Chapter 10 #2
“Must have been, yes. So that’s what he confirmed, but I also think… I think he might have, like—” His intake of air caught in his throat. “Sold his—I think he might have worked as a callboy. To get by.”
Tristan hissed through his teeth. When Joshua lifted his head, blinking, and met Tristan’s eyes, he appeared speechless for once. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, frowning. Joshua could empathise.
Several seconds passed before Tristan settled on, “Did you ask him?”
“No.” Dropping his head back down on Tristan’s shoulder, Joshua wound his fingers into Tristan’s T-shirt. His voice came out even lower than before, a small, helplessly rough whisper. “What if I’m wrong? I mean, this isn’t my—I can’t force him to tell me something like that.”
“Jesus fucking Christ on a stick,” Tristan said, heartfelt, and Joshua snorted.
“Basically.” He paused. “Maybe I am wrong. But he keeps saying that someone like him can’t be with someone like me.
And some other things he said… It all fits.
It’s, like… It seems so unlikely, but if I look at all the clues together…
” He raised a hand and dropped it again.
“It somehow seems even less likely that they’re not connected. ”
Again, Tristan was silent for a moment, then he said, “So that’s why you asked me all this stuff. About Kels.”
“I didn’t mean to offend. Sorry. I really didn’t mean—I just don’t know what to think. Like, at all.” Joshua cleared his throat, but his voice still came out in a thin rasp. He felt endlessly heavy. “But with the way you reacted, you do think it’s a really bad thing. What Leo maybe did.”
“Not bad in a way that makes him a bad person. Or, like, cheap or something.” Tristan sounded as though he was trying to feel his path through a tunnel, one step after the other.
“I think it’s just… the sense of powerlessness.
Selling your body like that, for sex, it seems like an act of desperation.
It’d make me fucking sick if Kels ever had to resort to that.
I mean, no one would want that for the person they love, or even just care about. Or for anyone ever, I reckon.”
Joshua tried to recall what Leo had said in the van—something about choices, about not being a victim.
“But it doesn’t necessarily mean weakness, does it?
It could still be a choice. What if it made sense at the time?
What if he made decisions that he wouldn’t make today, but he was young and dumb and needed the money?
I think…” Joshua’s lungs constricted. “I think he’d really hate it if I pitied him. ”
Tristan blew out a heavy breath. “Honestly? Unless he actually enjoyed what he did, it’d be hard not to pity him at least a little. Because those must have been some tough circumstances he faced.”
“He didn’t enjoy it,” Joshua said immediately.
It was barely out when he wondered how he could possibly know that, but…
somehow, he did. He had all the pieces, really.
He had a collection of little moments which—God, which assembled into a mosaic that made sense.
There was Leo’s early claim that he’d believed sex to be overrated, and then…
Oh, and also, how disinterested he’d seemed in relationships, like someone who’d lost all illusions.
Where I come from, the only currencies are money, sex and power.
More often than not, they’re one and the same.
No. Leo hadn’t enjoyed it.
But then, there was also the way he’d reacted to Joshua’s touch that night—how he’d opened up and strained into every kiss, shaking as he’d fought to stay still while Joshua had sucked him off in the bath. Want to stay inside you forever. Want you to.
Leo was in love with Joshua.
Oh God. Leo was in love with him.
He’d said so, and Joshua had been an arse about it.
He’d told Leo it could hardly be true when Leo didn’t act like it, when he wouldn’t trust Joshua with the whole truth about himself.
If Joshua was right in what he suspected, he couldn’t possibly blame Leo for struggling to come clean. This was… massive.
Tristan squeezing his hip was what brought Joshua out of his thoughts. He startled and glanced at Tristan’s profile. “Sorry, what?”
“I asked why you think that,” Tristan said. “That he didn’t enjoy it.”
“Because of the way he acted when we had sex, like it was… like he was almost shocked sometimes, at how good it was? At how it could be… mutual? And trusting.” Sitting up a little straighter, Joshua pulled one leg underneath him on the bench.
His skin felt brittle. “Like, I’m not sure he’d ever laughed during sex before.
He seemed so surprised by it. And he was all…
uncertain, but also confident about technical things.
Like, there’s—he didn’t expect me to prep him.
He thought he’d have to do it himself, like it was—fuck. I should have realised. Why didn’t I—”
“Because you didn’t know,” Tristan cut into the sudden rush of words tripping out of Joshua’s mouth.
But I should have.
Joshua choked on air. He coughed until his throat felt dry, his face pressed against Tristan’s neck, Tristan hugging him close and patting his back. Joshua’s eyes were burning, and he squeezed them shut, his breathing evening out.
“If he’d enjoyed himself back then,” he managed, “he wouldn’t be saying that a guy like him can’t be with a guy like me. He wouldn’t be hiding his past. He wouldn’t be trying to help some street kids make their way out, to make better choices than he did.”
“So essentially,” Tristan’s voice was low and serious, filled with awe, “he’s a guy who went through hell and dragged himself out by his own bootstraps.”
Joshua’s heart performed a slow, sad twist in his chest. He needed a moment to raise his head, and his voice sounded as raw as his entire body felt. “Pretty much. I mean, I think he’s had some help, like James giving him that chance, but… he took it.”
“Gotta respect that.”
Joshua forced some air into his chest. “He said he’s in love with me.”
There was no surprise on Tristan’s face; he merely nodded. “Yeah. After last night, with the way he was looking at you—I figured. Why else would he put himself through an evening with people who hate him? What did you say?”
Joshua choked on an empty laugh. “That I don’t believe him.
” Now that he had to put it out there, it sounded truly horrible, and he hurried to add, “Because I knew he was still holding back, so I thought he didn’t trust me, and if he didn’t trust me…
I don’t know what I thought. I only worked out the hooker thing after, and if I’d known—” Abruptly, he cut himself off.
For several moments, they were both silent. The music was still seeping in from somewhere in the flat, and Joshua was grateful for that tiny slice of normalcy.
“You know,” Tristan said quietly, a cross between incredulous and dismal, “if this is true, if you’re right… Fuck. You and him would be a huge scandal. The Prince with a rent boy.”
“Former rent boy,” Joshua corrected. Even as he said it, he knew it would be a minor distinction to many.
“Either way, it’ll be sleazy. People won’t care what he’s done since then, how bloody well he’s done for himself. They’ll only focus on that one little thing.”
“I don’t give a shit about what strangers think,” Joshua bit out. “They have no idea. They don’t know me, they don’t know him, and they sure as hell don’t know us.” Then he shook his head, shoulders sagging. “Except, I mean. There is no us. Obviously.”
Tristan’s tone was devoid of judgment. “So if it turns out you’re right, about what he’s done… You’d want him just the same. You wouldn’t be bothered?”
The question pulled Joshua up short. Could he honestly claim it wouldn’t make a difference? That it wouldn’t change his view of Leo at all?
Stalling, Joshua reached for his glass and washed the bitter taste in his mouth down with some juice.
Shit, this was… God. It was just… a little hard to digest. There’d been strangers with their hands all over Leo, strangers who weren’t Joshua.
Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. And it would have been different if Leo had wanted all of that, if he’d had a lot of one-night stands just for the hell of it, because it had felt good. Because it had been fun.
The little clues Joshua had caught suggested Leo hadn’t had fun.
But the thing was… The thing was, even if Leo had offered sex for money, then that didn’t change who he had become. Which—oh. Was that what he’d meant earlier, when he’d said that Joshua did know him, that Joshua knew who he was now? As though the past was a stepping stone.
Carefully, Joshua set his glass back down in precisely the same spot as before, a ring of condensation marking the place.
“I would hate,” he began, nearly inaudible, “that all those people got to touch him without deserving it. When he probably didn’t really want them to.
I’d hate that he ever was at a point where he felt he had to do that, and I’d wish I could change it.
But…” Turning his head, Joshua met Tristan’s gaze and held it, felt his voice gain an edge of confidence.
“But if that’s part of what shaped him, then it’s a part of him. So.”
Tristan sent him a small, genuine smile. “You’re in love with him.”
Oh.
The words bounced around Joshua’s skull, stirred up dust and upset his sense of balance. Something in his stomach gave, like plummeting through a slow-motion fall. “I’m in love with him,” he confirmed, toneless. Then, “Oh God. What do I do?”
The last part came out panicked. He gripped Tristan’s shoulder, felt wide-eyed and disoriented, utterly shaken.