He looks like my kid brother who I want to give a hard time and tease, but the dark look on his face reminds me of a pissed off Rayne Washington.

“I’ve got homework,” Rias says and then turns to me. “Luce, I know you’re mad at me for…whatever it is this week, but do you always have to be so reckless?,”

I don’t know exactly which reckless event of mine he is referring to but I’m not letting him know that.

“Fuck off--,”

“You’ll never change, I’m the one who has to answer for your stunts now--,”

“My stunts ?,” I argue. “I do exactly what you---actually, let’s be real here—what Minnow asks of me every time. What you think is me being reckless is me dealing with the fallout from your choices--,”

“Boys, enough.” Ma cuts in, exasperated. She’s not even yelling because she never yells at Rias. “We’re not doing this tonight.  As soon as we’re in this house all that other shit gets left behind until tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Rias  says heading for the stairs.

 “Zacharias,” Ma says in a soft voice I don’t fucking recognize from my childhood. “Luce just got here. Would it kill you boys to spend some time together ?,”

“Probably,” I venture.

“My college professors are expecting a lot out of me,” Rias says, a little haughtily. “ I can’t just blow school off if I want to make Dad proud.”

He kisses Ma on the cheek and heads upstairs without giving me a second look.

My baby brother was changing, it wasn’t just that he’d gotten more comfortable with cartel stuff but I knew he thought he was better than me because he was going to college. I’d gotten into fucking Stanford but he was too young to remember that and I didn’t tell him because I didn’t have shit to prove to him.

 “Fuck it, may as well have another,” Ma says using a butter knife to saw two misshapen hunks out of the yellow cake in the shape of a glossy lemon. She puts the uneven slice on disposable plates and hands one to me.

She settles back into the couch, watching some documentary that was on the television. She seemed content…she always seemed content these days. She’d basically retired and put all her focus on Rias’ well being. She hadn’t had a kill since killing Lachlan’s killer a few years ago and she only did hacks when she felt like it.

“How do you do it ?,” I ask her, picking at the cake, not sure if I was ready to tread into this water.

“Do what ?,”

“I don’t know. Dad. Rayne. Lachlan...”

She drops her lemon custard covered fork onto the pristine white couch, clearly stunned I’m me asking a question that isn’t why don’t you leave me the fuck alone.

“How do I do what, exactly  ?,” she asks carefully.

“You loved them, right ? How can you keep letting yourself love people knowing exactly how  it feels when it ends ?,”

She purses her lips together to hide a smile.

“Luce…do you love someone ?,”

I open mouth and then close it.

Yes. Fuck. I love him so much and it fucking scares me.

“I don’t know,” I shrug but she sees through my bullshit.

Alex had stayed over at the house but we made a point of always being platonic. Never touching or really making eye contact in front of my family.

“Rias is a little wrong,” Ma says. “It’s okay to  be a little reckless. Love can be reckless and you just have to hold on to it for as long and as hard as you can.”

The End

A/N

That's all she wrote! I just wanted to write something fluffy adjacent for Haley. I am actually drafting two more Vice short stories but up next we'll be tackling this (clicky clicky).