Work Text:
She wasn’t Ricki’s first love. But she was, perhaps, the very first to feature in many of his fuzzy fantasies. Even now, when he tried to recall what she looked like, the memories were more visceral than optical: rush of heat along his temples, the vague sense of wrongdoing.
It was a miserable summer. One of the last he would spend in Penang. Back then Ricki didn’t know, or care about the impending war. He was more concerned about being the pale kid with yellow hair, in a world full of dark curious eyes.
Worst of all, his own body was staging an insidious revolution; a deep ache in his bones that would jolt him awake at night, the abrupt, overwhelming awareness of a certain part of his anatomy.
There was this girl in particular.
They hardly talked. But she sat with him during team sports, something they were both excluded from for whatever reason. She’d perch about three feet from him, swinging her legs back and forth. And for many summers afterwards Ricki would flash back to the brown of her ankles, the peeks of skin when her cotton skirt flared up.
At night, he gripped himself before he even knew what it meant. Before he learnt the many crude names for the act.
---the jut of bone just above the heel, the little dip beneath, the rounded curve of a calf, paler than the rest of her. And whatever daunting, shadowy details that remained tantalizingly out of sight---
He never lasted long, and the relief was always temporary.
At sixteen, within the four walls of Changi jail, he didn’t find his attraction towards men any harder or easier to comprehend. The notion itself wasn’t taboo, just hadn't come up in any conversations he could remember. Like many other things he’d discovered all by himself---stealing, skipping classes, smoking---Ricki felt no real shame in it. Even though instinct told him to keep it quiet.
After all, his father wasn’t just a preacher in the verbal sense.
The guy was like no one he’d ever met before: muscles coiling beneath skin dotted with scars, shaved head, mouth forever set between a scowl and a sneer. But what made Ricki’s breath catch and his stomach drop, was the tattoos---spanning the entirety of his back, writhing and twisting as he sweated away in the yard.
A roaring tiger, with blood dripping off its teeth. Rumour had it that each drop of red represented a person he’d killed.
The truth was, for all his rebellious act Ricki’d had a pretty sheltered childhood; rich family, decent neighbourhood. Changi was his first encounter with the grittier side of life---thieves, murderers, bullies, as well as ordinary people, helplessly swept up by the Occupation. And to think (to hope) that, in the aftermath of apocalypse, the little bothers of life would evaporate was, as he discovered, laughable. He was still subject to chills, hunger, itches, and more often than not, teenage hormones.
He never got the chance to sneak a look in the showers, never dared. Plus, he’d be lucky if there was any sludge left for scrawny youngsters like him, bottom of the food chain. He imagined it often enough though: water slithering down those chiselled planes, over the intrinsic ink, allowing him to run a trembling finger over---
Ricki whimpered, biting down on his lip to swallow the sound. Back firmly pressed to the wall as his inside twisted and roiled.
He left Changi with all four limbs, a few more secrets, and went on to get a tattoo as soon as he could.
Rose was one of a kind.
She walked up to him one evening, stole his shot, before proceeding to drag him back to her place by the belt loop.
Rode him all night long like some honest-to-god cowgirl.
She swore and fired pistols like the best of them. Her fingers stank of cheap cigarettes. Little heart shaped face streaked with soot beneath those copper curls.
Ro tasted like cherry coke and mint gum and something earthy---sometimes come, sometimes booze, always a little like sin. Every kiss lingered and bruised like a vicious goodbye. She could be soft too, oh she could, sleepy and desiring in the early mornings. Or as Ricki came home after a shipment. Moulds her curves to his front, nipples poking through two layers of fabric, a throaty ‘hey’ slipped into his waiting mouth.
The thing she liked best about him wasn’t his mouth, but his hands. Callused but far from rough, on her and around her and in her. Over the years the image of Ro crouched over him has worn suitably thin. Her bare knees caught and squeezed his waist, her quivering thighs, tousled hair spilling forward with a dreamy swish. The heated core of her, smooth and slick, gripping his fingers snug as a glove.
The thing he liked best about her was her scent: a lowly, flowery perfume, mixed with her own warm odor. It wafted about them like a whisper, getting mellower as sweat poured out of her. It wasn’t even sexual, it was---
He’d still recognize it anywhere, across a thousand miles and through millions of people.
They clawed and clung to each other with the fierceness of two parentless children. And when the time came, they simply disintegrated, taking the best and worst pieces of each other with them.
He wasn’t lying. Irina really wasn’t his type: too skinny, too pale, too much rigid dignity.
Eyes too sharp and smiles too knowing.
He let her douse the light and close the shutters. Fumbled with the zip of her dress in the dark, trying hard to be careful, to be gentle. What he remembered most about that night was her near constant trembling. Back then he took it for inexperience. Later, later he could hardly bear to reminisce.
The next day they drove around the dock in his Ford. Irina behind the wheel, going through the gears in exact thirty mile increments. At 120 the road pulsed beneath them, a tide. Ricki tangled a hand in her wild locks, absently stroking the tender skin of her nape (where they shot her, according to the report. He dry heaved into the toilet for five minutes, throat raw).
When she turned to smile at him, arms in the air, the look in her eyes made him grip tighter. He’d seen that look enough times in the mirror; when an operation was collapsing in on him, when he just wanted to go home, to crawl back to his little flat, and sleep the sleep of the dead.
He thought of her once like that. The clean, non-descriptive smell of her, her tentative fingers, and was sobbing into the pillow before the mechanical heat in his belly fizzled out.
Ricki doesn’t come to Tattersall’s often. He isn’t one of those twitchy eyed gentlemen who sneak in to pick up sailors and telegraph boys. Most of the time he prefers Sombrero, where students loiter around after dark, bright eyed and thinking they’re being subtle. He likes the shy sort who meets his gaze with a telltale flush. Likes coaxing them out with a few soothing words, a casual thumb on their pulses; the push and pull as satisfying as tumbling them into bed eventually, if not more.
Sometimes though, he gets a whirr under his skin that sends him scurrying towards dingy pubs, deserted railway stations and public parks. Before the night is over he’ll either be throwing punches or getting a rough buggering against the wall, head blissfully empty. He’s not picky about which one it is.
Tonight, the place is filled with buzz-cuts just beginning to grow out. The very air saturated with the smell of men: men in leather, men in worn jeans, men looking for a fix, an out. And Ricki is finding it hard to relax after the long absence, left leg jiggling under the table. There are more than a few lashy come-hither looks, but no one has laid a hand on him yet. Good thing because he’s not sure if he wouldn’t lash out on instinct.
He needs to be a lot drunker for this to go anywhere.
Several shots and beer chasers later, he stumbles into the bathroom. Bladder screaming for relief but at least his shoulders aren’t around his ears anymore. One more round and he might just be ready to catch a piece of tail.
All of the cubicles are occupied. Judging from the noises, they are going to stay that way for a while. Ricki snorts, turning the tap on and slicks his hair back into some resemblance of effort.
‘…Christ!’
Ricki freezes. He’s always had a thing for posh accents; some fucked up, lingering romanticism from growing up in a British Colony, he supposes.
A thump---
Head thrown back, neck exposed, a lower lip bitten raw. Ricki has driven enough people to that knife-edge himself.
---something small and hard scrapes against a solid surface.
Buttons, cufflinks, a wedding ring perhaps. Skidding along the tiles as the owner tries to gain some white-knuckled purchase.
Ricki realizes with a jolt that he is, for all intents and purposes, listening in on some random guy getting off. And that thought, which should have made him run shame faced for the door, rooted him to the spot instead.
A few shaky exhales, followed by a muted gagging noise. Ricki grips the side of the wash basin, heat churning in his bones: the involuntary jerk when you hit the soft, moist part of the palate. When you know you’re practically down the other person’s throat.
‘So bloody hot…’
The breathy sound of those words makes every hair on Ricki's body stand on end. He’s still reeling from the punch of lust to his gut when someone exits, slanting a curious look at him as they rinse their hands.
Ricki staggers blindly into the empty cubicle and flips the bolt.
Unbuckling the belt with shaky fingers, he shoves the boxers down. Well past the starting line even before he wraps a clammy palm around his dick.
As luck will have it, there comes a soft chuckle right next to his ear. So low Ricki is sure he’d miss it, if he hasn’t somehow mashed half of his face against the divider.
‘You are always like this?’ That voice rumbles, velvety rough. ‘Always so eager?’
Distantly Ricki hears a groan, echoing his own. Which is probably why the guy hums, sounds high with it.
He turns, easing the pressure off his shoulder so he can get both hands free. He wonders if the guy could feel it too, when Ricki slumps against the thin plastic, hips pistoning into his own fist. A little too rough, just how he likes it, equal parts punishing and desperate.
The guy’s words are losing their defined edge, slurring into something softer, darker. Ricki can’t quite catch what he’s saying, but the sound still burns, like a mouthful of tequila downed too fast.
There’s a rustle, clothes moving out of the way, and the wet slap slap of hand moving over slippery skin is unmistakable. Ricki shudders, heart in his teeth. The guy was panting, hard, a little hitch at the end of every inhale. And for some reason that tiny noise drags up a razor-sharp image in his head---long, lanky limbs splayed out, soft wool bunching around mid-thigh, cock curving up over pristine shirt…
He grips the head tight, jerking it short and fast. Sweat trickles down his armpits. The noises coming from next stall a blur, twirling in and out of focus. His orgasm almost takes him by surprise, a full body lock-up that makes his knees buckle.
Ricki wipes down with some tissue and waits, breath haggard. Counting two sets of footsteps leaving the cubicle before he moves at all.
The tap water is wonderfully cool against heated skin. He splashes some onto his face, gulps down a few mouthful too. From the corner of his eye he catches his own heavy lidded reflection, grins; unplanned interlude notwithstanding, the night is still young.
A tall shadow budges in, muttering. Ricki glances up and promptly chokes. His brain takes in all the details without comprehension: the blond curls damp with sweat, the unconscious fluidity in those hips---the kind that only comes after a good shag.
That voice. Of course, of fucking course.
They stare at each other across the sticky bathroom floor, wide-eyed and unblinking.