Chapter Text
The hardest fucking thing, though, was trying to get all the booze and snuff outta an apartment I ain't never been in before. Felix was still drying out in some fancy clinic one of his old fuckbuddies had paid to lock him up in, and that guy'd got the keys, and now he was coming by, and I had to stop thinking of him as 'Felix's fuckbuddy' because I was gonna have to look him in the face pretty damn soon.
I think his name was Gideon?
So I lit a cigarette and waited. Was smoking allowed in flash apartments like this? Fuck if I knew. I figured, if someone wanted to give me grief about it, they'd speak up, but no one tried anything. Once, an old lady with this tiny little dog-- looked like a fluffy rat, you know the type-- came up to me with a look like maybe her lungs was going south and me smoking wasn't helping. But she took one good look at my face, and asked me for the time instead. The thing was, I could see the dinky little watch on her wrist. Once, I would've tried to lift it off her, maybe pawn it on Fifth Avenue. Instead, I thanked my fucking stars I wasn't a teenager no more, and put out my cigarette.
Gideon showed up a few minutes later, all apologies. I'd never met him in person, just got the address and all that crap from him on the phone. He looked like his voice, though, all reedy and shy. He never said 'I'm sorry', but the angle of his back, all crooked, and the slant of his shoulders, always shrugged, said it for him.
Had a face like an angel, though. I could see in a second how everything with Felix'd turned out. Must've been nice, I guessed, to be the one in charge, for once.
Well, anyway, Gideon showed up then, and let me in, and pulled out a list of shit the clinic had told us to do.
"We should immediately dispose of any alcohol on the premise," he said, and I nodded.
"D'you know where he keeps his booze?"
Gideon frowned. "...No."
"Right." I walked over to where the kitchen probably was supposed to have been, once. I mean, there wasn't no food in it. "That makes two of us."
I'd met Felix maybe twice? Three times? Since Miss Parr's fancyass PI agency had found me and told me I had a brother, and each time I'd seen him, Felix hadn't exactly been on the right side of sober. I knew there was some stuff in this apartment that Felix probably shouldn't come home to, but fuck if I knew where he'd kept it.
"D'you know what he drank?" I asked over my shoulder. "Maybe it wasn't the type that needed being kept in the fridge..."
I was looking around in the cabinets, which seemed to have been pretty fucking ignored during the time Felix'd lived here. There were empty cans, half-opened containers, something that looked like dirt... you know, all the normal shit for a junkie to have up in their cupboards. All the stuff that had been forgotten about, in the last few months when the addiction had become a career instead of a hobby, and then remembered about, when the money'd run out and Felix'd had to scrounge around looking for food he'd forgotten he still needed. And wasn't that a shitty image. I got distracted, thinking about my only family, and how fucked up that was, and I reached in too far, and apparently Felix'd had a mouse problem at some fucking point, or maybe he kept mouse traps around in his cupboard for shits and giggles.
I yowled like a tomcat and swore til I was blue in the face. Gideon came over and pried the damn thing off me, laughing the whole time. I guess I deserved that. Anyway, after, he warmed up to me a bit. I guess he saw I wasn't a total thug, if I can get tripped up by a goddamn mouse trap.
"The alcohol... I can't help you there." He said, walking from one empty, shitty room into another. "He mostly drank when he was out... I think, by the end, he couldn't quite afford to have alcohol in house anymore."
I thought about the kids I'd known, who'd gotten fucked up over snuff and darker shit than that. "Sounds about right," I said.
"But I do... er, that is, I do know where he kept his..."
"His stash."
"Er, yes. Quite."
I guess 'stash' is easier to say than whatever the hell Gideon was thinking of. Anyway, it was under a floorboard in the bedroom, right next to where the bed had probably been before Felix had pawned it off, mattress and all. I cringed, thinking of that-- I'd talked to Felix only a couple of times, but I hadn't gotten the impression that he was someone very good at haggling. But, well, what junkie is?
"Ah, yeah," I said when I pulled out my knife and pried the floorboard open. Underneath there was a shoebox, right as rain. "I can see him liking this shit. The secrecy and all."
Gideon nodded, frowning. "I suppose." He looked all sad to see the truth of it, like he hadn't had to hire me to drag my own damn brother, kicking and screaming, to a clinic, and then convince his sorry ass to sign himself up. But I guess that's what happens when you're in... whatever Gideon was in with Felix. I mean, I guess it was love, or something close enough to it to count. He was sure shelling out a lot of cash for him, anyway. I figured, if Gideon expected something special as a thank you after everything'd settled, well. I'd burn that bridge right the fuck down when I came to it. But not before then.
So, for right now, I had a shoebox filled with some strong stuff, by the looks of it. I wasn't tempted, myself-- I'd tried it once or twice when I was younger, but I hadn't liked how it made me lose my edge. Still, I knew some guys who could give me a good price for it.
I said as much to Gideon, who looked, as Zephyr would say, positively aghast.
"No, you- you can't sell it. What kind of example would that set?"
I thought about what I'd been doing at fourteen. Fuck, I thought about what Felix had apparently been doing at fourteen. I was past setting examples, and Felix was past needing them, that was for shit sure.
I didn't say that, though.
"I wouldn't tell him where the money came from." I shrugged, and put the battered old shoebox under my arm. "But we're gonna need it."
"Why?" Gideon said, still, you know, aghast.
"Well, Felix ain't really gonna be up to going back to work any time soon." I'd seen how this all worked. Felix wasn't gonna be good to nobody for a long damn time. "And he's gonna need a babysitter, which means I ain't gonna be getting back to work any time soon, neither." Not to mention the whole thing of, oh, you know, I used to steal shit for a living, and my name's mud now, so it ain't like that's an option no more, but thanks for asking.
But Gideon just kept on sitting on the floor where there used to be a bed, staring up at me all bewildered. "Oh... Felix didn't tell you?"
"Felix's in a damn padded cell for all I know. Last thing he said to me was if I could sneak him some of this." I looked at the box under my arm.
"Oh, yes... right, of course." Gideon cleared his throat, stood up. "I've paid the rent on this apartment for the next few months. Do you... do you think he'll be able to work again, after that?"
"Oh, yeah. Sure." Really, I figured, after a few months' free ride, I wasn't one to ask for more. If Felix couldn't work by then, well, I'd deal with that when the time for that to be dealt with.
And, I mean, how hard's modeling, anyway? You just sit tight and let folks snap pictures of you, right? I mean, I always figured there was some shady sex shit going on underneath-- I'd asked around, after I'd found out Felix was my brother, and apparently he'd been into some shady sex shit before and that was how he'd gotten into modeling in the first place, but who the hell was I to judge, I'd killed people, for fuck's sake.
Anyway, if there was anything still going on, I'd put paid to that real damn quick. Felix could model. I didn't think neither of us'd like ourselves very much if I let any whoring go on, though.
So I lied, and Gideon beamed like a schoolboy. "Good, then. Could you, er... could you throw that out, then?" He pointed to the box under my arm, and I figured, well, fuck it. If this guy was my sugar daddy now (and there's a fucking thought. Somewhere I bet Keeper was laughing her ass off), I best follow the damn rules.
"Uh, sure," I said. "Let's see if this place still gets water."
It did. I flushed a few hundred dollars worth of snuff down the toilet. That night I didn't have anyplace else to go, so I told Gideon I'd keep searching the apartment for booze and he didn't have to wait up for me. He gave me the keys, trusting as a milkmaid, and that night, I slept on the empty wood floors. Well, I didn't do much sleeping. I stared out the windows and walked around on the creaky floorboards, and thought about my junkie brother curled up in a corner, jabbering to himself and waiting for his next hit. Where'd he used to shoot up? Probably near where he kept his stash. And, wow, did I not wanna think about that.
At around the two in the morning, I found me a mostly empty bottle of old, cheap wine in the bathroom. I drank it to get rid of it, because I was feeling, you know, real responsible. It tasted like something'd died in the bottle, but that shit always makes me sleepy, and I was out until five, when my phone alarm went off and I got up like I still had a job to do. I didn't. I'd sold that down the river.
I played Snake for an hour-- my phone ain't fancy, thanks-- and thought about calling up Miss Parr. What the hell'd I even say, though? Thanks for telling me I got a junkie brother, that's what I always wanted? The sad thing, though, and I mean the pathetic type of sad, not the tragic type, well, the sad thing was that it was what I'd wanted. What was it Keeper always said? All you want's somebody to have a need for you, Milly-fox. And that was me, right down to the marrow of it.
So, no, I didn't end up calling Miss Parr.
Felix's place still had hot water, so I took a shower just when the sun was coming up, and waited for it to be time for me to go get Felix. I thought, maybe I could ask him to ask Gideon for furniture money, since Felix'd clearly sold all his to pay for his new lifestyle. But that'd have to wait until it was time to spring Felix, and I gotta say, I seriously wasn't looking forward to that. I wanted Felix okay, all dried out, you know that shit. But I'd never met him sober.
What if he didn't like me, when he was sober?
Shut the hell up, Milly-fox. Nobody needs you all dithering like a teenage girl. Least of all, Felix. So I did pushups and situps and tried not to think about it. I found some stale bread in the cupboards, and I went out on the flashie fucking terrace Felix had in his apartment and I fed the birds. When I got bored of that, I cleaned the apartment as best I could with water and a rag and some dish soap, and by the end of it, I think it looked pretty okay. And then I just sorta waited for it to be the noon. And eventually it was. I ain't so special that time stops for me, even though, a lot of the time, it feels like it does anyway, just to fuck with my head.
So I got out of the damn apartment after I'd checked it maybe a thousand times for every kind of booze you could think up. And mostly I'd found mostly empty wine bottles that'd clearly been left places and then just forgotten. I didn't drink any of them after the first go round, though. No fucking point. I sold them to a wineo I knew on the corner of Fifty-Second for a fiver, and I thought about how pathetic my life'd become. Not that it was ever, you know, anything to brag about.
At least, when I got Felix out, I'd have somebody to think about that wasn't me.
Felix's clinic was pretty okay. It's the sort of place where it's supposed to look like a real flash hotel, not, you know, a place where you can dry out in peace. I'll be honest, I don't really get the point of that, I mean, the secretary knows it's a clinic, and so do the patients, and I'll fucking bet you the maids who gotta clean up all that vomit know it ain't some normal hotel. But there I was with elevator music playing in the lobby, trying to talk to one of the girls at the front desk who looked like she'd been built to match the decor. Which is to say, her hair was as red as a bushfire, and that clashed real pretty with all the green plants filling the place up. I guess that's why they called this place the Gardens of Whatever. Nephnili or something. I dunno.
Anyway, I said, "I'm here to pick up Mr Harrowgate?"
The girl at the front desk looked me over once, and saw my scar, and I guess she thought I was a pusher or something (which is fucking dumb if you think about it for one second, because why the hell would a pusher come here) because she said, "Is today his scheduled release date?"
And I said, "I ain't the one got a job where that's my business to know, lady." Even though, technically, I guess, you could think that I did, now. I didn't know if I wanted to laugh or cry. Mildmay the Fox, ex-cat burglar, ex-murderer, professional babysitter for the rich and stupid.
So the girl just smiled at me, real fake like. "If you could just sit down, someone will be right with you." And I sat, because being trained to do what you're told all the time don't just go away overnight.
After maybe fifteen minutes, Felix wandered into the lobby with a folder full of papers and a doctor keeping pace real slow behind him. Felix looked at me all bug-eyed, embarrassed, I guess, and I stuck my hands in my pockets, because what the fuck else do you do for this shit. They sure as hell didn't talk about it in the Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch. That's where I'd learned what 'normal' was, anyway.
The doctor said, "You're family?"
"Yeah," I said back. "I am."
"Well, Felix here has a few papers for you to look over as to the terms of his treatment. Please call if there are any issues."
I nodded. He looked at me. I looked at him. I ain't one much for chitchat, and he got that, I guess, because he just said his goodbyes and fucking left. And Felix walked behind me like a ghost. When we was out on the street again, I said hi.
He said hi back.
"I... I know we met before this point, but I'll be honest, I don't... entirely recall it." He was staring at his shoes.
"Yeah," I said. "I figured."
We kept walking. I didn't know what the fuck to say, so I just, you know, I hid it in silence. Old habits.
This buggered the fuck out of Felix, though, I could tell. Even when he was half fucking crazy with a fever and trying to get my pants off me for the price of another hit, he couldn't stand it when someone wasn't talking, most of all him. So he said, real quiet, "Mildmay?"
"Yeah, that's me."
"Are, um..." He cleared his throat. Who the hell does that? Models, I guess. Models who used to be into whoring. Oh, wow, did I not wanna think about that. Anyway, Felix said, "Where... where are we going?"
Oh, duh, Milly-fox, the poor boy ain't psychic. "Your apartment," I said, hoping I didn't sound, oh, shit, what was the word. Condescending, I think.
Felix looked like he'd just swallowed a hiccup, kinda surprised. "Oh, I... I assumed I'd have been evicted by this point."
No, honey, that was me. "Naw, your, uh..." Your fuckbuddy. "Your friend Gideon paid the rent a couple months. You don't got to get back to work too soon."
Felix frowned, the angle of his face changing. He was naturally all angles and shit, but the drugs had taken out of him everything that wasn't a cheekbone or a hipbone or a chin, so the boy was all bone now, and kind of sallow skin. They could get rid of that with computers though, now, right? Or maybe that's what they wanted. Fuck if I knew anything about modeling with this ugly mug.
But Felix just kept frowning, kept thinking.
I decided to ask: "Gideon, is he, uh... he the type to ask for something in return?"
Thank Kethe I didn't have to explain what I meant to Felix. From the look on his face, kind of resigned, I knew he knew straight away, maybe he'd even been thinking of it beforehand. I guess we were related, after all. Or we'd just grown up in the same fucked up city. Little of both, I guess.
He said, "I don't... I don't think so. Like with you, I don't... precisely remember the early days of our acquaintance..."
Welp, someone was trying to put that whole rentboy past behind 'em. I couldn't really blame Felix, though; if I had a head good enough for flashie words, I'd sure as hell use 'em.
"Well," I said, "if'n he is, I'll..." What the hell could I do? Punch some manners into him? Oh, what a regular badass, Milly-fox. "Look, you don't gotta worry about that, okay?"
Felix made a noise in the back of his throat, somewheres between a laugh and a sigh. I reckon I deserved that.
He said, "Yes, well... I imagine we'll figure something out. I can't go back to, um... to it," Modeling, I guess, because he sure as shit wasn't gonna go back to anything else he'd done before, not if I had anything to say about it. "Not just this moment. But... in time."
I nodded, because what the hell else was I gonna do, and looked over to notice the poor boy was shivering. I mean, he was stick skinny and fucked up besides, and anyways, it was cold out, and he'd just come off some heavy shit. I got this leather jacket I've had since I was old enough to fit into it proper, and, I mean, it makes me look like some kinda rough, but it's got these pockets on the inside that I love, and I'd bought it for myself the legit way, first thing I ever bought that way with my own cash. It was the only thing I still had from the old life, and that was fine, I seriously wasn't the type for souvenirs. I just liked it, I guess. Kethe, what the hell am I doing, rambling on about some fucking jacket.
So I notice Felix was shivering, and I took off my jacket and handed it to him. There. Done. Fuck it.
Felix looked over me with eyes as big as bell wheels, and I felt kind of weird, like, what the hell do you even do with that? But he took the jacket and put it on. It fit hilariously bad. I ain't got the modeling figure, I mean, I used to wrestle with kids for pennies. I'm short and wide, whereas, with Felix, well, let's just say if you stuck him in a dress he wouldn't look outta place. And I mean that the real way, I ain't taking a crack at him for being a moll.
Anyway, so Felix took my jacket and looked at it, sniffing at, I guess, the cigarette smoke that hung off it like a cloud. Shit, could ex-addicts smell cigarette smoke without going off the edge? I couldn't remember. I'd have to get Felix to look through that folder full of papers once we got back. For the meantime, we just kept on walking.
After a few minutes more, he looked up all shy like, and said, real quiet, "Are you, um... are you the type to ask for something in return?"
My eyebrows shot right the hell up, but besides that, I tried to keep my face real still. It wasn't hard, when half of it was pretty much dead anyway. So I guess Felix'd forgotten the conversations we'd had before, in the clinic, where I'd told him I wasn't interested in nothing like that. I didn't want nothing from him. I ain't like that, and even if I was, Felix ain't got nothing I want. He's pretty, sure, but, girls are pretty too, and I like girls a hell of a lot better. Also we're related, which I realized, in the back of my head, bothered me less than Felix being a man, and wow was that not a warm and cozy thought.
So instead of any of that, I just said, "Naw, I ain't."
"Right... yes." Felix said. Kethe, did that boy hate silences. "What kind of, er, type are you, then?"
I was the type who'd killed a man before I could grow hair on my chest. Felix might feel bad about the shit that he'd done when he was a rentboy-- he'd told me about some of it, when he'd been real out of it, and I mean real out to sea-- but he ain't never drowned nobody and then turned around and bragged about it.
Instead of any of that, I said, "I been around. Bouncer, bar tender, that shit." I'd tell him about murdering folk for money when we weren't walking on the street. I said, "Nothing special."
Felix scoffed. "Modeling is hardly-" he stopped dead when he looked at my face, though. I guess I was giving him a look. I can't always rightly control that, not really. "Well," he said. "It's different from unskilled labor, I grant you. But it's not... it's not special."
"You're good at it," I said. When I'd heard he was related to me, I looked up what he'd done. He had that thing models do, where they got everything but they're still glowering like a dog shit their bed? Which I figured was a sign of talent, seeing as how all the big deal models did it and then some.
"Um... thank you." Very slowly, cautiously, he smiled. It wasn't like a fakey smile the type I'd seen in those photos of him, where he's holding a puppy or someone else's kid, all decked out in crushed velvet leather whatever with bells on. It was real, a real smile. I knew, because Felix didn't know what the hell to do with it. It just sat there on his face like some big accident.
I didn't smile back. But I did reach out to pat his shoulder. He nodded, polite like, and kept on walking.
"Felix. Felix?"
He stopped.
"Felix, your apartment's this way."
"Oh, um." He coughed. "Yes. Right. You lead the way."
So I did.