Maybe Benito needed to listen.
He rubbed Mickey’s warm skin, ignoring the ache in his groin. “I know what it’s like to get cornered by shit you can’t control.”
Mickey watched Benito’s fingers trace patterns on his torso. “I could’ve controlled it—at least at the start, but I was weak, man, and it swallowed me whole.”
“The coke?”
“Yeah. We were moving so much product I thought they wouldn’t noticed if I lifted some for myself, but then one gram became five, then ten, and I couldn’t keep up with the lies.”
“You got caught?”
“I think so. Even now, I’m not sure, and that’s the worst part. I’ll take addiction over paranoia any day of the week.”
Benito turned it over in his mind. Addiction wasn’t a vice he owned, but he knew paranoia all too well. The shadows that danced too fast to catch. “What do you think happened?”
“I think I spent a week locked in my flat thinking someone was coming to murder me. The bloke I lived with found me boarding up the windows with a nail gun.”
“How likely was it that someone was gonna whack you?”
Mickey shrugged. “Fifty-fifty. That’s the game, right? Kill or be killed?”
“If you play it that way.”
Mickey caught Benito’s hand. For a moment, Benito feared it was to push him away, but Mickey laced their fingers together and held tight. “I thought he was trying to help me.”
“Who? Your flatmate?”
“Yeah. But he called our boss. They took me to a field in the middle of fucking nowhere and told me to get the fuck out of the city and stay out, or they’d burn my whole family. I didn’t question if they meant it or not. I’d seen shit, you know?”
Benito nodded, guilt and pain manifesting so tightly in his chest he couldn’t breathe. Again. “What did you do?”
“What they said. I had fifty quid in clean money, so I bought a ticket heading south and got on a train. I woke up in hospital three days later. I’m not sure what happened in between.”
“Did they help you? In the hospital?”
“They had to. I’d banged so much coke I’d had a fucking stroke, so I was in there a while.”
“You had a stroke?”
“A tiny one. Couldn’t close my eye properly for six months or use my left hand. It was some fucked-up shit.”
Benito squeezed Mickey’s hand. “You’re okay now, though, right?”
“Yeah. I was lucky. Getting hooked on the gym helped. And I kept busy with night courses and stuff. It’s harder now I have more free time.”
“I meant the after-effects of the stroke, not your addiction.”
“I know you did, but I don’t care about the stroke. Recovering from that was easy because there was an end point. I’d reach milestones and move past them forever. Addiction isn’t like that. Some days I wake up—if I ever fucking sleep—and I’m back where I started.”
“When did you last use?”
“The day I left Manchester.”
“When you got on the train?”
Mickey hummed and fixed Benito with a gaze that was somehow penetrating and yet so distant Benito wanted to cry. “It was three years ago, and I’m still a mess. You need to think about that when you’re out there doing whatever you do with two phones and bundles of dirty cash.”
“What about your family?” Benito deflected. “Did they come looking for you?”
Mickey laughed without humour. “No. I mean, I think my mum might’ve wanted to, but me and my dad were done a long time before I hit rock bottom. We clashed, you know? He wanted me to join the army like my cousins. I wanted to work in social care so the old people in the home across the street didn’t sit in their horrible chairs all day and wait to die.”
“You wanted to work in an old people’s home?”
“Hell, yeah.” Mickey laughed for real this time and his face lit up so much Benito had to touch it, just to check it was real. “Old folk are the best. They say the funniest shit.”
“I don’t know any. My grandparents died when I was a kid.”
“What about your dad?”
“Same.”
“How?”
Benito let his hand fall from Mickey’s rough jaw. “Heart attack. He dropped dead on the factory floor where he worked.”
“How old were you?”
“Eight.”
Mickey whistled. “That’s young for a kid to lose their father.”
“Maybe, but at least I had one—a good one—for that long. Gianna’s dad is a fucking wasteman.”
“She wouldn’t tell me about him when I asked. I thought he was dead too.”
“She’s not that lucky.”
“She is, though, to have you. I have a big brother and he’s never given two shits about me.”
Benito scowled. “He’s a fuckhead then.”
Mickey’s laughter filled the room again. “He’s a data scientist for some huge conglomerate, but okay. We’ll go with fuckhead.”
Benito enjoyed Mickey’s smile for as long as it was there. It helped with the rage building inside at the thought of anyone not seeing Mickey for the compassionate, kind man Benito needed in his life so badly.
“What about you?” Mickey said.
“What about me? Unless it’s more dead dad stuff. I’m kind of done with that.”
“Valid. I was going to ask what you wanted to be when you were a kid.”
“Oh. Well. A footballer, obviously. It was all kids round my ends did until they either got good or went on the road.”
Mickey’s grin turned dry. “You weren’t that good then?”
“I didn’t want to be. Football’s bullshit, man. I only played because there was nothing else to do. Hey, so, I have a question, if that’s what we’re doing right now.”
“It wasn’t, but okay, I’ll bite.”
I wish. “How did you find your way to Freefall? Have you always been into that shit?”
“Which part? Dudes? Or rough play?”
“Rough play. I know you had a girlfriend back home.”
“You like both, don’t you? You’re bi?”
Benito shrugged. “I like a lot of things. I found my way to the club because it was a safe place where no one knew me. There could be women there and I’d enjoy it.”
“Why not go to a mixed club then?”
“Dunno. Maybe I need something extreme when I’m in that mood.”
“You think fucking men is extreme?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” Mickey’s grin widened a touch. “I’m taking the piss. I hear what you’re saying. I don’t drive all that way for something I could pick up on Grindr.”
“You’re on Grindr?”
“No.”
Benito didn’t deserve the relief that washed through him. Mickey wasn’t his boyfriend. He could fuck whoever he liked. They both could. But—
I don’t want anyone else.
“Hey.” Mickey waved his hand in front of Benito’s face. “Where did you go?”