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  Iwan pulled a dildo from under his pillow and rubbed his thumb along the underside of it and up to the crown, over the head, smearing imaginary pre-cum. He leaned down and closed his lips over the tip, gave a small suck to the lint-covered silicone, sliding down until his jaw ached and he gagged, then pulled off slowly, down again, imagining the hand in his hair holding him there and making him take it. He pressed his hips into the mattress, fingers tight on his sheets, and slowly let the dildo slip from his mouth again, coughing up a bit of gunk that he sucked off the shaft with a loud slurp.

  One of the blokes off the escort ad was looking at him from his photo, palming his cock. Iwan winked at the screen, then felt a right tosser.

  “Go down to the bloody centre!” his mum called from downstairs.

  Iwan closed the lid of his laptop and shoved himself out of bed. He flipped her off, though she couldn’t see him.

  The brand new day, starting mid-afternoon, greeted Iwan with drizzle all the way to the job centre. The rain peeled off the windowpanes as he queued, then sat, then pressed at a grimy touchscreen, counting the minutes until he could duck out for a smoke.

  “There’s a lad,” one of the old folks said while pushing past, stinking of alcohol and sweat. He clapped Iwan on the shoulder.

  “We should look at your prospects,” the lady at the desk said. “Certainly there’s an opening at the care home for a few hours next week . . .”

  Iwan leaned back in his chair and stared at the folders and files in front of her, not having the heart to tell her that his prospects were to be down in the pub after this and wanking his soul out when he wasn’t getting bladdered with mates . . . well, with Lyn, at least.

  The advisor went a bit frantic with her computer and a few leaflets, his sorry history of the on-again off-again trainings when the truth was, there was nothing down here for folks like him who had no particular talent for anything but holding their liquor and watching shit they couldn’t have and couldn’t be on the telly.

  “It’s the economy,” Iwan said, drawing out the words, just so she’d stop trying so damn hard at the impossible.

  Jonah stood at the desk of computers across the room, hip cocked against it, eyes hooded like he was still running on whatever he’d had the night before, lips plum and full and looking well-fucked.

  “I suggest you look for something temporary again, maybe . . . social care?” the lady said.

  Jonah’s jeans hung low on his hips, grimy, the bright blue band of his boxers showing. His T-shirt pulled up when he stretched with a jaw-cracking yawn. His bulge sat right there under his belt as he leaned just so and pushed his crotch out, glancing across the heads of people before he pressed another button on the screen.

  “Think about it,” the lady said.

  Iwan nodded. “Can I go?”

  She waved him away, eyes already on the next file, the next poor sod who’d never make it out of here. Iwan walked out past Jonah, a hello and hi again stuck in his throat and never making it out. Jonah’s eyes met his over the computer screen, eyebrow cocked, smirk on his lips in a come-on that had Iwan wet and wanting.

  Iwan hurried out before the flush on his face, probably bright red, made him look even more of a fool. He found Lyn smoking around the corner from the grocers’, sitting on the steps to one of the empty houses. Her makeup was smudged around pink eyes, the bruise on her cheek new.

  “Dafydd?” Iwan asked as he stopped in front of her, his toes touching hers. He pulled the pack of smokes from his back pocket.

  “Bloke,” she said.

  “Fucker.”

  She waved it off and pulled on her cigarette, watched people past Iwan’s legs, the old grandmas with barking small dogs, the pregnant girls, the lads in the bookies.

  “I could get someone to suck for a hundred quid,” Iwan said eventually, thinking back to the non-plan that was better than not getting any at all.

  Lyn gestured to the water. “You get on your knees down there, you can suck them for free.”

  Iwan shook his head. “Wouldn’t know what the fuck I was doing.”

  They each started another cigarette. “A hundred quid? Where are you gonna get that?”

  “Places.” Iwan sat next to her on the steps, their thighs pushed close, hips touching. “You think that’s a shit idea?”

  She turned to look at him, shrugged, and brushed at her cheek. “Blokes are a shit idea.”

  The light in the fridge was broken. Iwan pulled out two beers and grabbed dry toast from the counter, then shut the fridge door and took his spoils up to his room. The football was on downstairs, like most nights, Sky blaring scores through the house.

  Iwan’s laptop sat in the middle of his bed, his phone on the mattress next to it. Iwan sat cross-legged in front of it. Between tabs of Sleepyboy, Gay Times Escort, and Rentboy.com, he flicked through profiles of blokes who didn’t look like they’d run screaming if he never got his kit off, and tried to imagine how it’d go.

  He had one beer, then the second, comfortably warm as he leaned against the headboard of his bed and turned his phone over once, then twice, then three times on his bare knee before he thumbed in the number and typed a text: Saw you on sleepyboy. I’m interested.

  He hit send before nerves had a chance of fluttering in the way—that or the thought of the money he didn’t have that he was putting down for it—then lit a cigarette, fuck his mum, as he tossed the phone to the other end of the bed. It landed facedown.

  “Fuck,” he said, fingers shaking with the cigarette butt at his lips. “Fuck.”

  He rubbed himself off twice that night, fell asleep with the laptop still open and his fingers closed around the dildo.

  Date/Time? 120 up front, his phone read in the morning. Iwan glanced at the computer, bleary-eyed with sleep and residual alcohol buzz, instantly hard for it again even as the sober morning realization of how much money that was to blow someone pounded at the back of his skull.

  He lay back on his bed, thumb on his phone and typed in his response, random dates thrown out like he knew what he was doing. Then he picked it up and called Lyn.

  She answered on the sixth ring. “What?”

  “I need a hundred and twenty quid.” Iwan scrolled his mouse over the bloke’s face, Tommy, his uncut dick leaking cum in one picture, cut abs in the next. He imagined himself on his knees for him and tried the dildo on for size, but at a comfortable five inches, it fell short.

  “Fuck off.” Lyn hung up.

  Iwan dropped the phone next to his head as he stretched out and rubbed his fingers over his crotch. He thrust his hips up against the palm of his hand, grinding for sweet pressure. He was going to do this, with Tommy, suck real dick and toss his dildo to the dogs.

  The weather had taken a turn for the worse, but it hadn’t started chugging down until Iwan and Lyn were on the way back from one of Lyn’s friends, a baby thing Iwan had spent hiding in the corner of the room, sneaking out for smokes every ten minutes. They made it to the bus shelter, half drenched, freezing with the wind.

  “Mum’s been on me about the fucking weather,” Lyn said. She rubbed her arms and jumped up and down on the spot.

  Iwan tried to will warmth back into his limbs as he leaned against the plastic pane of the shelter and glanced out up the hill for the traffic. “She still feel it when the weather’s changing?”

  “She says she hears it. Like someone whispers it to her. Some shit. I don’t know.” Lyn lit a cigarette, blew out the first drag. “Makes me wonder what’d’ve happened if I’d kept the baby.”

  “Like Carys?”

  Carys’s baby, a few months old, had left all the girls cooing.

  “Yeah.” Lyn paused. “Think I’d be good at it?”

  “Making babies?”

  “Piss off.” She laughed, and Iwan joined in. “Having them, growing them. Family and things.”

  Iwan lit his own cigarette. “Families are shit, I don’t know. Mine’s shit. Yours is shit. What’s the point, hmm?”
>
  Lyn shrugged. “Rather spend a hundred quid to suck dick?”

  “Yeah.” Iwan laughed. “A hundred and twenty. Piss off, yeah.”

  Three weeks to London and he’d taken a few quid off Rhys here and there, a twenty and a tenner off his mum, a few off some bloke in the pub—one of the drunken, handsy bastards—but he was still fifty or so short. He couldn’t stop thinking about it though, about doing it and daring it.

  “You should let him fuck you for that.”

  “Fuck no.” Iwan shrugged away, shoulder jarring against the plastic pane. “Not letting anyone fuck me. Just . . .” He smacked his lips, then sucked on the cigarette. “. . . dick.”

  The bus pulled in. They flicked away their cigarette butts and got on, brushing together with wet jackets and jeans, the plastic seats squeaking underneath them.

  “What if he doesn’t give a shit if you don’t want to fuck?”

  Iwan watched the houses brush past as they made it through town. He shrugged.

  “You don’t even know who the fuck he is.”

  “He’s on the website. He—”

  “Yeah, what? Means fuck all when he’s got you.”

  Iwan glanced across at Lyn, her lips white and tight. She pulled at the ring through her lip with her teeth, then released it again. The frown lines on her forehead stood out against the thunder in her eyes.

  “More of a chance of that here,” Iwan said as he leaned back against the seat. “More of a chance of that here if I went up to any fucking bloke and asked for a suck and he’d pull on my shirt and grab my tits and think it’s a free for fucking all.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah, fuck.” Iwan huffed out through his lips. “His name’s Tommy. He’s uncut.”

  A pause, then Lyn laughed, burst with it despite herself if the lines around her mouth said much of anything. “No shit. How big?”

  “Eight.”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “He’s got photos.”

  “Shit.” She tugged at the wet fabric stretched across Iwan’s thigh. “Don’t fucking let him fuck you over.”

  “I’m good.” Iwan grinned at her. “Fuck, I’m good.” He would be, too, once he had the missing fifty quid to pay the bloke for it and make it out to London. He’d finally see something of the world.

  “I can get you thirty,” Lyn said as they got off the bus. They fell into step towards the supermarket, past a group of jeering lads and two nans.

  “Thanks,” Iwan said quietly as they walked in, looking for some booze to last them the night. He didn’t ask how she’d have that kind of money when she looked at him like she was just daring him to.

  “Got to look out for you.” She pushed at his shoulder and he hugged her, something they never did, not really. “I still think you could get it for free at the barracks.”

  “After, maybe.” In his dreams, that’s what he did anyway, walk down there and feel like he didn’t have to turn around because he didn’t even know what dick tasted like. He’d take Jonah up on it and bite at those lips and touch that cock.

  They sat on the bench in the park later, a six-pack of cheap booze between them. Lyn was on the phone with one of her mates, laughing about something. Iwan stared down at his trainers next to her and traced lines into the mud under his soles.

  He had to find another twenty for Tommy, if Lyn came through with thirty, and then more for the train and the hotel room.

  Lyn left for a party soon after, and he carried his booze home. Rhys and his mum were asleep on the sofa, the TV running, illuminating their faces in grey static every other moment. Iwan hesitated in the doorway, just watched them, beer cans and packs of cigarettes and the threadbare sofa and expensive telly. A few blokes drove past the window on motorbikes.

  This was home, pretty much, this was what he had.

  Dawn broke early through the cloudless sky a few days later, and Iwan caught the first bus out. Alcohol sat under his skin like sleep as he blinked through the murky windows, and the cold wind caught him out after he’d stepped off and trudged up the path to the care home.

  “The job centre sent me,” he said, then took off his beanie, got shown the uniform and the changing rooms, and held sippy cups to old people’s faces for the rest of the week.

  “You’ll see the world, love,” one of the old ladies said as she took his hand in hers, fingers shaking and voice thin. “It’s a wonderful world out there.” He didn’t have the heart to believe her much, but he was good with the world he had, for the most part.

  He bought booze, then tickets, and went down to the docks in the middle of the night. Lyn had begged off, something with a bloke, so he stood on the quay, smoking, ignoring the pull of the barracks with its barely contained light and laughter. The door opened every now and then, but he stood in the shadows, just watching and drinking it in. One bloke shoved his hand down another’s trousers, groping as he pushed against him, and Iwan watched his very own private porn show, fingers clasped around the tickets in his pocket, then pressed to his crotch inside his trousers. He palmed himself and took care not to moan too loudly when one dropped to his knees and took the other bloke’s cock in his mouth.

  At the window, he thought he saw Jonah watching him.

  The train to London was quiet. After Cardiff and Bristol, nothing but green fields and hills streaked past the window. Nerves curled in the pit of Iwan’s stomach as he checked his emails yet again for the right date, the right time, the information for his hotel and envied the lads down the carriage who carried on loud and rambunctious.

  He’d brought a few beers and had them, longed to be off the train to have a cigarette, but London crashed in on him with the harsh reality of being in another place entirely and fucked him over good for the hour it took to get to the hotel. Between the people and getting lost in the new-world sensation of it all, he missed the quiet lap of the waves against the quay and the moment to stop and stand in the rain and get pissed off his arse in the park with Lyn talking about the last guy she’d shagged.

  London was louder, busier too. Iwan sat at the Thames, ate ice cream in the drizzle and wandered about. He tried to mesh the images from the telly and the postcards to this, Big Ben and the London Eye, but felt more lost than he’d ever done back home with a view of the Channel and the lads getting their cocks out for a fuck down by the docks.

  No one paid him much mind or knew he was there looking to suck cock when he stopped in a Starbucks and spent three quid on a coffee. He watched them instead, the posh ones and the fit ones, the tight clothes and the airs of confidence with every gesture, the conversations and physicality of the contact as they hugged just to say hello.

  “Mind if I take this?” a bloke said, and gestured to the free chair to Iwan’s right. Iwan’s coffee had gone cold.

  “S’fine,” Iwan replied, croaked it out more than said it.

  “Cheers, mate.” The bloke gave him a quick nod and dragged the chair off to his group of friends.

  Iwan envied their ease, the sick, sour taste of his lacking more apparent here than elsewhere, and he left the coffee shop to suck on his cigarette and wait for the time to pass faster. He wondered whether Tommy was thinking about him, getting ready for him, whether it meant much at all to a bloke who sold his cock and arse.

  Nerves made his knee jiggle and his thumb flip the screen on his phone back and forth as he counted the minutes. The money sat thick in his wallet. With two hours to spare, he left the sights and the people of London to themselves and went back to his hotel, on the cheap side but he could have done worse.

  He slipped into bed and pulled up his laptop, watched videos of blokes sucking dick and gagging on their lengths. He was wet with it already, anticipation and arousal going straight to his crotch.

  Lyn texted him. He ignored her. He texted Tommy the room number and hit send. He took a shower like he’d read you should, even if he had no plans to let Tommy see any of his body, then sat on the bed, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt,
knee still jiggling.

  Time stretched. He fingered a cigarette from his pocket, fuck the no smoking sign on the door and above the sink in the bathroom, and sucked the nicotine from it. He could do with a beer now, anything to make him look less pathetic and feel less like he’d lost his mind to be betting a hundred and twenty quid on this.

  The knock on the door sounded hard and loud in the quiet room. Iwan, frozen on the bed, waited, but the knock came a second time. Cigarette in hand, he went to open it before he could fully contemplate pretending he wasn’t in.

  Tommy was a few inches taller and a few years older, fit and smiling easy, button-down hugging his body, jeans showing off his thighs and crotch. Iwan stared, gaped a bit, then caught himself.

  “Hey.”

  “Iwan, right?”

  Iwan nodded and gestured Tommy inside. A bit like a play of make-believe and dress-up, there’d be a crowd and there’d be applause and someone with an idea of what he was to do. Iwan pulled on his cigarette again and closed the door.

  “Fuck, I . . .” Iwan shrugged when Tommy raised an eyebrow at him from the middle of the room.

  The hundred and twenty quid sat on the desk, the only furniture besides the stool and the bed, and even with Iwan still standing by the door, Tommy wasn’t that far away.

  “First time, right?” Tommy asked. He smiled, wide and easy, body so relaxed Iwan wanted to just get past these minutes of awkward quiet at paying a hooker for sex in London to have him be everything he’d fantasized about. “S’okay, not here to bite.”

  “Yeah. I’ve just . . .” Iwan ducked his head, cursing the telltale bright red flush. “First time,” he got out, then walked into the bathroom to put out the cigarette in the sink. He left the butt there.