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The first time he meets her, her skin is soft underneath his fingers. There is only one scar: a pucker along her ribs, where she had gotten a kidney replaced. He's willing to accept the thought that it was a necessary surgery, that the organ had failed, and so she had sought surgery to replace it and save her life.
She presses against him, the same way the older girls do in the alley, but he pushes her away. She's just fourteen, a loud and bright slip of a thing, and he won't sully her with his dirty hands so young.
He gives her the first hit for free, easing her body of the craving it had developed after surgery. She grins at him, and he twists his mouth into a smile back. His expression is almost genuine.
She comes back to him a week later, bringing cash with her. He doesn't want to accept, but she shoves it into his hand. He neatly sidesteps when she tries to knee him in the groin in her anger about his refusal.
It's only when she pays does he abandon his misgivings and press the Zydrate gun against her shoulder. He feels her chest heave and hears the heavy sigh of relief she lets out. She stumbles away from him and slumps against the wall of the alley, a drugged smile on her face.
He doesn't mind shooting her up because she's young. He doesn't mind doing it because she's fairly pure, not yet a slave to the knife like all the other women who seek out his company are.
No, he minds being her dealer because she is Carmela Largo, daughter of Rotti Largo, and if her father found out about this, Graverobber would be dead within hours.
Carmela, of course, doesn't care.
She comes and goes. Sometimes, she goes to other dealers. But none of them hold her interest long. She always comes back to him, the tall one with pale eyes and hair full of dirty streaks of colour. He's beautiful in a way that confuses her, proper in a way she never would have expected from someone on the streets.
He fascinates her. She doesn't just want him for the drug, she wants to pin him down and explore him, tear him open and understand his inner workings. She wants-
She wants, she wants, she wants, she wants….
"I changed my name," she announces as she enters his alley. He raises an unimpressed eyebrow. He already saw. It was all over the news. The tabloids are probably having a field day.
"I'm aware, Amber," he tells her, a fifteen-year-old girl whose appearance has already completely changed twice, just in the year he's known her. From the new shape of her nose and cheeks, and the way her eyes are now purple, he suspects she's working on a third time.
She looks offended that he beat her to her announcement. This newest set of lips isn't the best for pouting, he thinks as she attempts the expression.
"I want a hit," she demands. He's waiting for his usual crowd still, but she's here early. She's got him alone, and he suspects that's exactly what she wants. With a sigh, he holds out a hand, twitching his fingers and gesturing for her to hand over the cash. She smirks at him.
"There are other ways to pay, dear," she purrs. She's not as seductive as she thinks she is, but she's not totally ineffective. Her bodyguards are standing far enough back that this is a private conversation. Idly, Graverobber wonders who their true master is, and how much they report to Rotti Largo.
"Forget it," he tells her. She looks offended again. "I'm already providing Rotti's daughter with street Z, I'm not foolish enough to sleep with her as well." Amber studies him thoughtfully, cunning hiding in the mind behind her stolen eyes.
"Who says that Daddy needs to know?" She asks, and makes a dismissive gesture at her bodyguards. They leave the alley to stand at either end of it, keeping watch. She stalks towards him. "It's not like you're the first man I've slept with he wouldn't approve of."
Well. He's not proud to admit it, but he gives in, and lets her push him down onto the cold of the ground. She's no longer soft like she was a year ago, but there are patches of skin he still recognises as hers and hers alone.
She doesn't seem to understand why he only has a handful of surgery scars, and not an excess like everyone around him does.
He doesn't recognise her face anymore, as the years go on. He sleeps with her more regularly now, forcing her to pay in cash some of the time, because she has money and he needs to eat more than he needs sex.
The sex, he supposes, is fine. She's less desperate than his other customers. Just as willing to auction off her body, but while the others will let him do absolutely anything to them for a hit of Z, she pulls him into a power struggle. Never lets him win or take total control of her just because she's a slave to the drug.
It's nice. He doesn't like her, but it's nice. She's a touch of annoyance and excitement he otherwise wouldn't get in his life.
She changes her last name, too. He gives up on keeping track of her appearance or how many times she's changed herself. Twice a year is now a far memory, with her undergoing surgeries every week. He suspects there are more that he doesn't know about, ones where she goes to other dealers to escape his judgement.
Whatever. He doesn't care much. It gives him more time to focus on his other customers, and to lure new ones in. It leaves him with more Zydrate he can sell for cash instead of sex.
She doesn't seem to care much either, but she always does come back to him.
She's plastic and scars and stolen skin under him. He's a good actor, and his body will respond to touch, but she disgusts him. He hates the feeling of her under him. Hates seeing all the surgery scars she has. Hates thinking about her younger self, when she had stumbled into his alley nearly a decade ago. Tiny and scared and new and pure.
Some nights, he sits alone and runs his hands under his shirt, feeling skin that is real. Skin that's his, that has always been his. It's not stolen from a corpse. It's not grown in a lab. Except for his heart and thyroid, everything about his body is truly his own.
He's a rare bird, he knows.
It disgusts him.
It disgusts Amber, too, but in a different way. While she tells him about surgeries he could undergo, improvements he could make, all the while thinking he's wrong for not changing himself so completely, he tunes her out. He's disgusted because he's the only one still pure and everyone else isn't. She's disgusted because he's the only one still pure and everyone else isn't.
He's disgusted because they change, and she's disgusted because he won't.
But usually, their arguments are short and are about the drug. About payment. She's more than willing to give him her body, but cash she's stingy with. He takes what he can get, pushes for more, and tries to avoid his other customers getting it into their heads they don't have to pay with money.
The sex is fine. Never great, but fine. He gets off, usually gets them off as well, if they aren't too impatient, and then they get their hit. He doesn't touch when he doesn't have to. They can run their hands over his clothing as much as they want. He doesn't want to touch their skin more than he must.
Maybe he's prudish. Maybe he's cruel. Maybe he's old and jaded.
But some nights he thinks of fourteen-year-old Carmela, still mostly in her own skin and with wonder in her eyes, not yet hooked on the knife, and some nights, the tears finally come for this wretched, wretched world.