We Are Bulletproof

Loud, obnoxious music? Check. Strobing light effects? Check. Hot dudes dancing around scantily clad? Check. Also naked men? Check. This was the club to visit when one wanted to get off with another man. Dakota personally found himself rather... fluid sexually. Man, woman, trans in either direction, whatever. He'd have sex with any interested party because life sucked and he was going to die anyway. At least if he died that way, it would be fun. Interesting.

Texting that number on the bathroom wall was a gamble. Dakota didn't even know why he did it. There was no reason to protect anybody, especially some nobody he didn't even know. But whomever wrote it, definitely wrote it out of revenge. They were pissed at Alejandro. For a tease with a tiny dick, call: And then the number. But there was also a small insignia next to it, a hallmark of a trophy hunter.

That was the real reason Dakota got in touch with him. Why would he have a trophy hunter on his ass? The insignia was not the same as the nasty note. They were separate. But they were meant for the same person.

Strange.

Dakota liked things like this, though. It piqued his interest and at least when he was interested, he wasn't thinking about what it would be like to die.

Stepping past two bouncing, dancing idiots, Dakota headed up to the bar, where Alejandro said he'd meet him. Dakota was dressed to kill; his preference ran toward black and maroon. He liked heavy, dark colors. Some called him goth. He didn't give a fuck about labels. But yeah, he was wearing mostly black. Leather jacket, leather calf-length boots, form fitting black pants (not leather, thanks), and a form fitting black t-shirt with a low neckline to show off his silver chain.

Dakota recognized Alejandro right away. He caught his eye the night he showed up in a mesh top and pants so tight that they could have been painted on.

"Alejandro!" he called out, throwing his arms out. "It's me! Kota!"

Why was life so strange?

Alejo had been grappling with that question for the past week. Ever since he got smashed and went out of his mind on party drugs, his life took a turn for the bizarre. Jack wasn't who he thought he was. Well, he was—he was the man Alejo had been tracking all this time—but he had changed. He was different in real life than he was on paper and what changed? Moving to Hazleton? Alejo didn't get it and now a week later he still didn't get it.

After he woke up from that hellish night to a bright and sunny morning, he found a woman sleeping beside him. Jack was on the other side of her, also sleeping and crazily Alejo thought they had a threesome. But he didn't remember fucking a woman; his ass was way sore, so he knew he'd been fucked but he did not remember a woman in the mix. His throat hurt like a bitch too and it wasn't until he was in the bathroom staring at the finger marks that he remembered what happened.

God... the shit he said. The shit he unwittingly let slip because he was high and drunk but not so high and not so drunk that he could pass it off as nonsense. This fucking body and its magical fucking ability to process drugs and alcohol... Damnit.

Alejo spent a lot of time at the sink that morning, then beside it at the toilet throwing up. His retching woke the woman, apparently, who came over to check on him. Well she watched him throwing up for a while before calling Jack, and the rest of the day went by in a blur. Alejo remembered sitting on the couch with a blanket around him, watching the Golden Girls and eating chicken soup and bitching about his hangover.

Nothing was said about their 'conversation' so Alejo assumed Jack also wanted to ignore it. Good. Alejo didn't want to get into it, either. But something in him also fundamentally changed after that night. He wasn't listless and emo but he... felt differently about things. Before, his priority was to find someone to take away the emptiness and to live a good life with them, secure and happy.

Now his priority was still to find someone to take the nothingness away... but living was. Negotiable.

Sitting at the bar with Marge keeping an eye on him, he smiled wistfully into his cotton candy pink drink. He knew Jack and Marge were taking turns babying him, probably because he alarmed Jack with all of his strange behavior that night. It was stifling but Alejo didn't really begrudge them. They cared about him, so he went along with it, spending most of his days and nights with either of them. It was just too bad that he no longer cared about himself, just when he found people to care about him.

"Can I get another one, Marge?" He asked as he waited for his new friend, dressed in skin-tight black jeans and a loose, creamy-white sweater. He came with Marge and had been sitting there forever thinking about things, drinking, ignoring the men who tried to pick him up. Then Kota happened and for the first time in a week, Alejo smiled with genuine pleasure.

Hunters were after him. Oh, he had never been so happy to hear something like that. And Kota, he sounded promising. He sounded like the kind of person Jack and Marge would've wanted nowhere near him, though, which was why he didn't tell Marge who he was talking to when she demanded to know. Alejo simply accepted the drink from her—putting up with her death glare—and had it to his lips when someone called out to him.

He was off his stool in less than a second, arms around Kota, body against his, lips to his cheek. "Hi baby." His savior was here, at last. Alejo eased back to look at him and took him in, noting the dark colors and the heavy black makeup. Mm... different. Sexy, though. "Ready to take me to heaven, handsome?"

Despite all the black clothes and the heavy eye makeup, Dakota had a surprisingly light and buoyant personality. It was part of the sylph in him, no doubt. But there was still a darkness in him, an edge that had been there probably from birth. He just hadn't noticed it until he grew older and everything around him began to disappear, crumble, and die.

His friends said he had a death wish and he laughed it off but it was true. Dakota couldn't seem to get his head out of the idea of doing the next "frightening" thing that might lead to his death. He could puss out and do it the way everybody else did. Leave a sad note, hang himself. Cut himself. Whatever. But Dakota wanted his death to ring out. Although he wanted to die, he didn't want to be forgotten. If anything, that shit was more frightening than any prospect of dying.

If he died doing something insane, people would remember him. Loved ones would remember him and he would forever be a part of them, a piece of them, even if a painful one. And people who didn't even know him would read his story, hear about it. And it would be tragic. And they would think of him, and he would be a splinter of a memory in their minds, something that sunk in as they wondered why. Why.

"You wanna go straight there?" Dakota asked as he hugged Alejandro tight. He was very real in that moment, not just a pretty face across the club. Up close, Dakota saw that he had a little sprinkle of freckles across his nose. Adorable. And blue eyes.

"Or do you want to have a few drinks first?" he asked, already lifting up two fingers to Marge, the bartender. Dakota had been here forever. He knew her, he'd been to this bar before and she had to know his favored drinks by now.

Tight, tighter, tighter still, Alejo liked the way that Dakota—Kota—held on to him. Tight enough to cut off breath. As tight as if he would never, ever let go. Alejo couldn't remember feeling so pleased in recent weeks. Ever since he came to Hazleton, everything about him was off—his mindset, his thinking, his actions. It was like coming here to this small town stripped him of his usual facade and revealed the confused monster he really was inside. And by all accounts, this town was filled with monsters just like him, so... he was in good company here.

"I've been drinking all night," he laughed, swaying with Dakota to the music and still holding him tight. "So why not another one!" Alejo moved suggestively against him as the music crested with a particularly hedonistic beat. The lights dimmed to near-darkness, then popped in a kaleidoscope of colors that shot across the club, illuminating everyone in garish blues and greens and purples and reds. It strobed in time to the beat and Alejo swore he felt it as his heartbeat.

"Drinks up! Sit down where I can keep an eye on you," Marge shouted as she pushed two drinks over, eyeing the two of them suspiciously.

"She's suuuch a drag," Alejo sighed—maybe his hands did go to a pretty naughty place, groping without shame. He caught the eye of a man walking past, staring at where his hands were, and grinned. Okay, Alejo was a touch tipsy. Not drunk, though—he couldn't think when he was drunk. Tipsy was a good place to be because the alcohol took away some of his heavier thoughts. Thoughts like how nice it would be to fly allll the way up to the heavens, lay down on a cloud and just let it smother him. Tipsy.

"What?" Dakota shot his brows up as he was ordered by the bartender to sit. He slid a Look over at Alejandro. What was that about? Keep an eye on them? On him? Or Alejandro? By the way Alejandro spoke, it seemed like she meant him. Or both of them, like a mother making sure her kid didn't run off and get knocked up. Pfft. Like that was going to happen.

"Not normally, she's not," he said, looking at Marge just as suspiciously as she looked at them. What was wrong with her? Normally she was all about slipping as many drinks as they could pay for, regardless of how drunk they got. Dakota certainly never got that Evil Eye before tonight.

He moved his hips against Alejandro, enjoying having Alejandro handling him and groping him. Funny how they were just meeting in person but they were comfortable enough to not give any fucks about what other people thought about their wildly inappropriate levels of affection.

With a foxlike smile, Dakota discreetly popped a couple of tiny sky blue pills into his mouth and then leaned forward. He grasped Alejandro by the back of the neck and kissed him quite thoroughly, his tongue passing one of those little blue pills into Alejandro's mouth. Even after the kiss ended, he stayed close, nose to nose, forehead to forehead. His lips curved into a knowing smile.

"We're going to fly, baby..."

"She's a monster," Alejo whispered, hoping that Marge didn't have super-human hearing. "A... a momster even!" Seriously she was mom, chaperone and prison guard all at the same time and he didn't even know her! At the beginning he didn't know her, at any rate; he started getting to know her better after she started taking the day shift from Jack. The two of them seemed to have put him on suicide watch 24/7.

Maybe Dakota could spring him from this weird imprisonment. Alejo was almost positive it was against the law; he could probably arrest both of them and haul them in to the precinct downtown. But he didn't because he... actually really liked them both. Jack and Marge, they were good people... in some sense of the word. Jack was still a man on the run and Marge looked like she'd probably caved in a few heads in her checkered past, but they were good to him.

He sighed and swayed in time to the music, not wanting to be boring and sit there sipping drinks like a bored housewife. Ah! But Dakota brought something fun. Alejo's eyes lit up immediately and his lips were already parting to hungrily devour the little tiny pill being pushed into his mouth by a slick tongue. He grasped onto the back of Dakota's jacket, feeling the stiff cool leather fold under his fingers.

"Mmm... but you promised we'd really fly..." His deft fingers were already inside Dakota's pocket, sifting around for more. More pills. One or two didn't cut it for Alejo, whose body had such different requirements. "You didn't lie to me, did you babe?" He found another little packet and slid it out, turning to pop those into his mouth too. Alejo chased it down with some of the alcohol that Marge served up; it would likely have killed a normal human to mix so much of the two. If only he could be so lucky.

"I want to go up where there's no oxygen, just air," he sighed. A little high laugh slipped out. Ahhh... there it was. The high. The floating sensation, the feeling of weightlessness. Flying~ Alejo laughed again and clung to Dakota, kissing him languorously, lazily. His tongue slicked against Dakota's, slid across the hard edge of teeth. Teeth on teeth, on lips, tugging and nipping the plump swell of the lower.

"Do you know what it takes to be a part of somebody, Kota? Forever?" Why didn't anyone know? He wanted Jack to know; he thought Jack did, but then... he was let down by the answer he got. Jack had someone else he was a part of, just like Judah. That man, Brayden, across the courtyard. Alejo liked him too; he wasn't jealous or angry. Brayden was someone he could never be, either, so if that was what it took to be part of Jack then Alejo had lost even before he began.

Dakota could safely say he never expected anybody to call Marge a momster. Was she acting like a mom? Since when? As long as Dakota had been coming to the club, she seemed more than willing to let everybody get as shit-faced as they wanted--as long as they had the money. Never once did he feel inhibited about what he could do here. So he didn't understand their relationship whatsoever.

"We will," Dakota said, leaning into Alejandro with a laugh as he was frisked. He didn't even try to hide the fact that he had more on him, letting Alejandro steal a few more. Or... you know, all of them. Dakota raised his brows, then smirked.

"You must have insane tolerance."

Because Dakota had taken his and he was already feeling the effects. Goddddd it felt so fucking good. Everything was upped that much more in pleasure. Every sound, every touch felt like it was gifted from some hedonistic god of pleasure. He loved it. So much.

"We have to leave if we want to actually fly," he said, into one of Alejandro's kisses. He grinned as teeth met his lower lip. Alejandro knew just how he liked it. Just that bite alone sent a thrill down to his groin automatically. His hands slid low to grope Alejandro's shapely ass. That felt good, too. He couldn't wait to get him naked.

"I can think of a few ways," he said. "Most of them involve death. I hope you're not planning on backing out on me now."

Was this a new drug? Alejo heard there was something called Prystal here but hadn't yet gotten his hands on any. That was supposed to be rainbow, though—kind of fitting to be honest, given how incredibly gay he and Dakota were acting at the moment. Those little blue pills were pretty too. Blue like the sky, like the promise of flying and soaring and getting as far away from their problems as humanly possible.

The fingers flexing against his ass made him laugh and moan on the same breath. He felt it now, that hedonistic heat erupting up from the depths of his core. His groin was on fire and from what? A few kisses and someone touching his ass? Jesus... he needed to get naked. They needed to get naked and just fuck the heat away. Didn't that sound nice? Alejo was sure he whispered that to Dakota—that they needed to fuck the heat away—even while Dakota was speaking to him. Jumbled words, words on words, words criss-crossing, nothing made sense but—see—also everything made sense.

Death, Dakota said. Ahhhh that was the magic word! Not please, but death.

"I thought so too!" He said excitedly, leaning up, into Dakota, with his glazed eyes wide open. "Death... is the only way to be part of someone. If-if you die they can't erase you!"

OH FINALLY!

Someone who got it! Alejo could have wept. He hugged Dakota tightly and laughed right in his ear.

Oh yes, that sounded magical to him. Getting naked. Fucking the heat away. Dakota smiled in that high, sloppy way when a person was fully inebriated. Everything around them was like a neon speedway now. Lights blurred and blended together. The music was booming and thrumming through his veins like a heartbeat and god, he kneaded that ass. He needed it, too. But both. Definitely both, especially when Alejandro moaned so prettily.

"Oh... my god..." Dakota loud-whispered back. "Exactly. Fucking exactly. And that's why we have to die in a way that will have people thinking and talking about us for years and years to come. You know?"

Dakota had given it a lot of thought and he was sure that was how it worked. Nobody cared if somebody died of old age. Nobody cared if they dragged themselves into their fucking 90s. And who wanted to live that goddamn long, anyway? Not Dakota. He wanted to die young, beautiful, tragically. He wanted people to hurt when they thought about him, about how he died, about what must have been going through his head when he chose to make that final step.

With a beautiful laugh in his ear, Dakota leaned into it, into his warm breath, the way it made his whole side of neck shiver. Again, it shot straight down to his groin. God, he just wanted to... fuck. Turning his head against Alejandro's throat, he kissed him, nipping hard enough to draw blood, then licking the warm blood. He was no vampire but the metallic taste of blood reminded him of life--and of death.

"C'mon," Dakota said, pulling Alejandro forward with him by the belt loop of his pants, making sure to brush their bodies close as he did. "Let's go fuck. I bet you look good naked..."

"Years?" That was fucking word candy to his ears. Years. Ears. Haha! Alejo laughed for no reason now, he was so elated and ecstatic. Dakota here was his fucking soulmate. See he thought that was Judah but it wasn't Judah. Judah's soulmate was Guy McFace out here, his ex-boyfriend that he crossed the country to visit. And it wasn't Jack, because Jack's soulmate was a kind, soft-eyed soup god. Alejo and Marge both agreed that they would kill for that soup, and they were pretty sure that Brayden put something like crack or maybe these tiny blue pills all crushed up into them.

Dakota?

Ohh he was everything Alejo didn't knew he'd been looking for. And he was fucking hot! The sensation of skin breaking wasn't new to Alejo but under the effects of the drugs, he... he felt it and he became it. He was the cut. The air shivered all around him—or maybe he shivered violently, pleasurably, as something warm slicked over the broken skin. "Drain me dry baby," Alejo moaned like a slut into his ear while clinging to him helplessly, enthralled and entranced.

"Hey! Where the fuck are you two little assholes going?" Marge's sharp voice rose above the pounding drumbeats. She was over in a second, grasping onto Alejo's arm.

He tore it from her grasp with a giddy little laugh. "We-we're gonna fuck Margie~ Maaargie~ We're gonna fuck and fuck all night and it's going to be." Alejo took in such a big breath that his chest expanded. Held it. Lifted his head to the heavens as if he was seeing God for the first time. "Gloriousssss!"

And off he went with Dakota, slithering into the crowd where Marge couldn't reach him. She tried, though, quite valiantly but a huge crowd cut between them and she was lost. Alejo laughed again—he couldn't stop laughing. Tonight was the single greatest night of his life! "Where?" He asked absently while he shed his sweater and let it drop behind him on the dance floor. "Here baby?" Overly eager, he yanked Dakota back against him for another series of dizzying kisses as he ground their hips salaciously together. Couldn't they just fuck here, right here in the middle of the dance floor? It was as good a place as any!

Damn. If that slutty voice didn't turn him on. He'd drain Alejandro dead dry if he kept talking to him like that. His laugh was muffled against the warm skin of his throat and he lavished Alejandro with another lick. He was about to go ahead and suck--give him a nasty hickey, because why not? --Until somebody's voice cut through the moment. Dakota turned toward Marge, who was trying to drag Alejandro away...

"What the fuck is your damage?" Dakota asked, wrapping his arm around Alejandro's waist as he slipped away from her. He laughed as Alejandro told her how it was going to be and then Dakota flipped her off while he turned away and held onto Alejandro to avoid losing him in the crowd.

If the crazy woman came after them, he didn't see or hear her amongst the other revelers and party-goers and clubbers. Dakota didn't even know where in the club they were by the time Alejandro started stripping but he grinned. Why not right here?

"Mmgod, fuck yeah right here," he agreed, not even caring about his own clothes as he let his leather jacket fall away. Dakota was kind of a "queen" when it came to his clothes--normally--but they were deep in the throes of Cloud 9--a magic drug that could probably rival that other one. He couldn't even think of the name right now, he was so fucking high.

And seriously, god, everything felt 100x better than it ever did normally. His hands were immediately all over Alejandro, up his beautiful chest, around his back, down to his waist. The way their hips moved together was like a beautiful torture, shivers of pleasure rolling up his legs and down from his nipples. He was already hard as fuck, too, and he could feel Alejandro against him, the friction between their mutually tight pants driving him some kind of wild.

Hips in hand, Dakota found the nearest wall or slammed Alejandro against it. Their lips crushed together and Dakota unzipped Alejandro, tugging his pants down low enough that he could gain access to what lay beneath. His hand was on him and he let out a delighted sound right under the sweet hollow under Alejandro's ear.

"You're so hard," he said. "And so big. So beautiful," he said after peeking down at Alejandro's cock. Dakota had seen his fair share of cock. He knew a pretty cock when he saw one. He pinched a nipple. "I want to suck you dry somewhere else," he said, thumb sliding over the blood he'd left on Alejandro's throat. And without any other warning, he was on his knees with his lips popping that beautiful cock into his mouth.

"Umph!" Alejo's low grunt of impact as his back slammed against the wall merged with a giddy laugh. He liked that—violence. Yessss. If it didn't hurt, it didn't count. Leaving bruises and cuts, being made to bleed, was the best form of pleasure that anyone could impart. Alejo was a little twisted like that—sadomasochistic, some called it. Doctors. Psychologists. He was smart enough not to let that slip at his annual psych evaluations but in his private life, Alejo liked it spicy.

He used to think there was something wrong with him, back home where everyone was so oddly proper. Out here, something wild overcame him. Maybe it was being out in the woods, surrounded by nature. Away from the concrete jungle, he regained some part of his true monstrous self. In New York there were clubs dedicated to people who enjoyed S&M but that was... so tame. So safe. Safe words and sterile equipment and man-made dungeons, it wasn't anywhere near as satisfying as being held by the throat and fucked, and not knowing if he would go home with a sore ass, sore dick or even if he would make it home at all.

God, maybe he did have a death wish. Or maybe it was the drugs. Probably both, although Alejo didn't arrive in Hazleton with the intention of dying. He was still innocent back then, laughable as that word was in relation to him. But a small part of him had been naive, perhaps. Now, he wasn't anything and he had found someone who did truly understand. And on the haze and high of drugs, Alejo felt as much in love as he had ever been.

He grinned like a fool as Dakota freed him from the confines of his jeans—Alejo hadn't even worn any underwear. Was that slutty? Yeah. Who cared, when Dakota made such a beautiful sound right by his ear. Every nerve ending flashed; sounds and colors blended into one sensory overload. He heard colors and saw sounds, reached out with a bemused laugh to touch the strains of music floating past him. Ahh he loved this. He was so gloriously high, he was out of his mind and that was exactly where he wanted to be. Outside his mind and away from his own tortured thoughts.

"Ooh baby..." Alejo's head bumped against the wall behind him as Dakota slid down on him. His hands automatically slid into Dakota's hair and rather carelessly, Alejo fucked his mouth. It was warm and moist and soft, and—a little teeth. He arched the angle of his hips to get at that painful ecstasy, loving the way it felt, loving how heightened every sense was. Nonsense came out of his own mouth, hisses and moans, praise for Dakota in the most vulgar, explicit terms that would have made even a sailor blush.

"F-fuck baby..." His hips jerked forward erratically as the pace he set for himself built up. Alejo's hands curled in Dakota's hair, tighter and tighter as the tension mounted and the spring inside his gut wound as tight as his hands. "Fuck fuck fuck Kota!"

Oh yeah... he loved Alejandro's hands in his hair and the way he fucked his mouth greedily and with as much need as Dakota felt deep down inside. He'd let him fuck him 'til he fucking choked. That was how greedy he was for it, too. He wanted it. He grasped the back of Alejandro's legs, his ass, his bare fucking ass. God, what an ass. And the words Alejandro spewed. They would have made most men blush but Dakota only felt the words shooting through his body like heroin.

Alejandro's pace became punishing, frantic, frenetic. Dakota's teeth scraped over his tender cock. Most men hated that but Alejandro seemed to revel in it. Before he knew it, he could feel it--he could feel the moment coming and his hands groped Alejandro's ass, tight, holding onto him as he rose up higher on his knees, taking Alejandro to the back of the throat. One hand moved round to fondle his balls, just as Alejandro hit his orgasm. He shot him all the way in the back of the goddamn throat.

Dakota swallowed like the slut he was. They were both sluts, high as kites, sexual entities. And he didn't lie; he sucked Alejandro fucking dry, until he had every bit of his cum inside of him. He licked his lips as he sat back on his heels, looking up at Alejandro as he tried to catch his breath. Every part of him shook with need, but especially his own cock.

Slowly, he rose up, twisted Alejandro around, shoving him up against the wall, giving his nice, bare ass a swift smack and enjoying the way it bounced under his palm.

"Now... I'm gonna fuck you," he said, half mad with need. He leaned into him, kissing the back of his neck before leaving another harsh bite mark. He gripped Alejandro's waist tight, pulling it to him as he used one hand to coax his ass to part for him. It felt like he was more than ready to go. Dakota sure as hell was. No lube, no nothing. He penetrated Alejandro with minimal warning, embedding himself deep inside and letting out a long, shuddering sigh before letting out a moan. He bit down on Alejandro's shoulder as he began a new rhythm. They weren't done here.

Dakota really hadn't lied. Alejo almost felt his soul leaving through his cock as that greedy, hot little mouth suctioned around him. He almost felt like cumming again, and barely held off. Apparently the drugs made it that much easier to lose it, too, but Alejo's speedy liver processed the drugs so fast that they were almost starting to lose their edge.

He clung desperately to his high, almost petulantly, childishly. "Baby you are illegal," he moaned as he writhed against the wall, hands all over Dakota's face, stroking his cheeks and fondling his hair, mindlessly high. If he could somehow map the shape of Dakota's face and all of his features with his fingertips alone, he would have tried his damned hardest to commit everything to permanent memory. Handsome man. Glorious lover. Generous, too—oh-so-generous and fucking desirable down on his knees licking his lips clean. Beautiful. Dirty. Filthy.

"Ah—ooh take it easy baby," Alejo laughed when he was pushed chest-first into the wall. Being facetious, of course. He loved that violence, the way every part of him throbbed with need for Dakota. A little surprised sound left him at an unexpected smack; he laughed again and pushed a hand over his face, then up into his hair. Alejo gripped his own hair tight and groaned. Teeth again. Mmm... It would leave a mark for him to remember tomorrow—

Oh wait.

There wasn't going to be a tomorrow.

That thought filled him with indescribable joy. He splayed himself against the wall since there was nothing to hold on to and let himself be vulnerable for a brief moment, exposed and open for anything that Dakota chose to do to him. It was okay—he trusted his new partner, his lover for a night. Dakota didn't disappoint. "Fuuuuuck!" Alejo didn't care if everyone in the club heard him, but he couldn't stop himself from crying out. God even with the drugs in his system, it hurt like fuck. And he kept pushing back into Dakota, determined to bleed, to hurt.

"Hurt me baby, hurt me." It came out on a half-sob; the pain really was getting to be too much. Tears popped into his eyes from the sting as blood slid down the insides of his legs. Maybe he was crying, too, he couldn't tell. His heart was light but heavy. He was overjoyed but so, so pathetically sad. This was finally going to be the end of his struggles and he knew he should have been happy, but... he was going to miss this, too. He thought of Judah, of Jack, Marge, Brayden, that random man who had his hands down Alejo's skin-tight pants last time...

Alejo pressed his face into the wall. He was such a mess. His body was on fire and it was shaking; his heart was burning up too, consuming him and all of his conflicting emotions. Somewhere he was aware of people gasping and probably everyone was now watching them but he couldn't find it in him to care. They couldn't be the only people who had ever done it out in the open in a club. Alejo reached back; his grasping fingers slipped around Dakota and grabbed one ass cheek hard, digging in with his nails as he urged him on. Like last time, he wanted to be fucked to death and god if Dakota didn't do it this time, nobody ever could.

"So... tight... fuck..."

It fucking hurt them both. He felt like he was going to kill them both but he couldn't stop smiling because if this was the way death decided to lead them to her final arms, there could hardly be anything better. An entire fucking club would be their witnesses.

The rhythm, as punishing as it began, became fitful as his toes began to curl and he could feel the orgasm coming on. Everything--everything--was heightened and it felt so good. Ecstasy swirled in his blood, hot and speeding its course down to the very heart of him. Down to his hard cock in Alejandro's pert little ass. Another thrust and he came with a loud moan. His teeth were on Alejandro again, leaving terrible marks all over his poor shoulder and his throat. He looked like something had mauled him.

And now that he was spent, Dakota's heart was beating a million miles a minute. And he was leaning against Alejandro, holding onto him because his knees had gone weak with the orgasm. He couldn't stop shivering, quivering, and smiling. God, he could hardly fucking stand, he could only imagine how Alejandro felt with his ass totally destroyed.

"You were so good, baby," he said, kissing Alejandro with the taste of blood still on his lips. "So good. Fuck."

And then, just like that, he felt somebody grab him roughly by the hair from behind.

"Ahhhh," he said, but it sounded more like a sexual sound than one of pain. He liked his hair being pulled. The guy behind him... was fucking tall. Like taller than Dakota, and he was six feet tall. And he had a build like a fighter, not hidden whatsoever by the tank top he wore. His piercing green eyes seemed made of marble as he stared at Dakota like he was furious with him. He jerked him aside and Dakota stumbled into a dancing pair. Shit. What the fuck!

"Hey," the new guy said--to Alejandro. "Are you okay?"

"Ah--ah--yes..."

God FUCK it stung! His ass was probably never recovering from this. And he loved it. His black, cracked heart loved the scene they were making and loved the moment that he and Dakota were drawn into. It was only them but it also wasn't. This moment was theirs but there was also an entire club watching, with the music pounding and echoing in his ears and Dakota's body working its magic, wrecking him from behind. He never felt so alive as he did when Dakota slammed into him one last time and he felt something hot, sticky, slippery sliding down his legs. Blood? Semen? Both? Who cared--it was still amazing.

Only being pushed up against the wall saved Alejo from falling completely over onto his face. He panted against it anyway, cheek rammed up against the wall and lips parted to let out half-pained, half-pleasured gasps. "Oh babe.. that was... amazing," he laughed faintly as he reached behind to pat Dakota's ass. Mmm tight. He'd have to get in there some time, see what the other side of him was all about. In all likelihood he would feel just as amazing and Alejo already felt something darker in him stirring at the thought.

"What?" Alejo stung and smarted and throbbed everywhere, but most of all his ass when he turned slightly to look at the new guy. He blinked. Was he okay? He was... fucking high, drunk, fucked. Fucking fucked so thoroughly that he would never be okay again.

"I'm amazing baby," he laughed deliriously as he stumbled drunkenly towards that tall, good-looking man with the glowy green eyes. Pretty. "Are you gonna... play with us?" Alejo's hand slid up his chest, right up the center. "You look like you could do some damage, big boy."

But wait. Where was the other half of 'us'? Alejo looked over and Dakota was being held loosely by some people who looked concerned. "Kota? Baby? What... are you doing over there?" Was he running away? But he--he hadn't done his job yet! Alejo was still alive and breathing!

Here's a thing about Seth: he didn't like it when people took advantage of others. Call it a pet peeve. But really, it ran deeper than that. The kid getting butt fucked was obviously high off his ass and the other guy--Seth had seen him around town before and he was kind of an asshole. He ran with shitty people. He was shitty people. Seth saw him at this club more than once, too and Seth had only been living in Hazleton for a couple of years. But he knew enough. He'd seen enough.

And he'd definitely seen enough of the little shit taking advantage of some poor high kid. It was fucking... depraved, was what it was.

He ignored the comment about the damage he could do. It was true, but he wasn't about that life. He took his fighting outside the bedroom. Gingerly, he reached down and pulled the kid's pants up, trying to be careful about it but... there wasn't much he could do about all that blood at the moment. But Seth was handy with first aid and he could help... elsewhere.

"Come with me. I can fix you up."

The fucking goth creep pushed away from the people who had caught him and he stalked over, putting his hand on the kid's throat and pulling him back, away from Seth and against himself, like he was taking ownership of him. Or taking him hostage. There was blood all over his neck, smearing on the goth's hand. He noticed--licked it off as he held the kid against him.

"Stay out of our business. He doesn't want to go anywhere with you." The goth petted the kid's cheek like he was an animal. "Isn't that right, darling?"

"Ahaaa... cum with you?" Somehow that struck him as being hi-la-rious because he just came! And Kota did too, which was wonderful because to his drug-addled mind, that meant they were soulmates. They were made for one another, in their shared and equal desperation to shed this mortal coil. He reached down to pat the handsome man's cheek with a deceptively gentle hand, since he was there in the vicinity of his destroyed lower body.

"Ah—fuck—fuck!" The pants were tight on him; not as tight as the leather ones, but still very clingy to all the parts that stung when they were pulled up by a helpful hand. Alejo half-collapsed, weak at the knees from the sudden jolt of discomfort that lanced up his spine. Luckily Mr Tall, Dark and Mysterious was there... and then he wasn't? Dakota was back! Alejo leaned up against him, moaning softly at the hand to his throat.

Oh... yes... He put up a hand to curl around Dakota's. It might have looked like he was trying to escape, he didn't know. Actually what he did was tighten that hand around his throat, in the hopes that Dakota would finish him then and there. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the still-decent part of him was dying because he had just done the most depraved thing he could think of. Without any regard for his own body, for dignity or self-respect, he let someone fuck him in the middle of a crowded club and that just... split his soul apart even more. He was breaking his own heart, and he was too high to realize it.

"Mm... I wanna fly," he said a little sadly. "You said we'd fly... waaay up into the clouds, Kota baby~"

This
poor
kid.

He didn't have a clue.

And was that sick fuck actually trying to strangle him? Right in front of Seth--and everybody in the club? Not everybody was staring but everybody in the vicinity sure as hell was. It was hard not to--first with the rough fucking--even normal fucking would have been an eye catcher--but then this. Seth wasn't trying to be a goddamn superhero. But he also wasn't going to just sit there with the rest of the crowd, ogling what was clearly an abusive relationship.

"We are," the gothic creep said, and it looked like he tightened his grasp on the kid's throat. He was choking him. Choking him out, right there, in full view of everybody watching. "We're going to fly--"

Punch. Right between the fucking eyes.

"WHAT THE FUCK, MAN?"

"You're trying to kill him!" Seth punched him again, this time hearing the telltale crunch of bone breaking. The guy finally let go of the kid to hold onto his gushing nose. There, that would take care of his fucking high! Seth reached out to catch the kid, because he looked unsteady as hell on his feet. And fuck. The guy squeezed so hard, there were fingernail markings all over the kid's throat. Was he even breathing?

"Hey, hey, stay with me, kid...!"

"He wants to die, you fucking moron!" Except his words were muffled by blood and the hand covering up his face. Didn't matter, Seth heard him. Didn't care what he had to say.

"Hup." He lifted the kid over his shoulder, best way to minimize the damage to asshole that the asshole did to him. "Get out of my way," he said to the people near him and they scuttled away like cockroaches.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Alejo let himself slide against Dakota as the hand at his throat dug in deep. The breath stopped at where those fingers clawed their way into his windpipe and he let out a softly strangled sound. His own hand kept pressing against Dakota's, pushing it in deep, deep,, urging him on. Kill me. He was all pain and all pleasure; his body was a complete mess but his mind was clear. In that moment, it was fully clear.

He wanted to die.

No more torment in death. No more thoughts plaguing him. No more feelings of inferiority, no more of that bone-deep need to be seen, to be loved as fiercely as Dakota was choking him right now. "Fl...y..." He smiled; darkness encroached on the edges of his vision. He was blacking out and in a few more minutes, he would be gone. He would finally soar way up into the stars, where he belonged.

...except...

He didn't go. He stayed. And as Dakota was punched and let go, his body forced in a great big gasp of breath. No! Alejo scrabbled to fight off the tall man but he was so weak—half-dead, really. "N-no," he whispered as he tried to reach for poor Dakota, who never even got to experience that brilliant, clear moment of his own. "Ko-Kota..."

Helplessly Alejo felt himself being carried off. He vaguely heard Marge's voice telling someone to take him to the back room and gamely struggled again, but somebody—Marge—slapped him hard on the ass and he flinched from the pain that rocketed up his spine. She-she did that on purpose!

"Stop fighting him dumbass! C'mon, go around the bar on the left side there."

The woman behind the bar--Marge--seemed to be of the same mind as Seth. Thank fucking god somebody around here had some sense in them. Seth moved around the bar as directed and into a room in the back. The kid was pretty pissed off at this point, which Seth didn't fully understand. It must have been the drugs. He probably had no clue what was going on and he was just acting out.

There was a nice, emerald green chaise lounge. Seth brought the kid over to it and laid him down as gently as he could. Marge didn't seem to be so delicate with the kid but... the kid... looked so delicate. He could have been made of spun glass. At the moment, however, he was a bloody mess.

Seth began looking through cabinets indiscriminately, until he found one that contained a full first aid kit. Any good bar or club would have one, given how fights liked to break out or people got sick. Not that it was the bartender's job to keep them patched up but... emergencies. Always good to be ready for them. Pulling out some clean gauze and disinfectant pads, Seth perched on the edge of the chaise lounge.

"This'll sting a little," he warned him as he opened one of the disinfectant pads. The sharp smell of it even stung his nostrils. Tilting the kid's head back, he wiped the blood from his throat. "That asshole really did a number on you."

Mess didn't accurately describe Alejo's state of being but bloody, yes. He smelled it in the air and tasted it on his own tongue. He thought of poor, sweet Dakota, who was probably back outside getting mopped up or maybe even escorted out. People really thought he was raping Alejo, didn't they? But didn't they see him on his knees earlier, bringing him to the brink of ecstasy? What was wrong with people these days, Alejo thought irritably. Couldn't two people in lust and in—some sort of suicidal downward spiral together fuck without somebody trying to haul them apart?

Ah, and Marge. Maybe she sent this tall man over to break them up. Well-meaning Marge who hit him right where it hurt... She was definitely the type to kick a dog while it was down! Alejo heard her saying that she would be outside if the stranger needed her, and then a door slammed, sealing him in. He was laid down somewhere rather gently, and he bit back a cry of pain and disappointment, turning his head into the back of the couch for a moment.

Shit. Why wasn't he allowed to just... drift away? How many pills did he have to swallow before death claimed him and he was finally put to rest?

Alejo heard cupboards being opened and things being shifted around. He only finally looked up into the face of his rescuer when he smelled something alcoholic—not deliciously alcoholic, but medical. Disinfectant. "Ng..." He didn't cry out even when it stung so fiercely that his eyes stung with his neck. Idly, he reached up and touched the wrist of the hand trying to save him. Followed it up to a forearm, tracing the patterns engraved into smooth, warm skin.

"Who are you?" He asked in a daze, frowning. His fingers rose up to touch the man's arm, finding strong muscles and more tattoos. "You have beautiful eyes," he mused mostly to himself. "Like... little gems..."

Brave boy. Seth had seen bigger men bitch and moan about getting a little alcohol in their wounds. This kid just took it, but it might have been the drugs. Probably the drugs. Seth had no idea what shit he was on but it was messing with his psyche big time. No sane person would stand there and let a man fuck him ass naked on the dance floor. And that was what Seth saw when he was headed towards the bathrooms. That gothic death freak fucking a helpless kid on drugs. Acid, probably.

"Seth," he said, glancing at the hand that was rising up his arm. He continued on, not even wincing at the wounds, although they were... pretty nasty. Seth could tell they were going to leave a mark for days, probably weeks. The throat was a delicate area. There was a reason MMA fighters didn't go around fucking strangling each other.

Pulling the kit back toward him, he found some good sized bandages. He did his best to ignore the curious fingertips. The guy was still out of it, by the way he was looking at him.

"You have pretty eyes, too," he said, traces of his greek accent evident in the gentle trill of his R. He tilted the kid's chin again so he could bandage him up. It really looked like some creature mauled him. It wasn't just his throat. The entire shoulder area had been shredded. What the fuck was that other fucker on?

"Who are you?" he asked, to keep him with him. Not that he looked like he was about to pass out but Seth really couldn't tell. He seemed confused but he didn't have a concussion or anything. Hopefully. Seth hadn't seen the entire debacle but his head, at least upon a cursory inspection--he felt for anything wet, any blood--seemed intact.

Gentle hands. Was Seth a doctor? Alejo whispered the name to himself. "Sethhhh..." Hm. He almost made that goddamn noise Jack did when he thought deep thoughts. Hm. Seth. "Doctor Seth," he said without realizing that he'd spoken it out loud. It was in his mind, rolling around and around. Seth with the beautiful green eyes and the careful hands, trying to patch up physical injuries when the real wounds were somewhere he couldn't reach. Not even with his gentle hands.

"Do I?" Alejo blinked those supposedly pretty eyes of his. They were blue, pretty ordinary. Green was much rarer. Hazel, too. Browns and blues were all over the place, but it was nice of Seth—Doctor Seth—to say that. Alejo vaguely thought that he was foreign, but it slipped away on the strength of a little laugh and a shiver as pain cascaded down his spine. Ahh Dakota, the little darling, had done a number on him.

Well, Alejo still had his number. He could find him again. For now, he was docile and calm—the high was fading already, as such things usually did. Alejo had never tripped out for more than a few hours at a time, more was the pity.

His curious fingers tickled the underside of Seth's chin; he laughed in childish amusement. "I'm Ale-ale-alejandro~" He sang his name. "But you can call me... Alejo, or Allie, or... Al." Alejo frowned as he traced Seth's facial hair. He liked it. It looked good on that strong chin and above those pretty lips. Hm. So pretty—in a masculine way.

"Actually no. Don't call me Al." His leg kicked out over the other armrest of the chaise lounge, bringing with it a fresh wave of pain that made him curl back up instinctively. "Agh... fuck. Are there painkillers? Can I have eight?"

Doctor Seth. He would have laughed, if the situation wasn't so serious. And Seth took these things seriously. He could have been a doctor, though. He came from an entire family dedicated to medicine and science. His grandfather was a doctor, his father a scientist, searching for cures and vaccines.

"Not quite. But my mama's a nurse and I learned from her."

He glanced at the boy's eyes. Crystal blue, spun glass. They were striking against honey skin and dusky hair. Even in his current state, it was quite obvious he was a looker. Which was probably why he was targeted by the creep. There was a boyishness about him that made him look like an easy target, like he had no clue what was going on. Or maybe that was the drugs. Seth didn't know him personally. Had never seen him off drugs.

His response to the question of his eyes, though, was a soft grunt. What else was he to say? He didn't want to wax poetic on his eyes. They were pretty. Objectively, he thought most would agree.

Seth knew the song Alejandro was singing and he almost smiled. But he was still feeling too serious for that. It was hard not to take things seriously after witnessing what he did. It really jarred Seth right out of the partying mood, that much was for damn sure.

Again, he tried to ignore Alejandro's questing fingertips, even when he tried to tickle him under the chin like a baby.

"In Greek, we say Alexandros or Alexo for short."

Alejandro seethed with pain and Seth instinctively laid a hand on his leg to stop him from moving it around any more than he had to. He couldn't deny painkillers, even though he was a little wary about their interactions with whatever unknown drug was still filtering through Alejandro's system. He found a bottle of pills and foolishly handed them over to Alejandro, not really expecting him to make good on the eight pill deal. It sounded like over-exaggeration due to pain.

"About your..." He gestured lower, to Alejandro's now blood-stained jeans. "You should take care washing that out. It's an easy place for infection to take hold."

He held out a few disinfectant pads. "Here... The sooner... the better."

"Alexo?"

He mused over that new iteration of his own name, sounding it out in his head, which was crowded by a thousand other thoughts. Alejo, Alexo, Allie, Al. He was collecting quite a number of pet names but this one was new. It felt like a fresh new start, with someone who looked at him with only concerned eyes.

"I like it." He smiled but his voice was plaintive. Alexo might be a better version of Alejo. Maybe Alexo didn't take a million drugs, chase them down with a hard drink, and then run off and make a spectacle on the dance floor of a crowded club. Alexo probably didn't make people think that he was being raped, or that he needed saving from someone who was only doing what he was told.

"My mom's a nurse too," he said almost off-hand, as that tidbit filtered through. By then Doctor Seth had already left to grab some pills, which he greedily accepted. Alejo shook out eight. Or ten. He had them in his mouth faster than a waiting dick, and then he looked up at Doctor Seth who was dispensing with advice and sanitary wipes. Alejo shook his head and while he took them, he didn't immediately use them.

"Why are you doing this?" He asked around a mouthful of bitter powder as he chewed, preemptively holding out a hand to prevent Seth from freaking out the way Jack had before.

To this, Seth did smile, slightly. He wasn't sure why. Just the way he said it. Heartbreaking but he liked it. Seth hadn't meant to bestow it as a nickname. It just seemed that Alexo here had a lot of them and some of them--Al?--might have some baggage attached to them. Nicknames, in general, were given by others. Maybe Alexo here didn't want to be reminded of those past people. There was a lot of pain in those pretty eyes. It flickered in and out, with the dazed expression.

"Interesting." And he was interested. Their mothers were both nurses. If Alexo's mother was a nurse, though, shouldn't Alexo be more careful? Well. Shit. Seth was one to talk wasn't he? Going out into the world, into pro fighting. It had to break his mother's heart, when she had such carefully laid plans for him. But she loved him too much to hold him down. Sometimes, a man just needed to go out, see the world, and make his own call.

"Hey--" he said in protest as Alexo decided to down what could have been ten or fifteen pills. Hard to tell. It was like he shook them out and just tossed back as many as possible. Seth frowned. "You're fucking up your liver."

And he might end up having to have his stomach pumped, which would just be the icing on this shit cake. He was half tempted to punch the pills out of his gut, make him throw it up. But he didn't. He'd already been through the wringer tonight. Seth didn't have to add to it.

"Helping you?" Seth asked, somewhat taken aback by the question. "Because nobody else would and I didn't like what I saw. Somebody had to stop it. That guy really wanted to kill you, didn't you see that?"

Interesting, interesting. Alejo's mother was a nurse, yes—that was how she met his father, a policeman who was taken into ER with a gunshot to the chest. It bypassed his heart but it clipped his lungs, collapsing one. After the surgery that nearly killed him, he took a long time to recover and Alejo's mother was there to help him through it. They fell in love, had kids—three, of which Alejo was the middle child.

He still remembered the pride shining from his father's eyes when he graduated from the police academy. How his father touched the shining badge on his chest and then hugged him close and tight and muttered into his ear that he loved him, and had never been so proud. Alejo thought back to that moment often with tears in his own eyes. There might have been tears in his eyes in that moment, when he flashed back for a few seconds to that scene which was embedded deep down into permanent memory.

But maybe to Seth he just looked high.

"I need them. Medical condition. Body doesn't respond to drugs. Need eight. Or fifty. To kill the pain." He responded automatically because he'd had to dispense with that explanation so many times before. Lots of people didn't believe him but he actually had medical records—just not on him right now, so he couldn't prove that he wasn't lying. Ugh. So bitter, though. He swallowed a wad of dry ass powder and coughed into his hand, which jolted his ass again and made him spasm on the couch. Fuck.

Slowly he sat up, even though his ass was screaming. Alejo broke open one of the wipes and sighed down at it rather than up at Seth. Another good Samaritan, huh? His half-high brain wanted to make a pun out of that, like... like Sethmaritan or something equally fucked up stupid, but he didn't say it. The half-not-high part said that Seth was a good guy. Like Judah, another Good Guy, doing the Right Thing by what he perceived to be someone in distress. Only Alejo was fucked up on drugs and thought he loved everything about that rough, raw bareback sex.

Which he did, don't get him wrong, but... he felt like these days it wasn't so much about the pleasurable pain as it was about the painful pleasure. He used to like it a little rough, sure. Scratching, nibbling, maybe a couple half dozen rough thrusts into his waiting ass—you know, vanilla things between lovers when the freaky mood overtook them. These days he was looking to get torn apart, like his heart got torn apart, like his life got torn apart. Was that what it was? He wanted to mirror his fucked up life so he destroyed his body in the hopes that something would... he didn't know, finally gel? Finally feel like it made sense?

Make the pain on the outside match the pain on the inside...?

"I asked him to do that," he said quietly as he eased his pants down to begin cleaning up. Wow... that was a lot of blood. It smeared all over the inside of his thighs, mingled with semen. Hm. Not a very pretty sight. "We were going to die together..." Alejo's hand stilled; his gaze lifted even though his head didn't. "I'm sorry. I know you thought you were doing the right thing. You seem like a good guy..."

But Alejo had had good guys and he didn't know if he could handle another one in his life to tear everything apart from the inside-out. Good guys, they were... too easy to fall for. Good guys with nice smiles and beautiful eyes, who looked at other people like they cared, whose hands were gentle and soft and whose hearts were the same... They were too easy to get to know, to love, to insert himself into their lives like he was made to do that. Good guys loved him back. But they couldn't handle his darkness. Good guys weren't equipped to deal with the way he needed to both be loved and torn apart by the same hands.

Not that Dakota was what he needed either. Dakota was on the other end of that; he was too far gone. There was no love, all hurt there, so in the end Alejo still didn't feel as if he had what he needed. He had what he wanted, which was a pretty death, but... something still wasn't right. He just didn't know what he needed so he took the easy way out—death.

His gaze flicked back down and he resumed cleaning himself up. "There's almost no point helping someone like me, you know?"

Seth wasn't sure he believed the medical condition bullshit. After Alexo took way too many pills, Seth took the bottle from him, carefully screwed the cap on, and put it back into the kit. Now he was really going to have to have somebody keep an eye on the kid. Seth did his best not to wince as Alexo sat up. He saw his fair share of messed up wounds but he could safely say he'd never seen anything like this before.

He turned his gaze away, somewhat sickened by what a man could do to another man with just his body. Still, out of the corner of his eye, he could see the sticky mess all over Alexo's thighs and inwardly he shuddered. Seth was mostly on the heterosexual scale sexually. He had no problem with men. Even he experimented a couple of times and he enjoyed what they did together. But he'd never seen such brutal... fucking. He'd never seen a man bleed from being fucked so hard that it was like that sick fuck was trying to rip poor Alexo into two.

It hurt to look at.

"It was the right thing to do," Seth said, as matter of factly as if he were telling Alexo that water was wet and the sky was blue. "Maybe you won't get it tonight but eventually, you will."

His gaze dropped too, automatically following Alexo's to the mess around his thighs. Seth wished there was a way to make that feel better. But it was probably going to follow Alexo for a while. And it was a lot worse than the neck wounds. It effected the way he was able to move, to sit, to walk, to even lie down comfortably. No wonder he wanted those painkillers. But... Seth thought that if he wanted to kill the pain, the pain wasn't as good as he wanted it to be.

"Almost, you say. But there is a point."

"Hm." God he was becoming his dad. Not his real dad—Jack. "You sound like someone I know."

That was something Judah would have said, in his infinite wisdom and goodness. That just because he couldn't see the forest for the trees in the moment, didn't mean that the forest didn't exist. Sometimes the bigger picture took a while to develop. Sometimes there was no bigger picture, though, and all they had were the broken up pieces to remind them of what had once been and could never be again.

Ah, life.

Alejo opened another packet. "Are you going to be the one to help save me?" His tone was wry, amused—disbelieving. "Save my damned soul? Pull me back from the brink of doing something drastic?" There was a line for that—Seth would have to get behind Jackie and Margie and Brayden. Alejo smiled to himself even while he winced; the alcohol really stung his ass.

"Are you that much of a good guy?"

"Is that what you want?" Seth asked. "To be saved?"

Hard to tell; but it seemed like Alexo didn't want to be fixed or saved. He admitted aloud that whatever fucked up thing was happening between him and Goth Kid was consensual. Alexo wanted somebody to rip him into pieces. It didn't much make sense to Seth, because he saw those as two separate things. Seth enjoyed fighting--there was something to be said about tapping into that primal part of him.

But when it came to matters of the bedroom, he wanted a good time. Perhaps he wasn't a totally gentle lover. He was enthusiastic. He had lifted women up against walls and fucked them while they wrapped their legs tight around his waist. But it was... sexy torture they engaged in. Not... trying to eat each other alive.

"Eh," he said. "I'm all right."

Good guy wasn't exactly the term he'd use. Seth was well aware of his own shortcomings. Nobody was perfect and he wasn't going to pretend that he was. It just happened that in this instance, he had become a "hero" of sorts.

"What do you actually want?"

To be saved...

"I'm usually the one doing the saving, believe it or not. I'm a cop." There was something of the old Alejandro in his smile. He wasn't used to being the one in distress—even if he didn't know he was in distress. Mostly he was fine being a cop, responding to emergencies and making house calls to check up on people. Sometimes he was acknowledged for that and it felt... fine. Good.

Seth didn't look like a superhero, this was true, with his tattoos and tank top and with that overall fierce appearance. Maybe Alejo just lucked out that tonight of all nights, Seth felt like playing superhero for him. Maybe tonight of all nights that was a bad time to do it, because the person he saved didn't necessarily ask for it. Alejo wasn't looking for a hero, this was true; he was looking for someone to make him feel like a hero again, instead of a zero.

"Hm? What do I want?" He eyed the painkillers that Seth had confiscated. More of those. Definitely. Now that he had failed to die, he didn't want to suffer until the next time he had another chance to wrap someone else's hands around his throat. Wasn't he just a ball of contradictions? In the throes of pain he wanted pain. When he'd come back down to earth, when the high went away, he wanted to be numb.

"I want to..." Alejo's voice faltered for a moment and real pain crossed his face. Not the physical pain from the wipes but the pain from deep down inside that made him feel ugly. His jaw tightened. "I want to be a part of someone. Forever. But there's no one like that here for me." And so salvation had to come from the bottom of a glass or inside a little baggy bought from a skeevy dealer at the corner of 3rd Street.

"Let's get a drink." He was finished and had cleaned himself up as best as he could. Alejo tossed the bloodied, used wipes into the garbage can nearby and winced. Still hurt, but he wouldn't die from a sore ass. Never had. "I think we're cute enough to bum a couple of free ones off Marge. Did you see her checking you out earlier?"

A... cop? Seth raised a brow in disbelief. This kid that looked like one punch could take him out... was a cop? Seth didn't see it. He really looked so... delicate. He had that little elfin chin, those big crystal eyes, and Seth didn't want to admit it but... probably the cutest little nose he'd ever seen. The freckles probably helped with the youthful appearance. Seth stopped studying him, somehow feeling... in the wrong for looking at somebody in pain in... that way.

"I never would have guessed," he said, unsure if Alexo's words came from drugs or maybe he was teasing him. There was a smile, though. That was encouraging. His gaze followed Alexo's to the first aid kit, where Seth had placed the pill bottle. Seth tensed, ready to grab it away from him at a moment's notice. Leaving a hand on the side of the case--just in case, Seth scrutinized Alexo. He looked to be in real pain.

Part of someone. Forever. Just somebody looking for love, then. They were all in it for something like that. At least, most people Seth knew wanted a good, steady relationship. Somebody that made them happy. It wasn't an unreasonable request. He just had to be patient. He was young! He had a whole lifetime to find that special someone.

"Hey."

Far be it from Seth to play babysitter or anything but... He reached out and held onto Alexo's hand before he went anywhere. It was a little awkward. He had meant to take his wrist but here he was, with his hand around Alexo's hand.

"Maybe skip the alcohol tonight." As much as a drink sounded so good right now--Seth was an occasional and social drinker more than an alcoholic, but even he could use a drink when stressed--he didn't think it was a great idea for the apparently depressed and suicidal guy to drink.

Yup, a cop. Yup, he knew that surprised look all too well. It was the babyface—it was always the babyface that threw people off. Him, a cop? Him with his boyish smile and easy laugh, a police officer rounding up criminals and doing stakeouts at three in the morning to bust drug rings? Yup. Him, Alejo, a cop. He would have laughed had his ass not throbbed so hard as to make everything seem... very much less amusing.

"I'll show you my badge if you really want proof," he smiled, shaking his head. A part of him did want to make a dive for the pills but he knew realistically he'd probably just flop off the chaise lounge and land face-first on the ground. Not worth the embarrassment. Besides, ten was a good number of pills to have in him. He felt a little better already—or maybe that was the drugs steadily exiting his system. Maybe both.

He almost got up, but Seth took his hand. Weird. Alejo looked down at the sudden gesture of concern, not sure what to make of it. Words of concern, too, came from Seth. Doctor Seth, hm? Hm, as Jack would have said. Hm.

"You really are worried." Alejo didn't know why he sounded so surprised. It was just... that they didn't even know one another. They were strangers. Seth's work was done the moment he got Alejo off the wall and into this back room. He could have called 911 for an ambulance, and then left. Marge was outside too; she could've taken care of him. But here they were. Holding hands.

Slowly, Alejo turned his hand around to hold his hand properly. "Okay... Then what does Doctor Seth recommend?"

"You have it on you?" Seth asked dubiously.

It was still hard to believe this guy could be a cop. And why would a cop be caught getting butt fucked on a club dance floor? It was all so... out of this world. Was it part of some kind of ploy? Was he hoping to rope in some criminal? If so, why didn't he cuff that jackass? He could have thrown him into jail for assaulting him--in every way a man could be assaulted, at that!

Yes. Their hands were. They were holding hands. It was extremely awkward for Seth, who could feel the heat in his ears. He wasn't much of a blusher but his ears were the sole exception. They were the dead giveaway every goddamn time.

See, this was another thing about Seth Spiros, aside from hating seeing people being taken advantage of. He was new to men. He had only enough encounters with men to count on one hand. He wasn't sure he'd call himself fluid. Maybe possibly bi. He didn't struggle with his sexuality. He just... he was accustomed to women. If this were a woman, he could easily have flirted with her. Since it was a man, he wasn't sure if that's how it worked. That's how new he was to it.

Whu.

Seth tried not to look down as Alexo's hand turned in his to hold onto his hand, like they were actually holding hands. Not just one person grabbing onto another person to keep them from doing something bad for them.

"Well, first, let those pills do their job unless you want me to toss you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes again." In the moment, it had been what he had to do. Now it would just be awkward.

"Nope." It was back at his motel, under his pillow with his gun. It had been sitting there for the better part of a week, actually, taken out only once to show Marge because she insisted on seeing it for herself. She even checked the serial number on it to make sure it was real—she was quite thorough, indeed she was. But other than that, the badge stayed where it was, out of sight but not out of mind.

Honestly, Alejo didn't even know how much of a cop he was right now. He knew he had done terrible things—tampered with evidence, led the feds astray, all to protect Jack. And while he didn't regret it, he knew his actions had real consequences. Jack wasn't killing people anymore (that he knew of) but if he did... If Brayden was his next victim... Yet Alejo didn't believe it. No one could hurt Brayden. He was just... some kind of exception to the rules. Even Alejo who should have hated him for fundamentally changing Jack could only muster up the slightest bit of irritation maybe, which was taken away very quickly by a bowl of soup.

He could have used a bowl of that magic crack soup right now...

But no. Someone was holding his hand—wrong, he was holding their hand now—and being all concerned about him and god, the guilt. It was always the guilt. Alejo laughed finally and he didn't know why he found that so funny. "Actually, that was the best part of the night for me. The view was very nice." Looking straight down at a firm, toned ass? Yeah. Even when he was just coming off of an exquisite fucking, he could appreciate a nice ass and Seth had just that. Broad shoulders, tapered waist, nice curve to his back—Alejo could just see himself making that back arch off a table or a bed. Hm.

"I'll be your sack of potatoes any day, baby." His thumb brushed idly over Seth's fingers, still holding on tight. "Since I can't drink, can I... have a friend walk me home?" He looked up at Seth with a gentler smile. "I'll show you my badge. It's back in my motel room."

Eyebrows raised. What was he laughing about? Seth looked down at the hand in his finally. They didn't look bad together. The hands, that is. Quickly, he glanced back up, remembering the way Alexo touched his arm, tracing his tattoos like he'd never seen one close up. His arm felt it still, the ghost of the sensation.

"Thanks?"

Seth had shown up to the club in a tank top and jeans. Nothing special. To be honest, Seth wasn't usually one to dress up unless he absolutely had to. Hell, when it was just him back at his place in the Greenwood apartments, he walked around in the nude because he could--and it felt good and natural. (He was definitely the man who went to nude beaches in Europe.)

So when it came to his body, he wasn't shy. Although he did find it a little surprising that a drugged out, recently strangled cop(?) had time to notice his assets while being carried off from his attacker. This one was wild.

"I can take you home," he said. "Well, to your... motel."

It sounded a little seedy, if he was honest but Seth could take care of himself and he wasn't worried about things going in some untoward direction. Cop versus MMA fighter? Not much to be scared of there, if Alexo even was a cop.

"By walk you home, did you mean carry you or are you good to walk on your own?"

Those ears kept getting brighter and redder, didn't they? Alejo thought nothing of it at first but after a moment he noticed them. Huh. It was definitely not hot in the back room, so... huh. There was something charming about that. Something almost innocent in the way they held hands. Kiddy stuff, right? Holding hands, asking for a friend. Alejo wasn't whacked out of his gourd on pretty blue pills but he felt a weird little high in the moment that he wasn't entirely sure was the lingering effects of drugs.

Maybe he just liked the idea of a giant of a man with tattoos all over him, who went up to poor Dakota and punched him twice, blushing over a little hand-holding.

"I can walk." Hopefully. He tried to stand and... mm. Not ideal. But he didn't fall, either, which was some consolation. Alejo leaned against Seth, though, clinging to his hand to keep himself upright. "I might need a little help... though..." Once he started walking, it would get easier. He knew from personal experience; the pain would be sharp and excruciating, but then it would dull as his body grew used to it. It wouldn't feel good by any stretch of the imagination but it would become bearable. Besides, Alejo was a big boy. He could take the punishment.

"Oh... I'm not wearing a sweater..." He noticed that very late in the game, he realized. Ah—the sweater had been shed on the dance floor and was probably trampled to pieces by now. Alejo sighed. Oh well. "If it gets cold, fair warning, I will hug you for warmth. So. Be prepared for a lot of hugs I guess."

"...all right."

What was Seth here for except to help? He'd come here to have a few drinks and just chill for a while, after his hours spent guarding that creepy ass library. Sometimes, he wondered if the pay and the gig was too good to be true. Some part of him really felt like some shit was happening in there that he didn't understand. An old spooky library... why did it even need a bodyguard? They said it was to keep adventurous kids out--this town apparently had a lot of those--and Seth did see his fair share of kids trying to snoop around it.

But nothing could stop that weird feeling that he was constantly being watched. That strange crackle in the air around the old library. Definitely something dodgy going on there but... a job was a job.

Taking care of somebody was a nice distraction, too, though. If he wasn't going to drink, then he could help his fellow man out. And although he was curious and dying to know what really happened between the two of them--why did he want to die so much? Was he really asking to die, then? At the moment, Alexo seemed docile enough. He didn't look like he was about to do something crazy like throw himself off a building. But Seth also knew that they didn't always look like they were going to... right before they did.

Seth looked down at his own lack of a sweater. But he was used to being out in a state of undress like this. The cold didn't really bother him much. Not the cold here, anyway. He'd been to Russia. That was cold.

"Thanks for the warning," he said. He wasn't sure what he'd do if the hugs came out of nowhere. Probably the same thing he'd do even with a warning. Take it.

Back out in the loud club, Seth nodded at Marge to let her know he had things handled. He looked around for the creep but if he was still in the club, he was nowhere that Seth could see. Well good. Hopefully he was banned from the club from here on out.

"Which motel are you staying at?"

"Non-consensual hugs count as harassment, I'm just covering my bases," Alejo said purely to be a little asshole, because that didn't need to be said but he said it anyway. Vestiges of drugs and alcohol in his blood. He'd claim that was the reason for it any day. Still, it felt nice to banter a little bit. Where did that somber mood from earlier go? God, he was so fucked up. Up and down, hot and cold, his mood swings were only getting worse each time he pushed himself that much further to the edge of oblivion.

Outside, Marge was by the door, apparently having been peeking in on them. She didn't even look ashamed or embarrassed. She did, though, peer hard at Seth's chest area, muttered "Oh Jesus fucking Christ, not again," rolled her eyes up to the heavens and let them pass. Alejo was shocked; he expected her to kick him so hard in the balls, his mom felt it.

But no. She let them go with a tame warning about hunting Seth down if he hurt Alejo. Aww... papa bear. So sweet. Alejo blew her a kiss as he left, telling her to let Jack know that he was going back to his own motel room that night, so that neither of them would worry unnecessarily about him. Or call the SWAT team out to find him.

"The motel in Little Asia." There was only one, thankfully. Alejo staggered off down the street with him, feeling as if he'd... played out this scene before. Three times. Twice with Jack, and now with Doctor Seth over here, who was very warm and very solid and very reassuring in both of those attributes. Alejo hugged him at a stoplight—he swore he did this before with Jack. Was he having some kind of time rewind problem? Was this destined to repeat on an endless loop?

"I'm making a lot of poor life choices out here, Doctor Seth." The light turned and he disengaged to totter across the street. Too bad he had to let go; it felt nice to hold on to someone solid and to be reassured that they were real and there. Not every night had to end in a bender, with him high off coke and doused in booze. Some nights, he wanted to stagger semi-paralytically down the street with a new friend. "I think I'm having a quarter-life crisis. Twenty-five is way too young to be doing what I'm doing, you know?"

"Huh?"

Seth looked down at his own chest, as if there was something visible sitting on his shirt. Or like, if he had hard nipples or something. (He didn't.) He raised his brow but if Marge had an explanation for her outburst, she wasn't sharing with the rest of them.

"Oh I know the one."

Seth stayed there for a while, before he got an apartment. Greenwood was all right--it was no fancy schmancy Sunrise but he liked it well enough. The handyman was a weird kid, though. As for the motel in Little Asia, it was all right... in a motel sort of way. But he'd be lying if he said he wasn't excited to get an apartment and leave the motel behind. There were some seedy people that hung around the area. Although Greenwood wasn't that much better for that.

"Really?" Seth said, doing his best not to sound like he'd noticed. Hard not to, though. Most people would classify getting fucked up at a club--literally--as a poor life choice. Seth blinked in surprise, then caught up to Alexo, who seemed determined to walk on his own two feet across the street. Seth kept near. Just in case.

"You're 25?" Shit. What. Honestly, Seth was half worried he was underage. He looked like he could still be in high school, for fuck's sake. But he was 25! He let out a low whistle to emphasize his surprise. "I'm 25. I thought you were like 18."

"You're 25? I'm 25!" Typical half-drunk conversations out here. Alejo laughed, delighted for no reason that their ages were the same. He took Seth's hand again in his. It was nice. Palm to palm, fingers linking, warmth communicated through one very small point but it spread out from there up his arm, up into his bare chest. Ooh he was cold! But also warm inside. It was strange; he chalked it up to the drugs.

"Is that why you didn't think I was a cop? Cause I look like your little brother's best friend from next door?" His grin was somewhat sly. He used to be someone's little brother's best friend from next door. Until he fucked that best friend's older brother. Then everything sort of fell apart after that, and Alejo was left to add another regret to the pile of regrets he'd been storing up all his life.

Alejo ran a hand over his face and sighed. "Nope. I'm 25. I should know better... But I don't." And he kept disappointing the people around him who cared about him, and that just drove him even more to drugs and alcohol to blunt the shame and the guilt. Why did these people even hang around? Jack, Marge, sweet Brayden, even Dakota--everyone kept coming to him. They circled him, faces he grew to like, to love, and yet none of them were the right kind of face. They weren't what he needed.

He stopped at another red light and looked up at Seth, taking him in. Handsome. Mature, certainly--but not old-looking. He looked a respectable 25. Kind. Nice. A good guy. Alejo sighed. Another good guy, huh? He drew closer and rested his head against Seth's shoulder and briefly closed his eyes. He didn't know if he said it out loud, but he thought it. "You should run while you can, Doctor Seth." Alejo was no good for anybody anymore.

Seth laughed. He couldn't help himself. One single shot of alcohol in him, that was all he got. But he found it amusing as hell that they both said the same damn thing. And Alexo, he laughed, too. And it was a cute laugh. Damn... why was it a cute laugh. For fuck's sake, man. Get it together.

"Possibly...?" Seth said, scratching his cheek in mild embarrassment. So he got the guy's age wrong. So what? Fair enough. He did have that boy-next-door look about him. Squeaky clean, despite the bandages on his throat and shoulder. His bottom lip, too. Looked a little... Seth glanced away, clearing his throat and watching a little plume of white breath take to the air. It was pretty cold out, wasn't it? But the walking felt good.

"Who really knows better, though?" Seth asked, because he sure as fuck didn't.

They stopped. Another red light. And in the glow, Alexo looked... soft. Bathed in a reddish glow. And tired. He looked so tired for somebody who was the same age as he was. Tentatively, Seth slid an arm around Alexo's upper back, not wanting to touch his shoulders, not wanting to get too low, either.

"Why? What am I running from?"

That was cute, the way Seth scratched his cheek. Boyish, Alejo would have called it. He knew cute guys who did the same thing, or they would rub the bridge of their nose or the backs of their necks, in that 'aww shucks' kind of way so typical of small-town boys. Was Seth a small-town boy? He had that accent—it wasn't a regional accent, but a very foreign one. Alejo didn't even know his last name, or where he came from, for god's sake.

But he knew he was attracted to Seth, and he thought Seth was attracted to him right back. The care he took with him, the way he held Alejo's hand so protectively, the arm now around him, keeping him close and safe and warm, that didn't happen just because. And he kept looking at Alejo and then looking away, embarrassed to be caught. How... innocent, Alejo thought. Seth was very innocent despite outward appearances.

Funny how that could happen. Alejo outwardly innocent, inwardly a demon. Seth who looked like a hardened criminal, sweet and charming, naive in many ways. Alejo looked at him and saw him in a new light. He puzzled over it, marvelled at it as they moved on. "Running... from me." His arm slid around Seth's waist too, both to steady himself and to maintain that comfortable closeness.

"You're criminally cute, Doctor Seth. It's my job to catch you and bring you in."

From... him.

Well, he did seem like maybe he was a troublemaker. He had a mischievous air about him. But Seth wasn't fearing for his life or anything. Should he be? He raised an eyebrow as he looked at this sweet kid hugging him like he was his personal teddy bear. Hard to see anything there to run from.

And.
What.

"Are you... You're flirting with me."

Of course he is, dumb-ass. Nobody was criminally cute. Nobody got arrested for that kind of thing. It was a play on his job. As a cop. Which Seth still had a hard time envisioning but maybe that was part of his job, too. Maybe he was part of that division that caught creeps. Maybeeeee that was what he was doing back there with that goth idiot. Shit.

Seth was not sure what to do with any of this information. So. He just. Sort of gently stroked Alexo's arm. And then the light changed and they were walking. To the motel. Together. This just wasn't his usual deal. Not that he had any wayward intentions or anything. He thought the poor guy could use a damn break.

"Yes, I am," said Alejo gently because he could tell that it took Seth aback to be flirted with so openly. Innocent. Naive. So, so sweet that he could give someone cavities just by looking at them. Alejo laughed low under his breath—and then patted Seth on the ass a few times to drive the point home. What? He didn't grab or grope him, it was only a few open-handed pats. Not even a slap.

Harmless flirting was an art form as far as Alejo was concerned. In the age of tinder and grindr and clubs thronging with hot men, hooking up with someone was as easy as sending a text or a lewd picture or flashing a come-hither Look across the dance floor. Alejo had had his fill of that. Look how easily he summoned Dakota; and it started out with something as simple as his number scrawled on a wall.

Something like this, it was rare in his world as of late. First he had a boyfriend, so flirting and sexting were both off the table. Then he spiralled downward into depravity and sex became another addiction, another vice to stuff the hole in his chest. He didn't flirt—he went for it. Dick in mouth, dick in ass. His dick in someone else's ass. It didn't matter as long as for a single brief moment in time, he felt wanted and needed and loved, even physically and not emotionally. But after the highs came the lows. Came the regret and disappointment, the silent tears, the shaking and shivering.

There was nothing gentle about the way Alejo fell but tonight, he felt that gentleness in their strange interactions. He felt calmer than he had in days as Seth rubbed his arm in lieu of a response. There was something in the way Seth guided him across the street and into that tiny motel that made him smile. Like he was coming home, for once. Home to a motel room whose door he unlocked with the keycard he kept in his back pocket. He eased the door open and let them both in, flicking on the light to the usual set of furniture—bed, small table, one chair, an old TV.

"Here we are, home sweet home," he said ironically as the door clicked behind them. Alejo turned to Seth and gazed up into those beautiful green eyes. Like little gems, he said earlier—when he was high. They were, though, like gems. Precious. He reached up to touch Seth's jaw. "You're cute," he said again, this time wistfully. And he was a nice guy, but Alejo didn't know if he believed in nice guys anymore.

"Huh."

He still didn't know what to do with that. Flirt back? It was so easy with girls. They did that thing, with their hair? And their voices kinda went up a pitch. They said sassy things. Alexo was kinda sassy. He was no girl, though. He wasn't mixing the two up. But he still looked... fragile. It wasn't just the way he looked. It was that look in his eyes. Fragile.

The motel room looked about the same as the one Seth holed up in for a while after moving to Hazleton. The same tired old furniture, the same suspicious looking carpet. It wasn't much of a home but Seth got it. Alexo had to maintain some kind of cheerful facade, probably to keep himself from breaking down. He stood there by the closed door and realized that Alexo had turned to face him. Was studying him. Or something. Seth studied him too.

"...thanks, you too."

It was a dumb fuck thing to say but he'd already said it. Seth didn't ever really consider himself cute before. Most of those flirty women would have said he was hot. One of them even called him a greek god. Kinda funny. Bit clever, if a little cliche. Seth cleared his throat.

"Where's this badge, then?"

Alejo laughed a laugh of pure amusement. Thanks, Seth said. You too. Well, yes. He was cute. Some said he was too cute, that maybe he should stop using that sweet face of his to throw people off because when they discovered the devil behind the smiles, they almost always never took it well. He didn't mean to do that, though, to use his face to deceive. In the moment he really believed he could be that person—that playful young man with the shining blue eyes and easy smile. That young man who was so easy to love, who loved right back.

But... it wasn't always him. No, there were two sides of him, like Jekyl and Hyde. That was his curse, he supposed. Maybe there was some kind of medication for it, he didn't know. Maybe there wasn't even anything wrong with him, or there was everything wrong with him.

"Ah, right!" Seth oh-so-uncomfortably cleared his throat and Alejo could tell that he felt awkward. Still grinning, he went over to the bed and reached under the pillow. His fingers slid over the cold barrel of the gun first; he stopped. Alejo swallowed. His fingertips moved on to grasp the badge and to pull it out. He held it up, gleaming in the light. "You have the right to remain silent! Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law!" Classic Miranda Rights.

Then with a breezy laugh, he tossed the badge at Seth so that he could look at it in more detail. "Believe me now?"

Seth caught the badge easily, and he was somehow a little surprised at the weight of it. He didn't know what he was expecting? Some plastic kid's toy? He inspected it with interest but in all honesty, he had no idea what a police badge actually looked like up close. Seth wasn't typically on the wrong side of the law. The tattoos were just his desired aesthetic. The build was because he was a fighter.

"I..." He was going to say he never questioned it but he did. That was partly why he was here. Wasn't it? "Yes."

Seth stepped further inside, not sure what he was still doing here. He made sure Alexo got "home" safely. He was here. He was safe. And he saw the badge.

"I stayed in this motel when I first moved here," he said, after a brief silence. A part of him wanted to ask what happened back there at the club but he didn't want to poke the sleeping cub. And whatever had been in Alexo's system seemed to have dissipated. His eyes were clear, no longer clouded with confusion. Maybe he didn't want to remember what happened to him. Why make him go through it all over again?

Looking down at the badge, he turned it over again, then looked back up at Alexo.

"New York?"

"Good!" Alejo turned to rummage through the chest of drawers for something to wear other than soiled jeans and nothing up top. He found pajamas and clean underwear and immediately peeled off his pants. Ahh... clean clothes. He should have showered but the thought of hot water stinging his asshole... nng. No thanks. In the morning he could attempt a lukewarm shower maybe, if his ass healed up enough. The human body was surprisingly resilient in that regard; a broken asshole healed up in a few days with some TLC.

No more bareback no lube going in dry sex for a while, though. Shit, he never learned. Last time with Jack he promised himself no more of that too, and look at him.

"Oh did you really? We have so much in common!" Alejo laughed—yes, they had sooo much in common. They were the same age and they stayed at the same place one time. They were practically soulmates! He turned after he'd put on clean clothes and tossed his jeans into the hamper they provided, intending to go to the laundromat later to wash all of his dirty clothes.

Noting that Seth was awkwardly standing not quite in the room, not quite at the door, Alejo sighed and went over to tug him down onto the bed to sit. If he wasn't leaving, he shouldn't just loiter there! Gingerly Alejo sat down too, wincing as his ass hit the hard mattress. "Yep. New York, the big apple. Home of Lady Liberty herself. Uhh... what else." There had to be more stereotypes of New York, right? "...That's all I got. But yeah, I'm from New York. I'm actually an undercover detective. I know—don't say it. Me? With this face? Detective?"

Well that face came in handy for sure. He lured out a ton of sexual predators. "What about you, Seth? You're definitely not from around here."

Oh! Whoa! Seth did not expect that! He turned his head away to be polite but... he already sort of saw and the image was burned into his mind--and burning the tips of his ears. Maybe he was cute. A pretty boy. But he was most definitely... a man. Jesus fuck what was he doing here. He swallowed with some difficulty and looked down at the badge from New York.

He didn't have to make it sound so dumb. That they had "so much" in common. Seth already knew how fucking dumb he sounded. Being a fighter, he didn't have to use his words or even his brain, really. His body knew what to do. There was muscle memory there, reflexes. This, though... Had never really been his strong suit. Chatting. Small talk.

He looked up as Alexo approached and he didn't know what to expect--but he was only tugged toward the bed, where he sat and then watched as Alexo sat, too. Shit, it looked like it hurt. Silently, Seth reached over to gently set the badge down on the table beside the bed. It didn't seem like Seth had to say much. Alexo was filling in the silence himself.

"No," he said, "I can see it."

That face was probably why he was an undercover detective. Nobody would ever suspect a thing. He could slip under the radar with nobody the wiser. Even Seth had his doubts but maybe he could take him out. If he had the opportunity, the right grapple... Seth or a guy his size wouldn't see it coming.

"Oh no," he said with a small laugh. Nobody would ever mistake him as a lifelong resident. Not when he opened his mouth, anyway. "Small town in Greece. Chora. I'm an MMA fighter... although in my downtime, I've been working security here in Hazleton."

Alejo wasn't a helpless little innocent child--though his face said otherwise. The beauty of being what he was--a nagual--was that he had access to so many powerful animals. He had access to their strength, cunning, fitness, speed and agility out of animal form too, which he used to his advantage in dangerous situations. And if worse came to worse, well, no one expected a panther to come at them with massive sharp claws out of nowhere.

But he also didn't work too hard to let people know of his strength; there was no reason to. It was fine for people to assume that he was that boy-next-door with the freckles and the ready smile and easy laugh. It worked in his favor more often than not, why mess with a good thing?

He rubbed the tops of his legs slowly as Seth spoke, looking him up and down, all over. "A fighter! Really!" That wasn't surprising, actually. Seth had the build and height for it. The athleticism. "It suits you," he remarked with honest admiration. But hm. Seth was a small-town boy after all, just not from the States. He had to admit, the accent was adorable. Sexy, even.

Ah--no. He shouldn't start thinking along those lines. No more good guys, right? No more sweethearts. Alejo was always drawn to them for the wrong reasons--thinking that they could make up for what he lacked. Maybe he needed to work on himself a little bit out here. If he lived long enough to come around to that idea. In the back of his mind, he still... thought about flying. About what Dakota promised...

"Where? The security thing I mean. You're not a bouncer, I've been to just about every club."

"Yeah," he said, finally cracking a smile. A fighter. It wasn't much of a surprise to people once they heard what he did and looked at him again with that new information. It just made a kind of sense.

"Thanks."

Seth felt like he was doing a lot of that but his mother taught him to accept a compliment when it was given to him. It had become so ingrained in him that it just came out the moment somebody paid him any compliment. As for the security thing, he made a slight face. Trying to make himself more comfortable, he leaned back, a hand on the bed.

"That's because I'm working security detail at the old library, I think they call it here." Just talking about it sent a little wave of goosebumps over the back of his neck and over his bare arms. "I thought it was a pretty weird gig but it pays well and the hours are pretty flexible."

Of course, he wasn't the only one working security there. They had rotating guards and as far as Seth had learned from the others, they felt as equally uncomfortable with the job as he did.

Aha! A smile! God it was an attractive smile. Alejo couldn't even be mad at himself for thinking that, it was so true. Even his eyes seemed to have an extra sparkle when he smiled. Such pretty eyes. Such a pretty smile from someone who looked as if he could break a man in half--and had been taught to do so in the octagon, apparently.

"You're... welcome." Boy howdy he was polite. What an odd find, really. Alejo didn't quite know what to make of him. He acted and spoke so differently than his appearance indicated that it was almost a total disconnect--much like Alejo being the one putting people in cuffs and reading them their rights. Hm. Did they really have more in common than met the eye? Then his facetious comment earlier might just be true...

Alejo shifted a little closer to him under the guise of checking out his tattoos. Why the hell not. Seth was in a tank top, obviously he didn't mind being checked out. Again he traced the patterns and images, liking the way they looked on Seth's arm. Bronzed skin, smooth and warm, felt nice under his curious fingertips. "The old library needs guarding? What're people gonna steal? Moldy old books?" Alejo laughed but his eyes didn't leave Seth's arm.

He continued tracing up the side of Seth's arm, just idly letting his fingertips do the walking. "I went there once but maybe I just missed you. The building looks nice, though." One of those historic sites that was more museum than functional library. "The front desk guy thinks... it might also be... haunted." He leaned close with an impish grin. "Boo!"

Yeah he didn't think that would scare the pants off of Seth but it was mostly a harmless joke. Mostly. It also brought him quite close to Seth, though. Alejo's hand curled around his bicep, feeling the hard muscles underneath pretty patterns and smooth skin.

"Stay the night? ...please?"

"That's what I thought."

He was a little... distracted by those light little fingertips against his arm, though. This time, he wasn't busying himself with first aid treatment and he watched the way those fingertips traced over the ink that marked his arm. With Alexo's gaze turned downward, Seth could see the gentle curve of his lashes, the light casting shadows on his face. Up close, he could really see the odd little dusting of golden freckles across his nose.

"Maybe you just didn't notice me," Seth said with a hint of amusement in his tone. Just because Seth played hero today didn't mean that he was immediately going to be noticeable to Alexo. Security guards, janitors, they were often overlooked because people just sort of forgot they existed. But he thought he might have noticed Alexo so he probably hadn't been there whenever Alexo visited.

Seth didn't want to admit it but he agreed with the "front desk guy" about the building being haunted. He doubted Alexo believed in things like that. Also, the way he said it, as if he were only saying it for dramatic purposes... and the way he leaned in close... Seth unconsciously held his breath because...

Boo!

....he thought Alexo was going to kiss him. Haha... His nerves were more jangled by that idea than they were by the sudden boo! Luckily, Seth didn't do something dumb like jump away or... lean in for a kiss that didn't happen.

Seth mulled it over. He didn't have to work until tomorrow night. It was his day off. He had nowhere else to be; he had just planned to get a couple drinks and beyond that, he wasn't really sure he had a plan for heading to the club. Maybe just watch. If he had enough alcohol in him, he might have danced. And then he might have taken somebody home for the night, if he hit it off with somebody. He didn't plan to go back to the club, anyway. So he'd just be going home alone for the night and he knew... he'd just be thinking about Alexo the whole time.

It wasn't like he was being propositioned, either. Alexo probably had enough of that shit and maybe he just wanted to feel safe. Plus... kinda hard to say no to those baby blues and that plaintive tone. Please, he said so prettily.

"All right. I'll stay."

Obviously he wanted to kiss Seth. Obviously. He wanted to kiss him back there at the club when Seth so nicely took care of him, mopping him up and bandaging up his throat and shoulders. He wanted to kiss him every time they stopped at a stoplight outside, on the way home. He wanted to kiss him when he smiled, when he laughed and the sound was so pleasant to Alejo's ears that it sent a thrill down his spine. Seth had such a nice laugh, such an enigmatic smile...

So much for no more good guys, though. Maybe he just needed this one last one. Maybe tonight he needed someone around who wasn't trying to get into his pants. That was a no-go anyway; he couldn't work his hips any better than he could offer his ass up for another pounding. Either way, Alejo was in no fit state to fuck or to be fucked and... Seth didn't make any overtures along those lines.

Seth was polite, a real gentleman, escorting him home without any expectation of payment in return. He was sort of rare, come to think of it—like a unicorn. An MMA fighting unicorn, if there ever was such a thing.

"Thank you." It was his turn to be polite now; he had hoped, secretly, that please would persuade Seth to stay, since he was such a polite person himself. Alejo leaned against him, hugging his arm to his chest like a safety blanket. "I don't want to sleep alone tonight," he whispered by way of explanation, eyes on the TV across the room. Its black surface reflected their blurred figures, seated together on the edge of the bed. Alejo smiled and turned to press a grateful kiss to the slope of the closest shoulder.

He let go so that he could painfully stand up and then crawl into bed, wincing again as he eased his battered body under the covers. "I don't suppose you'd let me have another... eight or ten aspirin?" Alejo laughed as he patted the spot beside him in invitation for Seth to join him. The painkillers he had earlier were taking effect, but not as well as he'd hoped, sadly. That walk back to the motel probably did more harm than good, much to his chagrin.

"That's understandable."

Alexo had been through a lot tonight. And that was just the part Seth saw and knew about. He didn't know anything about Alexo, other than he was an undercover cop from New York--curious, what was he doing all the way here on the other side of the country?--and that he had been at the club with a creep. And it seemed like maybe he wanted to die, the way he was talking about flying. The way he didn't fight the way that guy tried to choke him out.

Fragile.

He couldn't help applying that word to him. That was how it appeared to him. Like if Seth wasn't careful, whatever kept him quipping and flirting might just end up... shattering.

A kiss? To his shoulder. Seth looked over at Alexo but it just seemed to be some kind of gesture of gratitude. Seth smiled briefly. He wanted to... touch him. But he felt like it might have been wrong so he kept his hands to himself, instead running a hand up the back of his own neck. Definite tension there. He glanced back over at Alexo. The pain must have been pretty bad for him. Hard to imagine what it felt like... Seth saw it when he broke the pair up--the blood trickling down his legs. It wouldn't hurt to let him have a few more painkillers. So far, it didn't seem like the last ones had done anything to him.

But it seemed maybe to be a rhetorical question because Alexo patted the bed. Seth leaned down to untie his boots and take them off. He normally slept naked but that wasn't happening here, so he slid beneath the blankets with Alexo, fully clothed. But as he lay back against the pillow, he felt something prodding him in the back of the head.

"What's that?" he asked, half sitting up to turn the pillow over. The last thing he expected to find there was... a gun.

So polite. Too polite, really. Alejo couldn't help but be reminded of Judah again, recalling how things were when they first started out, how gentlemanly he was. Judah really had been sweet to him. He had been good to him and he was too good for Alejo, honestly. To have been cheated on, lied to, and still want to work things out... Alejo knew it was too late to realize how much Judah had loved him, but it couldn't stop the knot forming in his throat anyway. He turned his face into the pillow briefly to press back the sudden surge of emotion.

As the bed wiggled and jiggled and Seth got in under the covers—fully clothed, yet, what a silly thing he was—Alejo turned onto his side so that he could look at him. Ah—he felt the gun. Saw it when he flipped the pillow over, causing Alejo to laugh as he reached for it. "Sorry, I'm used to sleeping with it under my pillow. The safety's on, don't worry."

It was very much a real gun, though—fully loaded too. He set it down gently onto the bedside table alongside his badge. No doubt now, was there, that he was a cop? It was a standard-issue side-arm but he didn't anticipate having to use it out here. Hazleton had its own police department anyway and they looked to be doing just fine. Reaching out, he stroked Seth's arm soothingly, as one might stroke a spooked puppy. "Didn't scare you, did it? I swear I'm not hiding shotguns under the mattress or anything."

Shit. New York must have been shady as fuck, for Alexo to be sleeping with a firearm under his pillow. Or maybe Alexo was afraid of what might come for him here in the motel. What kind of job was he on? He wanted to ask but he had a feeling that it wasn't something Alexo could share--undercover--and besides, it wasn't Seth's business.

"Startled me," he said. Not really scared. Although he thought idly maybe it should have. For all he knew, sweet, boyish faced Alexo was part of the mafia or some gang. Again, he wondered about the undercover part of his job. Did it put him in danger? Maybe that was why the gun was there.

Slowly, he laid back down. He didn't mind all the arm stroking. Alexo seemed to like doing it. Maybe because it was the part of him that was unclothed. Having seen Alexo without a shirt for a good while, he was aware he didn't have any tattoos. And he didn't have any on the underside, either.

"Have you thought about getting one?" he asked. "A tattoo?" He seemed so interested in Seth's. Maybe he wanted his own.

Alejo more or less insinuated himself into Seth's arms after he laid back down, winding a leg over his, slipping an arm across his chest. He found a comfortable place to rest his head, too, somewhere between shoulder and chest, and snuggled down against him. Hm. Felt nice. Warm and cozy. Idly he slid the back of his foot against the side of Seth's calf, over the fabric of his jeans. Wasn't that uncomfortable, sleeping fully clothed? Alejo's hand slid under one of the shoulder straps of his tank, finding more warm skin to admire.

"A tattoo? Me?" There was humor in his tone as he traced another intricate design, this one across one of Seth's pectorals. His pinkie skirted the top of a nipple. Accidentally. Then it brushed it again. Accidentally. "And ruin this carefully crafted boy-next-door image? No rapist is going to want to come within ten feet of me baby!" He laughed—not that his job depended on him being pure and clean-looking, but it definitely helped. In some cases he did have to strip down, to coax the predator into doing something incriminating. They liked his innocence, the way his skin was unblemished and unmarked.

"I like them on you though. It goes with that whole MMA fighter ensemble." That was definitely a Jack word. Ensemble. As though Seth wore his profession like a suit. Well, maybe. Alejo sure as hell did—a suit that he sometimes took off and shoved way back into the darkest recesses of his closet. Out of sight, out of mind, right? He smiled again as his naughty hand moved on to the other side, to trace along another design. Very aesthetic. Very pretty.

"Why did you decide to become an MMA fighter? You could've been a model, or an actor, with your looks." He smiled up at Seth. "With those very beautiful eyes."

Okay, whoa, where was this going? It felt a little weird. Not because Alexo was a man. It was his own problem; he was wearing clothes and it wasn't exactly... comfortable. He felt like he should have at least taken off the jeans. There was nothing untoward about a man sleeping in his underwear. He just didn't want to give Alexo the wrong idea.

That part didn't seem to matter. Even fully dressed, Alexo managed to wind himself around Seth like a snake. Everywhere he looked, Alexo had a body part. He could feel his leg twining with his. His hand on his chest. Under his tank top, mind you. What was he even doing with his nipple? Seth shifted slightly, thinking oh, it might be a mistake... but it happened again. Er...

"It intimidates some people," he said, trying his best to ignore the way his nipple started to harden. And the intimidation factor was part of the game. Perfecting the right Stare. Some guys could be shaken just by the look of their opponent. But really, Seth just liked the aesthetic. The way his skin looked covered in art. The fact that it added to the intimidation factor in a fight was just icing.

"I like fighting. The adrenaline, the primal energy. Even just training for it..." It made him feel good. It was his hobby, not just his job. He smiled, though. Hard not to smile when Alexo smiled at him.

"My mama said the same thing. 'You're going to ruin your beautiful face!'" He said this in a typical Greek mama's voice. She'd grabbed his face in one hand and squeezed when she said it. "I told her... not if I'm good at it." He winked at this, a little more of his true personality peeking through the professional distance he'd been maintaining so far.

Damn, damn, damn. Alejo felt himself slipping back into old habits again. He had a good guy with him. A nice guy. A man who respected boundaries and who genuinely helped him without conditions, whose only concern had been to get him home safe and sound. And every damn time he had a decent guy, a sweet guy, alone in a room with him, he... he did shit like this. He tried to seduce them. He wanted to get close to them, to be part of their goodness and their kindness, insinuating himself into their lives just in the same way he insinuated himself into Seth's arms.

What the fuck was wrong with him? Why couldn't he enjoy the closeness without wanting to be greedy, to get closer, to have more? In his heart of hearts he still did want to be a part of someone. An integral part of someone. And no matter how jaded he thought he was, when there were no drugs in him and no alcohol replacing the blood in his veins, he still wanted it—to be loved solely and exclusively, thoroughly and completely.

And Seth? Seth laid there like a plank. It made Alejo want to cry a little bit. He came on strong, he wouldn't deny it; most guys would've had him on his back by now. Or they would've pulled him overtop of them, indicating a certain willingness to get a little... freaky between the sheets. Alejo wasn't accustomed to someone laying there with him all over them and they just... kept talking.

The worst part was, the more Seth talked, the more he made it sound sexy. That was wild shit. Primal energy? Sexual. Adrenaline? Sexual. Oh he was confusing. It derailed Alejo, who—honestly didn't know what he was doing wrong. Or right? Was Seth not interested? But his nipple, it did react to that little teasing flick. Alejo knew what he was doing, after all.

Urgh.

And he was stinking cute. The imitation of his mother made Alejo laugh out loud, despite his confused state. It was good—it sounded just like every old Greek lady chastising her son. And that wink. Oh, it made his black little heart flip and flop in his chest. "Obviously you're good at it," Alejo grinned, unable to help it. His mood kept rising. He was baffled as hell but he also felt oddly... good? He was having a good time...? Being ignored physically. Wild shit.

He reached up to touch Seth's face too, as though inspecting it. "Hm. But don't take this the wrong way... You'd look good even with a black eye I think. Maybe some bruises..." It would make him seem even more manly with some battle scars, Alejo thought. God, he was so fucking dumb even thinking that. His thumb brushed against Seth's chin, through the short hairs of his beard. Alejo eased himself up and hovered over him.

"Maybe a split lip, too." The thumb swept up to nudge the curve of his lower lip, envisioning it bruised and split... and how much it would throb if he kissed it hard, if he ran his teeth over the poor abused area. Alejo bit his own lower lip hard. Shit. They were so close now. Close enough for him to nuzzle Seth, nose to nose.

"Can't make my mama cry."

He had to be good to make sure he didn't come home with a scar he couldn't get rid of. Naturally, mamas were gonna worry. And his mama did worry for him. But she was a nurse and she was accustomed to seeing bruises and cuts. Worse than that, working the ER.

What a weird way to look at things. Seth let him explore his face, though, apparently imagining Seth all beat to hell. Was that his kink or something? Maybe he and that goth freak were actually doing something consensual together. Seth's gaze dropped to the bandages at Alexo's throat.

"Then you should see me after a fight," he said finally, smiling as he looked back up at him as Alexo hovered over him. What... was he trying to do now? It was distracting, was what it was. "I've had my fair share of lumps, but I'm pretty good with first aid."

He sort of shut up, though, when a thumb ran over his lip. And his gaze couldn't help but be drawn to the way Alexo bit his own lip. Suddenly, he was glad he hadn't given up the jeans. He placed a hand on Alexo's chest to gently push him back down, so he wasn't hovering like that, looking at him like he was about to full on straddle him if he didn't do something about it.

"Hey."

Alejo wished with all his heart that he could agree to that—to not making his mama cry—but he had already failed. His mama had cried out all of her tears for him. She cried until she had none left, and then she pushed him out of her life, telling him that he was no longer her son. She told him she didn't care if he threw his life away, if she threw God away.

And Alejo... he shouted back. Why did God make him like this, then? In whose image did he craft Alejo? God wasn't shit! He wasn't even real!

That hurt her deeply, he knew. Even at the time, when he was nineteen and angry and scared and should have known better, with the world crashing down over his head, he knew he hurt her far more than he ever had by denouncing God. By denouncing her and her faith. Not long after that, Alejo left home—and then began his year-long descent into madness.

How did he pull himself out of that? He didn't remember anymore. It was too long ago and between then and now, there had been many mistakes, many regrets. A lot of lies, a lot of bad decisions. Like what he was doing now—bad decisions. And he felt it, too, that certain tension in the air between them. Seth's eyes were on his lips, he saw that tell-tale flicker. But rather than giving in to the urge to kiss him, Seth pushed him back. Away. Gently. Politely.

"Hi." Alejo fell back into his former position with his head on Seth's shoulder, and his once-naughty hand stilled finally. He let it drape across Seth's stomach. Comfortable. Safe. Warm. Unkissed. Oh, what a shame. "I think I like you," he said with almost childish simplicity as he strummed his fingers across Seth's side. "You're almost too nice. But I like that."

Hi, he said. It was kinda funny. Seth wanted to laugh but he was a little confused. What were they doing right now? It was some kind of game to Alexo. Maybe this was what he intended from the start but Seth thought it unwise to attempt starting up the engine when Alexo was clearly in some kind of weird limbo place. Seth knew some girls like him, who did the same thing. Tried to use sex to heal something inside that was broken. But sex didn't fix it. Sometimes it just made it worse. Seth didn't want to be somebody else's regret.

"You just met me," Seth said. He turned his head toward Alexo. A soft little hum. The finger strumming against his side felt good. Not necessarily sexual. Just... good. But he hadn't meant to make that sound and he turned his gaze back upward, at the ugly popcorn ceiling above them, at the nipple shaped light fixture.

"Heh. You can thank my mama for that."

The niceness was a mark of his good old mama. She taught him to be respectful. Funny, when he thought about his interests. How did a guy born into a family of scientists and nurses end up getting into MMA fighting? Simple; he had a lot of pent up emotions when he started. It was a great way to lighten up his mood, to use his body and to reach for an obtainable goal. Seth wasn't necessarily stupid but he wasn't studious. As a kid, he was thought to have ADD. He was that kid who couldn't sit still, who couldn't concentrate on a task that bored him. He was a physical kid, not a brainiac kid. He was the kid climbing the monkey bars and breaking his arm after he fell out of a tree.

"Do you miss New York?"

They were doing nothing right now and Alejo was both disappointed and relieved.

All those men. All of them in the past, when he came on to them, they took his offer gladly. Nobody ever passed up a chance at sex. Nobody, not ever. Never. Even ones who were borderline interested and only along for the shits and giggles let him in their pants because sex was... a physical release. It was purely biological, something people did to get that tension inside smoothed out, because they were bored, because it felt good. Sex didn't have to be personal.

And then there was Seth. Doctor Seth. Looking like a thug, acting like a true gentleman. There was a real charm about him and Alejo hadn't lied—he did like him. He didn't love him, he wasn't in love with the idea of him, he simply liked him. He liked what Seth was saying, what he was doing, what he was all about. There was nothing fake about him and that made him pure and good. A real good guy.

"That makes it more significant then," was his response as he tucked that little hum away for later. For a cold shower maybe. Nah—for a cold heart. If he ever needed something to warm him from the inside, he might recall this moment laying with Seth, making him utter that cute little noise of contentment. Since he appeared to like it, Alejo kept stroking his side, which was oddly calming for himself too.

Seth himself seemed restless; his gaze didn't want to stay in one place, didn't want to stay on Alejo too long. Ah, he was giving himself away. That was very telling but Alejo didn't make use of that information just now. He tucked it away for another time.

"Don't ever make your mama cry," he said softly and regretfully, even though Seth had just told him the same thing. "You'll regret it for the rest of your life." That was said so quietly that he almost just mouthed the words. Alejo curled up closer to him and sighed. New York, huh? Did he miss it? He had to think about that, honestly, but he was glad they had moved on from mamas and crying.

"I miss parts of it. The skyline is beautiful at sunrise or sunset, if you can catch it from up high, like on the roof of an apartment building. Ground level, not so much. I miss my neighborhood. There's this old married couple next door to where I lived with my b—my ex boyfriend. They'd always sit on their porch and people-watch and bicker. It was adorable. And some new families moved in, so last Halloween we had a lot of kids running around in cute little costumes." He lowered his voice like he was sharing a dirty secret. "We were the only people giving away full-sized candy bars, so they'd keep coming back and pretending they'd never been to our place. I think one kid came around four times!"

Huh. He hadn't thought of it that way. That Alexo might like him when he barely knew him. Was it more significant that way? Seth didn't have any hard and fast rules for that sort of thing. Sometimes, people just instantly clicked. Sometimes it was the exact opposite. Seth had lived the same number of years on this earth as Alexo; he had met people on both sides of the spectrum. Sometimes, there was just a sixth sense about that sort of thing. (Sort of like the ghost stories about the old library...)

"Yeah..." Seth agreed. Well, obviously. He said the same thing. The last thing he ever wanted to do was anything that would make his poor mama cry. She was the best person on the planet to him, but most people thought that about their mamas. He heard the genuine regret, though, in Alexo's voice. Sounded like he must have made his mama cry. Seth turned his head toward Alexo, his gaze sympathetic. Yeah...

"I like," he said slowly, with a smile forming, "that it's not the place you miss, but the people. You can find home anywhere you go as long as you stay that way."

There was that smile again, slow to form but beautiful once it formed fully. Alejo was a little star-struck in the moment. The smile, the uplifting words, they made his heart soar. His eyes stung for some dumb reason too, and he quickly pressed his face into Seth's shoulder to sniffle the heat and the sting away. His nose tickled something fierce; he sniffled again.

"Are you for real, Doctor Seth?" His voice might have sounded muffled, nasally with emotion. This wasn't possible, was it? For one person to be so wise and caring and sweet and charming and sexy and... just... like someone out of a romance novel. The perfect protagonist, come around to sweep the heroine off her dainty feet. But Alejo wasn't a dainty maiden. He was lonely and desperate, making poor life choices while hoping that someone would come along who could save him from himself.

Seth had something that most of the men who passed through his legs didn't have—compassion. He seemed to understand what Alejo needed to hear and he said those things without agenda. He didn't have to tell him pretty things to get into his pants, when Alejo had just about climbed all over him—to no avail. There didn't seem to be anything that Seth wanted from him, which was a definite first. It was... strange. Surreal.

"What?"

He lifted his head slightly because it sounded an awful lot like Alexo was crying. Did he say something wrong? He didn't mean to make him cry. Slowly, like he thought maybe Alexo was a skittish stray unused to human touch, he wrapped an arm around him. Gentle, though. Not like... trapping him. A guy like him had to be careful, really, what kind of signals he put out there.

"Hey." He had said it before, when he gently pushed Alexo back. But now it was a little softer, with a hint of concern laced through it. "Are you okay?"

It was a stupid question--Seth seemed to be doing great in that department, with the saying stupid things--but it wasn't really the question that mattered. It was the opening for the answer. Seth wasn't that stupid. He knew things weren't fine with Alexo. Nobody who was fine would have been found the way Alexo was at the club. Out of his mind, like he would rather be... gone. High. Seth had seen it in old friends and it was never good. Soon, the high was the only thing that made them even feel alive anymore. It was sad when people lost their spark like that. It was almost like they lost their soul, what made them... them.

See, this was the thing. Seth did everything right. Said all the right things to make him feel so much less shitty. And he probably didn't even know he was saying and doing it. The careful way he held on to Alejo was just what he needed in that moment. He didn't need to be grabbed or hugged tight when he was vulnerable and feeling fragile; he didn't want to be trapped in a hug. He just wanted someone to be tender with him, to know without having to be told that this was a poignant moment for him, and he needed gentle support.

He sniffled again and the tears went away. Alejo wasn't going to bawl in front of Seth; he was just overcome by emotions for a second. "I'm." He got stuck at—yeah, I'm okay. No, of course he wasn't okay. Look at him. Look at what happened that night, where he had gone. No highs, all lows. He sank to such a new low that he didn't even want to think about what it meant. He said it himself: he ought to have known better, but he never did. He never took himself to account for his own actions, never took responsibility.

"Are all Greek guys like you?" He asked out of desperation, half-laughing, half in disbelief. "I've been looking in the wrong places if they are." Trying really hard not to answer the question. He knew what Seth wanted to know and he didn't want to get into it. It... was shameful and embarrassing and he didn't want Seth to think any less of him. Not that he could, having already witnessed Alejo in the club.

...but he did... and he didn't leave. He stayed around, actually, doing the opposite of what most people would have. Most would have judged Alejo and passed him off as a junkie and an immoral slut. But Seth, he leapt into the fray, he helped (he also helped break poor Dakota's nose too). That was significant too. And now he was here laying with Alejo, holding him tenderly, asking if he wanted to talk. It was an invitation, Alejo realized.

"...no. I'm not okay. I haven't been okay since... since I was disowned for coming out. I was nineteen. Just got out of the academy. Youngest one to graduate, you know? My parents were so proud. Dad cried at the convocation ceremony, told me he loved me and had never been so proud of me in his life. And I-I thought. If they loved me so much, it'd be okay. I could tell them the truth and they'd still... love me." He trailed off to take in a shuddering breath. Somehow it was easier to go on once he started talking about it. Seth, he... had that effect on Alejo, apparently.

"Well I was wrong. I left home and I-I haven't been back since. And it's been one terrible life decision after another, Seth. Oh my god you don't even—you can't imagine the shit I've done to myself. I had. Judah. My ex. He was the best thing that ever happened to me and I fucked it all up. Slept with another man. Cheated on him. And he still wanted to stay with me but I... I'm not good enough to be with someone like that. Someone that good. Judah was a good guy, Seth. Like you. I don't deserve good guys anymore. I can't..."

Seth gave it a moment's think and then came up with, "Nope."

Even if it depended on Alexo's take on "like him," nobody was like anybody else. That was as simple as it was. No way could Seth vouch for every one of his fellow Greek men. They had their share of assholes, too, and he didn't want that to be Alexo's takeaway from this. Although if he decided to go looking for Greek men after this, that was his prerogative. Seth could only be flattered(?) that he inspired him in some way. Hopefully... not a harmful one.

It seemed like Alexo did need to talk, though. Aha. Seth thought so. Well... it didn't take a damn genius to figure that out. But Seth knew (from experience, actually) that sometimes there just weren't any ears when you needed them most. Seth also found that most people didn't care to be the ear. But Seth didn't mind.

And so he was the ear, soaking in Alexo's words and just listening. Really listening. Between the lines. The happiest day of his life turned into the worst day of his life. The people he counted on most in a delicate point of his life rejected him--or Alexo perceived it that way. Seth didn't know the details but it didn't matter what the details actually were because this was Alexo's truth, not theirs. Whatever they did or said hurt Alexo in an irreparable way.

Seth lightly brushed Alexo's arm as he took in a shuddering breath.

So it spiraled out of control from that one big, defining moment. Alexo could see it but he felt like whatever his parents thought about him was true so he kept punishing himself for... being himself. Seth let the words hang in the air for a moment, to sit in them, to let them sink beneath the skin. This was somebody who, when asked what he missed about his last home, was the people. Not the place. People... were important to him. He just wasn't letting them be.

"I think," he said after some time to think about it, "you deserve more than you're letting yourself believe." How did he put this? Seth had to formulate it properly, because it felt very obvious to him when he looked at it from the outside--but that was the problem with being mired in your own thoughts and feelings. The obvious really wasn't.

"People who don't deserve good things don't say things like 'I don't deserve this.' It's... like, the opposite. Really bad people believe they deserve everything they want. You see?"

"Oh my god stop," Alejo half-laughed, half-cried into Seth's shoulder. He had buried his face away again after his diatribe ended, heart hammering as he realized that he'd unloaded so much baggage onto Seth that he could've passed for the luggage carousel in terminal 4 at LAX--coincidentally where Alejo also lost one of his pieces of luggage, and was still waiting for them to find it and send it to him here.

This was NOT how he envisioned his night ending up! If he'd had his way--or if Kota had had his way--Alejo would be six feet under right now! Instead he was curled up with a literal piece of human perfection whose words moved him to tears. And they were exactly what he wanted to hear, or maybe even what he needed to hear--even if Seth only said it to reassure and sooth him. But somehow Alejo didn't think so.

Seth meant what he said and that sincerity helped Alejo to believe it, too. That maybe he didn't do anything wrong when he tried to tell people who he really was, and that others simply couldn't accept the truth--but that wasn't on him. That was on them. They took themselves out of his life, they didn't throw him out of theirs, and there was a real distinction to be made there.

"You." He couldn't accurately describe the sense of relief he felt. No one had ever said something like this to him because he never gave them half a chance to. He just laughed his pain away, drank it away, smoked it into the heavens. Even the people who knew didn't know that it tore him up so badly inside; they just thought he was over it because he told them. Eh, it's cool. I'm in a better place now anyway. But he wasn't--he wasn't in a better place at all.

Alejo breathed in deep. He clung to Seth like a lifeline and breathed, in and out, slowly, deeply. "You're really real?"

"Stop what?"

He watched Alexo burrow into him again, like he was maybe embarrassed about something? Seth wondered if he hadn't worded things correctly, if it wasn't quite coming across as he'd hoped. Because it did sound like Alexo might have made a little crying sound but it also could have been a laugh. Seth wasn't certain; it could have been both. Was he hysterical? Was it the drugs coming out of his system? But he seemed pretty lucid when he talked about his problems with his family and his feelings of abandonment.

Yes, me. Seth waited. And he waited for a long, silent beat. He could feel that--the breath that Alexo took in. He felt it against his whole body, like maybe... Alexo had been holding in so much and now he was letting it all out on that breath, as he slowly let it go. It seemed to Seth, a lot of the tension left him then, too. So Seth smiled. Good. That was his hope. They were getting somewhere.

"Yes, I'm really real." The smile translated into his voice as he spoke, even if Alexo wasn't looking at him. "You can pinch me if it makes me more real."

Actually, Seth thought belatedly, the dreamer was the one who had to pinch themselves. But he also thought that if he was just a hallucination, pinching him would suffice. Because if he wasn't there, then he wouldn't have anything to pinch!

Alejo smiled at the sound of mirth in Seth's voice. "...I'm not pinching you." He wasn't hurting a hair on that precious head of Seth's. Someone this good and true and compassionate needed to be protected. Alejo finally did reveal his face, once he stopped sounding and feeling hysterical. Instead of a pinch, he slid a hand up against Seth's jaw and leaned up to give him a soft kiss on the cheek.

"Thank you. I needed to hear that." His response really wasn't appropriate for the gravity of the moment, but now Alejo was sober and less emotional. His lips lingered a beat too long before he laid back down, smiling up at Seth. "Maybe I did need a superhero tonight."

He had been so down and so low for so long that he forgot what it felt like to be happy. Sometimes he was less sad, but that wasn't the same thing at all. The drugs and alcohol and pain helped to distract from the brokenness inside but they only offered temporary reprieve. They were nowhere near what he needed to truly begin picking himself up. Losing Judah hit him the hardest, too; he stopped believing in himself completely after that.

It just went to show how much that good man meant to him, though. Judah really... truly loved him. And Alejo let him go. He could have maybe tried to get Judah back but... a little part of him still felt inadequate. And besides, Judah was in love with that other man and things were just too weird now to ever be the same again. With a sigh, he closed his eyes.

"What a night."

Okay. It was just a kiss. Not even a real kiss, actually. A gentle... peck to the cheek. But it still made Seth's ears heat up. Funny how something so chaste could make him feel... something less chaste. Not anything like he was stirring in the groin area or anything like that. Just that it made him feel like he was twelve years old and harboring a crush on somebody that just noticed him for the first time. Foolishly happy. Absurdly... pleased.

"You're welcome." He almost did something dopey like... pat him on the head but he refrained. Somehow, that seemed patronizing. Alexo shared something deeply personal with him and Seth did his utmost best to sooth frayed nerves and maybe, hopefully, help heal Alexo from the inside out. If he had somebody to be his ears and let out what ailed him, he could heal from it. Because now he could look on it and reflect without so much pain in his heart. Now he could see it from another viewpoint.

Seth only smiled at the superhero comment. That was partly why he fought, too. Not because he wanted to become a superhero or some kind of vigilante. But watching them as a kid, that made him want to be cool and strong and tough. That was what got him interested in MMA fighting down the line. The other shit--the learning to listen, to digest, and dispense some kind of helpful advice--that came from somewhere else.

His papa. He was Seth's ears growing up. And he learned from what his father said--but mostly from his actions. Whenever Seth or his brother or even his mother had a problem or something that ate them up inside, it was to him they went to. Seth watched him, and he learned--to listen and not to hear; hearing somebody wasn't the same as listening to them. It was something that was nurtured in him by his father, just as his tendency to respectfulness came from his mother.

It hurt his heart, though, watching as Alexo closed his eyes, to know that Alexo couldn't go to his family to be heard--to really have them listen and understand who he was. But maybe... someday they could reconcile. It was hard to believe that such loving parents could throw away their son forever. Seth gently stroked Alexo's arm as he turned his head into him, relaxing and drifting off into sleep.