Kit checked through the cabinets for booze.

As he expected, there was nothing. Alcoholics couldn't keep spirits at home - they would just drink it all.

So he went on social media. He found several of his new classmates, who responded quickly, inviting him into a couple of different groups connected to the school.

And then he called Tyson.

"Who's this?"

"Forgotten me already? I'm hurt."

"What the fuck do you want?!"

"Just one number. For the guy who buys for you. Booze, not weed."

"Why should I?"

"Oh, c'mon. You know I'll find out in school in like...two seconds. Bet there's a number on every other bathroom stall."

"Urgh. Fine, fine. Just don't ever call me again."

He dialled the number, took the buss a few stops away, and walked up five flights of worn concrete stairs to an apartment where a guy with a toddler on his hip handed him two bottles of cheap vodka in exchange for cash.

In his old hometown, it would have been even easier. He knew people there - one call, how much do you want, what, when, this is the price, this is the place. 

Knew which stores didn't check ID:s too closely - that was the cheapest option, unless you counted moonshine. 

And then there were always the house parties. Someone was always having one, and you found free booze there, and other things for sale - usually weed or pills. Sometimes hard drugs. 

He could have easily sold them himself - he had been buying for his mother for years, both the 'outright illegal' and the 'just shady' stuff.

They'll give you better prices, darling, they can see you're not hooked yet.

Could always go on the internet - didn't even have to be the dark web, as long as you knew where to go and what to ask for.

The internet had the best prices for drugs, but you knew even less what you were getting. There were some tests one you could do at home, and Kit knew them all, but no test for everything, and each one destroyed a bit of the stuff you were testing.

Could buy prescriptions from some doctors, but that was expensive. 

He had always drawn the line at dealing or turning tricks.

The sex industry all looked the same from the outside, but there was a big difference between the students and immigrants who gave hand jobs in massage parlours to make extra cash, to the popular strippers who filled trash bags with money on a good night, and the victims of human trafficking, paperless and brutalised, pimped out and more or less enslaved.

Then there were the junkies who'd do anything for cash, and the runaways, offered a place to stay, only to find out the extended hand belonged to a pimp, and you can stay here, sure, but you gotta pay your way, sweetheart. And countless others. 

Kit knew several runaways like that from foster care.

His mother had been one of the junkies, after she got too sick to dance. Kit knew most of her dealers, and had picked up odd jobs for them, let them send deliveries to his and Kitty's latest temporary place, dropped of stuff. 

He put four eggcups in a row on the kitchen counter and filled them with vodka. One by one he threw them back, barely registering the bitter taste or the way it burned going down, making him grimace.

"Damn." This has been a long time coming...

Kitty had been an exotic dancer, and she had been good. One of the ones with trash bags of cash. Making enough to pay for drugs, and rent, and - when Kit was small - even food and someone to mind him. 

But after a while she needed more and more, and made less and less, they had no food except what he could find outside (dumpsters behind stores and diners, plates with leftovers sitting outside restaurants, free samples in supermarkets, and then shoplifting, when he got older), and she barely ate anyway. 

One day he got home from school and she was on the floor - with two others - unresponsive, blue.

Kit had given them all Narcan in a nose-spray and called an ambulance, then checked Kitty's pulse and airways before starting rescue breathing (her heart was beating, but she wasn't breathing right, too little, too shallow, that's why she had turned blue) and given her another dose every few minutes.

She had survived, and so had one of her friends. 

I need to learn more, he had thought. 

If Kit had been able to give it intravenously he might have saved the other one. 

And if Kitty had gone into cardiac arrest, what would he have done? He barely knew CPR from school, and had learnt about naloxone from the emergency overdose response kit someone had given her. 

He'd been eleven, and after that, spent over two years in foster care. 

When she got lung cancer, she tried to quit. She'd gotten a place in rehab and drugs to help her cut down on heroin, and they let him move back in with her. 

She had no insurance, and with medical bills on top of everything, that's when Kit had been forced to get creative. 

But he hadn't wanted to cross that particular line.

No doing drugs. No turning tricks.

It had seemed like the kind of slippery slope he might never be able to climb back up.

Funny, how little it seemed to matter now that she was dead. And he had no-one to fight for but himself. 

And was losing his mind. 

Taking a plastic sports water-bottle out of a cabinet, he filled it halfway up with clear, antiseptic-smelling liquor - it's  was cheap all right - and filled the rest of it with sticky sweet apple juice.

Tucking the half-empty vodka bottle and carton of juice under one arm and holding the sports bottle with the other, he headed towards his room.

Hunter had a new, spacious SUV.

Charles let him press his face into the tan leather of the back seat, let him inch his trousers and underwear down and pull them off while kissing every vertebrae along his sinuous spine.

Let him slowly work out the smooth, oblong, pink glass buttplug that he had given Charles gift-wrapped that morning in their office, while the younger man gasped and tried to hold still.

He bit his lip.

All through lunch he had felt it, making him extra sensitive when Hunter had kissed him in the bathroom, making him feel filthy in the way that he liked to feel filthy - and not in the other way.

Holding him open, stimulating him whenever he shifted his weight, reminding Charles of the person who had given it to him.

His body was already sensitised, and he shivered when Hunter grabbed some hand cream from the glove compartment, before sliding his finger along the rim of his softened, slick hole and rolling on a condom.

He placed a hand between the faint dimples on Charles's lower back and pushed in slowly, relentlessly without rocking back until his hips were flush with the blond's ass, making him gasp at the stretch.

Charles whimpered, nails scraping on the leather, the pressure somehow always surprising him, but because of the plug there was barely any pain. He bit his lip and breathed through his nose, relaxing.

He could feel Hunter, a deep, branding, and familiar heat inside him, bending down to press a kiss between his shoulder-blades.

There was something about being taken like this that always turned his muscles into jelly, sapping the strength from his limbs and air from his lungs until he could barely hold his own weight with the sheer onslaught of sensory input.

When he started to rock into him, one hand weaving through the silky waves of Charles's hair and keeping him pressed down, the other on his hip pulling him back on his cock, Charles could barely move an inch. Heat pooled low in his stomach.

He groaned, muffled, and heard Hunter chuckle, hips snapping forward faster.

Charles felt that wonderful stretch, feeling filled and held and controlled, and he started to float away, moaning and pushing back on Hunter's cock.

That made the other man tighten his grip and push his face down so he could barely breath before letting him come up for air, gasping.

"Be still."

He tried, he did, but his own cock ached, just barely out of reach from rubbing against the seat, bobbing in the air with each thrust.

"Please," he gasped, all too soon.

"I need - please - "

Hunter dragged him up against him, thrusting in harshly, the new angle making Charles whimper with pleasure, sending little ripples through him.

"Have I said that you could?"

"Please - I can't - "

Hunter paused, the unexpected lack of stimulation making Charles clench down, his knees and arms shaking.

Pulling out another condom, Hunter ripped the packed open with his teeth, still holding himself deep within Charles.

"I'll be very disappointed in you if you do," he breathed onto Charles's neck, holding him still as he reached a hand around his waist and slowly rolled the latex onto his stiff, pink cock.

His whole body shuddered at the touch, the effort of holding himself together. The heat in his belly coiled tighter, bringing him right to the edge.

But with Hunter holding still, it was not enough to send him toppling over.

His superior trailed his fingers teasingly over him, nuzzled into his shoulder, and Charles's breath caught in his throat.

"Don't come," Hunter ordered.

Then he snapped his hips forward, fucking him at a brutal pace, fingers digging into his hips.

Charles's knees gave out and he collapsed forward, knocking his head against the car door. Hunter's cock grazed over his prostate with each deep thrust and his dick was now trapped between the seat and their bodies, friction sending little jolts through him -

"Ah! Ah, ah, I - oh - "

Charles tried, but the sensation was taking over his body, toes curling, spine arching and he came with a muffled yell, twitching around Hunter's cock, which was still moving, fucking.

It heightened everything, making him cry out again, still coming while Hunter picked up his pace once more.

"Aah...please..."

He kissed the now damp waves at the back of Charles's neck.

"You've been very bad, coming without my permission. So now," he gripped his hips tighter.

"Be good and take my cock."

Charles was already going boneless after his orgasm, and now he whimpered, letting Hunter wrap one hand around his throat and slipping a finger into his mouth, forcing it open so that his moans sounded even louder into the enclosed space.

Then he pushed Charles's leg in under him, forcing his ass up into the air.

Every sensation was so much - he felt sure he couldn't take any more. But he knew from experience that he could.

Charles let go, letting the sensations carry him away, letting Hunter use him however he wanted, letting go of all his worries and all the thoughts usually swirling around his head. 

They got back late from lunch.

After Hunter left to catch his flight - Be good while I'm gone  - Charles stayed behind, working late.

When he finally wrote down his last results, packing up and flicking odd the lights, he sighed, wincing. 

Sore...

Usually Hunter might take him out for a drink sometimes after work and then bring him back to his apartment. He had been to Charles's place, but rarely. And that would be impossible now that he was living with Kit. 

Unlocking the front door with a sigh of relief, he felt decided to go straight to bed for once. There was a faint sour smell coming from somewhere. Was it the trash?

He noticed that door to Kit's room was open slightly, but it looked dark inside. Was his nephew awake? Should Charles apologize? He chewed his lip. 

I should at least say good night...

When he nudged the door open, the first thing that struck him was the smell. The reek of sick. Reminding him unpleasantly of college parties - bathrooms - of waking up with no memory, with this smell clinging to his clothes.

The next thing was the way Kit lay on his side on the floor, still and ashen - the sight making his  breath catch in his throat.

"Oh, no..."