Chris watched this with a little flare of jealousy, a rather novel concept that he’d not experienced before. But, it seemed, he was having to grow accustomed to these new feelings now that he’d allowed Pierre in.
The last week or so had been very sweet, pleasant and mostly comfortable. Chris’ little emotional wobble after the date had been abandoned to the vaults of history. He still didn’t know how to describe how he felt about Pierre, but it probably didn’t matter. What mattered was that he allowed it. Time to embrace the chaos… or so Chris thought.
Unfortunately in the last week Sam had been completely absent, having somehow vanished off the face of the earth. He didn’t know where he’d gone, or when he’d be back. Chris had told Alexis to message him to collect his product, but Alexis had seemed disinterested and probably hadn’t passed it on. It was like Samuel Le Bont had just ceased to exist.
“HEY!” he heard a girl shout and he turned. But she wasn’t shouting his attention, she jabbed Rat-features on the shoulder. She then whispered something in his ear. She was pretty; long brunette hair and a nice figure in a little black dress. Whatever they said resulted in drugs, because she discretely slipped him twenty euros and he placed a little sachet of something into her hand. She then quickly turned and retreated back to her friends who’d been hovering nearby.
Alexis took this a cue to step it up a notch, she threw herself onto a straddle of his lap. She was wearing a skirt and it rode up a little, exposing the underside of her ass and the thong she was wearing. His hands instantly grabbed her arse and she plunged her lips against his.
Chris didn’t understand, wasn’t she with Sam? Or had they broke up? If they had then Alexis had said nothing… Or maybe this was just about drugs?
He turned his attention away and saw Pierre was coming in. He was dressed in a yellow shirt (a surprising colour choice) and beige jeans. He smiled as he approached, a beautiful smile illuminated in pulsing neon. He slipped in alongside Chris and pressed a kiss onto his cheek. “What the fuck is she doing?” he sounded disapproving in Chris’ ear. He didn’t have an answer so he merely shrugged. Pierre took a swig of Chris’ drink, a pronounced swig that essentially emptied the bottle, and left for the dance floor again.
Chris wasn’t left alone for long, a figure came and sat beside him. Despite ignoring the unwelcome intrusion the man pressed his mouth to Chris’ ear. “Your boyfriend is hot…”
Boyfriend. It was the first time anyone had said that about him and Pierre.
“Thank you,” he mouthed back. The man was the mature gentleman who had gyrated against Pierre. He wasn’t entirely unattractive. Dark hair, square jaw and broad shoulders. The somewhat flattened nose and awful taste in shirts however…
“You guys ever do threesomes?” at least he was forward. But judging by the strength of alcohol on his breath, he was pretty drunk.
“Not yet,” Chris smiled thinly.
“I’d love to fuck you both…”
Chris was flattered, but not even he and Pierre had sealed the deal themselves.
“I could get rid of my girlfriend and we could go back to your place,” the guy persisted.
“I don’t think so,”
“I’m clean. I swear…” as if that wasn’t a warning in itself.
“I don’t sleep with straight guys…” Chris told him, he smiled politely but stood up. He was going to ask Alexis if she wanted a drink, but she was too busy playing tonsil hockey with the rat. He sighed and departed for the bar, the drunk didn’t follow him.
He reached the bar, which was a few people deep, almost immediately a server was at him. It was a little odd, like the server had dropped everyone else and concentrated solely on him. He might’ve been flattered but this was something of a strange reoccurrence. Every time he went out with Pierre it seemed like people bent over backwards to please him. For example, tonight the doormen forwarded them all straight to the front of the queue and didn’t even so much as ask for ID. Now at the bar it was like Chris was a VIP.
He was curious why people acted this way around Pierre, but he’d not found the right moment to ask him. It made him think of the comment about Chris not treating him any differently. He just didn’t know why others did…
He collected his drink, taking another one of the same flavour for Pierre and turned back for the table. He navigated through the throng of partiers, almost colliding with a drunk woman who was nearly falling out of her dress. One wrong move and that tit-tape wasn’t going to keep it together. He reached the table and was disgusted to see Rat-features’ hand had disappeared inside Alexis’ underwear and she was rocking her hips against it. Did she have no shame?
He turned back to the dance floor just in time to see Pierre shove a guy backwards after he’d planted a kiss on him. Pierre almost went to punch him, but restraint kicked in. Boy did Pierre attract them…
Suddenly someone was jabbing Chris on the shoulder and he found himself accosted by an angry woman. What the hell?
“You been chatting my boyfriend up?” She barked in his ear.
What? The woman was in her late forties, dressed in a flowery blouse and a pencil skirt. Her greying hair had been dyed blonde and she’d tried to cling onto her youth with some thigh high boots.
“What?” he mouthed in confusion.
“He came over a couple of minutes ago…” was she talking about the guy who’d propositioned him for a threesome?
“I wasn’t chatting anybody up…” he answered her.
“Good, cos he’s my man. I know he likes to fuck guys on the side, but he’s my man… y’know…” what was it with drunk people? Its like alcohol only encouraged people to tell him shit he wasn’t really interested in.
“I’m pleased for you,” he hoped it would placate her and she’d leave.
“I mean, we had a threesome once. Me, his friend and him. Them two fucked each other…”
Ok, information overload now. He nodded and flashed her his best I-don’t-wanna-know smile. She leant back in, “he likes being fucked in the ass. I bought a dildo…”
She nodded enthusiastically like she was proud of herself for this.
He didn’t know how to respond, what did you say to something like that?
He glanced to the dance floor, but Pierre wasn’t there.
“…But I just don’t want him fucking other guys y’know, behind my back…” she kept waffling on in his ear but he was scanning the crowd. Where was Pierre?
Then he spotted him, stumbling towards the exit under the arm of someone. Someone wearing a thick jacket and a hoodie. Wasn’t that the guy who’d tried to kiss him?
Chris rose sharply, an edge of jealousy and anger sharpening his rise. The woman recoiled, nearly fell backwards but Chris didn’t care. He was cutting through the masses in pursuit.
He reached the exit of the club and was greeted by a refreshing wall of cold air, he hadn’t realised quite how heated it had been inside till now. He scanned both ways but couldn’t see Pierre for all the smokers congregating together.
Where the fuck had he gone? He stepped out onto the road, off the kerb and looked both ways.
He spotted a glimpse of a blue hoodie to his left, he followed it. He snaked his way through the smokers, it seemed Pierre and the stranger had turned down the alley. He reached the alley just in time to hear a car door shut, but as he stepped forward he couldn‘t see anything. The darkness was too deep and too consuming.
“Pierre?” he called out but the sound of the car starting drowned him out. The lights came on, but the car was facing away from him.
“Pierre?” he called again. The car lurched forward and turned right down another alley. He had no proof but Chris was convinced that Pierre was in that car. He gave chase walking hurriedly to the junction in the darkness, relying on spatial memory skills and not a lot else. He was just in time to see the car turn right onto the main road. Chris turned sharply, he sprinted back to the roadside he’d entered from. He beat the car by a few seconds, i
t reappeared and turned left. He ran after it.
The car drove slowly for a little while, but after it crossed the traffic lights which remained on green, it accelerated sharply. Shit, there was no way Chris was going to keep up. He ran as fast as he could but the car was already starting to disappear from view.
By chance he glanced to his left, a discarded bicycle lay on the pavement.
The rider was stood at a doorway talking to a stranger.
Without even putting much thought into his actions, he grabbed the bike and threw himself onto it. He was a good distance away before he heard a confused shout after him.
Chris hadn’t rode a bicycle in years, probably not since he had been a young child but he was relieved the old saying was true. On and on he cycled till eventually he spied the stranger’s car slowing down to take a right across a junction. This time the lights were on red and worked in Chris’ favour. He closed the gap by a decent margin.
He’d never tailed a car before, let alone doing it on a bike. Chris might’ve felt like a super-spy or a special agent if he hadn’t been fatiguing already. He obviously wasn’t as fit as he’d once been. Yet another reason to take up swimming again he thought.
The car carried on until they were almost heading out of town, then it took a right turn and drove into a disused parking lot. Chris had been concerned and suspicious before, but now he was worried. He was breathless but he couldn’t stop now, he cycled on despite his legs feeling heavy and jellified. The streetlights stopped and he found himself cycling into darkness. He jumped off the bike unable to determine kerb from road anymore and unwilling to risk falling off it. He left the bike where it landed and panted his way towards the disused lot. The car’s interior light illuminated the hooded figure wrenching an uncoordinated Pierre from the backseat. Pierre staggered and fell about on his feet, but he hadn’t had enough to drink to be that way. Chris had learnt about rohypnol, or the date drug as he’d been introduced to it as. Pierre had been spiked, he didn’t know how or when, but he just knew it. The hooded figure dragged Pierre towards an abandoned outhouse, a little metal hut.
Where once had been a flame of jealousy and anger, now sparked a desire to protect and rescue. He didn’t know who the fuck this hooded figure was, but he wasn’t going to drag Pierre into that hut and hurt him. The two of them disappeared inside.
Chris used the interior light of the car as a beacon to head towards. Loose tiny gravel crunched underfoot but he didn’t think the sound of his footsteps would travel that well. He closed in on the hut, but didn’t immediately go for the door. He could hear sounds of rope and drunken slurring, sounds that were way too clear. It told Chris that there was a window open somewhere. While he wanted nothing more than to burst through the front door and rescue Pierre like an action hero, he needed to know what he was going up against first. This wasn’t any ordinary man, this was someone who had premeditated this abduction. This was a man who had planned and was prepared. Who knew what he had stored in this hut…
He crept around the metal shack and found the open window overhead. If Chris stood on his tip-toes he reckoned he’d manage a peek inside. The inside of the shack was brightly lit with artificial light and it illuminated a disturbing workshop. Metal tools and saws lined the walls, majority stained with old blood. The floor was marble but stained irreversibly with dirt and old blood too. Tied to a wooden chair Pierre was the centre piece in this scene of horror. The hooded figure had turned away and was now rooting through a toolbox.
What the fuck was this place? Chris didn’t have time to pursue that thought, the hood figure turned back to Pierre with a set of pliers in one gloved hand. The stranger had adopted white vinyl gloves, the types used in healthcare. Not that it mattered because the pliers were far from clean and sterile. He closed in on Pierre.
Chris dropped to his feet and swiftly made for the door.
Suddenly there was an ungodly scream from Pierre, a scream of pain so sharp it echoed in the lot. The flare of anger returned with a vengeance as Chris grabbed the door handle.
“NO!” the scream masked the sound of the door opening. He entered the hut to the sight of the stranger hunched over Pierre, a silver nose ring in the pliers.
Pierre’s cries of pain were violent and penetrating.
The stranger grabbed Pierre by the chin, speaking for the first time. “Dirty. Fucking. Nancy…” He spoke in strong French, in a tone that couldn’t mask the poisonous hate he felt.
The stranger had his back to the door so he was none the wiser that Chris had entered. He wasn’t aware of Chris at all until suddenly he saw flash of movement before his eyes and then something was constricting around his throat. The pliers and the nose ring fell to the floor as he tried to grasp whatever had wrapped around his throat. It was thin but he couldn’t manage to hook his fingers around it.
Chris pulled tightly on the length of wire wrapped around the stranger’s throat, not releasing for one second. He spun sharply to his left and threw the man to the floor, where he jumped onto, and pinned, him to the floor. He pulled and pulled that length of wire, hearing the man gasp and whine beneath him. Yet he still didn’t stop, he wasn’t going to stop until the man was dead.
After a few moments of struggling, eventually the man passed out. He went limp against the wire, his head hanging lamely. Chris kept up the pressure, just for good measure. Satisfied the bastard was incapacitated, he let him drop. His head hit the floor with a thud.
“Pierre?” He turned his attention to the boy. He was sobbing softly to himself. A messy river of claret had exploded down his front, the site of the wound still dripping blood itself. There was a clean tear where once the nose ring had been.
“Pierre?” he closed in on him, grasping him by shoulders and shaking him gently.
“Chris?”
“It’s me… I’m here…” and just like that the instinct to nurture and protect took over, he slipped around the back and undid the ties. Immediately Pierre’s hands travelled to the tear in his nose.
“My nose…!” he cried softly.
“It’s ok,” what Chris wanted to say was it could’ve been much worse. A glance around this dirty workshop from Hell told him that the worst was probably the intended end result. “Can you walk?”
“Yeah..” and Pierre stood, perhaps a little too sharply and he passed out. He landed on the floor next to the dead killer with a thud.
“Pierre?” Chris rolled him over, his eyes flickered open.
“My head…” he groaned. Perhaps he wasn’t fit to walk after all. As if Pierre was suddenly aware that he was laid next to a dead body, he turned and recoiled in horror. “He’s the guy who did this to me!”
Chris finally had a moment to look at the guy. He could only see half of his face as majority of it was still obscured by the hood, but it was clear to see he was a mean sonofabitch. A shaved head, sharp features and missing teeth painted a picture of someone who was living a rougher lifestyle than most. His eyes were partially closed so Chris couldn’t clearly see the colour of his eyes, not that it mattered because he was dead.
“Come on, we need to get out of here…” he turned his attention back to Pierre. The struggle onto Pierre’s feet was difficult and he had to lean heavily onto Chris, it was like his limbs were separated from his mind and barely under control.
“Did you kill him?” it sounded childlike and it threw Chris for a moment.
“No, he’s just asleep…” Chris lied. He hoisted Pierre towards the door. He glanced back, like he expected to see the dead man breathing. He wasn’t of course… The shiny wire caught his attention. Shit! He need to keep that, it was the murder weapon! His prints would be all over it!
“Stay here,” Chris propped Pierre against the door and turned back for the wire.
“You’re so hot when you’re bossy…” Pierre giggled. He had forgotten about the bloody gash on his nostril, in fact he seemed quite giddy and content. “Say… are you bossy in bed?”
Chris retri
eved the wire and coiled it up before shoving it into his pocket. He turned and had to catch a Pierre who was almost about to stumble backwards, he had about as much coordination and grace as a newborn deer. Again Chris took his weight and the pair of them stepped out of the workshop and back into the night air.
“I think I like you, like a lot…” Pierre whispered, then giggled to himself. This drug had a very strange effect on people, Chris concluded.
He decided the two of them would head back into civilisation and from there Chris would order a cab. He glanced and saw the wound had stopped bleeding, which was good. As gruesome as it had been, the torn piercing would heal. It wasn’t a major wound and it didn’t need hospitalisation. If Pierre disagreed in the morning that was fine, but right now Chris didn’t want to have to explain what had happened tonight to nurses and doctors. If they learnt Pierre had been date-drugged, they would only start to ask questions and Chris was too tired for any of that.
“Do you like me too?” Pierre whispered.
CHAPTER TWELVE:
Chris laid silently watching the boy sleep, perhaps it was a little creepy but Chris didn’t care. He was mesmerised by the rhythmic falling of his chest and the soft clucking sound the boy made. He’d slept fitfully himself, haunted by yet more dreams of his dead mother only this time she was in the grotty workshop when she was torn apart by gunfire.
Now in the early hours of the Sunday morning, he was awake. Awake with the larks.
He had spent a long while considering his actions last night. He had rescued this boy, rescued him from the clutches of danger and why? Because they were boyfriends? Even though no official description or status had been broached…
Chris cared for this boy, and he didn’t know why. Something about the little punk had hooked him. Now laid in his bed with Pierre beside him, he realised that this was quite the wondrous little moment. He longed to touch the boy, to feel his skin beneath his fingertips.
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