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When Roman entered the VIP lounge, he found himself pleased to see that everything was as he remembered in the large, oval room lit by neon lights hung on the walls, the only elements bringing some colors in the otherwise black and white tone. Against one of the circular walls stood the bar, where a handful of formally dressed strangers drank in front two waitresses, too busy crafting cocktails to pay them any real attention.
One of them -a short middle-aged woman with tired eyes- rushed up to him and his two bodyguards and greeted the little group, then led them to the coffee table surrounded by two leather seats on either side of it and a couch that faced the wide glass window.
Roman sat down on the couch while the goons took the seats, put his arm over the back of it for comfort, ordered three beers then scanned the rest of the club downstairs once, twice. The window muffled the noise and gave an overall view on the rest of the club downstairs, from the DJ on her elevated stage to the dancefloor swarming with ecstatic people, and finally the other bar counter, with lights that shone from the inside of the liquor cabinets and highlighted the customers around it. He did find some interesting profiles, yet they weren't worth much of a second thought.
It was a secret to no one that the Black Mask had a specific type. Not to the goons that let his "type of people" walk in his office, at the very least. Generally young, in their twenties or sometimes older when he felt like hopping on a new challenge. Both sexes, knowing that limiting oneself to either Adam or Eve was a waste of life, and relatively attractive, seeing as pretty faces and sinful bodies lying down on one's bed for the night was easy on the eyes and rewarding to the ego.
But all pretty things didn't have the drive to genuinely blow his mind the way he sought. Only the type in question could entertain him successfully, the playful, borderline cunning ones who knew without a doubt how valuable they were and capitalized on it shamelessly.
The waitress came back with the drinks, the check and a polite smile then disappeared just as fast, leaving his bodyguards to resume chatting as Roman got up and drew closer to the window. The lighting was quite dimmer in the lounge, allowing him to watch cautiously. A guy here, out with his little friends. A pretty woman there, looking too hammered to stand on her feet. He was about to take a sip of his beer when his gaze fell on something he wouldn't believe existed if he only imagined it.
Sharp, clear eyes caught his attention before anything else, the young man's low eyebrows darkening his stare, making it look locked on Roman. He stood there, relatively strong forearms resting on the bar counter, his chest slightly exposed by the two first buttons of his shirt that had been opened by himself or God-knows-who. Nothing in his behaviour gave off his interest, except for that look from the corner of his eyes. Roman didn't pretend not to have seen and felt it, that invitation full of pride and disdain ; they were both on the same wavelength and it was perfect, he was perfect, even more so when he curved up his plump lips and smirked, daring Roman to make his move.
Roman pondered the pros and cons of that sudden encounter, then came to the conclusion that life was too short for him not to unwrap its gifts. He took a bitter sip of his drink and eventually motioned him to come join them upstairs with a quick head tilt. The young man finished his own drink, left the bar and glanced up one last time before disappearing into the crowd.
"You," Roman called out to one of the waitresses walking by when he turned around "be a doll and tell the bouncer to let in the young man who's about to arrive."
- Certainly, sir."
she went to the door and slipped the word to the guard on the other side. One of Roman's own bodyguard frowned :
"You sure about that?"
- Not really," Roman answered when he sat back down on the couch,"but you don't see what I've seen everyday."
A minute passed by until the young man sauntered into the room and took his sweet time gauging the place from left to right. One of the bodyguards rose from his chair and drew closer to him when he was a few feet away in order to do an usual body search, checking for any type of hidden weapon. Before he had even been given any instruction, the boy lifted his hands and put them behind his head as it was expected during such a process, an obvious sign that he had gone through it in the past.
"He's clear."
- Good, you can leave now."
The bodyguards exchanged a worried look, but they knew his words were an order disguised as an invitation out of courtesy. As soon as they exited the room, Roman watched him grab one off the seats and drag it around the table so that they ended up facing each other, then he flung himself down on it. The waitress came back to take the newcomer's order, but before he had to chance to say anything, Roman told her to only bring a bottle of vodka. The boy didn't protest yet it was obvious he was slighty irritated by that action.
"What is your little name?"
- You don't care about my name." His voice was a bit deeper, more measured than what one would expect from someone who looked like they hadn't reached their mid-twenties yet. There was a clear hint of smugness that, surprisingly enough, didn't sound unpleasant to the ear, quite the contrary.
"And what makes you say that?"
"I can't really tell…" he ran his hand through his hair then let it slide slowly, deliberately down the exposed side of his neck, right above the collarbone "...just a feeling."
- Very well then," Roman said, trying to ignore the move that almost succeeded in distracting him, "Do you know who I am?"
- Of course I know, half the city does. That's the reason I'm here."
The waitress brought the bottle along with two glasses, that she put on the table. Right before she poured the first drink Roman stopped her with a quick hand sign.
"I'll do it myself."
When she hurried back to the bar, the boy frowned out of curiosity then asked :
"Cultural habit?"
- Close, upbringing habit. In my family, we only served drinks ourselves to close relatives or any other known individuals."
- But you don't know me?"
Roman poured the clear drink in the other's glass then his own, smiling to himself, waiting for the realization to hit.
"Oh…" he added with a light chuckle that dug dimples in his cheeks, "...now I gotta tell you who I am, don't I?"
- Or else seven dreadful years of bad luck and suffering will fall upon me." Roman leaned back in the couch, tasting the vodka as a little victory for the pleasant turn of events.
"All right then. The name's Jason." he said before taking a long sip out of his drink then winced right away. "How can you drink that? You hate yourself or something?"
Roman's trail of thoughts was stuck on the name he had been given ; boyish, sharp, a sound that remained easily in one's memory, and he reflected on how well the word fitted the personality. His gut feeling hinted that he would grow quite fond of those two syllables, at least by the end of the night.
"I can order milk and cookies if adult beverages are too much for your delicate taste buds."
Jason shot him an annoyed glance, "Don't underestimate me, I can handle overpriced rotten juice, I just need it to have some quality."
- Anyway, you told me you wanted to see me because you know who I am, elaborate on that."
Jason emptied his glass and said :
- That's quite right, I'm not gonna "beat around the bush" like you all bourgeois folks say ; I need a job, one that pays relatively well, but because of some... issues with law enforcement I'm pretty much unemployable in the eyes of any goody two-shoes human resource worker. But I know that people who are already hands deep in the black market don't discriminate, do they?"
Roman swirled his drink as he pondered Jason's case. To provide a job was not the first or second thing that crossed his mind when he layed eyes on him, but the idea in itself wasn't so much of a inconvenience, seeing as low-tier goons turnt out to be a valuable currency. Very basic errands, like fetching or selling small supplies could pretty much be run by anyone who needed the reassurance of a decent paycheck, the downside remained one's moral compass when it came to said errands. Which brought yet another question :
"How do you feel about casual violence? Both towards you and from yourself?"
Jason stared at him in disbelief, let a few long seconds go by, and at last a laughter that sounded as clear as crystal echoed across the room.
"Hey, see this?" he answered once he had composed himself as he lift up one hand in the air, which bore bruises and cuts all over, then formed a solid, proud fist, "I use it almost every night on dudes who think they're the toughest thing around and have a compulsive need to prove it. Why do you think I've had legal issues ?"
Roman sneered at the irony then took his glass to his lips :
- Nobody gets a criminal record for self-defense.
- Correct, and nobody called it self-defense with the way they looked when I was done."
Roman was midway through his sip when he froze, struck by the other's implications. The sheer serenity with which Jason had stated his actions, as if they could be defined as a minor routine, had taken him aback ; even better, it had pleased him on a deep level, since it showed that Jason could very well be a different breed compared to the average henchman, both in spirit and efficiency. He refilled the other's glass and decided to dig a bit further.
"You're a big boy, huh." he stated more to himself than anything, "There are opportunities like the one you seek in every block of this city. Why come to me?"
Jason shrugged then downed half of his drink and leaned forward in his seat.
"I told you I can't explain it, just a feeling." He had emphasized the last word in an almost intimate way, holding Roman's full focus despite the blasting lights and the music behind him.
"I see. Well, fresh workforce is essential to any business, but you're not the only one in line, you'll have to earn the opportunity to work for me. You should know that I, during most of my rare lost hours, like to be impressed. If you manage to do that I'll consider it."
- "Impressed"… in which way?
- Your pick, pretty boy."
A few seconds of silence passed by, during which Jason let what seemed to be a discreet but genuine smile show on his face, his act of bravado getting undoubtedly a bit shaken by the compliment. He was quite good at all that, that game of stares and implications, Roman thought, but twenty year olds remained twenty despite everything and it never took much for some of their vulnerability to appear through the veil.
Jason stood up and kept looking at him with those vivid eyes when he rounded the table and sat down next to him. He finished up the rest of his second vodka, hummed with the caution of someone getting used to the taste, then said :
"Ok, I can do it right now"
- Do what?"
As soon as Roman uttered his question he noticed the glint of a blade at the far corner or his field of view and he felt a cold object against his throat. Jason, who had pulled a knife on him, checked the people across the room, then answered :
"Do this, since I figured we're in those people's blind spot."
It was not the first or tenth time a weapon had been drawn on him, and Roman, pushed by the habit rather than a barely existent fear asked him casually :
"Now that's interesting, how did you hide this one?"
- Years in and out of juvie teach you a lot of useful skills, including but not limited to smuggling sharp items."
The answer wasn't surprising at all but the act itself had been unexpected, even quite exciting in many ways. There was no witness, no one to stop the boy from acting on a whim, and that wicked behaviour had awakened Roman's own playfulness.
"Tell me," he spoke clearly, waiting for a satisfying answer "do you have what it takes to use it, right here and now?
- Maybe."
Roman put his glass down on the table without a care in the world then grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the knife, before redirecting the weapon forcefully towards Jason's throat, precisely his jugular vein.
" "Maybe" is no good mindset. It's either yes…" he pressed the blade harder against the soft skin and took delight in seeing the way the anxiety rose in Jason's features, how those damned lips had the reflex to part for him, "...or no." He eventually eased his grip on the other's wrist, took the knife and tossed it on the table between the bottles and the glasses.
Jason rubbed the small cut in his skin, wiping out a drop of blood in the process as he groaned in discomfort.
"That's fucked up."
- Play stupid games…
-...win stupid prizes." he admitted with a lighter tone, even scoffed afterwards, his stiff shoulders loosening up.
- Although it was indeed a nice surprise, I'll give you that. Not nearly enough but we have a starting point here." Roman said as he watched the crowd swarming with increasingly drunk people downstairs. He felt the strong vodka buzz beginning to take over him as well, putting him in a more easygoing state.
Beside him, Jason inspected the horde downstairs too and asked out of the blue :
"How does it feel to hover over people and look down at them without anybody realizing it?"
Roman snorted, but did note the interest in his tone.
"It feels right."
Jason nodded slightly and kept staring at some random point in the distance, deep in thoughts.
"I guess a lot of things feel right but who knows if they really are. Breaking boundaries everywhere, beating up anyone who crosses mine, never giving a second chance... when it comes to 'good' and 'bad' the line blurs a bit too much at times, to me anyway." he drew closer and reached out to play with Roman's hair, speaking in a calm and secretive way, giving off the feeling that he was confessing his wrongdoings to an accomplice.
"And you," he whispered, "which one do you see in guys like me?" It took some serious strength in Roman to not let his last trace of self-control vanish and take the boy right there and then, out in the open, the second he heard the breathy voice utter the question.
The heady scent of his deodorant floating in the air along with his warm breath landing on his neck hit Roman's senses a bit too hard for the latter's own good. The boy belonged to a special breed, a type that was dangerous way beyond physical violence and Roman had guessed it at first glance, however having him up close deepened the temptation. Whether Jason himself knew about that powerful effect remained the question keeping him on the edge.
"I only see what's truly there, but boys like you don't really like telling the truth. Sneaky, shifty...riveting. However, that alone wouldn't make you last a week among the folks I deal with. I want more than playing grown ups and carrying a scalpel around, you should be the weapon, not that piece of metal."
"I see...How do I do that?"
- The question you should ask yourself is not "how", it's "why"." Despite a long criminal record the boy had the savvy to find more secure, low-profile jobs to pay the bills but he didn't, which meant Roman had not grasped a key element in the whole equation yet. He lifted Jason's chin up with a finger and added :
"There's something more that you want from all of this, tell me."
Jason blinked several times, apparently a bit unsettled at first, then took a long look around, from the club downstairs to the uppity folks upstairs.
"Fuck these people," he said " there's no saving anyone or their mentality in a city like this, and it's not for lack of trying, believe me. For so long you'd think they would care, make an effort to stop accepting bribes for silence and use each other everywhere you'd go, squats, food banks, even cops who only clock in at eight AM to get a paycheck and make quotas with abused kids... I've seen it all with my own eyes. I used to think that guys like you were the problem, but you're not, not really… so I told myself..." he paused and sighed deeply "...just be the best at what they do."
Roman sensed the raw frustration in his speech, and in a ominous way found himself gradually more and more entertained by his troubled state of mind. He was sitting next to a ticking bomb heating up over the span of what must've been several years, threatening to blow up its surroundings and destroy itself in the process.
" What is it you care about the most?"
- Difficult to describe," Jason glanced down for a brief moment, and during that strange time lapse one could've sworn his features softened and made him look a full decade younger, "I guess it was a some sense of doing things right, be a source of justice, but now it's…
-...yourself."
Jason nodded without any other response.
"Then you're right, it's not about things, actions or people being good or bad, big boy." Roman placed his hand on the side of his throat and stroke the cut with his thumb, studied it for a while. He enjoyed a bit too much the way the neck muscles shivered under his touch, and how despite finding himself so inappropriately exposed the boy let him keep his grip on a vital body part. "It's all about how it feels. "
Roman pressed the wound tighter, leading the boy to muffle a yelp of pain behind his teeth, the strangely arousing tune he waited to hear.
"Now tell me something else ; how does this make you feel?"
Once again Jason chose not to reply openly, but Roman did catch that signature twitch at the corner of his mouth, like a barely hidden smirk.
"Definitely a vicious one... Good, self-indulgence begins there, let's explore yours a little bit."
Of all the self-indulgent things he planned on doing that night, a coming-of-age ritual hadn't been part of the plan, but then again plans always changed when the unexpected walked in. He dug out a little bag no bigger than a matchbox from the inner pocket of his suit and held it to Jason's face.
"Do you know what this is? Do they teach about this in schools nowadays?"
- They do, 'depends on what kind of schools you're referring to." Jason said as he side-eyed the cocaine, "You learn about that pretty quickly when most of your classes consisted of searching for some coins on grown men who OD'd on sidewalks. Never took interest in taking that along."
- You will learn with me."
Although the statement had in no way sounded like a question, Jason wore for a brief moment an air of serious pondering. He stared back and forth at the bag and Roman.
- Then let's go." he said at last.
The bold little tease sat there, toned arms spread across the couch back, mind and body begging for the man's attention, which willingly or not made the man feel no less than the desire to count him among his worthiest possessions. Irrespectively to the fact that his mindset might lead the boy down a spiral of short-term pleasures and even worse temper issues, or rather in hopes that it would, Roman rejoiced. Every detail in the boy's behaviour screamed that he was already heading towards that perverse direction anyway and Roman found no benefit in fixing lost kids whose life had never been built to begin with ; however, he did find some pleasure in feeding their vices.
He opened the bag, dropped a line of coke across his index finger length and snorted it swiftly, then handed it over to Jason who did the same, not without one last short hesitation when the powder still lied under his nose. Something like ten, twenty seconds passed before the boy looked back up at him with pupils widening in his clear eyes until they seemed unnaturally large. Jason frowned in what came across as a mix of confusion and wonder, a normal reaction from a beginner who had taken such a dose, intense euphoria was flooding his mind. Roman began to feel the sweet rush in himself too, noticed how the colors in his sight had brightened up and the way the young man's chuckles echoed so pleasantly from beside him.
"You like things like this?"
Jason's every movements were more energetic than before, he was shifting in his seat, assessing everything he saw under the influence with a new eye.
"You're kidding? I live for shit like this."
"This is simply a tiny aspect of my lifestyle, there's a lot more I could show you. From now on you work for me," he leaned even closer, his breath grazing Jason's ear, making sure the boy would register every word whether he wanted it or not, "I'll make you feel alive over and over again."
Jason let out another complicit chuckle and maybe due to the words themselves, maybe due to the indecent proximity in public, he kissed him so frantically that he left a bite wound on Roman's lower lip.
"Do it." he replied softly, the intoxication, his age or both making him more oblivious than he should be. But big boys with a big mouth and pretty eyes always felt like they knew what they were doing anyway.