Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/12713415. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: M/M Fandom: Yuri!!!_on_Ice_(Anime) Relationship: Otabek_Altin/Yuri_Plisetsky, Otabek_Altin/Jean-Jacques_Leroy Character: Otabek_Altin, Yuri_Plisetsky, Jean-Jacques_Leroy, Emil_Nekola, Isabella Yang Additional Tags: Recreational_Drug_Use, Bad_Boy_Otabek_Altin, Graffiti, Fuck_Boys, Daddy Kink, Pet_Names, Pining, Kitty_-_Freeform, hypersexuality, Angst, Humor, Explicit_Sexual_Content, Crime Stats: Published: 2017-11-14 Chapters: 2/4 Words: 6482 ****** God Monster from the End of the World ****** by djdaddybek_(llyn) Summary Otabek struggles to justify his life as a graffiti artist until the day he lays eyes on Yuri. If god can make something so beautiful, Otabek can, too Notes hide_the_virgins,_say_your_prayers     please check out this beautiful art of graffiti_artist_Otabek by kawaiilo-ren See the end of the work for more notes ***** Chapter 1 ***** He’s got a dishwashing gig every night until one in the morning. Cool with his tats and his attitude, and, bonus, he can wear headphones, blast beats. Everyone else he ignores. When he gets off he buys beer, stops at his place to pick up whatever drugs, then walks to Jean’s via one route or another, catching handstyles. At Jean’s there’s more drugs and the crew: Witch and 3some almost always, Ncess, Selfy, and Husk most days, too, and everybody on Friday and Saturday nights--even the girls, posing together silent as siamese cats on the battered, sunken, cigarette burnt loveseat, sharing a clove. From there they mob deep to a party or two or three, if the party isn’t at Jean’s, and there’s a chance to get laid with any drunk little kitty that strays too close to Otabek and too far from his friends. “What's a kitty?” 3some asks, eyes red, passing to the left in the dark backyard of the house party, the bass inside a muffled thud. “A pretty boy shorter than him,” Jean says. Then, “Hey!” when Otabek plucks the joint from his mouth in retaliation. “Not cool.” “So you have a type,” 3some says. “I have a specific type,” Otabek says. “Wow,” 3some says. “Can’t relate.” After the parties it’s the hour just when it’s darkest and time to paint. The silent trainyard, the rattle and hiss of their cans, Jean by his side--the others’ whispers carrying on a night breeze from the next railcar down--dressed all in black, ears pricked like dogs for the crunch of gravel under boots. He feels alive, for the moment. He gets home from the yard at eight or nine covered in paint, sneezing up colors. That is, he gets home if he doesn’t go snuggle up with a sleepy kitty somewhere cozy instead. He loves their cramped twin beds, they way they suck his fingers to keep from moaning, their pissed off roommates. He hates to sleep alone. Even if he does sleep by himself--rumpled black sheets on a mattress on the floor--he dreams of kittens. There are so many. The boys in the crew tease him: pussy-wild . Maybe so. But give Otabek a pair of kitten cheeks to bury his face between, and he’s happy. He’s a simple man. He likes art school kitties the best. They’re easiest. He’s become a connoisseur of kitty art the longer he stays put in this dying town. The long-threatened hostile corporate takeover of the few dirty streets he considers his own is now well under way in the city. Each day dawns newer and cleaner and colder. Sharp, neat lines like a prison cell replace old, paint- stained brick. Everything is replaced, but not improved. The landscape is pockmarked with logos. It’s up to Otabek to spray over clown red, fast food yellow, and facebook blue. He is nature taking back the land. Tear it down and let the city try again, because it can do better than these bright, toxic monuments to empty spending, empty eating, empty living. What poor excuse for the future is this? Sometimes the only cure for his ennui is silly kitty art, is filling some pretty kitten's head with ideas of how he’s gonna break through and be the next big thing. He's gonna teach him how to paint, throw him down on the crew. He does love their art, with all their ideals right there smeared on the canvas for anyone to see. He’s not that kind of artist. But the same kitty telling Otabek in breathy gasps that he’s right, he will bedifferent and n-new, yes, daddy, right there--that kitty will be the first one drinking iced chai in a shirt from KLM, first in line when the new Teaman opens. Sell-outs. It was like that with all of them. Kitties were good and bad. Hippie kitties had drugs and jokes but wanted to get smacked around and told they were dirt. Party kitties were sexy but might not leave once he got them in bed. Strays might rob him, or they might just get weepy and want to go home. The dirty ones wanted to be clean and the clean ones dirty. That was the thing about kittens, they never knew what they really wanted. Trust one and get scratched. Love one and watch him run away. But Otabek knows now after years of practice how to grab a kitty and treat him just rough enough. And he knows how to walk out, leaving them whining for more over texts, over dms, over the phone, in sugar-sweet voicemails, in person--at work--making a scene. He knows how to drive kittens crazy.   Otabek slouches through his shift, nursing a molly hangover from a rough Sunday night that’s cut his attention span short along with his temper. His will to live, too, is dipping dangerously low. The light hurts his eyes. His shirt scratches at the road rash he’d earned by falling ten feet off a fence onto the broken pavement. The smear of his blood on the ground had been funny at the time, to him and to Jean. They’d pretended to see shapes in it, lagging behind the others, laughing like jackals under the crescent moon until Witch came back for them, exasperated. It hurts now. He hadn’t come with the kitten, afterwards, either. He fucked him for hours, until he was chafed red and raw and the kitty a wet mewling mess beneath him. He’d rolled out of his little cat bed still hard, and went for a walk, catching hollows and fill-ins with a can of seafoam in broad daylight. He was acting foolish. Now he wonders how hard he hit his head when he fell. He never was that graceful, like the others. No sleep. No come. No hope. No mix, no beats, can give him comfort, not even his guilty pleasures. The worst thing about a molly hangover--and Otabek’s had plenty--is the self-doubt, like maybe he’s just a scumbag--not an artist--and the cops are winning, and the system, too. He looks out the porthole door of the kitchen with a frown and blinks twice. There’s a boy sitting in the restaurant in a patch of afternoon sunlight. All alone and so pretty, a baby kitten frowning, too--like Otabek--though he makes it look more appealing. He’s delicate, perched like a blown glass figurine on his chair, his phone in his hand, hand fine as a fan brush--from his slender wrist to his long fingers, he’s a work of art. His bottom lip’s stuck out. He’s blond as daylight. Looking at him, Otabek forgets to breathe. It’s like a little angel has been revealed on Earth by the sunshine. No. It’s like a real angel has appeared, the kind with eyes and mouths and wings upon wings, uncountable. The kind that shriek and blind. A monster. It’s possible he’s sniffed up some leftover molly, but he gets sudden goosebumps, pulling his headphones down around his neck, reverent as if he were receiving an oracle. Wings upon wings, that’s what it feels like to look at him. The rushing sound of wings. A shining tower of light. A soldier of god. Even though the kitten hasn’t noticed him it feels like he’s looking right at him, right into him, whispering against his ear: that the world is an ashtray, yes, but the phoenix rises from the ash. Otabek can’t explain it. But he feels himself take his first deep breath in a day, or a month, or maybe it’s been years. He wants to go say hi, but his feet won’t move. Then he considers: he’s dirty, paint flecks in his hair, wet from the dishes--no. He doesn’t deserve to kiss this kitty’s pinky toe, let alone say hi, let’s fuck sometime . If nothing else, his grandpa or grandma--the older couple Otabek notices sitting with him, half in shade--will sniff him out. A perfect kitty like this--no, no. They must see it all the time. Otabek should be humble. And he’s too young. Too powerful, too. Otabek watches him undrape himself from his chair and go, never looking up from his phone. He strains his neck, looking out the porthole after him. Then the kitten turns a corner with a flick of his slender hips and Otabek feels the dark cloud roll back into place, and the thunder of his thoughts returns. Months pass. Otabek looks for him everywhere and finds so many little blond kittens instead. The crew goes on a graff tour to befoul other cities for a change, sleeping on the thin carpet of their friends’ apartments in low places. Still, Otabek finds his way most nights into golden-haired kitties’ soft beds, and if that wasn’t enough, when they get home there’s new freshman i n the dorms. His back and chest are scratched red and infected. He’s always got a few hickeys. The boys in the crew tease him: cat scratch fever . He can’t help himself. Jean says he only smiles when there’s a kitten in his lap, but what else is there to smile for? He’s jaded. Drugs. Fights. Running from the cops. The city’s closing in around him. Then one day he gets to Jean’s around two in the morning to find him alone, doing rails. “Where’s everybody at?” Jean shrugs, “Busy. S’just you and me, Beks.” Jean, ascendent. Everyone knows King JJ. He went all-city last summer and got famous, ended up in Graff Kings , ended up in The Channels cutting a fine figure in the yard in a gasmask, guaranteeing him a ten year supply of groupies. He’s even got some rich girlfriend now he keeps as far from his friends as possible. Doesn’t mean he’s not a scumbag, too. But he’s taking it better than Otabek. “Taking what better?” Jean asks. “I don’t know,” Otabek says. “The life.” “Is this like--” Jean winces, “retirement talk? Are you trying to leave the crew?” “No, I’m not gonna retire,” Otabek says, while realizing it’s exactly what he wants to do. Jean looks skeptical. “I’m just saying, don’t be a quitter, Beks.” Then his eyes do that puppy dog trick, going soft and sweet. “And you know there’s no crew without you. What would be the point?” He offers, magnanimous, a line of coke to change the subject. Otabek graciously accepts. “There’s a kitty in here you’ll like,” Jean says, throwing him the latest issue of While You Were Sleeping . All the usual stuff--flicks of burners, adds for caps and markers, young little kitties in pin-up poses, or else tied up and blindfolded. Then he sees him, his angel. His schoolgirl skirt is bunched high on his hips as the kitty looks over his shoulder at the camera, pink glossed lips open in surprise, springy pigtails in motion. The tops of his white thigh highs cut into his creamy skin. His little heart-shaped ass is spanked red and his white panties are too small, drawn tight across his cheeks. His arms are tied behind him, sailor top pushed up, revealing his smooth arched back. It feels like the earth has cracked open and swallowed Otabek, at last. “Fuck.” “I know,” Jean tsks. “Young. But still--” “He’s the one.” “The one. Jesus. Nothing like a little blond graff slut for Beka, eh?” Jean laughs at him, then does another line, passing him the rolled up bill. “You’re insatiable,” he says, sniffing. Otabek barely hears him. It’s not just that his angel is a pin-up slut in a graff zine. It’s that he must be just like Otabek: burning with it, always. Otabek can see it in his eyes. The kitty’s desperate to get fucked. He’d do anything for it. They’re two sides of a coin. Blood rushes to his cock. He tears himself away from the kitty’s picture to take his turn. He comes up with a curse, pinching his nose. “God, I want to do a line off his ass.” Jean laughs, “Beks, he’s fifteen, tops.” Otabek groans. “This fucking good boy act. You think I’m gonna believe you haven't rubbed one out to him?” “That’s private,” Jean says, pointing at him, then he ducks his head to do another line. “I wanna taste that tight little pussy. Tongue him open in his bedroom at his grandparents’ house,” Otabek’s feeling it. His skin’s hot, he bounces his leg faster and faster. The coke roars in his head. He’s so lucky. There’s an angel walking the Earth, for him. All he has to do is find him. The kitten is posing in a sweet little girl’s room, getting it dirty just with his presence. “I want to bend him over a big teddy bear with a gag in his mouth and lick him until he’s crying,” Otabek says, feeling like a hero declaring himself at the start of a quest. He always knew he was the one meant for greatness, not Jean.   “Beka, fuck--” Jean says, shifting on the couch beside him. Otabek notices Jean--his flushed cheeks, his bright eyes. His thoughts soften. His best friend. His partner in crime. “We could fuck him together,” he offers. Jean looks at him and nods yes. Otabek licks his lips, looking from Jean’s big blue eyes to the kitten’s green ones. “Two cocks in that tight little hole. Kitty’s homework scattered all over while he sucks your cock, and I lick that pretty pussy clean.” Jean breathes heavy, eyes half-closed. “God,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his face. The other hand dips under his jeans, but Otabek pulls it out, putting it over his cock instead. Jean unzips him in a rush--how he loves sucking cock. Otabek rarely gives in, though. Tonight is special. Jean can swallow him to the root and he does, as Otabek scrapes his nails through his short cropped hair. He knows Otabek likes it slow and messy, moaning around the tip. Jean always remembers just how he likes it, no matter how long Otabek makes him wait. “Good puppy,” Otabek murmurs, staring at his beautiful kitten. “Fuck, you’re such a good boy.” ***** Chapter 2 ***** Chapter Notes love_comes_in_spurts Coke makes him horny, he knows that. Not to mention sex on coke has so little to do with the other person. More like jerking off in a mirror. So it’s no big deal to fuck Jean. It’s no big deal. Jean’s hot. This isn’t the first time they’ve fallen tangled onto the couch and missed, ending up in a pile on the carpet. Otabek covers that shitty tramp stamp with his hand, guiding Jean’s hips back. He’ll have rug burns. Jean is hot. Especially when he’s not talking. The sounds he makes instead are exactly what he wants to hear from Jean--animal sounds, a pack mate in heat. And Otabek doesn’t say a word except a few murmured fucks , watching Jean so greedy for cock, snapping his hips, not talking either. He pulls out to come on that big, ugly tribal, wondering with a stray flame-lick of jealousy if anyone else has, too. He doesn’t know for sure. Jean’s so tight. Or, he was. Now he’s leaking come in a muzzy crumple on the floor. Otabek takes a joint from his wallet. They share it, lounging naked on the sofa. Then they fuck again. This time they talk. “Always desperate for it.” “Nng--not like you’re hard to get.” “Gonna tell your wife?” “Shut up.” “Got all tight when I mentioned her.” “Fuck--” “Come here.” Otabek rolls him over on the ash-dusted, drooping cushions so he can look Jean in the eyes. Jean looks back at him, ice-blue. “Remember the last time we did this?” he asks. His eyelashes are so thick, long as a girl’s, black as ink. Otabek remembers the first time he stared at them. He remembers everything. “Yeah,” is all he says. They fuck again. Otabek’s got him tipped over the table when he realizes Jean’s got his hand over the page with the angel, crinkling it with each thrust of Otabek’s hips. He grabs his arm and twists it behind his back, eyes drifting the kitty, who looks at him still, big green eyes cast over his skinny shoulder with his shiny pink lips parted, so scandalized. For a moment he’d almost forgotten. Rubbed raw, they decide to go paint. Trouble is, there’s no place more romantic than the yard just before dawn. Jean doesn’t say it, but he knows Jean agrees. Pink-gold puddles, tall summer corn in the farmer’s field behind them, chirping frog songs, the wide columns of the overpass high above like the ruins of some great, forgotten wonder of the world, and, most of all, the railcars like gentle sleeping elephants, groaning and shifting in the changing light. They end up in each other arms against an autorack, tongues in mouths, hands everywhere. With dirty black jeans and black shirts and black hats they must look, from a distance, like twins. No one interrupts. Otabek fucks him again, in an empty car. He didn’t think it was possible, but he’s hard and willing. He hasn’t fucked Jean since he got so infamous, but he knows it’s Jean he’s fucking. King JJ isn’t here, tonight. Jean calls him, “Beka.” He bares his neck for bites. It’s just another dawn on blow for them, no big deal. They’ve fucked before. No, the problem isn’t fucking Jean. The problem is falling asleep at noon--not on the couch, not at his place, not with some naughty kitten skipping his classes, but with Jean, in Jean’s bed, blackout curtains pulled tight, and Jean pulled tight, too, breathing deep and steady, with Otabek’s arm curled around his waist. He sleeps like a rock, drug-heavy. Or maybe that’s not the problem, either. Not really. Jean is big, Jean is warm, and Otabek hates sleeping alone. The real problem comes when he wakes up, hot, groggy, and alone in the almost-dark, to muffled voices in the living room. He listens, blinking bleary-eyed at a fancy chandelier earring stuck in the carpet by the bed, until he recognizes 3some’s voice. He’s slinging his wares, which means Jean must’ve called him here. Otabek finds his phone and his wallet and drags on his clothes. He stands with his hand on the doorknob and sighs. Fucking Jean would kiss and tell. When he opens the bedroom door 3some stops mid-sentence, posed like a scientist in a commercial with a glass vial in his hand full of clear liquid. He takes in the sight of Otabek with an animal glee that he tries, at least, to keep off his face. The results are mixed. All of that caught you and knew it and I fucking knew it and I can’t wait to tell everyone is condensed down and sharpened to a point. “You didn’t invite me?” he asks, mouth twitching in the threat of a smile. Otabek tries to glare it off his face, but he knows he’s lost this one. Then Jean winks and says, “Maybe next time.” Fucking Jean. “What’s that?” he asks, voice crackly with the burn of the thousand and one cigarettes he and Jean shared all night, morning, and day, desperate to change the subject. The vial’s more interesting than this, but 3some just wiggles his eyebrows. “Acid?” Otabek guesses. He’s not one for guessing but drugs are drugs. He wants them all. “No,” 3some says, gazing at it fondly. “Molly water?” 3some just laughs, indulgent, and has the nerve to look at him, eyes crinkled with pity, and say, “You need to free your mind, Otabek.” “I’m going home,” he says, too tired to wait to find out, and half-terrified Jean’s gonna try to kiss him goodbye. But Jean stays where he is, waving a hand lifelessly. He’s halfway down the stairs when he remembers the zine. 3some and Jean are right where he left them--3some extolling the virtues of his new elixir and Jean draped boneless over the entirety of the couch. They both look up. “What’d you forget?” Jean asks. Jesus, he must love this little kitten, because it’s humiliating to go skulking back into Jean’s bedroom after the magazine he’d dragged to bed with him like his favorite blanket. It’s not where he left it. “Where’s that zine at, Jean?” he calls. There’s no answer. He picks up the blankets they’d fucked right off the bed, then gets on his hands and knees to peer beneath it. Where the fuck is it? “Jean?” “What?” Jean’s voice closer than he expects, in the doorway. “Where’s that um--” this is humiliating in the extreme. Otabek stands up straight, “You think I can nab that While You Were Sleeping ?” Jean shrugs, “Sure.” “Where is it?” Jean smiles. Yeah, of course. Jean would enjoy this, “I dunno man, last I saw you were holding it like a teddy bear.” He must look mutinous, because Jean laughs at him and says, “Jesus. I’ll find it for you, Beka, go home.” Otabek doesn’t believe him. Jean’s capable of the strangest deceptions. But he leaves, every step he takes away from that kitten like a rope pulling tighter around his neck. He needs him, now. He catches some tags on the way home. It’s not smart, it’s not the right thing to do, and yet. That’s the theme of his day, so far. Fuck Jean. Catch tags in broad daylight. He uses the chrome pen he had in his pocket until it busts over his hand. Ah, well. The space between his place and Jean’s is smashed. It’ll keep. It’s the same for the others. They've all woven a web of graff spreading and spreading with Jean in the center. Jean. Always in the center. Otabek can’t sleep. If he had that zine he could rub one out looking at those poor, pretty, pink-spanked cheeks and the babydoll’s wet open mouth. He’d love to teach him to suck cock. He’d love to whisper all of his secrets in his sweet little ear while he slept like an angel. And he has so many secrets. Thoughts that glint like knives in the corners of his eyes. Thoughts that his mind bucks and shies away from. He falls asleep with music on to drown out the afternoon street, dreaming not of kittens, but of one kitty, in particular. His phone wakes him up. Suddenly, night, and he forgot to call off work. Jean says he wants to go get paint. Otabek texts back yes. He has time, smoking a good-morning spliff on the front steps while he waits for Jean, to begin to question his choices--or one choice, in particular--but Jean only lives a few blocks away and is there in his shitty old minivan before Otabek can find any answers. Besides, he needs paint, too. He needs paint like he needs a kitty moaning daddy at him. He always needs paint. Then a voice in his head reminds him that he fucked Jean last night, this morning, today, and not a kitty. Otabek grinds the spliff under his battered boot with a growl and tells that voice to shut up. Jean pulls up to the curb. He’s in high spirits, telling Otabek he hasn’t slept at all. He and 3some tried that stuff in the vial and ended up on the roof, spaced out for a few hours, but he’s good to drive. That, it turns out, is debatable. Jean doesn’t drive so much as sail down the highway, weaving between the lanes as he fights currents and strong waves Otabek can’t see. How to steal paint: flip the stickers or scan a cheap can twenty times over at the self-checkout, filling the bag with the good shit, but Jean--being Jean-- only likes to push carts. “Why rack twenty when you could get a hundred?” Jean asks, slouched over the cart as they turn toward the kitchen appliances. His pupils are big as an owl’s, but he says he’s alright to steer the cart. “Besides, I gotta think about Sun Machine.” “You’re going?” “Yeah, I got invited to live paint,” Jean says, then nods at twitchy fridge salesmen who’s eyeing up the big chain swinging from Otabek’s leather jacket. “Hey, man, you got any extra boxes?” Otabek leans against the nearest fridge, arm crossed, feeling faint. “When, uh- -” The blood’s rushing to his head. He doesn’t take Jean’s surprises very well, ever. “You got invited?” But Jean doesn’t hear him, negotiating with his new nervous friend for a big enough box with which to rip off the store. Otabek tells himself to calm down. He remembers his first Sun Machine, years ago. He’d lost his v-card there, to some little raver in cat ears. His first kitten, who’d dazzled his eyes as he walked past with these silly gloves with lasers mounted on the end of each finger. Kitty paws with laser claws, and, naughty thing, he’d blinded Otabek as he glowered past--pissed at Jean for some reason, he remembers that, too. After he blinked the lasers away the kitty was there. He said hi . Or shouted it. Avas Avis was playing, loud, the lights smearing the big hill with orange and the valley with blue, then the colors switched, or else the hill rolled forward like a wave and left a new valley behind. Otabek had two hits of acid on his tongue. Back then, what a child, he never swallowed them, just kept them in his mouth so he could show off. He did just that--showed the kitty his tongue and the kitty had stuck his own pretty pink tongue out to show Otabek his. They’d fucked in the forest, away from the camp ground, deep enough that the festival lights couldn’t reach. All they had for light were the kitten’s laser-tipped paws. When Otabek took his little wrists and pinned them up above his head on the tree, the leaves lit up purple, green, and gold. Sex on acid wasn’t impossible, but it wasn’t sexy, either. More like a science experiment, Otabek and the kitty standing aside from their bodies, watching their molecules weave together. He still came. There are worse ways to lose it. After, they’d sat on the hill, Otabek absently braiding the kitten’s night- black hair while they watched the live painters with their easels and the fire dancers with their flames and the hula hoopers, faces in meditation, lit by the glow of their hoops, and the drugged and happy crowd grinding and the lights sweeping over everything and the great glowing stage with the dj enshrined and giving off dark smoke like a cursed statue at its center and the trees and the sky above--so many stars this far out in the country--and he’d thought he might have finally found the answer to everything, got the joke, broken through --as 3some liked to say of the great transcendence, wistful. But that was his first Sun Machine. He saw it now for the black hole it was, disguised more ingeniously than television, but no different in essence.   “Perfect,” Jean says, dropping his new box into the cart. “Thanks, man,” he flashes his shark smile at the man, then turns it on Otabek. “Sun Machine’s for kids,” Otabek blurts out. “Yeah,” Jean shrugs and keeps moving. Otabek is forced to abandon his fridge sulk for a walking pout. “I’m getting paid, though. Festy staff,” he says with a wink, oblivious to Otabek’s bad mood. Jean pantomimes a blowjob, tongue stuck in his cheek, then sobers up with a sigh when Otabek doesn’t laugh. “For real, though, I’m thinking of taking Bella. Got a couple free tickets, so--” he trails off. Otabek doesn’t say a word, jaw clenched. It’s the stupidest idea he’s ever heard. Bella at Sun Machine. Jean getting paid by Sun Machine. Thank fuck they arrive at the paint aisle right then, and silently get to work loading the box up. White, black, and red. That’s all Otabek wants. Maybe some cornflower blue. Green? His head spins, but he tries to help. Jean moves faster, six pack of black, six pack of white, red, red, red, blue. They’re on the same page. But Jean got invited to live paint, and Otabek didn’t. “How long’ve you known?” he hears himself ask. Jean looks up suddenly, those big blue eyes wide, and Otabek realizes he’s given himself away. Fuck. “Beka--” Jean starts. Fuck. “I think we got enough,” Otabek says, and grabs the cart, swinging it--heavy with paint--toward the garden center. It’s called pushing a cart ‘cause that’s the idea--aim a cart at the exit and don’t stop. The key is to look pissed. Otabek finds it easy, today. “You should come,” Jean says, keeping up with long strides. “We’ll set up an easel for you, fuck them, y’know? Me and 3some--” “3some got in?” “Nah. I mean, yeah, but like, he just asked if--you how how it is with him. We’ll get you in, too.” “I don’t want in,” Otabek says, as the sliding doors slip open to the garden center, the air thick with fertilizers, pesticides, death--”Sun Machine has sponsors, now. It’s no better than fucking Bonnaroo. There were cops last year.” “Yeah, I know.” Jean waves at the lone cashier and says, “We’re good, thanks!” as they blow past. They keep pace to the van, not looking back. That part’s important, too. Don’t look back. “I figured you weren’t interested,” Jean says. “Yeah,” Otabek says. “No. I’m not.” “Yeah,” Jean says, again. But he knows. He knows Otabek too well. And he hadn’t said a word about this. 3some, either. “That’s what I figured.” Together, they lift the box to throw it in the back of the van, but the bottom gives out, cans rattling as they spill into the cart. “Fuck!” They rush to get the cans in, Jean peeking up like a prairie dog to check on the cashier. “She’s on the phone. She looks pissed,” he says. “The fuck does it matter to her?” Otabek says, “It’s not her paint.” They release the cart into the parking lot wild and jump in, peeling off victorious as the cans rattle and roll in the back. Otabek lights another spliff and passes it to Jean. His adrenaline flows from his brain to his heart to his fingers to his toes. He’s all lit up with it. He rolls his window down, lets the air hit him. He feels better. “Yeah, I think I’ll sit this one out,” he says, watching the box store recede in the sideview mirror until it blends into the next--big beige rectangles, rising up one after another, far into the distance like sand dunes. “You know I can’t trip around that corporate shit.” “That’s what I thought. I knew you wouldn’t care.” Jean says, looking too happy with himself for Otabek’s taste. But it’s chill. He accepts the spliff back. Jean would get all hyped on some cleaned-up joke of a festival. He only paints to feed his own ego. Not Otabek. He doesn’t want the world to find them, to praise them, to pay them. He just wants to destroy it. Art for profit. The false god of property. He looks into his own burning eyes in the mirror, half- listening as Jean sings along to the same mix that’s been playing since this time last year, one Otabek made. He needs some new music. At Jean’s they sit on the floor and sort their paint, happy as kids on Halloween night. Fifty-three cans each. “Let’s use it,” Jean says. Otabek holds up his hand. He hasn’t forgotten, this time. “Not yet. Did you find that zine?” “Hn?”Jean feigns deafness. Otabek expected this, if nothing else today. He stands up, walking behind him so his legs are pressed to Jean’s back. He grabs him by the hair, tugging. “You heard me.” It’d be a perfect moment, except Jean likes it too much, grinning up at him upside down like it’s a game. “I swear I looked,” he blinks his puppy dog eyes. “You know I don’t make a big deal out of things,” Otabek says. “Mmhm,” Jean says, ‘cause it’s true that Otabek makes a big deal out of things. He knows that. But this is important. The angel is the first bright light in his life since--since when? Hard to say. He tugs Jean’s hair again, and Jean winces, biting his lip. Fuck if this isn’t working for Otabek, though. Maybe he just needs to take it all out on Jean. The kitten. Sun Machine. Everything. “Tell me where you hid it,” Otabek says. “Or I’m not gonna fuck you.” “You’re crazy,” Jean says. Otabek pushes his head forward, starting on his belt. Jean turns, cans skittering across the floor, to help. He raises up on his knees, nuzzling his face against Otabek’s jeans. He’s so easy, but he doesn’t expect the belt around his neck. Otabek pulls it tight to hold like a leash in his hand. He knows Jean wants to be choked. It’s why he talks so much- -he’s just begging for someone to stop him. Otabek wonders, tugging it hard to the side so Jean loses his balance, catching himself with a hand, if Bella’s found out yet. “You’re gonna suck my cock until you’re ready to confess,” Otabek says. Jean smiles his cat-with-cream smile up at him, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”    “Wrong answer,” Otabek says, slipping his hand down the belt to pull it tight, close to his neck, holding him right there as he fumbles his cock free of his boxers and pushes the head between Jean’s plush lips, turning pink-white as they stretch around his cock. Easy. Jean moans, eyes fluttering shut as he tries to suck--light-headed and pale and paler, until Otabek lets him go, tickling the tip of the belt over the bridge of Jean’s nose as he catches his breath. “Fuck,” Jean licks his lips and stares up at Otabek under his dark lashes, leaning in to nuzzle his cheek against Otabek’s cock. Otabek gives his leash another tug. He’s gonna drive his puppy crazy. Jean’s mouth is wet and warm. He’s so good, tongue swiping against the underside, stroking the thick vein. Otabek groans and tug his leash sharply. Jean fights it, choking himself to get back to Otabek’s cock. He slips his hand up to play with his balls, sneaking another glance into Otabek’s eyes. There’s something in that look, though, that wide-open puppy dog look, that returns Otabek to this spot, one year ago, and it’s like a bomb dropping in his mind. Jean just wants to please. The thought nearly topples Otabek to the side. Like a ghost of his past self has pushed him, punched him, grabbed him, and said how did you let this happen again . How had he forgotten, after last time. It makes his stomach flip. It’s just that. He’s buried it so deep, to stay friends. But. He hadn’t known about Bella. Not a word out of Jean’s big mouth. Just, one day, Jean pulling away when Otabek grabbed the scruff of his puppy’s neck to pull him in for a kiss. Jean batted his hand off with a, “Hey, man.” Man. Dude. It wasn’t what Jean had been calling him. “Why can’t I date her?” he’d asked, when Otabek had wrapped himself up in thick bitterness and at last spat out a few poisoned-tipped words. “I like her, why shouldn’t I?” Because Otabek’s heart was broken into pieces at Jean’s feet. But what did that matter? “Get on the bed,” he growls. Maybe he’d lost, but who’s got King JJ on a fucking leash, one year later? He’s a good puppy for his Beka, he knows to crawl. He’s not nice to Jean, pulling his pants and boxers down all at once and roughly. There’s no kitty-whispering pillow talk until he’s giggly and pink. There’s just Otabek yanking back hard on the leash until Jean’s broad back arches. His body is beautiful. Otabek doesn’t tell him. He grabs the lube from where it last fell and rubs over his tender, red rim with slick fingers, coaxing it loose. He doesn’t tell him his cunt is all wet, that it can’t fit in that little hole. It can, and even if Jean moans and says fuck me --does he really like it at all? Or is it just a way to keep Otabek close. All he wants is to keep Otabek close. He’d said that to Otabek’s face, close enough to kiss. Big puppy dog eyes, his fat, ripe lips and all. Jean didn’t lose him. But what did Otabek lose? He yanks the leash with a growl. Jean’s tight walls squeeze his fingers as he moans, then he pours more lube right between his cheeks so Jean jumps, surprised. Two fingers, then three. “Fuck yourself,” he says. Jean rolls his hips, lube squelching out, and looks over his shoulder. “Like this, daddy?” he asks. “Don’t--” Otabek says, then, “ Fuck ,” lust dense as white fog behind his eyes. He pushes Jean face first into the sheets and drives his cock into him. Palm over his face, pushing his cock in, the angle forcing it as deep as it will go. Jean’s not a kitty but he is a dirty slut, and he lifts his ass for that cock. He wants it so bad. He’s not such a good boy, after all.   “Daddy--” “Shut up!” Otabek isn’t gentle, twisting his fingers in Jean’s hair and keeping him right where he wants him. Jean sneaks a hand beneath himself, stroking himself, eyes squeezing shut but his mouth wide open, panting, his cheeks pretty pink. He looks so young, like the little sixteen-year-old asshole Otabek tracked down in the yard and punched for biting his style, before crossing him out all around town, before they were friends, when Otabek would wake up, cock spent, from dreams of him. Otabek pulls him up onto his hands and knees to fuck the puppy right. He snaps his hips, pulling back on the leash so Jean couldn’t say that word again if he wanted to. He can’t say anything--not until Otabek comes in him, whipping the tip of his belt against Jean’s face. Take that, you fuck , he thinks. You broke my heart . Jean comes, too, with a gasp, one hand drifting up to touch his neck, his stung cheek, as if that will help. Then Jean laughs, breathless, rolling onto his back. “That was fun,” he says, smiling. Like it meant nothing. It didn’t. Otabek has to remind himself of that. It didn’t mean anything, and it never had. Not to Jean.   End Notes follow me on twitter @commandantllyn or on tumblr at djdaddybek Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!