Fight

Chapter 1 When questing hands found his hips and hot breath blew on the back of his neck, Nathan smiled and shut his eyes to the chaos of the laser lights and strobes. The world slowed down; the techno-house soundtrack faded into the background, until he heard nothing but the rush of his heartbeat, and the pharmacological cocktail in his bloodstream tangoed with the vodka. He reached behind him and grabbed two handfuls of skinny, denim-clad thighs. Less than half an hour, and Nathan had a taker for the offer he was broadcasting with eyes, mouth, and hips. The interested party was tall and lanky, and that suited Nathan fine. He ground back into the stranger’s groin. Palms slid around to frame Nathan’s fly, fingers pointing south. Nathan’s head lolled side to side on a bony shoulder, and together, Nathan and the stranger began to move. All around them men and boys jostled for position. It was hard to call it dancing—hard to call it anything but foreplay. A tremulous voice trapped in a corner cage of Nathan’s mind whispered logical nothings that were all but lost beneath the lake of hidden desire and bad drugs. The voice whispered to please, please get out. Please don’t do this. Not again. “Haven’t seen you around before,” said the stranger in Nathan’s ear. What the hell was that? A pickup? An observation? f**k that. No talking, no asking, no answering. The only thing worth anything was the doing. Nathan couldn’t have connection, so here, he sought oblivion. Nathan wondered if he could get through this without seeing the guy’s face at all. Then Nathan was moving, one hand clamped around a narrow wrist as he stalked through the manic throng. He kept his eyes on the easy prize, ignoring the stares, the hazy looks, the licked lips, and the bared torsos of glitter gods. The world switch-swayed, and he staggered. Lights and sound streaked by him like banshee ghosts, and Nathan waited until the urge to vomit passed him by. The stranger pressed against Nathan’s side, and Nathan cussed, regaining balance and keeping his death grip on the kid’s arm. He raced for the rear of the club. Reality slowed again when he found the door leading into the men’s room and pushed it open with too much force. Wicked red light poured around them. Mirrors ran along the wall, covered in God knew what, and the music was dull, so Nathan could hear the sounds of piss hitting porcelain and skin hitting skin in the stalls. He paused, panting and shaking his head. Sweat dripped into his eyes. “That one,” said the stranger, lower now: a rumble of lust. A finger tipped with a dark-colored nail jabbed toward an open stall, and Nathan got moving, yanking the man along for the ride. A sideways two-step fit their bodies inside a narrow chamber. The slam of a door reverberated in Nathan’s muddled brain. The slide of a lock made Nathan’s c**k twitch, and the guy kissed Nathan’s sweaty neck while fumbling to get Nathan’s jeans undone. Standing passive to the onslaught, Nathan read odes to fuckers past written slap-dash on the sticky wall two inches in front of his nose. “Blow you?” The man got his hand down and around Nathan’s d**k, and Nathan’s jaw went slack. His hips started moving of their own accord, and one palm skated for purchase across the grime while the other one reached for his pocket. “f**k me,” Nathan ordered, handing back a rubber and single-shot of lube. There was no answer, just breathing and a faster stroke to his c**k. The stranger let go and tore open the condom’s packet with his teeth. “Hurry up.” Nathan rested his forehead on his arm. A moan pierced his ears—from behind him, from next to him, from hell or heaven or who knew—and Nathan shuddered. The stranger hesitated. “Could you?” “Goddamn it,” Nathan groused, though he shouldn’t complain. It was just that Nathan was having troubling blinking and standing at the same time. He fumbled but managed to shove his pants down to his thighs, presenting his ass, and his hole spasmed so hard, he bit back a whine. God, he needed this. May not want it. May not like it. But need it, he did. Spreading his legs and bracing for balance with one hand, Nathan reached back to grab a covered c**k. Mr. Hesitant was full and eager, not so large but not so small. An average d**k for an average asshole. “Come on,” Nathan said, pulling and guiding. Mr. Hesitant slapped his palm next to Nathan’s hand on the partition. Dark hair covered the stranger’s skin, and he had nice, well-formed fingers, short nails with chipped polish, and the stamp for the club was smeared on his wrist, right below a bracelet made of skulls. Mr. Hesitant was a young goth-geek type. Excellent. “Jesus.” A grunt and Mr. Hesitant’s tip was against Nathan, a gasp—his, theirs, Nathan didn’t know—and hips rolled, pushing. The latex was slippery, and Mr. Hesitant took it easy on Nathan. The film of slick and the caution were enough, but Nathan stared at the concrete floor and made a horrible noise of pain behind pressed lips. It had nothing to do with what Mr. Hesitant was doing to his ass and everything to do with what Nathan’s craving for destruction was doing to his mind. “All right?” Mr. Hesitant panted. Nathan snapped a sharp nod. He shifted, adjusted, accepted at a high price, and a hand steadied and smoothed over his lower back to rest on his side. “s**t, tight.” Mr. Hesitant’s forehead dug between Nathan’s shoulder blades. The music changed, and a riff of dissonance rendered it nearly impossible to hear Mr. Hesitant at all. Nathan thought the stranger said something else, and murky voices deep within Nathan wanted to make the douche stop speaking and start slamming, but the length inside Nathan finally sank, and the shadowy desires scattered. “Oooh, f**k off and f**k me.” Nathan must have said that louder than he thought, because someone on the other side of the stall cackled. “Go to hell,” Nathan said, too quietly for anyone to hear, and then nothing mattered because the guy started to give Nathan what he craved, and Nathan didn’t give a s**t about anything but getting off with another man’s c**k inside him. Fingers dug into Nathan’s flesh. “Oooh, yeah,” the man moaned, angling and making Nathan want to let go of the noises he held trapped in his throat. Nathan turned his head and bit into his own arm, muffling breath and need, and he reached to palm his d**k and stroke. He couldn’t help the shudder, and Mr. Hesitant rubbed Nathan’s flank, touching and teasing. It made Nathan want more than he could, so he grunted and pitched himself backward, meeting the strokes and making them both gasp. Nathan wanted it over, wanted it to last forever, wanted for once not to be such a contra-f*****g-diction. “Harder,” Nathan ordered, voice so rough it sounded like he’d been crying. He hated and burned at the same time, but Mr. Hesitant obeyed. With a sigh of relief, Nathan stroked himself faster, and on it went: gasping, cursing, holding air, letting it go, bodies meeting one another. Urinals flushed, the music changed pulse, and Nathan’s breathing hitched. “f**k,” choked the man behind, inside, against him, and Nathan wanted to kill Mr. Hesitant for getting off so easy and so fast. Like this was a piece of cake, a normal night. For a second, Nathan saw himself from the stranger’s point of view: Nathan’s broad back, wet blond hair, straining form. To the other man, Nathan was a sweet offer in a dirty room after a quick round on the dance floor. Simple. So damned simple. Then there were lips on Nathan’s neck, dampening the painful longing and fueling the greedy kind. Teeth bit his earlobe, and the stranger put a hand over Nathan’s on his c**k. Mr. Not-So-Hesitant-Now slapped Nathan away, and Nathan whimpered when his flesh registered a stranger’s touch and rhythm, helping the light at the end of the tunnel burn brighter. “Damn, man.” Nathan almost turned around, but he stopped the impulse. “Shut up,” he wheezed. “You’re so fuckin’ hot.” “I said…” Nathan moaned. The strokes sped up. “Come on.” “Please shut the f**k up,” Nathan begged, the words cutting like glass shards in his heart. Self-hate swelled, aimed for Nathan’s underbelly, and threatened to overtake him, but then his d**k trumped his brain again, and his eyes squeezed shut. “Yeah,” the man whispered when Nathan sprayed the wall. The softened c**k slid out of Nathan’s body, and Nathan’s legs trembled. They breathed together, frantic and otherworldly. A stall door banged, a high-pitched voice bitched about the price of shots, and in a flash-fire second, Nathan wanted to be home, in bed, with someone he knew and could hold. The ache scorched, the truth incinerating the last shreds of Nathan’s buzz, and then, thank God, Nathan crash-landed on charred, metaphysical earth. Time sped up to match Nathan’s racing heart, and he licked his lips. “Get out,” Nathan said, forehead pressed against the bend of his elbow. “I—” “Get. Out,” Nathan repeated but with more volume. “Whatever, man.” Nathan held it together until the door smacked into his side, and he slammed it shut and locked it. Turning and holding up his jeans, Nathan barely managed to catch the back of the commode before he threw up his guts, most of the vomit making it into the bowl. “f*****g mix.” Nathan spat. He stood hunched and blinking at his own mess, the sequence of events that got him here blurring by his eyes. Standing in his shitty apartment, staring down the temptation of another silent Saturday night and all be damned, but it hadn’t even been Nathan’s conscious choice to grab his gym bag and throw in some clothes. Pulling open the sock drawer, lifting the false bottom, and snatching up the plastic baggie full of pills he’d sworn a thousand times never to use again, Nathan was out of body, checked out, thank you much, and then he was driving west on I-40, heading out of Knoxville, Tennessee and aiming for Nashville. It was no New York, but it was bigger and easier to become a random guy checking into a Holiday Inn Express. Another sucker looking for a high, Nathan broke open pills and snorted lines off the granite bathroom countertops. Under the flickering fluorescent, Nathan’s blue eyes had been demon-clawed with red. Then there’d been driving he shouldn’t have done, parking that’d been a miracle of mechanics and straight lines, getting through the door, and sitting at the bar with Reason and Better Sense, who made piss-poor companions. He had no defense. Sometimes the urge to escape beat him down so hard, there was no other option but to curl into the fetal position and promise anything if only it would stop tearing open his insides. He hated himself for giving in, but he hated the hatred too. Being crazy felt like the real Nathan. The Nathan who went to work Monday through Friday, sat in his office, took meetings, went to the gym with his friends, and waded through the bullshit of the mundane—that guy was a p***y. That guy was an illusion built on habit and practice, and he was getting more indistinct by the day. The Nathan curled up between a stall wall and a toilet in some club while high and recently f****d by a kid who might or might not have even been legal? Now that guy was obviously the better man. Nothing said upstanding, righteous citizen like emotional repression, illegal drugs, and meaningless s*x. Nathan spat, shivering now. Someone banged on the door, and Nathan ignored it as he wiped his mouth on the shoulder of his too-tight T-shirt. His ass felt raw and his d**k sticky. His body ached, and his stomach churned. He could always lie down right here and sleep forever. They could mount a sign on the wall over his head: HERE LIES NATHAN THE ASSHOLE. LAST FAKE STRAIGHT MAN STANDING Yeah, well, more like crawling, but maybe they’d give him the benefit of the doubt. Nathan weakly chuckled and got his clothing together. He snorted when he thought about how Laura would kill him for taking such risks. Nathan’s laughter became manic as he unlocked the door and wove his way through the bathroom and beyond. He staggered through the rippling tide of bodies. The youth in the faces startled him. God, when had they all turned into children? Nathan got past the bouncer and greeter at the front door, and a chilly autumn breeze licked his skin once he stepped into the after-midnight air. It took him entirely too long to find his black Corvette coupe, longer still to make the key work. He had no idea how long he sat in the seat with the doors locked, fogging the glass with his breathing. The panic started to set in. That swift wave of, Oh God, what have I done always followed Nathan’s anonymous nights on the town. He was getting less and less careful. Sure, he was in another city, but Nathan remembered when he used to do this s**t only after a flight out of state. His job often sent him alone and packing for long weekends, and Nathan would take advantage. He’d lose control once every quarter, not once a month, and never so close to his own turf. If there was one thing Nathan knew for sure, it was that the world was always a smaller place than one thought, especially if one had something to hide. Nathan gulped and thanked God he had no idea who’d just f****d him. If a strange kid cornered Nathan on the street and tried to say anything to Nathan at all, Nathan could be genuinely confused. Say I don’t know you and mean it. Because Nathan didn’t get wasted, lose control, or f**k guys. Oh no. That wasn’t like Nathan Hunt at all.