linndechir (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
linndechir) wrote2014-04-03 11:01 pm
linndechir) wrote2014-04-03 11:01 pm
Fic: Ben Siegel's Adventures in Getting Sid Laid (Ben, Sid)
Title: Ben Siegel's Adventures in Getting Sid Laid
Fandom: Mob City
Characters/pairings: Ben Siegel, Sid Rothman, platonic Ben/Sid, mentions of Sid/Ned, mentions of Ben and Sid sleeping with various other people
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3413
Warnings: Ben and Sid being various degrees of sexist and/or homophobic jerks to the people they sleep with.
Summary: Ben considers it his job as Sid's best friend to make sure Sid gets everything he needs, whether that's pretty girls or pretty boys. He just doesn't get why all those hustlers never believe him when he says he's only buying their services “for a friend”. Cue Ben being the most awkwardly supportive best friend ever.
Author's Note: This is not an entirely serious fic.
“You ever been with a girl?”
They're sitting on Ben's bed, Ben leaning against the headboard, Sid against the wall by the foot of the bed, his feet tucked under Ben's thigh. The bed's getting too small for the two of them, but Ben's room is tiny and there isn't really any other place to sit.
Sid shakes his head. Ben knows he hasn't. Hell, a few days ago Ben hadn't been with a girl yet either, and Ben is a head taller than Sid and more muscular and more handsome, and he generally looks like a young man already while Sid still looks like a scrawny boy. All the girls in the neighbourhood pine for Ben. They don't even look at Sid.
“You should,” Ben says, the grin on his face nothing if not dirty. He curls his fingers around Sid's ankle and squeezes a little. “Best thing in the world.”
Sid just shrugs because, damn, it's not like he doesn't want to. He relaxes into Ben's touch, listens to Ben tell him for the tenth time in great detail about all the things Rachel, the dark-haired beauty who lives around the corner, let him do to her and all the things she's promised to let him do in the future. Sid isn't jealous, he never is. He loves Ben, the last thing in the world he'd do is blame others for wanting to be close to him.
*
Three days later Ben shows up with a girl on each arm, sisters by the look of them, with pretty faces and big brown eyes. He shoves the younger one in Sid's direction, and she giggles and blushes when Sid's fingers touch her arm. Ben smirks and wriggles his eyebrows at them before he takes off with his girl. Sid has no idea what Ben promised the younger girl, but she lets Sid kiss her, there's only token protest when he pushes her on the bed and lifts her skirt, and she doesn't even cry all that much when he fucks her, even though Sid is pretty sure that she hasn't done this before.
Sid feels like he should be insulted that she only did it because Benny asked her to (probably promised to kiss her or whatever it is he tells girls to make them swoon and agree with anything he suggests), but he doesn't really care. He's high on the feeling of not coming into his own hand, and he loves Benny all the more for sharing his good fortune with him. So he smirks to himself when the girl gathers up her clothes and sneaks out of the room, and hell if he doesn't enjoy the intimidated look on her face. Ben always wants to be loved and adored, but Sid much prefers to be feared. He knows he doesn't have Ben's easy charm, but he can unsettle people just by looking at them for a moment too long. He doesn't mind making that work for him instead.
* * * * *
They're barely sixteen when Ben notices that it's not only girls Sid looks at. It's summer and they're lounging in the sun like lazy cats, watching a group of boys their age play ball not far from them. It's so hot that most of the boys have stripped down to their undershirts, and it's not the game Sid is watching, but the boys themselves, the way they tackle each other and fall into the grass, long limbs entwined and sweaty skin sliding together.
“Sid?” Ben asks, confused and a little uncomfortable.
“Hmm?” And Sid doesn't turn away from the boys, his eyes dark, and Ben has seen him look like that at the girls Ben brings him.
“Unless there's a pretty girl hiding somewhere behind those guys, what are you looking at?”
Sid turns to face him now, but he can't meet Ben's eyes. There's no shame on his face, never that, but a look of doubt and uncertainty and actual fear – Sid, who's never afraid of anything, who fights people twice his size and sends them running – and Ben never ever wants to see him look like that.
“No girl,” Sid mumbles, glances briefly at Ben, and Ben realises that Sid is worried that he'll mind, that he'll turn his back on him. Like he could ever turn his back on Sid. Ben looks back at those boys, playing and laughing and wrestling with each other, and he doesn't really see the appeal.
“I thought you liked girls,” he says, feels suddenly offended that Sid should have lied to him about enjoying the company Ben provided him with.
“I do.” Sid sounds like he means it.
“That don't make any sense if you're a -” and he doesn't want to say queer because he could never think of Sid that way; his Sid isn't some pansy who wants to dress up in women's clothes and suck a man's cock. Ben shrugs awkwardly. Sid mirrors the gesture, shifts uncomfortably.
“You like both blondes and brunettes, don't you? You don't like one of them less just because you also like the other.”
“That's different,” Ben wants to say, and it is, but he decides it doesn't matter. He's always known Sid isn't like other people, and this is probably far from the weirdest thing about him. So Ben just slings his arm around Sid's shoulders and pulls him close.
“You're a pervert, you know that?” he says fondly. Sid laughs, and the tension seeps out of his body as he sinks against Ben.
“You only noticed that now?” Sid chuckles, and it's the last they speak of it for weeks.
*
Ben has no idea where to find the kind of boy who likes other boys, or who's at least willing to pretend he does. And he doesn't wanna go asking around either because the last thing he needs is people talking about how Bugsy Siegel is a queer. So as much as he wants to help Sid out, there really isn't anything he can do about it for a long time, until he's walking home alone one evening, and sees a boy his age smiling at him, smiling a bit too much to be just friendly.
So they talk a little, and Ben feels a bit weird when the boy touches his arm and bites his bottom lip the way girls do when they try to catch his eye, and he almost punches the boy on pure instinct when he eventually says, “Wanna go somewhere else?”
Ben swallows his anger and his outrage at anyone thinking that he's a cocksucker, and he's really damn proud of himself for keeping a grip on his temper for once.
“Yeah, I do,” he says. “I got a friend who'd wanna meet you.”
And the boy doesn't look like he believes that's true – and again Ben feels the urge to punch him in that stupid pretty face and tell him men shouldn't smile like whores – but he comes along anyway, only looks a little disappointed when they arrive at Ben's place and Sid is there, waiting for Ben.
Ben feels suddenly not so sure of this anymore, looks from Sid to the boy and back to Sid.
“You think he'll do?” Ben asks. He knows what kind of girl Sid likes, not that Sid is all that picky, but he has no idea what boys he'd like. Blond or dark, hunky or boyish, his age or a little older.
“Do for what?”
And Ben has never wanted a conversation to be over more quickly since his aunt Sarit caught him stealing money out of the drawer where her husband kept his savings, and he was six when that happened. So he turns to the boy, grabs him by the collar and snarls, “You better give him whatever he wants or I'll break every bone in your body. Won't be so pretty then.”
He shoves the terrified kid in Sid's general direction, and Sid laughs as he catches the stumbling boy, smiles at Ben. That dirty, ruthless smile that promises trouble, and Ben has loved that smile since he first saw it on Sid's face. Birds of a feather, the two of them.
Ben spends the night at one of his girlfriends' place, and Sid has a spring in his step the next day and a grin on his face that makes people cross the road, never mind that Sid is still one of the smallest kids their age. Ben asks him about the boy, about how it was, and tells him to stop talking two sentences in.
He loves Sid, but there's limits to how much he needs to know about Sid's pastimes.
* * * * *
Sometimes they share girls. Either because there's only one pretty girl around and Ben doesn't want Sid to have to go home alone, or simply because he wants to get his dick wet and be with Sid at the same time. He feels like it should be awkward to do this now that he knows that Sid probably wouldn't even mind if the girl wasn't there with them, but somehow it isn't. Not like Sid would ever try anything.
Sid likes that most girls are scared of him, and Ben likes the way they press themselves against him, clinging to him like they think he'll protect them from Sid, when all he does is spread their thighs for Sid and enjoy the dirty smirk on his face. Likes the way they'll crawl into his arms afterwards, likes admonishing Sid gently that he's really not much of a gentleman, and then they both laugh because neither of them cares. Loves falling asleep with the girl's breasts pressed against his back and his arms wrapped around Sid's smaller body, and the only time that ever gets awkward is when he wakes up hard with his cock against Sid's ass.
But he never minds when his and Sid's hands meet on the girl's body, fingers entwining on her breast or her hip as they both fuck her, foreheads pressed together over her shoulder like she isn't even there. They only kiss once, one night when Ben is so drunk he barely knows what he's doing and his lips meet Sid's almost by accident. It's needy and sloppy and it actually feels damn good, but Ben just laughs afterwards because he'd really meant to kiss the girl instead, and it doesn't happen again.
Sid's fine with that. He'd let Ben do anything he likes to him, would even bend over for him and take it, the way he never would with those pretty boys he bones, but if that's not what Ben wants, Sid won't pine for something he doesn't truly need. Sex is just a meaningless pleasure he can get anywhere, not something he needs to assure himself of Ben's love.
* * * * *
Ben's sitting in his car with a beautiful boy, and he's trying to ignore the way the kid is leering at him. It's the heyday of Prohibition, and even as prudent as they are with their money, they can afford nice things nowadays. The car Ben is driving is a beauty, and they live in nice flats these days, not in the tiny rooms their parents raised them in, where they had to huddle together for warmth in winter. He's wearing a suit that cost more than his father used to earn in a month, and the boy on the passenger's seat was even more expensive.
No need anymore to pick up boys on the street or to bone neighbourhood girls, not when they can afford high-class whores and hustlers, the kind that's actually pretty to look at and most likely clean. He figures the boy next to him will do, with a full head of golden-blond hair and lips as sinful as any girl's, the kind of boy Ben himself could almost imagine screwing, if it wasn't for the lack of tits and the cock in his pants.
“So, where are we going?” the boy asks, and even his voice is nice, low and promising.
“I told you, to my friend,” Ben says testily. He's yet to meet a single hustler who believes him when he says that, and sure enough, this one too gives him a knowing smile.
“You know, it's all right. I'd be the last person to judge. Nothing wrong with having a bit of fun.” He bites his full lips and reaches out to put his hand on Ben's thigh to give it a firm squeeze. Opens his mouth again to say more, but gasps instead when Ben hits the breaks so hard the car comes to a screeching halt. He turns in his seat and slaps the boy brutally, makes his head hit the window with a dull thump and a pitiful whimper. Ben sighs as the kid stares at him with wide, scared eyes and touches his bloody lip with shivering fingers. Great, now he ruined Sid's present and he's probably going to have to pay the kid's pimp extra for making him bleed. Ben swallows his anger and starts the car again.
“I said it's for a friend,” and this time the boy nods hastily. “So keep your hands to yourself.”
They arrive at Sid's place an uncomfortable ten minutes later. The boy is sulking and shivering and Ben is still in an abysmal mood when Sid opens the door, but at least seeing Sid's eyes light up makes Ben feel a bit better.
“Got something for you,” he says and gives the boy a light shove, and Sid's arm wraps around the boy's waist to pull him close. “Sorry about the split lip. He kept getting fresh with me.”
Sid's thumb brushes over the boy's split lip, tenderly almost, but Ben knows Sid well enough to recognise the hungry look in his eyes. Sid isn't tender with the people he sleeps with. He may pet them a little when he feels like it, but he'll still fuck them hard enough to make them cry.
“That's all right, Ben, looks good on him.” He smirks, then gives Ben a more serious look. “ You know you don't have to keep doing this. I can get what I need on my own.”
“Yeah, I know.” He does. Sid has the money to afford what he wants, and he's even learnt how to be quite charming himself, if in a different way than Ben. The girls who voluntarily go with Sid always look like they know they shouldn't, but just can't help themselves. Some girls like the danger, Ben figures. He shrugs. “But I like doing it. Except for the part where your boys can't keep their hands of me.”
“What can I say, Ben, you are pretty damn handsome,” Sid laughs. Ben shakes his head, amused.
“Have fun, Sid.” And he turns to leave before Sid can ask him if he wants to stay, Sid and his terrible habit of pointing out to Ben that men suck cock better than girls do, because he knows that saying that makes Ben groan and shift uncomfortably (even more so because part of him really wants to know if it's true).
“Thanks, Ben!” Sid calls after him and then the door falls shut, and despite himself Ben smiles again.
* * * * *
“I'm just looking, Ben.”
The Clover is packed that night, hot and loud, and it feels like the first time in the evening Ben doesn't have a girl on his lap. He moves closer to Sid on the cushioned bench, puts his arm on the backrest, his fingertips just barely brushing against Sid's shoulder. Sid is drinking tea, as usual, his eyes fixed on the bar, where Mickey is talking to that young hotshot lawyer Meyer sent Ben.
“Yeah, but why?” Ned Stax is a smart boy, seems to be good at his job and have a cool head, knows how to dress and how to talk. Ben likes him.
“Not my fault he's pretty,” Sid says casually.
“He is?” Ben knows by then how Sid likes his boys, pretty and slender, the kind that looks like they're going to break underneath his hands (and they usually do, Ben knows, knows the way Sid smirks when he says that breaking men is more fun than breaking women, that it's harder to make them cry and whimper the way Sid likes it). Stax is hardly his type. Handsome, yeah, but he doesn't look like the hustlers Sid usually fucks.
“Sure. Wouldn't mind shutting that smooth, smart lawyer mouth for him.”
“Sid!” Ben groans in fond exasperation, shakes his head. “Keep your hands off the kid, all right? You know I don't mind that … that thing you do, but I can't have a lawyer who wants to get back at me because you decided to have your fun with him.”
“I know.” Sid finally stops leering at Stax from afar and turns to face Ben, puts a warm hand on his forearm. “You know I keep my hands off people we have to work with. Like I said, I'm just looking.”
Ben grumbles a little, but he nods.
“Fine, as long as he doesn't notice you're looking. You may not give a damn that people know about your habits, but I don't want him to feel … uncomfortable. You're good at making people uncomfortable.”
“I know.” Sid grins.
“That wasn't a compliment.” They both laugh at that, and the two pretty redheads Ben had been flirting with before return to the table with a bottle of champagne and a few glasses. Ben pulls one of them into his lap, takes the other's hand and gives her a charming smile.
“How about you keep my friend Sid here some company, darling? He gets up to no good when he's all alone.”
The girl giggles as she stumbles into Sid's lap, and Ben watches the way Sid's hands fit themselves to her slender waist and pull her closer. He seems to have forgotten about the lawyer for now. Ben just hopes it'll stay that way.
*
Except he catches Sid looking a few more times, until Ben eventually goes out of his way to find a hustler who looks a bit like Stax, tanned skin and black hair and broad in the shoulders like a real man, and he even has a smug little smirk on his face like Stax does when he's outsmarted someone.
“You put your hand on me, I'm gonna break it,” Ben says in a flat voice, and the way the guy flinches makes it easy to understand why Sid likes terrifying the people he sleeps with. Personally Ben prefers to have his girls fawn over him, but Sid has never cared whether anyoned but Ben liked him or not. Ben takes out the card and the pen he brought with him, scrawls two sentences on it in his large handwriting.
Stop leering at my lawyer, Sid. You can have your fun elsewhere.
Puts the card in an envelope and hands it to the hustler before he sends him on his way. He's not sure if it'll be enough for Sid, but he hates not letting him have what he wants.
*
Sid looks content and sated the next day, barely even bothers to glare at Stax when the lawyer suggests a more diplomatic solution to a problem than sending Sid to deal with the troublemaker. But another week later he grins like the cat that got the cream, while Stax sits down a bit gingerly, and that conjures up all kinds of images Ben really didn't need in his head.
He gives Sid a pointed look, and Sid just smirks at him and shrugs. At least Stax looks like he always does, calm and smooth and like nothing in the world could rattle him.
“It won't be a problem,” Sid assures him when they're alone later that day, and Ben trusts him enough not to question that.
Still, he thinks, his life was somewhat less stressful when Sid only got laid with the people Ben sent to him.
Fandom: Mob City
Characters/pairings: Ben Siegel, Sid Rothman, platonic Ben/Sid, mentions of Sid/Ned, mentions of Ben and Sid sleeping with various other people
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3413
Warnings: Ben and Sid being various degrees of sexist and/or homophobic jerks to the people they sleep with.
Summary: Ben considers it his job as Sid's best friend to make sure Sid gets everything he needs, whether that's pretty girls or pretty boys. He just doesn't get why all those hustlers never believe him when he says he's only buying their services “for a friend”. Cue Ben being the most awkwardly supportive best friend ever.
Author's Note: This is not an entirely serious fic.
“You ever been with a girl?”
They're sitting on Ben's bed, Ben leaning against the headboard, Sid against the wall by the foot of the bed, his feet tucked under Ben's thigh. The bed's getting too small for the two of them, but Ben's room is tiny and there isn't really any other place to sit.
Sid shakes his head. Ben knows he hasn't. Hell, a few days ago Ben hadn't been with a girl yet either, and Ben is a head taller than Sid and more muscular and more handsome, and he generally looks like a young man already while Sid still looks like a scrawny boy. All the girls in the neighbourhood pine for Ben. They don't even look at Sid.
“You should,” Ben says, the grin on his face nothing if not dirty. He curls his fingers around Sid's ankle and squeezes a little. “Best thing in the world.”
Sid just shrugs because, damn, it's not like he doesn't want to. He relaxes into Ben's touch, listens to Ben tell him for the tenth time in great detail about all the things Rachel, the dark-haired beauty who lives around the corner, let him do to her and all the things she's promised to let him do in the future. Sid isn't jealous, he never is. He loves Ben, the last thing in the world he'd do is blame others for wanting to be close to him.
*
Three days later Ben shows up with a girl on each arm, sisters by the look of them, with pretty faces and big brown eyes. He shoves the younger one in Sid's direction, and she giggles and blushes when Sid's fingers touch her arm. Ben smirks and wriggles his eyebrows at them before he takes off with his girl. Sid has no idea what Ben promised the younger girl, but she lets Sid kiss her, there's only token protest when he pushes her on the bed and lifts her skirt, and she doesn't even cry all that much when he fucks her, even though Sid is pretty sure that she hasn't done this before.
Sid feels like he should be insulted that she only did it because Benny asked her to (probably promised to kiss her or whatever it is he tells girls to make them swoon and agree with anything he suggests), but he doesn't really care. He's high on the feeling of not coming into his own hand, and he loves Benny all the more for sharing his good fortune with him. So he smirks to himself when the girl gathers up her clothes and sneaks out of the room, and hell if he doesn't enjoy the intimidated look on her face. Ben always wants to be loved and adored, but Sid much prefers to be feared. He knows he doesn't have Ben's easy charm, but he can unsettle people just by looking at them for a moment too long. He doesn't mind making that work for him instead.
* * * * *
They're barely sixteen when Ben notices that it's not only girls Sid looks at. It's summer and they're lounging in the sun like lazy cats, watching a group of boys their age play ball not far from them. It's so hot that most of the boys have stripped down to their undershirts, and it's not the game Sid is watching, but the boys themselves, the way they tackle each other and fall into the grass, long limbs entwined and sweaty skin sliding together.
“Sid?” Ben asks, confused and a little uncomfortable.
“Hmm?” And Sid doesn't turn away from the boys, his eyes dark, and Ben has seen him look like that at the girls Ben brings him.
“Unless there's a pretty girl hiding somewhere behind those guys, what are you looking at?”
Sid turns to face him now, but he can't meet Ben's eyes. There's no shame on his face, never that, but a look of doubt and uncertainty and actual fear – Sid, who's never afraid of anything, who fights people twice his size and sends them running – and Ben never ever wants to see him look like that.
“No girl,” Sid mumbles, glances briefly at Ben, and Ben realises that Sid is worried that he'll mind, that he'll turn his back on him. Like he could ever turn his back on Sid. Ben looks back at those boys, playing and laughing and wrestling with each other, and he doesn't really see the appeal.
“I thought you liked girls,” he says, feels suddenly offended that Sid should have lied to him about enjoying the company Ben provided him with.
“I do.” Sid sounds like he means it.
“That don't make any sense if you're a -” and he doesn't want to say queer because he could never think of Sid that way; his Sid isn't some pansy who wants to dress up in women's clothes and suck a man's cock. Ben shrugs awkwardly. Sid mirrors the gesture, shifts uncomfortably.
“You like both blondes and brunettes, don't you? You don't like one of them less just because you also like the other.”
“That's different,” Ben wants to say, and it is, but he decides it doesn't matter. He's always known Sid isn't like other people, and this is probably far from the weirdest thing about him. So Ben just slings his arm around Sid's shoulders and pulls him close.
“You're a pervert, you know that?” he says fondly. Sid laughs, and the tension seeps out of his body as he sinks against Ben.
“You only noticed that now?” Sid chuckles, and it's the last they speak of it for weeks.
*
Ben has no idea where to find the kind of boy who likes other boys, or who's at least willing to pretend he does. And he doesn't wanna go asking around either because the last thing he needs is people talking about how Bugsy Siegel is a queer. So as much as he wants to help Sid out, there really isn't anything he can do about it for a long time, until he's walking home alone one evening, and sees a boy his age smiling at him, smiling a bit too much to be just friendly.
So they talk a little, and Ben feels a bit weird when the boy touches his arm and bites his bottom lip the way girls do when they try to catch his eye, and he almost punches the boy on pure instinct when he eventually says, “Wanna go somewhere else?”
Ben swallows his anger and his outrage at anyone thinking that he's a cocksucker, and he's really damn proud of himself for keeping a grip on his temper for once.
“Yeah, I do,” he says. “I got a friend who'd wanna meet you.”
And the boy doesn't look like he believes that's true – and again Ben feels the urge to punch him in that stupid pretty face and tell him men shouldn't smile like whores – but he comes along anyway, only looks a little disappointed when they arrive at Ben's place and Sid is there, waiting for Ben.
Ben feels suddenly not so sure of this anymore, looks from Sid to the boy and back to Sid.
“You think he'll do?” Ben asks. He knows what kind of girl Sid likes, not that Sid is all that picky, but he has no idea what boys he'd like. Blond or dark, hunky or boyish, his age or a little older.
“Do for what?”
And Ben has never wanted a conversation to be over more quickly since his aunt Sarit caught him stealing money out of the drawer where her husband kept his savings, and he was six when that happened. So he turns to the boy, grabs him by the collar and snarls, “You better give him whatever he wants or I'll break every bone in your body. Won't be so pretty then.”
He shoves the terrified kid in Sid's general direction, and Sid laughs as he catches the stumbling boy, smiles at Ben. That dirty, ruthless smile that promises trouble, and Ben has loved that smile since he first saw it on Sid's face. Birds of a feather, the two of them.
Ben spends the night at one of his girlfriends' place, and Sid has a spring in his step the next day and a grin on his face that makes people cross the road, never mind that Sid is still one of the smallest kids their age. Ben asks him about the boy, about how it was, and tells him to stop talking two sentences in.
He loves Sid, but there's limits to how much he needs to know about Sid's pastimes.
* * * * *
Sometimes they share girls. Either because there's only one pretty girl around and Ben doesn't want Sid to have to go home alone, or simply because he wants to get his dick wet and be with Sid at the same time. He feels like it should be awkward to do this now that he knows that Sid probably wouldn't even mind if the girl wasn't there with them, but somehow it isn't. Not like Sid would ever try anything.
Sid likes that most girls are scared of him, and Ben likes the way they press themselves against him, clinging to him like they think he'll protect them from Sid, when all he does is spread their thighs for Sid and enjoy the dirty smirk on his face. Likes the way they'll crawl into his arms afterwards, likes admonishing Sid gently that he's really not much of a gentleman, and then they both laugh because neither of them cares. Loves falling asleep with the girl's breasts pressed against his back and his arms wrapped around Sid's smaller body, and the only time that ever gets awkward is when he wakes up hard with his cock against Sid's ass.
But he never minds when his and Sid's hands meet on the girl's body, fingers entwining on her breast or her hip as they both fuck her, foreheads pressed together over her shoulder like she isn't even there. They only kiss once, one night when Ben is so drunk he barely knows what he's doing and his lips meet Sid's almost by accident. It's needy and sloppy and it actually feels damn good, but Ben just laughs afterwards because he'd really meant to kiss the girl instead, and it doesn't happen again.
Sid's fine with that. He'd let Ben do anything he likes to him, would even bend over for him and take it, the way he never would with those pretty boys he bones, but if that's not what Ben wants, Sid won't pine for something he doesn't truly need. Sex is just a meaningless pleasure he can get anywhere, not something he needs to assure himself of Ben's love.
* * * * *
Ben's sitting in his car with a beautiful boy, and he's trying to ignore the way the kid is leering at him. It's the heyday of Prohibition, and even as prudent as they are with their money, they can afford nice things nowadays. The car Ben is driving is a beauty, and they live in nice flats these days, not in the tiny rooms their parents raised them in, where they had to huddle together for warmth in winter. He's wearing a suit that cost more than his father used to earn in a month, and the boy on the passenger's seat was even more expensive.
No need anymore to pick up boys on the street or to bone neighbourhood girls, not when they can afford high-class whores and hustlers, the kind that's actually pretty to look at and most likely clean. He figures the boy next to him will do, with a full head of golden-blond hair and lips as sinful as any girl's, the kind of boy Ben himself could almost imagine screwing, if it wasn't for the lack of tits and the cock in his pants.
“So, where are we going?” the boy asks, and even his voice is nice, low and promising.
“I told you, to my friend,” Ben says testily. He's yet to meet a single hustler who believes him when he says that, and sure enough, this one too gives him a knowing smile.
“You know, it's all right. I'd be the last person to judge. Nothing wrong with having a bit of fun.” He bites his full lips and reaches out to put his hand on Ben's thigh to give it a firm squeeze. Opens his mouth again to say more, but gasps instead when Ben hits the breaks so hard the car comes to a screeching halt. He turns in his seat and slaps the boy brutally, makes his head hit the window with a dull thump and a pitiful whimper. Ben sighs as the kid stares at him with wide, scared eyes and touches his bloody lip with shivering fingers. Great, now he ruined Sid's present and he's probably going to have to pay the kid's pimp extra for making him bleed. Ben swallows his anger and starts the car again.
“I said it's for a friend,” and this time the boy nods hastily. “So keep your hands to yourself.”
They arrive at Sid's place an uncomfortable ten minutes later. The boy is sulking and shivering and Ben is still in an abysmal mood when Sid opens the door, but at least seeing Sid's eyes light up makes Ben feel a bit better.
“Got something for you,” he says and gives the boy a light shove, and Sid's arm wraps around the boy's waist to pull him close. “Sorry about the split lip. He kept getting fresh with me.”
Sid's thumb brushes over the boy's split lip, tenderly almost, but Ben knows Sid well enough to recognise the hungry look in his eyes. Sid isn't tender with the people he sleeps with. He may pet them a little when he feels like it, but he'll still fuck them hard enough to make them cry.
“That's all right, Ben, looks good on him.” He smirks, then gives Ben a more serious look. “ You know you don't have to keep doing this. I can get what I need on my own.”
“Yeah, I know.” He does. Sid has the money to afford what he wants, and he's even learnt how to be quite charming himself, if in a different way than Ben. The girls who voluntarily go with Sid always look like they know they shouldn't, but just can't help themselves. Some girls like the danger, Ben figures. He shrugs. “But I like doing it. Except for the part where your boys can't keep their hands of me.”
“What can I say, Ben, you are pretty damn handsome,” Sid laughs. Ben shakes his head, amused.
“Have fun, Sid.” And he turns to leave before Sid can ask him if he wants to stay, Sid and his terrible habit of pointing out to Ben that men suck cock better than girls do, because he knows that saying that makes Ben groan and shift uncomfortably (even more so because part of him really wants to know if it's true).
“Thanks, Ben!” Sid calls after him and then the door falls shut, and despite himself Ben smiles again.
* * * * *
“I'm just looking, Ben.”
The Clover is packed that night, hot and loud, and it feels like the first time in the evening Ben doesn't have a girl on his lap. He moves closer to Sid on the cushioned bench, puts his arm on the backrest, his fingertips just barely brushing against Sid's shoulder. Sid is drinking tea, as usual, his eyes fixed on the bar, where Mickey is talking to that young hotshot lawyer Meyer sent Ben.
“Yeah, but why?” Ned Stax is a smart boy, seems to be good at his job and have a cool head, knows how to dress and how to talk. Ben likes him.
“Not my fault he's pretty,” Sid says casually.
“He is?” Ben knows by then how Sid likes his boys, pretty and slender, the kind that looks like they're going to break underneath his hands (and they usually do, Ben knows, knows the way Sid smirks when he says that breaking men is more fun than breaking women, that it's harder to make them cry and whimper the way Sid likes it). Stax is hardly his type. Handsome, yeah, but he doesn't look like the hustlers Sid usually fucks.
“Sure. Wouldn't mind shutting that smooth, smart lawyer mouth for him.”
“Sid!” Ben groans in fond exasperation, shakes his head. “Keep your hands off the kid, all right? You know I don't mind that … that thing you do, but I can't have a lawyer who wants to get back at me because you decided to have your fun with him.”
“I know.” Sid finally stops leering at Stax from afar and turns to face Ben, puts a warm hand on his forearm. “You know I keep my hands off people we have to work with. Like I said, I'm just looking.”
Ben grumbles a little, but he nods.
“Fine, as long as he doesn't notice you're looking. You may not give a damn that people know about your habits, but I don't want him to feel … uncomfortable. You're good at making people uncomfortable.”
“I know.” Sid grins.
“That wasn't a compliment.” They both laugh at that, and the two pretty redheads Ben had been flirting with before return to the table with a bottle of champagne and a few glasses. Ben pulls one of them into his lap, takes the other's hand and gives her a charming smile.
“How about you keep my friend Sid here some company, darling? He gets up to no good when he's all alone.”
The girl giggles as she stumbles into Sid's lap, and Ben watches the way Sid's hands fit themselves to her slender waist and pull her closer. He seems to have forgotten about the lawyer for now. Ben just hopes it'll stay that way.
*
Except he catches Sid looking a few more times, until Ben eventually goes out of his way to find a hustler who looks a bit like Stax, tanned skin and black hair and broad in the shoulders like a real man, and he even has a smug little smirk on his face like Stax does when he's outsmarted someone.
“You put your hand on me, I'm gonna break it,” Ben says in a flat voice, and the way the guy flinches makes it easy to understand why Sid likes terrifying the people he sleeps with. Personally Ben prefers to have his girls fawn over him, but Sid has never cared whether anyoned but Ben liked him or not. Ben takes out the card and the pen he brought with him, scrawls two sentences on it in his large handwriting.
Stop leering at my lawyer, Sid. You can have your fun elsewhere.
Puts the card in an envelope and hands it to the hustler before he sends him on his way. He's not sure if it'll be enough for Sid, but he hates not letting him have what he wants.
*
Sid looks content and sated the next day, barely even bothers to glare at Stax when the lawyer suggests a more diplomatic solution to a problem than sending Sid to deal with the troublemaker. But another week later he grins like the cat that got the cream, while Stax sits down a bit gingerly, and that conjures up all kinds of images Ben really didn't need in his head.
He gives Sid a pointed look, and Sid just smirks at him and shrugs. At least Stax looks like he always does, calm and smooth and like nothing in the world could rattle him.
“It won't be a problem,” Sid assures him when they're alone later that day, and Ben trusts him enough not to question that.
Still, he thinks, his life was somewhat less stressful when Sid only got laid with the people Ben sent to him.