Rentboy On Montague Street [CHAPTER TWO] NC-17
Title: Rentboy On Montague Street
Rating: NC-17
Chapter: 2/?
Pairings: None presently, possible S/J later (presently pre-John). Not S/L.
Themes/warnings: male prostitution (therefore dubcon) drug abuse, some violence, mentions of past OC child cancer.
Summary: Twenty-two year-old Sherlock plunges headfirst into the gritty London underworld of prostitution, selling his body to fund his cocaine addiction. His brother Mycroft, distracted by work and his rising power in political affairs, is too distracted to make the proper enquiries, and Sherlock sinks deeper and deeper into trouble, too proud - or ashamed - to ask his family for help.
A/N: Not a Secret Diary of a Call Girl style rentboy!fic; more my exercise in slightly minimalistic writing, with a gritty theme. This fic aims to highlight the dangers of the underworld and substance abuse realistically, though I have no personal experience of these.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Notes for this chapter: You will notice that there are some things here which are not canon and other things which sort of are. For a start, Lestrade is still a Detective Sergeant, which is a rank below DI. Bear in mind we're still a few years away from the start of the BBC show, hence some things have to be taken into account, like rubbishy mobile phones! Also, DI Athelney Jones is a real character from the Sign of the Four, and I don't like him. You'll notice that. Plus, Sherlock's illness is a real side effect of cocaine use, so be warned!
Sorry for slow updating. I hate my life. Ill, stressed... Nothing that won't pass though, yay! And I will clean up any formatting issues on Wednesday. Sorry to be a pain!
JANUARY, 2005
Sherlock waits until his birthday for the monophonic, tinny ring of his Nokia to break the silence of the flat.
It does not.
His Samsung, on the other hand, rings constantly.
“I can’t,” he says, dully, into the phone. “I’m ill.”
“Still??” Michael’s voice echoes threateningly down the static line. “Fuck this, Alexander, I’m too old to play your games. What is it this time, a headache? You work for me, kid. I give you a fucking place to live, I keep you fucking safe, I even make sure your drugs don’t give you some kind of fucking AIDS or something. And what do you do for me? You’ve missed the holiday season now, all the fucking tourists all hyped up about double-decker buses and Union Jacks and English boys, they’ve all gone home, and you didn’t get a penny off them. You’re freeloading off me, is what.”
Sherlock says nothing. He can feel the dull flush of his hot blood throbbing along his arteries, begging for cocaine. He rolls the cold metal spoon handle between his fingers; he’s got the powder, but he needs to dissolve it, first. The cocaine will fix him, will take away the stinging aches in his knees and spine that have been jabbing at him since Boxing Day.
“I don’t care what you have to do to get better,” Michael continues, voice hard. “But get well or get out. I’m not Oxfam, lad. I don’t let people live off my charity. If you’re not earning your keep, I’ll give the flat to someone else.”
*
Far from improving things, the cocaine assaults him, violently and without mercy.
On Tuesday, he ends up cancelling the two appointments Michael has bullied him into making because he cannot move his jaw without his brain screaming out in pain, nerve endings so ablaze he thinks they might implode. Michael sends him a series of scathing, derogatory texts until Sherlock turns it off and shoves it in the wardrobe, under the box of school ties and cheap plastic cuffs that he keeps for the clients who like to think their kinks are extreme.
On Wednesday, it’s worse.
He wakes on the cold, ruthlessly hard kitchen floor where he passed out the night before, cheek damp with sweat where it presses against the tiles. His spine is locked in place, rigid from the curve between his bony hips up to the contorted vertebrae between his shoulder blades. There is an incessant ringing noise in his ears; he tries to shake it off, like a dog, but his neck is excruciatingly stiff.
It is terrifying.
As soon as he can stand he does, and he can do nothing but pace, pace, pace around his stupid, tiny Montague Street flat, knees painful and sore, jaw stiff as iron, until it’s too much and he passes out against the side of the bed, eyes rolling back into his skull.
When he comes to again, his body is aching and something is pulsing in his brain, but he can walk, and he makes it to the kitchen sink and lets the cold stream of water splash over his face, dribbling into his open mouth; it’s cold and fresh and surprisingly stabilising. The metal rim of the sink is cool against the flushed skin of his fingers, but he can still feel his calves shaking with suppressed exhaustion, ankles threatening to roll in and collapse unless -
Beep.
He ignores it. Mycroft can fuck off and die -
Mycroft.
He pulls it from his pocket, damp fingers scrabbling on its hard plastic shell, hating himself for the weak clench of his chest, for this ridiculous weakness, and -
It is not a text. It says battery low.
White-hot tears of anger and frustration well up in his eyes and he bats at them with his sleeve, but they will not stop coming and coming, mingling with the tap water, stinging his eyelids, his cheeks, his mouth where they run in along the tap water-tracks to sting at his lips. He can see his distorted reflection in the silver tap, face red and blotchy and weak.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there, braced against the sink, waiting and waiting until his chest stops heaving and his eyes stop leaking. His tongue feels thick and useless in his mouth, and his gullet has that uncomfortable feeling of a dry ball lodged in the junction between nose and throat.
Emotional lability, he tells himself, taking in a great, rattling breath. It’s the cocaine, again. It must be.
It must.
MARCH, 2005
“What the bloody fuck,” says Detective Sergeant Lestrade, glaring at the offending toaster. It has charred his bread into a black square vaguely reminiscent of Pompeii. He considers eating it anyway - he’s too close to being late for work to make any more - but his phone beeps again and he is flying pell-mell out of the front door, sans toast, shouting goodbye to his wife before he remembers she moved out two years ago. He’s halfway to the nearest Tube station before he catches sight of a vacant cab and dives in hastily, thinking about the car he’d buy if the arses at the Met would actually give him his long-overdue promotion.
By the time he gets to the Yard, however, he is cool and collected; to all outward observers he’s back in control as he strides past reception, making it into his cubicle at 9:01 with his tie straight and his hair combed neatly, close enough to punctual for no one to notice.
Of course, he’s barely picked up his pen before he’s interrupted by the most irritating Detective Inspector in the Yard.
“Hey,” Athelney says, leaning over the cubicle partition in the least professional manner possible, gently-glowing cigarette in one hand and Styrofoam coffee cup in the other. His dark hair is slicked back over the wide-set planes of his broad skull.
“Morning,” says Lestrade brusquely, suppressing the urge to remark that Athelney’s head is blocking his light. Athelney Jones is the sort of thirty year-old who still parrots all his father’s opinions on left-wing politicians in an attempt to sound well-educated and buys the Financial Times purely to be seen carrying it around. Lestrade hates him.
Athelney, fortunately does not seem to have noticed. “Heard about Big Jim?”
Lestrade stares at him blankly.
“Jim Callaghan,” says Athelney, impatiently, as if Lestrade is stupid; as if Lestrade hasn’t spent the last year sorting out the messes Athelney makes every time they are given a new case. “Ex-Prime Minister. The one that fucked it up in, what, 1970? 1971? The Labour guy.”
1980, Lestrade wants to say, gripping his pen more tightly. You were barely out of nursery, you stupid git. He can’t stand kids like this, who think they know everything there is to know about politics because they’ve read the headlines of the Daily Mail a few times. Lestrade wouldn’t use the Mail to wrap his Friday night fish-and-chips.
“He’s dead,” Athelney goes on, carelessly. “Liver failure and some other stuff, I dunno. Good riddance, I say.”
Liver failure.
Lestrade’s hand strays almost unconsciously to the old, creased photo taped to the bottom of his computer monitor. It’s a few years old, worn at the edges from constant thumbing, but he can’t bear to replace it.
It’s one of the only ones of the entire family, taken a year before Tom died, before the subsequent divorce. In the photo, Helen’s soft arms are wrapped tightly around his shoulders, smiling down at Lestrade as he balances a pair of three-year old boys - Daniel blonde and smiling, Tom dark-haired and thoughtful - on his knees. Little Carrie, tomboyish even then, leans against Helen’s hip, dimpled and freckly in muddy dungarees. The angle isn’t quite straight, none of them are looking at the camera, and it’s a little blurred where Daniel’s little arms windmill frantically to keep his balance, but Lestrade has never cared. His family is beautiful. Was beautiful.
“Oh yeah, the kids,” says Athelney, noticing his thumb sweeping over the family photograph. He’s still hanging over the partition, a few crumbs sticking to his expensive tie. “How’s it going then? With Hattie and the twins? She still letting you see them on Sundays?”
“Helen,” grates out Lestrade. He can feel the cheap plastic of the biro’s barrel threatening to crack under his thumb. “Her name’s Helen. And they’re triplets.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” says Athelney, not sounding sorry at all. “But they’re not, really, are they, if there are only two of them now?”
“I’ve got work to do,” says Lestrade, loudly, and stabs vengefully at the power button on his computer with his pen.
What the fuck is the point of his life?
It’s barely a quarter of an hour before Athelney is back, harassing him about some e-mail or other, as if Lestrade can’t see the bloody notification symbol on the system, as if he isn't planning to get to it after he’s finished covering all Athelney’s fuck-ups on the Cournalson case. He wouldn’t do it, if not for the rest of the team. If not for London.
“He keeps showing up,” whines Athelney. “We’ve got no idea who he is. He never says anything, just lurks around crime scenes. Personally I think he’s a -”
“I’ll look at it,” interrupts Lestrade, testily, because today is not the kind of day on which he can deal with Athelney Jones’ prejudices and bigotry, and opens the e-mail with a few angry clicks of the mouse.
It’s a video attachment, so he lets it buffer while Athelney harps on about the mystery man and Lestrade pretends to listen; he’s on the edge of losing his job, after all.
The video finally loads, and Lestrade hits play instantly, though it’s mainly to shut Athelney up.
The first minute or so consists of monochrome CCTV shots of the back of a lanky, dark-haired youth at various different crime scenes. In the first, he’s leaning against the window of a coffee shop as policemen swarm around the dead bodies of three blonde women, killed in a drive-by shooting outside Holborn; in the second, he’s steadying himself against a lamppost while officers tape off a section around a theatre Lestrade can’t remember the name of.
It goes on, still after still of security feed showing the kid at different crime scenes, always leaning against something, always avoiding the camera, until he comes to actual footage of the kid, the picture blown up large and slightly blurry.
The kid - he needs to stop calling everyone under thirty a kid, he realises - is sprawled on the floor, clearly having fallen over - what? His own feet? No one around him seems to care, though; bodies sweep past the youth as he struggles to his feet, massaging his knees, and Lestrade frowns, thinking of the stills of him leaning against windows and telegraph poles and letterboxes; it jogs a memory, somewhere, but he can’t place it.
The boy straightens up awkwardly, as though it hurts to move, and Lestrade can’t help but notice the way the shirt billows in around the kid’s concave stomach and too-straight hips. His wrists are skinnier even than the small cuffs of the long-sleeved shirt that ends just above the bump of his wrists - and that’s wrong, already, because he can see the sky and it’s bright white; on CCTV that almost certainly makes it one of those anomalous boiling days in the middle of March that send everyone into a tizzy about climate change. Not a day for long sleeves. Junkie, he thinks, distractedly; there’s a more PC term for it, these days, but he doesn’t care.
Then the lad’s head turns, looks directly up at the camera, and Lestrade’s world goes to hell.
*There’s not much of a resemblance, he tells himself, ten minutes later, locked in a staff toilet cubicle with his forehead leaning against the smooth taupe plastic of the bolted door. He can hear someone pissing into the urinal against the other wall. Probably one of the new constables; no inspector would grunt like that, like an adolescent bull. Fucking moron.
There is the short hzzthwup of a zip, the brief, rapid hwssshwssh of a tap peppered with the squelch of the liquid soap dispenser and the brief ripping of paper towels, and then the door is creaking open and slamming dully back into its frame, thudding wood on wood, and Lestrade is alone again.
It’s embarrassing, really; he’s a Detective Sergeant. This is going to set his already overdue promotion back several months. It’s been two years, Greg, they’ll say. Maybe you should take a holiday. And Athelney - God, Athelney will be insufferable.
But the kid reminds him so much of Tom that it hurts to even think about it, to rationalise it.
He tries to tell himself that it’s only because he’d been thinking about Tom a few seconds before, because both of them were in his line of vision, Tom in the creased photograph and the kid on the screen. Really, if he wasn’t so wound up, it would never have occurred to him at all that some twenty year-old junkie might in any way resemble his dead five year-old son.
It’s just the hair, he tells himself; the same loose mop of dark curls desperately in need of cutting, the way Tom’s had been before the chemotherapy the doctors had promised would help. That and the slightly hunted look on his face, the permanent feeling of being an animal in flight.
And his body. Lestrade, like any red-blooded male, went through the phase of liking girls - and blokes, but that’s been a long time - with lean, skinny bodies and endless legs. But the boy’s body is nothing like the long, slim lines of Heather Thomas or Christie Brinkley that he remembers jacking off to in his youth. It’s emaciated, skeletal; Lestrade could snap him like a piece of old, dead wood. He remembers how thin Tom got; how he couldn’t eat, would poke at his stomach with a confused expression, would turn his head away and ball tiny fists when Lestrade made desperate aeroplane noises, weaving the spoon through the air, not stopping until Tom forced out a laugh and Lestrade pretended to believe it was real.
All at once, he’s filled with a sudden rage; he’s seen kids like this one too many times before, drugged up to their eyeballs, chucking their lives away for a shot of heroin or morphine or cocaine. He’s heard their excuses; it makes them feel alive, makes them feel powerful. He wants to shake them all, sometimes; shake every last junkie in London until they see sense, until they stop turning up dead on his watch, in his paperwork, in his inbox with Athelney Jones breathing down his neck.
It’s fucking hard to work for the police, he thinks, and then, Jesus, just a kid.
Just a stupid, irresponsible, unappreciative kid, chucking away the life Lestrade would die to give to Tom.
Just a kid.
MAY, 2005.
Nowadays, Sherlock Holmes thinks about crime scenes when men fuck him.
He has a vague feeling that there is something slightly amoral about this, but it helps him avoid thinking about whatever he’s unwilling to admit the cocaine is doing to his body.
At this moment, he is on his aching knees on the bed, gripping the flimsy headboard as the grey-haired client slams into him messily, without technique or sensuality. It’s unpolished; clumsy. The man’s sweaty balls slap dully against the flushed red skin in the cleft of his backside, latexed dick thrusting harder than is really comfortable. But he’s paid in advance, thinks Sherlock, so what does it matter?
Sherlock prefers this, somehow, to the men who occasionally want what he’s mentally taken to calling ‘the boyfriend experience’; the ones who like to do what they so sentimentally refer to as ‘making love’. He tolerates them - partly because they fall asleep in his bed with their limbs all spread over him and are warmer than blankets, but mainly because they pay extra for the privilege of having him kiss them from their noses to their toes and back up again, whispering false words like ‘I love you,’ and ‘darling’ all the way.
They never return the favour. There is that much to be grateful for, at least.
When the man finally finishes rutting into him, collapsing onto the creaking bed with a piglike grunt and a limp spurt of come, Sherlock is sore and aching, but he pulls the condom off the man’s softening dick anyway, looking away as the man pulls his trousers back up over his flabby knees and tucks himself in.
When he’s gone, Sherlock lies alone in the dank, sweaty bedsit, deliberating the finer points of yesterday’s case, hands folded over his jutting ribs, ignoring the sensation of sweat drying on his skin and the dull ache in his backside.
He wants cocaine, but he’s too stiff to get up and make up the solution, now. He’ll do it in a minute, he decides, staring at the pattern of mould on the ceiling. He’s got better things to think about, even for a moment.
Criminals.
Fascinating.