Deconstruction

by Kit Zheng

  Tomas spoke softly, almost under his breath: “You don’t need to speak to me like that.” The mysterious expression returned, lingered just long enough for Jon to isolate it. Anger.

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  Jon almost smiled. Could it be? Sweet-natured Tomas was pissed off? Like a shark drawn to the smell of blood, he circled. Wondered how deep that vein ran. “A thousand dollars in your pocket says I can speak to you any damn way I please.” Tomas’ mouth twitched. “No. You don’t own me,” he said, louder now, but still in that calm, even tone. His anger was not really directed at Jon, he realized, which he was surprised to find disappointed him. Trouble in paradise, he supposed. Jon really couldn’t care less.

  “Tonight, I do,” Jon said, standing. He reached around himself, under his untucked shirt, and retrieved the handcuffs he’d stashed there earlier on a whim. Brought them around, let one cuff fall, the other dangling from his forefinger. Like magic, color suffused Tomas’ cheeks, and Jon could hear him swallow in the heavy silence that settled. “You know how I work, how I want it. You should have canceled ahead of time.

  Now turn around.”

  Tomas hesitated, holding his breath and looking Jon in the eye. But Jon knew—was 100% certain—that he would not disobey. Something had changed between them since the incident in the club, since Jon met Detective Nimikos.

  Tomas turned around. Automatically, his hands came a little way behind his back.

  Jon loved it. He cuffed Tomas’ wrists and yanked on his arm to turn him around.

  Tomas was breathing hard already. Jon’s lip curled as he saw the way Tomas kept his eyes a little downcast, ashamed. He let his fingers slip south, cupped the curve of Tomas’ ass through those disgustingly well-worn jeans. Decided it was time to show his first card.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t play these games with your little detective boyfriend.” Jon bared his teeth as Tomas glanced up in surprise.

  “But he must be letting you down or you wouldn’t be spending the night with me.”

  “Vic’s a good guy,” Tomas said, defensive in his soft-spoken way.

  “But you and me, we’re not good guys, are we, Tommy? Or at least, you’re not.” Tomas flinched as if Jon had hit him. It made Jon hard, really fucking hard, worse 72

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  than when the big man first showed up at his door.

  “He knows what I am.”

  “And who you’re fucking?”

  “No. That’s none of his business.”

  “But it’s your business. Bet Nimikos fucking hates it.” Jon hit the truth again, stirred up the anger, watched Tomas’ puppy-dog eyebrows scrunch together over his baby blues.

  “So what if he does?” he said, as if he meant the opposite.

  Jon shrugged. “Exactly. So what? Get over it. Now fucking march, you piece of shit.” He shoved Tomas toward the door he’d entered through not ten minutes ago.

  “But—”

  Seizing Tomas’ elbow hard enough to pinch, he half pushed, half led the man through the door and outside. Tomas tried to be furtive as he looked around for neighbors, pedestrians, guard dogs; but Jon was sure that the late-evening dark had reduced them to two indistinct silhouettes—two buddies going to the bar to pick up some hot chicks, maybe. He opened the door for Tomas and pushed him down into the seat, buckled him in to avoid being pulled over for something as stupid as a click-it-or-ticket checkpoint.

  As he shifted the car into reverse, he reached over and squeezed Tomas’ knee.

  “Don’t worry, big boy,” he said. His tone was, though he did not register it, oddly comforting. “I’m gonna make sure you don’t have to think at all tonight.”

  * * * *

  Tomas watched the street lights roll by, heard the almost muted radio. Jon was speaking again, that strange undertone in his voice. Tomas wondered from a distance if Jon, on some level, cared about him. But as quick as the thought occurred to him, the sympathetic touch became a hard, demanding clutch on his knee, more familiar to 73

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  Tomas—and oddly, more wanted, right now, when there was too much and everything was overwhelming and Tomas just wanted it all gone. That was why he’d gotten into the cab, headed to Jon, even though he knew it was a bad idea. The worst idea. When he was working, he could put everything but a small part of himself in a box, set it aside.

  He always wondered if actors did the same thing when acting. But tonight it was different, more extreme. He felt odd, detached, completely outside himself.

  His body was ready, at any rate; his balls ached, his cock chafed in his jeans, semi-rigid. That never let him down, did it? Not when he was too young and too eager to try out his newfound good looks; not when he was fumbling for better grades in college and fucking to pay off his loans; not when a dark, handsome officer stopped by the 11:30 Club to investigate a disturbance and Tomas didn’t want to go home with anyone else.

  Vic again.

  Tomas heard the click of the turn signal indicator and looked outside to see them pull into Navigator Park. After hours, the park had a reputation: drugs, quick fucks and anonymity. Vic would hate this place, he thought, and actually, he didn’t much want to be there either.

  When he looked over at Jon, Jon was watching him. Daring him, maybe, to say it: “I don’t want to do this.”

  Tomas’ heart rate quickened and he was unable to tell if it was nerves or arousal or some fucked-up mix of both. Vic would never look at him like this, and he would never want Vic to. In Jon’s eyes, he was a piece of meat. Something to mop up the sticky white need. Tomas wondered just what kind of person he was to get off on that, to need that.

  As if he knew what Tomas was thinking, Jon threw open the car door with an almost military snap, pulling him out of the car and onto his knees in the dirt of the parking lot. Shoved him up against the car while inelegantly whipping out his dick.

  Rubbed it against Tomas’ lips. Tomas’ mouth opened, like he was an automated toy.

  Press the button and watch fantastic! Vacuum! Action! He leaned forward, swallowing 74

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  Jon down until his nose was buried in dark brown pubes and his mouth was full of hot, heavy dick. With his body, he gave Jon everything he wanted, a thousand bucks and more, but in the back of his mind, there was only Vic demanding, “Do you even love me?”

  And then he was angry, so angry he let his jaw close a little too much and his teeth scraped the head of Jon’s cock. He didn’t even feel sorry as Jon shouted and practically slammed him back into the side of the car, surprised.

  Still, he said he was sorry, feeling the dull ache in his right shoulder where he hit the car. He knew Jon didn’t mean to hurt him, so he let it go.

  Jon was angry, now, too, and once again his grip dug into Tomas’ shoulder, pulled Tomas to his feet. His mouth pressed hard against the curve of Tomas’ ear and his breath was warm and damp and invading.

  “I shouldn’t have to teach you to watch your fucking teeth!” Tomas instinctively pulled away as Jon spoke, which only made the fingertips biting into his muscles dig deeper. His blood felt like it had gone crazy without him, surging through his body and swelling his dick without inviting his mind along. He turned his head to say something, but the words fell away as soon as he saw Jon’s face.

  Instead, his breath escaped hard between his teeth like someone punched him in the gut.

  He wondered if Jon was going to hurt him. If Jon was going to kill him. If Vic had been right and he’d been blind, if Jon was really the hustler killer. It would serve him right, he supposed. The thought made him grin joylessly.

  Then Jon was dragging him along again and the handcuffs rattled behind Tomas’

  back as he stumbled through the dark. He felt like there were people were just beyond the edge of his vision, but they melted away into the shadows as he and Jon passed, as if sensing who and what Jon was. It struck Tomas that he didn’t have any real understanding of Jon, himsel
f. He was never interested in his clients that way.

  He tripped over something, sending a low scream through three of his toes. Almost 75

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  fell into the brick side of a dingy park bathroom. His nose hovered a few scarce inches above damp cement, wet from some roof runoff, or maybe something worse. The hard, rounded toe of Jon’s boot pressed between his buttocks.

  “Get up.”

  “Don’t—” Tomas got out, and then he didn’t say any more because he didn’t know what he wanted to say. So he got up, shaking a little, because he was angry and he was tired all of a sudden and he hadn’t eaten since seven in the morning, a bowl of dry cereal. Maybe the beer, if you counted the empty carbs.

  Jon herded him through the battered door of the men’s bathroom. Tomas blinked repeatedly against the sudden blast of light. Fluorescent light turned the cement floor and dingy whitewashed stalls a little greenish-gray. The color became secondary as the smell of the place hit him: dirty, damp, mold, piss and worse, and more recently, sweat, with an acrid tang of spent sex.

  There were two men already in the restroom, frozen in a tableau worthy of a basement porno. The one braced against one porcelain sink with his fly open and his dick out looked up with a sort of mute, deer-in-the-headlights terror; the other, on his knees without care for what he was kneeling in, hardly acknowledged them, his eyes slitting open and then closing again as he went back to jerking off the massive cock in front of him with both hands.

  “Pardon me, gentlemen,” Jon said. He reached into one pocket and did something Tomas never dreamed he’d do—he pulled out his badge and showed it. “Vice, SPD.” Suddenly, even Mr. Seen-It-All on his knees was paying attention. His eyes widened cartoonishly. Deer-in-the-Headlights yanked up his pants, threw up his hands and started babbling excuses: he was a prominent so-and-so and he couldn’t go down for this and he could do anything they wanted—

  And Jon loved it, he devoured it; Tomas could feel the rock-hard evidence of Jon’s joy dig into his left buttock.

  The atmosphere in the room shifted. Everything turned surreal; or maybe 76

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  everything had gone that way the instant Jon shoved him through the beat-up men’s room doors. Suddenly, he was in either a porno or a slasher flick; he had his pick. With his hands cuffed behind his back, Tomas felt his disadvantage keenly.

  “Park’s closed, girls.”

  Seen-It-All’s jaded eyes landed on Tomas’ face. Tomas felt his face heat and stomach turn queasy. It was out of control, too out of control.

  “What are you looking at, fag?” Jon said. “You like the look of this little slut? He’s almost as stupid as you are. Came up to me begging to suck me off. Guess he wanted a taste of a real man.”

  Tomas groaned despite himself, hating the way those dirty words pushed all his buttons. Fingers dug into his neck, wrangled him like a bull onto his knees in front of Jon’s two new victims.

  “Hey,” Jon said, like he’d just thought of it, even though Tomas was sure now that he’d been wanting to do this for ages, “maybe if you three boys put on a nice enough show for me, I’ll let you off?” Where the other men couldn’t see it, Jon’s thumb rubbed along the side of Tomas’ neck. The caress made him flinch for multiple reasons.

  Deer-in-the-Headlights swallowed, looking from Seen-It-All to Tomas. He had a familiar face, a face like a dozen men Tomas saw nightly—yuppie, well groomed, desperate. Seen-It-All looked one step above the pathetic junkies willing to trade a blow for some blow. Seen-It-All nodded almost immediately. “Yeah,” he said. “All right. I’ll do it.”

  “Me too,” Mr. Deer said.

  “And what about you, Tommy boy?” Jon growled into Tomas’ neck, too low for the others to hear.

  Tomas stared at the dirty tile, at the glimpse of his skin through the hole torn in one knee of his jeans. The lights overhead made everything look jaundiced and sour.

  Fucked up and wrong. Like he was, cock hard even though he was terrified he’d end up like Robbie, terrified that he was never gonna get the chance to say, “Yes, you 77

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  motherfucking asshole, of course I love you,” to Vic. He could feel the two strangers staring at him. Could tell without looking that they were afraid, but they were also highly interested. It was the same way he could tell at the club, just the feel of the room and maybe something invisible like the smell, he wasn’t sure, he’d just always liked it: being watched. Being appreciated in some entirely unwholesome way.

  In Tomas’ head, he could hear Vic say, “Just walk away. Just walk the fuck away.

  He won’t stop you.”

  Something hot twisted in Tomas’ gut, an acid snake, an ulcer waiting to happen, the angry little dragon he had always managed to suppress. Vic didn’t understand this part of him. Why he couldn’t just walk away, why it wasn’t that easy.

  Without looking up, Tomas nodded.

  Jon’s grip on the nape of his neck tightened to the point of pain. Tomas gritted his teeth.

  “Okay,” Tomas said.

  Mr. Seen-It-All took a half-hesitant step toward him, so that his sneaker came into the field of Tomas’ vision. The rubber toe, once white, was scuffed with green and brown. Grass stains, probably. Something about him made Tomas wonder if he was a pro, like Tomas himself. Maybe they were all pros; maybe Jon had set this whole thing up. But Tomas didn’t think so. The fear coming off both men was too real.

  “What do you want us to do?” Mr. Deer’s voice was strange, high and trembling.

  Tension, too much of it; Tomas wondered if he’d snap before the night was over.

  “If you gotta ask, you’d better start getting ready to make real good friends with Bubba down in the County Jail.”

  With the two men approaching him in front and Jon just behind, Tomas felt his uneasiness rise another notch. The alarms in his head were now up to air-horn level loudness. He’d gone against all his rules—let himself be tied up, check; sold himself for an entire night, check; let a john put him in a situation with no out, check; and now, he was about to let two strangers fuck him. Maybe Vic thought he went home with just 78

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  anyone if the price was right, but that wasn’t true. Tomas had always been careful, always felt comfortable saying no to people who didn’t give off the right vibe. To people who might be sick or might not want to use protection, who might not listen to him if he wanted it all to stop. Tomas chose.

  And now he wasn’t choosing. Now he was on automatic. Seen-It-All pushed down his jogging pants and boxers; Mr. Deer had unzipped, taking himself in hand and trying to jerk himself back to life. Jon pushed on the back of Tomas’ head, pushed him toward Seen-It-All’s cock, and Tomas was obliging. More than obliging. He was sucking the man’s cock like he’d sucked Jon’s cock earlier, like he’d suck Vic’s cock if Vic planned on ever talking to him again. Tasted salty opening notes and the dusty-musty flavor of skin trapped too long against chafing tighty-whities and the slightly cooler, rougher skin of the man’s sac against his bottom lip. Seen-It-All pushed in, spread his throat wide open. Tomas hadn’t had a gag reflex since tenth grade, which was a sick point of pride. His brother Michael claimed eleventh, but Michael was just competitive. Behind his back, the cuffs made a metal chink as he leaned, Seen-It-All taking a step back just to see Tomas strain toward him like a hungry puppy.

  Mr. Deer took the chance to step in, the purple, round head of his dick nudging Tomas’ mouth and Tomas thought how, once upon a time, this might have been his hottest fantasy. Tomas was usually a steady optimist, but this time reality was surprisingly disappointing. His world reduced to this, to one fat, short cock leaping out of a mad nest of mouse-brown pubes, waving in his face in the hand of a man who’s face he hardly knew; another massive purpling dick smearing him with pre-cum, face-frottage, dry-humping his cheek and parted lips, forcing itself against his tongue, which had emerged from his mouth with something like instinct; and the
hand in his hair shoving him forward, driving him, taking away what little control he had.

  Maybe this was all his life was, really. Two dicks stuffed in his mouth and one driving him from behind.

  A sharp jerk on his scalp brought him to his feet, turned him stumbling toward the 79

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  one grimy stall in the restroom. Mr. Deer and Mr. Seen-It-All were really into it now.

  Jon let go of Tomas and it was Mr. Seen-It-All who bent him perilously close to the rusting outer workings of the toilet, yanked his jeans down and shoved his tongue up Tomas’ asshole. Tomas started to say, “Condom—” but then thankfully there was the tear of foil wrapper and a pause as Mr. Seen-It-All got himself situated. If Tomas was hoping for a little more foreplay, he didn’t get it; he got a moment of warning as slippery, rubber-coated cock head pressed against his ass, and then Mr. Seen-It-All was inside of him, on top of him, all over him. Arms wrapped gorilla-like around his torso, fingertips seeking out and then thoughtlessly pinching his nipples. Balls slapped against his ass and Tomas wished hard for those rude hands to find his dick, waving miserably in midair, throbbing.

  “Please,” Tomas managed before Mr. Deer interrupted.

  “Give me a go,” Mr. Deer said, and then Seen-It-All was pulling out of Tomas, leaving Tomas moaning, his hands flexing and unflexing against the small of his back.

  His arms ached; he was forced to brace his cheek against the dirty wall and its smear of green algae. It seemed like he should be enjoying this more, somehow. If it were Vic standing here instead of Jon, playing a game, just playing…would it be such a fucking turn-on? Would it be more? Would Vic even do this, let him be this? Now he just didn’t know. Might never know. He let himself get out of control with Jon, with a client, because he couldn’t bear to let Vic see him like that. How fucked up was he?

  Then there was Jon—Tomas could see him out of the corner of his eye, standing back, watching. His arms were crossed over his chest.