Page 59 of Freak Camp
He knew he wasn’t exactly being mature about this, but Jake was pissed, and when Dad wasn’t there to be pissedat,it all just built up until Jake wanted to smash something.Preferably a certain fancy-ass piece of slag steel.
It wasn’t until Dad was goneagain, leaving Jake in another ass-backwards town without a single hot chick or dude, that Jake realized he didn’t have to just sit where Dad had left him and mope and drink and fuck.He had the fucking Eldorado, and where there were roads he could drive them, and where there were bridges he could cross them.Leon fucking Hawthorne—who clearly didn’t give a damn, who had his truck to keep him company—could find him if he wanted to.Dad could find anything.
Jake could drive anywhere.He could drive to Freak Camp and see Toby if he wanted to.
Like a silver bullet finding a werewolf’s heart, that thought hit home.Jake grabbed the Eldorado’s keys, paid the hotel bill—fake credit card again, Dad had taken most of the cash—and hit the road humming at the thought.I can see Toby any time I want.
***
Tobias was scrubbingfresh stains off the floor of the barrack showers—on his knees with a brush, the astringent cleaning solution stinging his hands, searing like acid in his fresh burns and cuts—when a guard walked in behind him.Tobias glanced back through his bangs, saw it was Crusher, and then focused on his job.
It was a bad place to be.Maybe Crusher would cut a deal, go for the blowjob, and Tobias wouldn’t have to risk fighting him off.A handful of other guards were getting too close for comfort, but Crusher always had that edge of crazy that scared him in ways no one else did.
“Get up, Pretty Freak.Hawthorne wants you.”
Tobias kept the first sharp rush of relief off his face.Relief so intense that his hands shook and he felt lightheaded.Crusher would see the shaking and think it was fear.Might even get off thinking about it later, with some other poor bastard mouthing his dick.
That image reminded Tobias of what he had done.Of all the times—
He didn’t have to fake the sick look on his face when he stood up.How could he face Jake, look him in the eye (and Jake would tell him to look him in the eye, he always did, he’d always tilt Tobias’s face up, so gently, the calluses on his fingers brushing down Tobias’s jaw) when he had been about to blow Crusher to get out of a beating?
Tobias didn’t want to go.For a breathless, insane second, he considered saying, “No, I won’t see him,” punching Crusher, running until they caught him and he fell beneath their clubs.Letting the pain and blood wash away the scalding shame that burned his insides worse than anything he’d swallowed.Better that than being in the same room with Jake, looking at Jake, contaminating the only good thing in his world with the filth he did every day and didn’t even feel any more.
He couldn’t do it.He couldn’t walk into that room.
But running was suicide.Of all the ways Tobias could kill himself, saying no to a hunter was not the one he wanted to pick.They would probably just drag him to Jake anyway, dump him bleeding on the floor.They might apologize that Tobias couldn’t suck Jake off with his jaw shattered like that, but at least he still had an ass, right?
That’s all you need, Tobias, to make him happy.
Crusher pushed him out of the showers, and Tobias wiped his hands on his pants, wishing he could stop to wash the cleaner off before Jake—
Before Jake touched him.Every visit Jake touched him, whether on his arm, his face, or his shoulder, totally unlike the way anyone else here touched him.Soft, slow, not to hurt or hurry or because Tobias was looking at him wrong, but ...Tobias didn’t know why Jake touched him like that, but it was one of the things he couldn’t stop thinking about.Couldn’t stop craving.
Maybe Tobias wouldn’t have to talk, wouldn’t have to say anything.Maybe today was the day Jake would turn him over the table and take him—no preliminaries, no gentle questions, no smiles, no jokes that Tobias didn’t quite understand but laughed at anyway.Maybe today Jake would grind his face into the table and pull his pants down, and Tobias’s meager, pathetic dreams would die in the feel of Jake forcing his way inside him.
Shit, he should believe that.He should remember what he was—a worthless monster, a freak with only one use for his mouth—and he should not believe that nothing with Jake could hurt that badly.That Jake would never hurt him.
Of course, it would hurt.Tobias had been in the room enough times when the guards bent over some guy unwilling or unable to wheedle out of it, and he knew that it would hurt like hell, that he would bleed, probably scream, maybe not get up afterward if Jake was too rough.But he still wanted that.He wanted it to beJakebecause Jake would be touching him then, holding his shoulders while he forced his way in, maybe holding Tobias there after he was done instead of dropping him or telling him to pull his damn pants up and get out of his sight.Nothing Jake did to him could be that bad if Jake really wanted it.
Better Jake than any guard, any other hunter.Better that Jake got the last part of Tobias that hadn’t gone through a dozen hands before someone else took it.Otherwise Tobias would have nothing left to offer.Jake could have anything—why would he want what everyone else had used and cast aside?
By the time Tobias crossed the yard, he was calm, almost hopeful.Of everyone in Tobias’s world, Jake was the only one who could rattle him, could send him from horror, to despair, to ...something like contentment in the time it took to walk from one end of FREACS to the other.He wanted Jake.He wanted Jake to do anything he wanted to him.Hunter or no, real or no, Jake was the best thing in his world.Any day he saw Jake was a good day in Tobias’s book.That would be true no matter how it ended.
Then Victor smiled at him when he got to Reception, and his stomach dropped again.
“Here to see Hawthorne, Pretty Freak?”He made a mark on his clipboard.“Good boy.Jake’s looking good, you know, full-grown hunter.He’s got special plans for you today—requested a private interrogation in Room Three.”If anything, Victor’s expression got nastier.“Real shame.No cameras.”
Tobias’s mind shut off.Sure, a hunter would ask for no cameras if he wanted to fuck a monster in private, but he might also ask for no cameras if he wanted to cut a monster up without bothering with questions, without bothering with the forms and pretense of an interrogation.
Suddenly, Tobias couldn’t think of Jake, a hunter, without thinking of all the other hunters, the other guards who had tied him down and laughed while they hurt him, even as the cameras ran.He could imagine Jake smiling at him while he—
Tobias shut down the thought, clamped down hard, and retreated until he felt nothing, until he couldn’t feel the cold air around him.Jake could do whatever he wanted with him, of course.Tobias was just a monster.That was what he told himself.But he knew, deep down where he hid all the things he could never admit even to himself, that if Jake tied him down and started cutting, Tobias wouldn’t be able not to care.And without that shell that had kept him alive for nine years, he didn’t think there would be anything left of him.Or anything Jake would find worth saving.
***
What are you doing, Jake Hawthorne?
The hardest part had been rattling off the ID number and not saying that he wanted to seeToby.They’d shown him into an interrogation room: stainless steel walls, table, and two chairs.
